Time m-1

by Stephen Baxter

  “But that would give us billions of years,” Malenfant said.

  “In fact more,” Cornelius replied. “Orders of magnitude

  more.”

  “Well, perhaps we should settle for that,” Malenfant said

  dryly.

  “Perhaps. Still, the final extinction must come at last. And the fact of that extinction is appalling, no matter how far downstream it is.”

  “But,” Emma said skeptically, “if you’re right about what you said in the desert, we don’t have trillions of years. Just a couple of centuries.”

  Cornelius was watching Malenfant, evidently hoping for a reaction. “Extinction is extinction; if the future must have a terminus, does it matter when it comes?”

  “Hell, yes,” Malenfant said. “I know I’m going to die someday. That doesn’t mean I want you to blow my brains out right now.

  Cornelius smiled. “Exactly our philosophy, Malenfant. The game itself is worth the playing.”

  Emma knew Cornelius felt he had won this phase of the argument. And, gradually, step by step, he was drawing Malenfant into his lunacy.

  She sat impatiently, wishing she wasn’t here.

  She looked around the small, oak-paneled conference room. There was a smell of polished leather and clean carpets: impeccable taste, corporate lushness, anonymity. The only real sign of unusual wealth and power, in fact, was the enviable view — from a sealed, tinted window — of Central Park. They were high enough here to be above the park’s main UV dome. She saw people strolling, children playing on the glowing green grass, the floating sparks of police drones everywhere.

  Emma wasn’t sure what she had expected of Eschatology. Maybe a trailer home in Nevada, the walls coated with tabloid newspaper cuttings, the interior crammed with cameras and listening gear. Or perhaps the opposite extreme: an ultramodern facility with a giant virtual representation of the organization’s Mister Big beamed down from orbit, no doubt stroking his white cat.

  But this office, here in the heart of Manhattan, was none of that. It was essentially ordinary. That made it all the more scary, of course.

  Malenfant said now, “So tell me how you know we only have two hundred years.”

  Cornelius smiled. “We’re going to play a game.”

  Malenfant glared.

  Cornelius reached under the table and produced a wooden box, sealed up. It had a single grooved outlet, with a wooden lever alongside. “In this box there are a number of balls. One of them has your name on it, Malenfant; the rest are blank. If you press the lever you will retrieve the balls one at a time, and you may inspect them. The retrieval will be truly random.

  “I won’t tell you how many balls the box contains. I won’t give you the opportunity to inspect the box, save to draw out the balls with the lever. But I promise you there are either ten balls in here — or a thousand. Now. Would you hazard which is the true

  number, ten or a thousand?”

  “Nope. Not without evidence.”

  “Very wise. Please, pull the lever.”

  Malenfant drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Then he pressed the lever.

  A small black marble popped into the slot. Malenfant inspected it; it was blank. Emma could see there was easily room for a thousand such balls in the box, if need be.

  Malenfant scowled and pressed the lever again.

  His name was on the third ball he produced.

  “There are ten balls in the box,” Malenfant said immediately.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because if there were a thousand in there it’s not likely I’d reach myself so quickly.”

  Cornelius nodded. “Your intuition is sound. This is an example of Bayes’ rule, which is a technique for assigning probabilities to competing hypotheses with only limited information. In fact—” He hesitated, calculating. “ — the probability that you’re right is now two-thirds, on the basis of your ball being third out.”

  Emma tried to figure that for herself. But, like most probability problems, the answer was counterintuitive.

  “What’s your point, Cornelius?”

  “Let’s think about the future.” Cornelius tapped the softscreen embedded in the tabletop before him. The small monitor before Emma lit up, and a schematic graph drew itself elegantly on the screen. It was a simple exponential curve, she recognized, a growth rising slowly at first, steepening up to a point labeled NOW. Cornelius said, “Here is a picture of the growth of the human population over time. You can see the steep rise in recent centuries. It is a remarkable fact that ten percent of all the humans who have ever existed are alive now. More than five percent of all humans, Malenfant, were born after you were.

  “But that is the past. Let’s imagine how the future might develop. Here are three possibilities.” The curve continued to climb, steepening as it did so, climbing out of Emma’s frame. “This,” Cornelius said, “is the scenario most of us would like to see. A continued expansion of human numbers. Presumably this would require a move off-planet.

  “Another possibility is this.” A second curve extrapolated itself from the NOW point, a smooth tip over to a flat horizontal line. “Perhaps our numbers will stabilize. We may settle for the resources of the Earth, find a way to manage our numbers and our planet indefinitely. A bucolic and unexciting picture, but perhaps it is acceptable.

  “But there is a third possibility.” A third curve climbed a little way past the NOW marker — then fell spectacularly to zero.

  “Jesus,” said Malenfant. “A crash.”

  “Yes. Studies of the population numbers of other creatures, lower animals and insects, often show this sort of shape. Plague, famine, that sort of thing. For us, the end of the world, soon.

  “Now. You can see that in the first two cases, the vast majority of humans are yet to be born. Even if we stay on Earth, we estimate we have a billion years ahead of us before changes in the sun will render Earth’s biosphere unviable. Even in this restricted case we would have far more future than past.

  “And if we expand off-planet, if we achieve the kind of future you’re working for, Malenfant, the possibilities are much greater. Suppose we — or our engineered descendants — colonize the Galaxy. There are four hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, many of which will provide habitable environments for far longer than a mere billion years. Then the total human population, over time, might reach trillions of times its present number.”

  “Oh. And that’s the problem,” Malenfant said heavily.

  “You’re starting to see the argument,” Cornelius said, approving.

  “I’m not,” Emma said.

  Malenfant said, “Remember his game with the balls and the box. Why are we here now? If we really are going on to the stars, you have to believe that you were born in the first one-billionth part of the total human population. And how likely is that? Don’t you get it, Emma? It’s as if I drew out my ball third out of a thousand—”

  “Far more unlikely than that, in fact,” said Cornelius.

  Malenfant got up and began to pace the room, excited. “Emma, I don’t know statistics from my elbow. But I used to think like this as a kid. Why am I alive now? Suppose we do go on to colonize the Galaxy. Then most of the humans who ever live will be vacuum-sucking cyborgs in some huge interstellar empire. And it’s far more likely that I’d be one of them than what I am. In fact the only pop curve where it’s reasonably likely that we’d find ourselves here, now, is…”

  “The crash,” said Emma.

  “Yes,” Cornelius said somberly. “If there is a near-future extinction, it is overwhelmingly likely that we find ourselves alive within a few centuries of the present day. Simply because that is the period when most humans who ever lived, or who will ever live, will have been alive. Ourselves among them.”

  “I don’t believe this for a second,” Emma said flatly.

  “It is impossible to prove, but hard to refute,” said Cornelius. “Put it this way. Suppose I tell you the world will end tomorrow.
You might think yourself unlucky that your natural life span has been cut short. But in fact, one in ten of all humans — that is, the people alive now — would be in the same boat as you.” He smiled. “You work in Las Vegas. Ask around. Losing out to one in ten odds is unlucky, but not drastically so.”

  “You can’t argue from analogy like this,” Emma said. “There are a fixed number of balls in that box. But the total number of possible humans depends on the undetermined and open-ended future — it might even be infinite. And how can you possibly make predictions about people who don’t even exist yet — whose nature and powers and choices we know absolutely nothing about? You’re reducing the most profound mysteries of human existence to a shell game.”

  “You’re right to be skeptical,” Cornelius said patiently. “Nevertheless we have thirty years of these studies behind us now. The methodology was first proposed by a physicist called Brandon Carter in a lecture to the Royal Society in London in the 1980s. And we have built up estimates based on a range of approaches, calling on data from many disciplines—” Malenfant said hoarsely, “When?”

  “Not earlier than one hundred and fifty years from now. Not later than two hundred and forty.”

  Malenfant cleared his throat. “Cornelius, what’s this all about? Is this an extension of the old eggs-in-one-basket argument? Are you going to push for an off-planet expansion?”

  Cornelius was shaking his head. “I’m afraid that’s not going to help.”

  Malenfant looked surprised. “Why not? We have centuries. We could spread over the Solar System—”

  “But that’s the point,” Cornelius said. “Think about it. My argument wasn’t based on any one threat, or any assumptions about where humans might be Jocate4 or whafJeveJ oftecb-nology we might reach. It was an argument about the continued existence of humanity, come what may. Perhaps we could even reach the stars, Malenfant. But it will do us no good. The Carter catastrophe will reach us anyway.”

  “Jesus,” said Malenfant. “What possible catastrophe could obliterate star systems — reach across light years?”

  “We don’t know.”

  There was a heavy silence in the wood-laden room.

  Malenfant said gruffly, “So tell me what you want from me.”

  “I’m coming to that,” Cornelius said evenly. He stood up. “May I bring you more drinks?”

  Emma got out of her chair and walked to the window. She looked out over Central Park, the children playing. They were engaged in some odd, complex game of shifting patterns. She watched for a while; it looked almost mathematical, like a geometric form of communication. Kids were strange these days. Getting brighter, according to the news media. Maybe they needed to be.

  But some things never changed. Here came a buggy, she saw, crossing through the park, drawn by a horse, tireless and steady. The world, bathed in smoky, smog-laden sunlight, looked rich, ancient yet renewed, full of life and possibilities.

  Was it possible Cornelius was right? That all this could end, so soon?

  Two hundred more years was nothing. There were hominid tools on the planet two million years old.

  And, she thought, will there be a last day? Will there still be a New York, a Central Park — the last children of all playing here on that day? Will they know they have no future?

  Or is all this simple craziness?

  Malenfant touched her arm. “This is one hell of a thing, isn’t it?” She recognized the tone, the look. All the skepticism and hostility he had shown to Cornelius out in the desert had evaporated. Here was another Big Idea, and Reid Malenfant was distracted, like a kid by a new shiny toy.

  Shit, she thought. I can’t afford for Malenfant to take his eye off the ball. Not now. And it’s my fault. I could have dumped Cornelius in Vegas, found a way to block his approach… Too

  late, too late.

  She tried, anyway. “Malenfant, listen. I’ve been digging up Cornelius’ past.”

  Malenfant turned, attentive.

  Some of it was on the record. She hadn’t even recognized the terms mathematicians used to describe Cornelius’ academic achievement — evidently it covered games of strategy, economic analysis, computer architecture, the shape of the universe, the distribution of prime numbers. He had been on his way, it seemed, to becoming one of the most influential minds of his generation.

  But he had always been… well, odd.

  His gift seemed nonrational: he would leap to a new vision, somehow knowing its rightness instinctively, and construct laborious proofs later. Cornelius had remained solitary: he had attracted awe, envy, resentment.

  As he’d approached thirty he had driven himself through a couple of years of feverish brilliance.

  Maybe this was because the well of mathematical genius traditionally dries up at around that age, a prospect that must have terrified Taine, so that he thought he was working against time.

  Or maybe there was a darker explanation, Emma’s e-therapists speculated. It wasn’t unknown for creativity to derive from a depressive or schizoid personality. And creative capacities could be used in a defensive way, to fend off mental illness.

  Maybe Cornelius had been working hard in order to stay sane. If he had been, it didn’t seem to have worked.

  The anecdotes of Cornelius’ breakdown were fragmentary.

  At first he was just highly aware, watchful, insomniac. Then he began to see patterns in the world around him — the cracks in the sidewalk, telephone numbers, the static of dead television screens. He had said he was on the verge of deep cosmic insights, available only to him—

  “Who says all this?”

  “His colleagues. His doctors’ case notes, later. You see the pattern, Malenfant? Everything got twisted around. It was as if his faith in the rationality and order of the universe had turned against him, becoming twisted and dysfunctional.”

  “Yeah. Right. And envy and peer pressure and all that good stuff had nothing to do with it.”

  “Malenfant, on his last day at Princeton they found him in the canteen, slamming his head against a wall, over and over.”

  After that Cornelius had disappeared for two years. Emma’s data miners had been unable to trace how he spent that time. When he reemerged, it wasn’t to go back to Princeton but to become a founding board member of Eschatology, Incorporated.

  And here was Emma now, with Malenfant, in the orderly office of this apparently calm, rational, highly intelligent man. Talking about the end of the world.

  “Don’t you get it, Malenfant?” she whispered urgently. “Here’s a guy who tells us he sees patterns in the universe nobody else can make out — a guy who believes he can predict the end of humanity.” A guy who seemed on the point of inducing Malenfant to turn aside his own gigantic projects to follow his insanity. “Are you listening?”

  Malenfant touched her arm. “I hear what you say,” he said. “But—”

  “But what?”

  “What if it’s true? Whether Cornelius is insane or not, what if he’s right? What then?” His eyes were alive, excited.

  Emma watched the children in the park.

  Cornelius returned and invited them to sit once more. He had brought a fresh chilled beer for Malenfant and a coffee for Emma: a decent latte in a china cup, smelling as if it had been freshly brewed and poured by a human hand. She was impressed, as was, no doubt, the intention.

  Cornelius sat down. He coughed. “Now comes the part you may find hard to believe.”

  Malenfant barked laughter. “Harder than the death of humankind in two hundred years? Are you for real?”

  Cornelius said, with a nod to Emma, “Here’s a little more dubious logic for you. Suppose, in the next few decades, humans — our descendants — do find a way to avoid the catastrophe. A way for us to continue, into the indefinite future.”

  “That’s impossible, if your arguments are correct.”

  “No. Merely highly unlikely. But in that case — and knowing the hugeness of the catastrophe to come — if they did fi
nd a way, what might our descendants try to do?”

  Malenfant frowned. “You’re losing me.”

  Cornelius smiled. “They would surely try to send us a message.”

  Emma closed her eyes. The madness deepens, she thought.

  “Whoa.” Malenfant held up his hands. “You’re talking about sending a message back in timeT’

  Cornelius went on. “And the most logical thing for us to do would be to make every effort to detect that message. Wouldn’t it? Because it would be the most important message ever received. The future of the species would depend on it.”

  “Time paradoxes,” Emma whispered. “I always hated stories about time paradoxes.”

  Malenfant sat back. Suddenly, to Emma, he looked much older than his fifty years. “Jesus. What a day. And this is what you want me for? To build you a radio that will pick up the future?”

  “Perhaps the future is already calling. All we have to do is try, any which way. They’re our descendants. They know we are trying. They even know how we are trying. And so they can target us. Or will. Our language is a little limited here. You are unique, Malenfant. You have the resources and the vision to carry this through. Destiny awaits you.”

  Malenfant turned to Emma. She shook her head at him. We ought to get out of here. He looked bemused.

  He turned back to Cornelius. “Tell me one thing,” he said. “How many balls were there in that damn box?”

  But Cornelius would only smile.

  Reid Malenfant:

  Afterward, they shared a cab to the airport.

  “Remember those arguments we used to have?”

  He smiled. “Which arguments in particular?”

  “About whether to have kids.”

  “Yeah. We agreed our position, didn’t we? If you have kids you’re a slave to your genes. Just a conduit from past to future, from the primeval ocean to galactic empire.”

  “Right now,” she said, “that doesn’t seem such a bad ambition. And if we did have kids, we might be able to figure it out better.”

  “Figure out what?”

  She waved a hand at the New York afternoon. “The future. Time and space. Doom soon. I think I’m in some kind of shock, Malenfant.”