Nature Futures 2

by Colin Sullivan

  * * *

  “So, you gonna tell me what happened?”

  I could tell Marcie was excited because she didn’t make her usual crack about Botox even though I was frowning.

  “Well, I turned up at All Bar One wearing my —”

  “I know what you were wearing!”

  I blushed but said nothing.

  “What did he look like?”

  “It’s hard to say.”

  Marcie groaned. “You did pick one with a photo, right?”

  I shook my head. “No, but…”

  “Have I taught you nothing?”

  Quite the opposite in fact, but I wasn’t about to say so. I sighed and continued my account.

  “There were lots of men there, but no standalones. So I sat at a corner table and waited. After half an hour of cooling my heels, I was about to go when … the best way I can put it is that I felt a presence. I couldn’t see him properly or work out what he was saying; yet I knew someone was sat next to me. But take it from me, you feel a right fool talking to thin air, so pretty soon I made my excuses and left.”

  “Good call.”

  “But walking to the bus-stop, I could feel someone holding my hand. And when I finally got into bed, well…”

  “Omigod, you pulled!” Marcie high-fived me before asking the inevitable question: “So, was he any good?”

  “Well, I did enjoy a very nice buzz.”

  I could tell Marcie wasn’t convinced by the way she frowned at me. And who could blame her? But I knew I’d been to bed with a man, even if I hadn’t actually clapped eyes on him at any stage.

  I sipped my Chardonnay in silence while I awaited Marcie’s verdict. Finally she delivered it.

  “I bet he wasn’t even dark, never mind tall and handsome.”

  On that point she couldn’t have been more wrong.

  * * *

  The official news about our exotic friends broke the next day.

  According to the hot-looking guy on Sky News, the Large Haddock Colander (the pride of CERN, as rechristened by Marcie) hadn’t opened up a planet-swallowing black hole as some had predicted, but it had definitely opened up a gateway to something. Within days, an MIT boffin announced that he’d built a dark matter delineator. Once the portable model hit the stores, my dates got a lot easier to spot. Fortunately I’ve always preferred the silent type.

  I was dating my fourth dark guy by the time Marcie decided to join in the fun. My best friend asking me for dating advice; now that was a first!

  “Okay, let’s build your profile,” I said. “And no, you can’t upload those photos of you wearing nothing.”

  Marcie waggled her tongue at me before clicking her way through the options so expertly I wondered whether she was quite as inexperienced at this kind of thing as she claimed.

  “I see you didn’t select Dark,” I said.

  Marcie grinned like a snake hypnotizing a mouse.

  “I’m looking for something a lot stronger than a ‘very nice buzz’!”

  * * *

  After three days with no phone calls or messages, I felt sick with worry. I texted Marcie a lurid description of my latest date, but didn’t receive a reply. Either she was having such a good time it had left her speechless — another first — or her alley-cat morals had finally landed her in trouble.

  As I drove into Marcie’s street a fleet of fire engines and ambulances wailed past. Some hundred metres from her home, a police-boy with a volcanic complexion waved me back. He needn’t have bothered. One glance at the huge pile of smoking rubble where Marcie’s apartment block had once stood was enough.

  * * *

  Last I heard the death toll had topped 50. Needless to say, Fundamentals.com has withdrawn its Energetic option. It seems that some guys really are too dangerous to date, especially those made of antimatter. According to the boffins, the containment field needs more work.

  Once the dust has settled I’ll resume dating. Marcie would want me to. I miss her terribly but remember her well. Say what you like about my best friend, but she definitely went out with a bang.

  Vaughan Stanger wishes to make it clear that any visits he might have made to dating websites were purely in the interests of researching this story. For further writing excuses, please visit http://www.vaughanstanger.com.

  Survivors and Saviours

  Philip T. Starks

  The airlocks close behind me, but I can’t hear them. My ears register nothing but the radio and my breathing. White noise, the rhythmic acceptance and expulsion of recycled air, and my own inner dialogue keep me company as I take my first step. The ground compresses beneath my foot, but my protective gear mutes the full experience.

  I was selected for this mission not because I’m the oldest or youngest, weakest or strongest, smartest or dimmest, but because I’m expendable. When you’re a dead-end vehicle in an evolutionary war, your job is to die first. I’ve been awarded this step because I’m sterile.

  Sterile not only describes me, but also the environment that I’ve survived in. I won’t say, ‘lived in’, although the others seem hopeful enough to equate survival with living. I don’t. Up until now, I’ve been surviving. However, with each step taking me farther from the enclave into the real world, I feel more alive.

  And I’m not alone. Out here, the world is teeming with life. Some teams collaborate, some hold ground in extended battle and others triumph. The skeletal remains splintering beneath my feet, serving as coral-like scaffolding for microbial masters, remind me that when one team triumphs, another fails. I might be advancing, but my team is losing.

  Many teams have lost, but I suppose the majority have survived. It’s just my own bias that elevates birds over biofilm. But I find no comfort in these thoughts. So, while ploughing through this microbial minefield, I focus on stories of long extinct beasts: of mammals, birds, reptiles and insects. I recite parables explaining how the loss of honeybees was an ignored bioindicator of a New Age, and how financial and political interests handcuffed a timely response. I fill my mind with these details to shield me from my fears.

  My mission is to find survivors, but the unspoken hope is to find females. That hope isn’t buoyed by data or experience. Of almost 10,000 embryos, only 1,500 survived. Even this pathetic number stressed our pool of viable uteruses, forcing us to transfer as many as three to the younger soldiers. Most failed to implant, or perished shortly thereafter. Our hopes were pinned on 350 fetuses, 280 of which survived birth; 165 enjoyed their ninth birthday, and prior to their tenth, we released them. Only 68 were female.

  Now I’m searching for at least one. I understood that this trip would be long, and that the first steps would reveal our past failures. Despite these warnings, I didn’t anticipate the boneyard I’d trample. The beauty of the growth encompassing them notwithstanding, these were my kin. Still, the horror of the eviscerated, cleanly consumed bodies was infinitely preferable to what I feared came next.

  I pass through the final gateway, frightened but hopeful, but ultimately unprepared. My fears, developed and nourished in isolation, paled against this sight. Extinction nestles into one’s arms more easily than a dead child. And I can’t possibly hold all of the dead children.

  Most of the food and water packets littering the ground are untouched. I am pleased, actually, by the advanced decomposition: most died immediately. Some of the bones, however, hold flesh. These children had survived, but not long enough to rejoin us. I mourn them, mutter a silent prayer, and wish they were never born.

  I begin tallying the dead, then stop and radio in: “I count at least 150, I’m coming back.” I turn down the volume and don’t wait for an answer. We fertilized the eggs, developed the embryos and reared the young. We took the survivors and released them, unprotected, into this world. We killed them: I just couldn’t count every last dead child.

  If I had, my count would have fallen short. My walk back to my sterile tomb was not solitary, and before I reached the airlock I felt a delicate hand tug my
gloved finger.

  “Don’t leave me.”

  She is beautiful: eleven years old, fit, and without protective gear. Her words are stronger than she knows: with them, she has sealed both our fates. I am overcome with joy and grief: I am thrilled she breathes, but I wish I was dead.

  “I won’t leave you,” I promised her. “Where are your friends?”

  “Gone,” she said. I understood. She was the lone survivor of our challenge test. She has endured our abuse, and now I’ll deliver her back to her abusers.

  “So many people are looking forward to meeting you!” I confess to her the truth, but not its depth. I know that delivering her to the airlock will kill her freedom. She has survived, but only to be an egg donor. The goal of our research has always been to produce a generation that could thrive without protection. If she carries alleles that protect her against extinction-level pathogens, we need them.

  I bring her to the airlock, call in the news and lie to her. “I’m going to step aside and protect the site, so I know you make it in.” As she enters our crypt, I remove my mask, remember those we saved and mourn those we killed. As a dead-end vehicle, I am happy to reach my end. I breathe deeply, taste the Age of Microbes, and convince myself that the Age of Man is not over.

  Philip T. Starks is an associate professor of biology at Tufts University. His research focuses mostly on the behaviour of social insects, but he has recently been exploring microbial communities.

  The Day We Made History

  Ian Stewart

  I should have known better than to draw Wesley’s attention to the advertisement in Spiritual Physics. Our chairman had no intention of spending his life running the Mixatap Centre for Quantum Appliances at the University of Central Sidmouth. Seizing his opportunity, he cornered us at the coffee machine.

  “Have you seen Godwit and Pond’s paper on strong decoherence?” he said, waving a copy of Qubit.

  “I have,” said Sandra. “But putting their ideas into practice would take a massive amount of equipment, and we don’t have the funding.”

  “Not yet,” said Wesley, opening Spiritual Physics at a double-page advertisement and holding it to his chest for us to read.

  “The Trumpington Foundation?” squeaked Pete.

  “Call for proposals,” Wesley said. “Historical Reconstruction Project.”

  “Oh, come on, Wesley. They’re not interested in genuine history. What they want is so-called ‘scientific proof’ of biblical events.”

  “Agreed. But they’re offering a grant of $30 million.”

  “How do you propose to divert funding for historical evidence of supernatural events into quantum computation?” I asked.

  “I thought that instead of digging up the past, we could simulate it.”

  “You want to compute the Crucifixion?”

  “Of course not.” I relaxed. “We need to think bigger.” I tensed. “I don’t believe you can cherry-pick historical incidents. History is a single system.”

  “Oh no,” I groaned. “Wes, it’s been done. Isaac Asimov. Psychohistory. The great Hari Seldon forecast the entire history of the Galactic Empire as it plunged into anarchy. But that was fiction, and even Asimov had to write some extra books to patch the holes. Chaos, for starters.”

  “Godwit and Pond explain in rigorous detail why chaotic effects do not, in fact, change the course of history.”

  “Yeah,” Sandra chipped in. “It’s not a matter of one stupid butterfly flapping its wing and causing a tornado. There’s zillions of butterflies, flapping like crazy all the time. What one flap creates, the next destroys. It all averages out.”

  “Yes, and it averages out to one thing. Quantum simulations of history always give a unique result, provided they’re really big simulations.”

  “So … we get hundreds of quantum computers, and simulate the whole of human history, right?”

  “Wrong. We spend this grant on a feasibility study, and simulate the twentieth century. When that works, we hit Trumpington for a really big grant.”

  “But Wes, where would the simulation start?” I asked. “There’s no way to get accurate initial conditions.”

  Wesley’s face fell. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

  But Pete’s eyes were shining. “Not a problem. We start from the present and work backwards.”

  To cut a long story short, we got the grant. We bought 10,000 QQorp MR2s, with Extel ParacoreMulto QPUs. We hooked the lot into the Gnet, and imported every present-day fact available. Then we ran Schrödinger’s equation in reverse time, to work out what history had been.

  The feasibility study checked out in every detail, right down to who really assassinated Kennedy. Trumpington was impressed; we bought another half a million MR2s, and calculated our way back towards the Middle Ages.

  The Domesday Book reconstruction was word-perfect, and we celebrated. But somewhere around 990 the simulation went off the rails.

  It was Pete who spotted it. “Hang on … shouldn’t Vladimir of Kiev be a Christian by now?”

  Sandra pulled up a data-window. “He should have converted in 988.”

  “So why is he building a Temple of Mithras?”

  “What?”

  “Maybe he converted back,” I said, but somehow I doubted that. “Let’s call Wesley.”

  But when Wesley arrived, none of us could work out why we’d called him. The simulation was spot on. Vladimir’s temple bore a striking resemblance to the famous building in Kiev that currently attracted pilgrims from all over Europe. With Wesley as our Heliodromus, we chanted a Yasht in praise of Mithras, to celebrate the accuracy of our simulation.

  But later that evening, we once more became concerned. The Aztec invasion of Australia didn’t seem to be following the expected pattern, and the Chinese Empire was totally out of whack, except along the Icelandic coast. Sandra ran a few tests, and called a Holy Conclave.

  “Fellow initiates,” she said. “I have bad news. I have looked up some obscure files, and we are in the wrong universe.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Sandra.”

  “To be precise, we are in a superposition of our original universe with the simulated one. Practical quantum computation requires entanglement on the level of bulk matter. Unfortunately, our simulation was so massive that it became entangled with the real world.”

  “You mean…?”

  “The world has in effect become our simulation — which turns out to be hopelessly inaccurate. Or would be, except that the world is changing to match it. Aside from a few vestiges of the original, such as the anomalous files I just showed you. Which are slowly fading, even as I speak.”

  We all thought about this. Eventually I broke the silence.

  “Which anomalous files, Sandra?”

  “Files? I didn’t mention any files!”

  “Then why did you invoke this conclave?”

  “To report that the simulation has now reached regnal year 12 of Queen Nefershepsut of Jerusalem, and it remains perfect in every detail.”

  “Praise be to Napoleon of Lancaster!” we cried in unison. I looked out of the window. Herds of camelopard grazed the nearby plains, and huge galleys laden with electrum from the mines of Atlantis were moored in the harbour. A procession of domesticated mammoths made its way through the city, as the Lemurian virgins gave thanks for the Rebirth of the Sun in a ceremony as old as time itself.

  I sighed.

  All was exactly as it should be.

  Ian Stewart, emeritus professor at the University of Warwick, writes popular science books and science fiction. His Science of Discworld series with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen lies somewhere in between.

  The Greatest Science-Fiction Story Ever Written

  Eric James Stone

  I tore open the self-addressed, stamped envelope and unfolded the single sheet of paper inside. The letter was signed by the editor of Analog Science Fiction and was addressed to me, personally, which still gave me a warm feeling after all those years of form rejection
s. But what I craved now was an acceptance.

  And … this wasn’t it. Good luck placing this elsewhere, the letter read.

  I shoved the rejection in my overstuffed file with the rest of them. Eyeing the four-inch-thick wad of paper, I felt a wave of despair. Maybe I didn’t have what it took to be a science-fiction writer. Maybe I should just give it up — after all, I worked for a quantum-computing start-up. That was almost science fiction, even if all I did was manage the website. Maybe that was as close as I’d ever get.

  The next day, while having a mint Oreo shake at a restaurant near my office, I told Caleb, one of the quantum-circuit experts I worked with, that I doubted I’d ever see my name in print.

  “Don’t quit,” he said. “You’re a great writer.” He’d read a few of my stories to give me feedback on where I’d got the science wrong.

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, if I’m not writing what editors want to buy.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Why don’t I? It’s not that easy,” I said. “There’s no way of knowing what an editor will like. I write the best story I can, but apparently that’s just not good enough.”

  “So it’s subjective.” Caleb took a bite of his burger and chewed thoughtfully.

  “Yeah,” I said, playing with the last spoonful of shake in my cup. “What one editor thinks isn’t worth publishing, another might think is the greatest science-fiction story ever written. It’s just my luck that the editor who would love my stuff isn’t actually an editor anywhere.”

  “No, no,” Caleb said. “You’re looking at it all wrong. What you need is a story that adapts itself perfectly to the editor.”

  I dabbed my lips with a paper napkin. “I just told you I don’t know how to write what they’re looking for.”

  “Right.” Caleb grabbed the napkin from my hand, flattened it out, took a pen from his pocket and sketched a curve. “It’s a probability function. The right combination of words makes them buy the story, the wrong combination means they don’t.”