“You’re telling me we have a.purpose!”
Oh, yes. Humans are the most important sentient creatures who have ever existed, or will ever exist.
That sent a shudder down Malenfant’s spine. God damn it, I waited all my life to hear someone tell me that. And now that I have, it terrifies me.
“So these downstreamers of yours have reached back in time and changed things, created another timeline, in which—”
Michael frowned. Your language is like noise. But you are more right than wrong. Yes, I can say that. But there are no such things as timelines. There is a universal wave function that determines a sheaf of paths —
“I heard all that before, and didn’t understand it then… Earth. Do they know what’s going to happen?”
People are, umm, at peace, Malenfant. In a way they weren ‘t in your day.
“Even now, as the lights are going out?”
Even now.
“But, no matter how prosperous and contented and understanding they are, they’re all going to die. All the people on Earth, and the Moon and Mars and wherever the hell else they got to… Tell me about Earth, Michael.”
Michael smiled, and Malenfant heard voices.
A.D. 2051:
In Britain, and other parts of the European Federal Union, God
is dead. Or if not dead, irrelevant.
Believe me, Monsignor, I know. I just got back from a year’s assignment in London. Religious practice and belief has genuinely collapsed, on a mass scale.
It’s clear that the absorption of the Carter message in some corners of the world has led to a kind of group despair, the feeling that nothing is worth struggling for. In Britain, this is manifesting itself in a denial of any external basis for moral action. Essentially the Brits are redesigning the moral basis of their community. They are appealing to such philosophical doctrines as ethical relativism, the weighing of moral codes relative to each other and not against any imagined absolute; and emo-tivism, action on a gut response to injustices and so forth; and prescriptivism, reliance on the announcement of appropriate moral standards based on human authority without appeal to a higher or external source.
That the British state is holding together at all, that it hasn’t all lapsed into barbarism or chaos, is probably some kind of tribute to the basic British character. But then, just as the Brits were the first industrial society, so they became, arguably, our first postin-dustrial culture. Similarly they are comparatively recently postimperial. Now they seem to be becoming the first truly postreligious nation.
Strange that a country we think of as being staid and old fashioned should once more be forging the way into an unknown future.
Will the Brits survive? Will they tear each other apart? I find myself hoping they have a chance to grope their way out of this darkness, to find the end of their story, before the curtain falls on us all in a couple of hundred years — assuming it’s all gloomily true, of course.
But maybe these are controversial views for a Jesuit. We are all, after all, missionaries.
I’m recommending that the Vatican fund further missions, a presence. We have to go in there and talk about God, as well as study this new phenomenon. But how much good it will do — or even what good means in this context — is hard to judge…
A.D. 2079:
You must not be alarmed. You must understand why extreme force was required to quell the unrest in this neighborhood. Orientation classes like this are provided as a service to help you come to terms with the losses you have suffered, and your long-term injuries.
Unrest is fueled by nostalgia for an imagined “better time,” when America governed herself, when there was economic growth and fast cars and cheap food, and so forth.
But you must not be nostalgic. Nostalgia is harmful.
Look at the big picture. Earth has passed through the Malthu-sian bottleneck. We avoided major war, and more than three billion souls have passed into a better future. The others, on the whole, met their end with dignity, and we salute them.
Today Earth is stable.
We have become a closed-loop economy, a giant spaceship. From the surface of the Earth, raw materials production and energy production have all but disappeared, along with the damage they did — particularly pollution through mining, refining, transportation, combustion, waste disposal. It is important to understand that the amount of key commodities such as metals and glass in circulation at any moment is constant. The only requirement is an input of energy, which is largely provided from the orbiting solar power plants and the quark-nugget installations.
Certainly there are costs. The standard of living of some is not as high as it once was. But the standard of living of us all is about equivalent to the well-off of Soviet Russia, circa 1970: that is, beyond the dreams of much of humankind for much of our history.
Economic growth is not possible. But growth was always an illusion, bought only by exploiting other people or the Earth’s irreplaceable resources or burning up our children’s future. Now we are mature.
Consider the indicators the UN uses to measure our wealth and happiness today.
We count more than simple economic facts. We measure the health and education and even the joy of our children. We consider the beauty of our poetry and our art, the strength of our families, the intelligence and integrity of our public debate. In a very real sense we are measuring our courage, wisdom, learning, and compassion: everything that makes life worth living. And by every such measure the world is a better place.
You are not as free as your grandfather was to foul up the neighborhood, or to own three cars. But what would you want with such freedoms?
Some say the UN has become undemocratic. But the control required to run the planet today would be impossible without the powerful central authority wielded by the UN.
What would happen to us without central control?
Remember the lesson of history. Easter Island — remote, cut off — was a close analogy to our present situation, a human population essentially isolated within a finite resource.
The islanders bred until they destroyed their biosphere. Then, starving, they almost killed each other off in the resulting wars.
So do not mourn freedom. Freedom was an illusion, paid for by the death of others less fortunate. Today you have the freedom to live in peace, and not to starve.
Support us. We will save you from yourself. After all, without us things would be a lot worse.
And, incidentally, Peacekeepers are not police. They merely reinforce the popular will. There is a difference.
AD. 2102:
But what we call the biosphere — yes, make a note of the word — was left badly depleted before the end. There was a great wave of » extinctions that, ultimately, couldn’t be stopped. How bad was it? Well, Oona, we don’t really know. We didn’t even get as far as counting all the species before destroying them. Yes, that’s right; a lot of species must have died out before we even knew they were there. Shivery thought, isn’t it?
The sea fared a little better than the land. We lost some species, mostly from overfishing and from the dumping of pollutants and washed-off topsoil in the shallow waters around the coastlines. But today things are fairly stable. In fact there are enhanced cephalopods, squid and octopuses, managing the big undersea farms for us now.
Still, it was a severe extinction, in historical terms. Worse than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, sixty-five million years ago. Not as bad as the one at the end of the Permian.
Now, of course, we live in a world where evolution has been ended, and the future depends on conscious management by…
No, Maisie, I never saw a chimp or a gorilla, so I can’t tell you what it would have been like. Now you are the only surviving primate species. Anyhow I’m just an e-person. I don’t know how it would have felt to meet your cousin like that: like you, yet not quite you.
I can make a guess, though.
A.D. 2147:
So there are sixty
years to go before the Carter firework show and the population is increasing, despite all the UN can do to discourage us.
It sure is in my house.
What, you’re surprised?
Look, for a long time many people accepted the UN below-replacement-number childbirth guidelines — and a lot even went further, having no kids at all because they were depressed about the future. That is, they didn’t expect there to be any future. It seemed unfair, maybe even immoral, to bring kids into a situation like that.
After all, you never treated anyone unfairly by leaving them unborn, because they never existed to suffer in the first place. Right?
Well, the world may be heading for the iceberg, but the dead hand of old Darwin is still on the tiller.
What am I talking about? Just this: If most people stop breeding, the handful of people who love kids and want to have them — people like me — are, within a generation or two, going to outnumber everyone else. Simple math.
And that’s exactly what is happening.
Friend, I’m your neighborhood representative of a new species: Homo philoprogenitus, which means “lover of many children.” As you can see, or maybe hear.
I pay my UN fines. For me they are worth it. A happiness tax. What’s money for?
Sure, if Carter is right, these kids are not going to live to a ripe old age. But it’s better for them to have existed and been happy than not existed. What are we here for except to add to the sum total of human happiness-days? Right?
And besides, I plan to be around to usher in Carter Day too. We’ll probably have one hell of a party. By then there will be nobody left around but us Hphils, and we’re a friendly bunch.
You’ll be invited. Bring the wife and kids. Oh, they’re e-kids? Yes, I know, a comfort. Never worked for me. Bring the dog, then. He’s not an e-pooch too, is he? Hey, you still up for poker Tuesday night?
springs, and then the final winter will descend on us all, leaving us without hope.
Where, then, is the relevance of the Christian mythos for us, whom God has abandoned?
The relevance is in the character of Mary, Mother of Jesus.
Mary stood and mourned at the foot of the Cross. Even as Her Son gave His life for humankind, so He abandoned His Mother.
So, today, we reject the grandiose and selfish ambitions of the Son, and embrace the grief of Mary, the Mother He abandoned.
For we, too, have been abandoned. We draw strength from Mary’s dignity in betrayal. We are no longer Christians. We are Marians.
Let us pray.
A.D. 2207:
It is the best of times, and the worst of times. Who wrote that?… It does not matter. We have been drawn together by the tragedy; that is clear. Those of us who have a glimmering of understanding — who see that even the awesome destruction to come is merely a stage in the endless evolution of life and mind, as regrettable but inevitable as the death of an individual, just as the Blues tried to teach us — are consoled, even if we cannot comprehend it fully. And we do not condemn the Ocean Children, who have fled into the bright comfort of mindlessness. The world spins on, full of heroism and selfishness and despair, just as it always has. The children have been a comfort, of course. A preliminary perusal of history shows that, and the happy lack of any Blue births after the Nevada event… I apologize. Even now I am more prepared to analyze history than to talk about myself, about us! Well. There is no more to say. We are here together. We choose to end it now, rather than to submit to the arbitrariness of history. Good-bye, my darling, good-bye.
AD. 2208:
Where were you on The Night?
If you’re reading this, it must be over, and you survived. Right?
As I’m recording this there are twenty-four hours to go.
I can tell you where I’ll be: in orbit around the Moon.
For two centuries people have been probing and prodding and cracking at that damn energy bubble up there. Of course they’ve had no success. But that hasn’t stopped them trying. And it won’t stop me now, right to the end.
I might even meet my uncle and aunt, Tom and Billie Tybee, up there. My grandfather, Bill Tybee, left me this diary, which he kept from the day he first married, and even the gadget, the little plastic Heart, that taught us all so much about our Blue cousins. Hell of a guy, my grandfather. Lost his wife, lost two kids to the Blue hysteria, survived a war on the Moon, and still built a life: married again, more kids — none of them Blue — and died in his bed.
People tell us we’re at peace. We’re all just waiting, praying if we choose to, otherwise just turning out the lights. Calm, dignified acceptance.
Yeah, right.
For me, I mean to go out of this world the way I came in: dragged out headfirst, kicking and screaming.
Anyhow this will probably be the last entry. I’m burying the diary in hardcopy a hundred feet down in a disused mine. If it gets to survive anywhere, it will be there.
Godspeed.
Michael:
Watch the Moon, Malenfant. Watch the Moon. It s starting—
Emma Stoney:
A bolt of light streaked vertically down from the gray dome sky above. It headed straight for the degenerate matter, merged with
it unerringly.
The children made sounds like it was a firework display: Ooh, aah.
Anna’s gaze was fixed on the Tinkerbell nugget in its cage; Emma saw its light sparkling in her clear eyes. And the Tinker-bell was getting brighter.
“How long?”
“A few minutes,” Anna whispered. “This is what we were born to do. It is what you were born for—”
A wave of pain, unexpected, pulsed from Emma’s leg, and she gasped.
Billie Tybee pulled away from her, eyes wide.
Emma made an effort to calm down. She deliberately smiled. Billie crept slowly back to her, and Emma laid a hand on her head.
They may be about to kill you. Even so, don’t frighten the children. It surely isn’t their fault.
“Vacuum decay,” she said to Anna.
“Yes.”
“Will it be quick?”
Anna thought that over. “More than quick. The effects will spread at light speed, transforming everything to the true vacuum state.” She studied Emma. “Before you know it’s happening, it will be over.”
Emma took a deep breath. She didn’t understand a word; it was so abstract it wasn’t even frightening. Thank God I’m no smarter, she thought. “Okay. How far will it reach? Will it engulf Tycho? The Moon?”
Anna frowned. “You don’t understand.”
And the droplet exploded.
Emma flinched.
The cage held. Light flared, a baseball-sized lump, dazzling Emma, bathing the faces of the watching children, as if they were planets turned to this new sun.
Billie was cuddling closer, wrapping her arms around Emma’s waist. Emma put her hands on the child’s head and bent over her to shelter her. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay to be frightened.”
The light got brighter.
“Nearly, now,” Anna said softly.
“ Why, Anna? Revenge?”
Anna turned to her. “You don’t understand. You never will. I’m sorry. This isn’t destruction. This isn’t revenge. This is—”
“What?”
“It’s wonderful”
Emma felt heat on her face; a wind, hot air pulsing out of the cage, fleeing the heat of theTinkerbell.
Now more children came creeping closer to Emma. She reached out her arms and tried to embrace them all. Some of them were weeping. And maybe she was weeping too; it was hard to tell.
At last even Anna came to her, buried her face in Emma’s neck.
She thought of Malenfant: Malenfant on Cruithne, defying fate one last time. She might easily have been with him, up there, sharing whatever had become of him. Even at their worst times, the depths of the divorce, she had expected, in her heart, to die with him.
But it hadn’t turned out like
that, for better or worse.
In the years after Mojave, after Malenfant, Emma had had relationships. She’d even inherited some children, from previous broken relationships. None of her own, though. Maybe this was as close as she had ever come.
But the children around her seemed remote, as if she touched them through a layer of glass. She felt incomplete. Maybe she was spread too thin over the possibilities of reality, she thought.
The light grew brighter, the heat fiercer. The wind was beginning to howl through the loose, shuddering framework of the cage.
The children whimpered and pushed closer to Emma.
There was a blue flare. Through the tangle of the Tinkerbell cage, Emma glimpsed an electric-blue ring, distorted, twisting away. And more of them, a great chain disappearing to infinity, a ribbed funnel of blue light. Sparks flared, shooting out of the blue tunnel, disappearing into the remote gray dome of sky.
They’re reaching into the past, Emma thought, wondering. Sending off the quark nuggets that reached the center in Nevada — even the one that initiated this event. Closed causal loops.
It was always about the children, she realized now. Not us, not Malenfant. All we did was help it along. But this has been their story all along. The children.
The light sculpture was gone, the burst of blue light vanishing like soap bubbles. Then there was only the fierce white glow of the Tinkerbell itself.
“It isn’t so much energy,” Anna was murmuring. “Not so much at all. But all of it concentrated on a single proton mass. You could have done this. You built particle accelerators, reached high energies. But you gave up. Besides, you were doing it wrong. You’d have needed an accelerator of galactic dimensions to get to the right energy levels—”
“We weren’t trying,” Emma said. “We didn’t know we were supposed to.”
Anna looked up, her eyes wet, her hair billowing around her face. “That’s the tragedy. That you never understood the purpose of your existence.”
Emma forced a smile. “Guess what? I still don’t.”
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