The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF

by Mike Ashley

  Kamis laughed. “But there are hundreds of them! Thousands!”

  Across the wide breadth of the seabed, the cavalcade of beings was drawn like iron fillings as if by some invisible magnet towards the beauteous attractor of the dying sun.

  “But not all are from Earth?” Cheth said.

  “You are correct,” Rep said. “Some hail from Mars and the moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, and beyond. All are races which once dwelled proudly in the solar system.”

  “And they, too,” Kamis asked, “have been accessed, enabled and brought to fruition?”

  Rep waved an acknowledging claw. “That is so.”

  I said, “So, then, has every sentient being that has ever lived been brought to fruition to witness the end of planet Earth and the solar system?”

  There was a pause before Rep said, “Not every being, my friend. Merely . . . representatives.”

  We all three allowed this statement to sit in the air, before Cheth said, “But by what right, or by what stroke of fortune, was it deemed that I should represent my race?”

  It was the question which had sprung to my mind, too. Rep was silent. At last Kamis prompted, “Well? I think Cheth’s query is valid.”

  “I will explain very soon,” was all the crab would say.

  I gazed down at the throng, and saw that it was added to all the time by the arrival of more beings from every direction, escorted by their Ky20 guides. Then I beheld, among the teeming life down there, something almost human. It was small and ape-like, though walked upright with a noble bearing. I gestured to Rep and said, “A human being, like me?”

  Rep responded, “A being which came to sentience on Earth a million years before Homo sapiens, but of a different species.”

  I thought of the scientists working away in the underground bunker, and said, “The scientists we saw – what exactly were they doing?”

  Rep tuned an eye-stalk my way. “They were bringing about a rift in space and time.”

  I gasped, and thought I had an answer. “Our summons here, the scientists . . . they – you – are sending us back in time to warn our races of the doom that awaits the planet?”

  Rep made a sound like laughter. “Such a rationalistic theory, my friend. But what might that achieve? The end of Earth is a fact, an immutable law which cannot be averted. It is, indeed, to be celebrated.”

  “Ah ha!” said Kamis. “So that is what this great pilgrimage is – a celebration?”

  “Not,” said Rep, “as such.”

  “Then what?” asked Cheth.

  Instead of replying, Rep spoke hurriedly to Cheth, and in response Cheth dropped so that we were flying low above the seabed, just above the heads – and other appendages – of the marching assembly.

  I looked upon the varied life that had shared the solar system, and marvelled.

  Ahead, the seabed came to an end, dipped and formed a vast amphitheatre. Gathered within this declivity, washed with the light of the ailing primary, sat, stood, and hovered a myriad curious individuals. We came to a halt, hovering above the heads of the crowd, and stared.

  And as we stared, a remarkable thing happened high above the amphitheatre; it was as if the air before the sun had finally succumbed to the great heat and split, for the sky was torn from horizon to zenith to reveal an ellipse of such blinding luminescence that it dazzled the gaze to look upon it. I turned my head and beheld, to either side of the rent, great silver machines the size of planets with claws which reached out and held open the sides of the blinding ellipse.

  Rep gestured. “The last gesture of the Effectuators,” it said, “aided by our humble selves.”

  “But what . . . ?” I managed.

  “They were masters of space and time,” it said, “and we their mere minions, slaves if you like, to do their bidding. But what bidding!”

  “Tell us,” said Cheth.

  “We have helped to open a rift in the fabric of the continuum; we gaze now upon the fundament, the essence that underpins all reality.”

  “And our presence here?” I asked.

  Rep turned to me, and regarded me with its eye-stalks, and paused before saying, “I implied earlier that you represent your race, my friend.”

  Kamis said, “And we wondered why us, why we of all the millions, the billions, of our race . . . why we should be selected for this . . . honour.”

  And Rep said, “When I said represent your race, that is exactly what I meant.” It paused before continuing, “You are not individuals, as such, but distillations of the essences of your respective races.”

  I felt a welling sadness within me, almost like despair. “But my memories . . . my loved ones . . . The love I felt, the love I feel!”

  Rep said, “It is valid, my friend, but does not refer to specific individuals. Instead, it is something far greater – the incarnation of the goodness that made your race great.”

  “And we were brought here for what reason?” asked Kamis. “Surely, not just to witness the end of the Earth?”

  Rep waved a claw. “The Effectuators were perhaps the greatest of all the races that ever graced the solar system, and they foresaw an end to all things, not just our sun – but the universe itself.”

  Something stirred within me at these words, some premonition of what all this was about, and I felt a fluttering sensation within my chest.

  “They worked to defy entropy, to abnegate the draconian laws of the universe – the laws which state that all things must end.”

  “And?” I asked, my voice a tremor.

  “And,” said Rep, waving towards the rent in space, “they have succeeded. Behold the entrance to another time and space . . .”

  We stared, but comprehension eluded us.

  Before we could question Rep, there was a stirring in the crowd beneath us, a surge forward, and I looked ahead and saw that, on the distant horizon, the amphitheatre was emptying of its assembled species, draining like water from a dam.

  They were giving themselves to the rent in the space-time continuum.

  And we too were moving towards it.

  Rep said, “You contain, within you, the essences of your races, the life-force of the universe.”

  “And you, my friend?” I asked.

  “I am a mere guide,” Rep said. “I go no further, but will live out my last years among my kind, secure in the knowledge that we have fulfilled the desire of the Effectuators.”

  “And they?” I Kamis asked.

  “They dwell in the universe as beings of energy,” Rep said. “Now . . . go!”

  We left Rep, and moved swiftly towards the light, and it was blinding.

  And I cried out, reaching for memories. I felt great sadness that I was no more than an illusion, and then a welling of rapture that everything I was should amount to such greatness, for I knew then that I – and Kamis and Cheth and the countless others with me – were seeds.

  We moved towards the rent, towards the beginning of a myriad new universes, and I gave thanks.

  And fell into the light.

  VACUUM STATES

  Geoffrey A. Landis

  Like Gregory Benford, Gerald Nordley and several others in this anthology, Geoffrey Landis (b. 1955) is a science-fiction writer who also gets his hands very dirty as a practising scientist. He has worked for NASA and the Ohio Aerospace Institute and specializes in photo-voltaics, which is about harnessing the power of the sun. He has been writing science fiction for over twenty years and has won two Hugo Awards and a Nebula for his short fiction. His books include the novel Mars Crossing (2000) and the collection Impact Parameter (2001).

  I had originally intended that Eric Brown’s story would close this anthology, but this one kept niggling at the back of my mind. It just would not fit anywhere else in the anthology, and just had to come at the end. You’ll soon see why, as it’s quite short, and will leave you wondering in classic “Lady and the Tiger” tradition. I hope, by now, your sense of wonder is fully restored.

  “. . .the
vacuum state must contain many particles

  in a state of transient existence

  with violent fluctuations . . .

  The total energy of the vacuum is infinite . . .”

  P. A. M. Dirac, Quantum Mechanics

  YOU OPEN THE DOOR hesitantly, then walk into the laboratory where the two scientists wait for you. They seem to know you. Perhaps you are a science writer, well known for your ability to convey a sense of the excitement of even the most arcane scientific discoveries. Or perhaps you are merely a friend, someone who knows both of them from long ago. It doesn’t matter.

  The older scientist smiles as she sees you. She is a world-renowned physicist, and justly so, an iconoclast who laughingly destroyed the world-view of her predecessors and rebuilt the universe to match her own view of beauty. Some say that now, older, she has grown conservative, less open to speculation. Her hair is clipped short, just beginning to grey. Call her Celia. Whatever else she may be, she is a friend. Between you no titles or last names are needed.

  And the younger scientist, barely out of grad school, with an infectious enthusiasm and boundless energy; the new iconoclast, the barbarian storming the walls of the citadel of knowledge, already being compared to the young Einstein or Dirac. Perhaps he is tall and lanky, with unruly black hair, wearing a grey sweatshirt emblazoned with a cartoon picture of Schrödinger’s cat. Or maybe he wears a three-piece suit; such an incongruity would appeal to his sense of humour.

  You were there when they first met. Perhaps you even introduced them, in the hopes of seeing sparks fly. If so, you were disappointed, since their conversation had quickly shifted to another language, a language of Hilbert spaces and contravariant derivatives. Perhaps the very language, you muse, of the Word spoken in the Beginning, before the world began.

  But sparks indeed flew, could you but have seen. And one of them had caught fire.

  “I came,” you say, “as soon as I could.”

  The younger scientist – perhaps his name is David? – takes your hand and shakes it vigorously. “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” he says, “I knew you would. I trust you are ready to see something, well – ” he grins, “Earth-shaking?”

  “What do you know about guts?” says the older scientist.

  “Yes,” you say, speaking to the scientist whose name is perhaps David, and “GUTs? Grand Unification Theories? Just the barest bones,” you say to the other.

  “But you do know that the quantum vacuum is quite full of energy?” she asks, in her slightly British accent. “That, according to quantum mechanics, even empty space must have a large ‘zero point energy’?”

  “Alive with virtual particles,” he interjects, “bursting with the energies of creation; constantly afroth and aboil with the boundless, countless, infinite dance of creation and annihilation below the Heisenberg limit.”

  “Yes,” you say, slowly. You’ve tried to understand quantum mechanics before. Somehow, though, the vital essence has always managed to elude you. “But it’s not real energy, is it?”

  “Indeed,” she says, “most respectable (she pronounces the word as if it were somehow dirty) physicists will tell you that zero-point energy is just a mathematical artifact, a figment of the formalism.”

  “So goes the conventional wisdom,” he says. “But it’s there, never the less.”

  “Maybe,” she says dryly, “you should show the apparatus.”

  “Yes, of course. This way.” He turns and walks with a bounce across the room, not even looking to see if you are behind him. You follow him into an adjoining room where a large, complicated piece of experimental apparatus fills most of the available space. “What do you think?”

  You hate to admit it, but all physics experiments look alike to you. A shiny stainless-steel vacuum chamber, large storage tanks of liquid nitrogen and helium, racks of digital meters, an oscilloscope or two, with brightly coloured wires strung all about and the ubiquitous computer sitting in front. “Very pretty,” you say, hoping he won’t notice your indifference. Experimenters all think that their apparatus is beautiful. “What is it?”

  “A device to extract energy from the vacuum,” she says.

  “What?”

  “An endless energy source,” he says. “A rabbit that pulls itself out of a hat. A perpetual motion machine, if you will.”

  “Oh.” You are impressed. “Does it work?”

  The two scientists look at each other. David sighs. “We haven’t tried it.”

  “Why not?”

  “There is a question we disagree about, and we thought we’d ask your opinion,” Celia says, slowly. For a moment you think this is funny; there is no way that you could hope to answer a question that they could not. Then it seems less funny, then not funny at all. So you hold your silence. “A philosophical question: if we take energy out of the vacuum, what do we have left?”

  “Nothing!” he interjects, barely waiting for her to finish speaking. “That’s the symmetry of the vacuum. Since the zero-point energy is infinite, no matter how much energy is extracted there is always an infinite amount left.”

  “So goes conventional wisdom,” she replies softly. “But the infinity is a renormalized infinity, and that the only thing of importance is differences in energy. If we remove energy, what is left must be a vacuum with lower energy.

  “Therefore, if we can extract energy, the physical vacuum must be a false vacuum.”

  She makes this pronouncement seem portentous, as if it were the most important thing in the world. “True vacuum?” you say. “False vacuum?”

  “Right,” she says. “It’s simple. A ‘true vacuum’ by definition is the lowest energy state of empty space. If you put anything into it – remember, mass has energy! – the energy must increase, and it’s no longer the true vacuum.”

  You plop yourself down onto a lab stool, a spidery metal thing with a round metal seat, slickly enamelled in nondescript light brown. Through your jeans you feel it cool against your buttocks. You swivel slightly, back and forth, like a compass needle uncertain of true north.

  “The GUTS theory postulates that when the universe was young there existed a vacuum that was just as empty of matter, but had higher energy. This ‘false’ vacuum decayed into our ‘true’ vacuum by a process we call spontaneous breaking of symmetry.”

  Her colleague leans back against a rack of equipment, smiling slightly. He seems willing to let her do the explaining. She glances at her watch. “We don’t have a whole lot of time, so please pay careful attention.

  “Here’s an example. Consider a beaker of perfectly pure liquid water. The water has perfect symmetry, which means if you start from one water molecule, you have just as much likelihood of finding another water molecule in one direction as any other. Now, cool the water down. Cool it past the freezing point, and keep cooling it. If it’s really pure water, it won’t freeze. Instead, it supercools. That’s because ice has lower symmetry than liquid water, all directions are not the same. Some directions are along the crystal axis, others aren’t. Since pure water doesn’t have any way to “pick” a preferred direction to orient the crystals, it can’t crystalize.

  “Now drop in a tiny crystal of ice. One little seed of ice, no matter how tiny, and whamo! Suddenly the whole mass of water crystallizes, releasing energy in the process. Explosive crystalization, it’s called.

  “That’s symmetry breaking.

  “Now, symmetries exist in empty space as well, although a bit more abstract ones. According to GUTs, the big bang itself was caused by symmetry breaking. In the beginning, the universe was unthinkably small, and unimaginably hot, but empty. Everything was supersymmetric, all the four forces were the same, and all particles were alike. The universe cooled, and then supercooled. After a while the supersymmetric vacuum wasn’t the true vacuum any more, but a false vacuum, laden with potential energy. Nobody knows what triggered the crystallization, but suddenly it happened, and the universe flipped over into one of the lower energy states.

  “A
lot of energy was released. Everything that is, was created from that explosive transition to a lower energy vacuum.”

  “Oh,” you say, since you can’t think of anything else.

  “Sometimes I dream of it,” she says. “Perhaps before the big bang, there were intelligent creatures in the universe. What they were like we couldn’t possibly imagine. Their world was hot, and dense, and tiny; their entire universe would have been smaller than the point of a pin, and they would have lived a trillion generations in the shortest time we can measure. Perhaps one of them realized that the vacuum they were living in was a false vacuum, and that they could create energy from nothing. Perhaps one of them tried it. One tiny seed, no matter how small . . .”

  Your head is spinning, trying to imagine little tiny scientists before the big bang. You picture them as something like ants, but smaller, and moving so fast that they’re like blurs. And hot, don’t forget hot. You give up trying to picture it, and go back to listening. She is saying something about cubic potentials, comparing the universe to a marble on top of a hill – if the marble is right exactly at the top, it doesn’t know which way to roll.

  “The question is,” she continues, “if energy can be extracted from the vacuum, why doesn’t it happen spontaneously, all by itself? The answer has to be, because some symmetry forbids it. But if that symmetry is broken . . .

  “Since the big bang, the universe has cooled a lot. Perhaps our vacuum has cooled out of the lowest energy state. If the symmetry is broken, all the energy of the vacuum would be released at once. It would be the end, not only of the Earth, but of the universe as we know it.