The Fifth Science

by Exurb1a

  Great hairy ape-like creatures searched for grubs in a forest.

  Workers built gargantuan stone monuments to gods they were promised existed.

  Riflemen on long ago cliffs raised their sights to advancing enemies.

  Scientists tamed the four forces of nature and taught them to pirouette and power cities.

  Engineers built elegant metal monsters, shepherding those first humans beyond the boundaries of the motherworld system.

  Trade agreements were signed.

  Galactic legislation was ratified.

  A trillion pairs of eyes looked out on ten trillion stars and searched for some nugget of meaning.

  Bodies were placed underground.

  Effects were collected and distributed to close family members.

  A dirge.

  It was a sleeping song. It was a lullaby for the empire. It was a request for the last one out to turn off the light. It was a kind thank you for all our trouble.

  The song began to die and the voices faded one by one until there was only a crawling bassline played on an impossibly distant oboe. Then that died too.

  “Will you join?” the boy said, and somehow I knew he was speaking to me.

  “What?” I said.

  “Your companion has come here to join with the project. Will you join too?”

  “Have you come here for that?” I said to Lysithea. I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice, but my voice was mental and I suppose it gave everything away.

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “Well then?” the boy said. “What will it be? We needn’t travel anywhere. I can organise the process from where we are now. It’s painless.”

  I looked out again for any sign of humanity among the heavens. Nothing.

  “No thank you,” I said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “The offer will stand for another century. Any time during that period you may come to me and I will honour this.”

  “No thank you.”

  Lysithea said, “He told us it won’t hurt.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You like this? You like your life now? Racing around and getting drunk the whole time?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re an idiot. You’re a fucking idiot.”

  “Please don’t say those things,” the boy said. The room returned, the boy sat before us. “Say your goodbyes in whatever way you choose. Not with meanness.” To Lysithea: “There’s no hurry. Come when you’re ready and we can begin.”

  Lysithea and I moved back through the main room, onto the porch. We stood in silence a while and looked out at the ruins.

  “I hope you found what you were looking for,” I said.

  “Oh shut up,” she snapped. “You’re being a child.”

  “Maybe. Do you have children?”

  “Two girls. They both have children now. Their children have children too.”

  “Think they’ll miss you?” She didn’t reply so I said, “They joined the Fifths too?” She nodded. “I’m sorry, Lysithea.”

  “It all happened long before you were born anyway.” She rubbed her hands as though they’d been dirty and her childish smile came back. “Well then. Thanks for playing tour guide. I hope you come around eventually. You’ll be safe won’t you?”

  “Sure. You?”

  “I will.”

  She nodded. I nodded. We met eyes just for a moment. Then she went back inside and closed the door.

  I walked off the porch and down into the dirt. The evening was very still.

  On the skyline were the Five Great Shipwrecks: The Meldusika, The Oort, Alithra, Wiremind’s Benediction, and The Liu.

  They seemed like mighty, dead dragons. As fine a graveyard the empire would ever get.

  I took the dirt path back down from the house. I would buy more cigarettes when I reached the city, and maybe a beer for the long walk back to our camp.

  Above, the stars were appearing for night. Which were living and which weren’t was impossible to tell. One day, I thought, they’d all go Fifth anyway.

  I was about to stop for a piss when there came a noise behind. It was Lysithea, running.

  When she was close enough I said, “What are you doing?”

  She locked me with her old eyes. “Will you come?” she said. “Will you come when you’re ready? Whenever it is, will you?” I went to reply but she said, “I’m scared of going in, even though I have to. There’s nothing else. Really, there’s nothing else. But I’m afraid the people inside won’t be people anymore and they won’t be kind. Will you come?”

  “I’ll come,” I said.

  “Now?”

  “No, not now. I want to live a little more first. I'll come when everything’s wound down. Wait for me. I promise I’ll come, all right?”

  “All right,” she said.

  We hugged for a long time.

  “I get so fucking alone,” she said quietly.

  “Me too.”

  “I hope you find your mother and father.”

  “I hope so too.”

  “You can introduce them to me. We could all go for lunch, or whatever it is everyone does in the Fifths.”

  Don’t fuck it up with sense, I thought, but I said, “There won’t be any you and me or them and us in there. You know that, don’t you? When you go in, you go all in. You give everything up.”

  Not in my ears, but in my head her voice said, “We’ll all go for lunch together.”

  A scene appeared before me in my mind’s eye: a sunset, a valley somewhere. It had the feeling of Christmas, of total safety. A table was being set by an old woman and an old man. The woman was tall and pale with a sphere floating at her side. The man was quiet in a thoughtful manner, careful eyes. A young girl brought cutlery from the house, then they all sat and ate and nothing was painful or strange, nor seemed like it would end. The young girl looked out at the sunset and forgot to eat a while. I knew in the way one understands the context of a dream that the young girl was Lysithea, that these were her parents.

  Nothing had an edge to it, not for little Lysithea, not for her mother and father.

  “I hope it’s like this when I go in,” Lysithea said.

  “Me too.”

  We stayed as statues for a while.

  I promised myself I’d be good in her name, and in the name of all the things that had come before.

  Now almost everything in the world was dead and there was a last little living fragment that we had to coddle in cupped hands and just hope it held out.

  “This is a terrible end, all of it,” she whispered.

  “We don’t know that yet.”

  “Please just come when you’re ready.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  She stepped back. “I’ll see you,” she said.

  “I’ll see you.”

  She set off for the house.

  I watched her shrinking into the distance for a while.

  I turned back to the starship graveyard.

  Yes, I would buy some cigarettes.

  Yes, I would drink with the men and women at the bar.

  Yes, I would race boxcars with the other vagrants.

  And when the meaning fell right out the bottom of the thing, when everything was old ash, on that very same day, I would go find the Fifth boy again and join Lysithea.

  She wouldn't have aged. I wouldn’t age after that either.

  We’d remember our species together.

  We’d remember our empire.

  We’d forget the ills of old.

  We’d talk about the meaning of things.

  We’d give ourselves over to the marching drumbeat of infinite history.

  We’d live in a constant summer afternoon of abstractions.

  And sure, then we’d have lunch.

  Notes on Why Stuff Got Written

  It’s generally considered bad form for someone to open up about where stories came from, but in the event you’re cur
ious I thought I might just leave this little addendum at the end.

  For Every Dove a Bullet

  I am a fairly strong devotee of a thing called panpsychism. The general idea is that aspects of consciousness can’t be explained in terms of our current physical frameworks, or we haven’t managed it yet anyway. Instead, consciousness might be another fundamental force alongside the regular four – hence: the fifth. I was playing with this idea in the back of my mind a lot while reading David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks a few years ago — featuring spirits who wander from body to body. I guess the two things married in my head and out this story came. It occurred to me a wandering spirit could travel into the future too, and I started to wonder what that future might look like. And this book was subsequently born.

  Now, I’d be very surprised if there really is a ‘consciousness’ particle out there. But you can’t deny we’re having some serious trouble at the moment matching up what it feels like to be a thing with our picture of the brain. Perhaps it will all turn out to be reductionist in the end, nothing but neurons and complexity. That would be great too.

  The entire premise of this excuse of a book only works if consciousness can be reproduced on other mediums though. We have no evidence yet that it's possible. However. We also have absolutely no idea what the hell consciousness is in the first place. It's entirely likely that the phenomenon is native to brains and neurons. Perhaps there's a very good reason why only brains are capable of making self-aware systems. If, however, consciousness is based on some more general process such as an infinite feedback loop, or general emergent complexity, then the thing is a lot more open.

  It's unlikely you and I will live long enough to find out, unfortunately. Still, we get to play with it directly as conscious monkeys from the inside. So that's neat.

  The Menagerie

  I have never understood why science fiction that uses teleporters never mentions how fucking awful teleporters would be. Even if we ignore the fact that you’re basically just cloning people, what would stop you doing it thousands and thousands of times? I felt an ethical rant had to be written in the form of a story.

  And the Leaves All Sing of God

  The title of this one fell into my head about ten years ago and I had no idea what the story was. I’ve been daydreaming about it ever since. I hope you liked the result.

  101 Things Not to Visit in the Galaxy Before You Die

  This one was originally supposed to feature space creatures that were in constant quantum superposition and could mate with themselves from other timelines. I sobered up the next day and rewrote it.

  The Lantern

  Again, a story that had been knocking around in my head for ages. It was partially stolen from China Mieville’s Embassytown, where only certain humans are capable of tolerating hyperspace, or ‘the Immer’ as he called it.

  The Want Machine

  This one was inspired by the Schopenhauer quote at the beginning of the story itself. I wondered what would happen if man could choose what to want. I often think it’s a terrible shame that good people are struck down by unpleasant impulses like drug abuse or an inability to shut up about politics while you’re having a beer with them. If we could choose to do away with this stuff, however, it might do more harm than good if taken too far.

  I would like to believe — and I hope you would too — that one day we will work out how to encourage long-lasting contentment in the brain. We're still slaves to our evolutionary roots, unfortunately. And evolution didn't have much interest in making us happy creatures. Perhaps with the right alterations, the right lifestyle, the right chemicals and cardio and cake, we'll kill whatever it is that keeps us perpetually racing after happiness, and actually make it a lasting condition. That would be much nicer than hyperdrives and teleporters anyway.

  Water for Lunch

  Months ago — or, about mid-June 2018 for those of you living in the future — I knew this book wasn’t finished, but couldn’t put my finger on the last two stories. I’d gone away for a few days alone to a town in Bulgaria called Melnik to try and find them. I spent most of the time wandering about through the sand pyramids there and trying to come up with a half-decent idea. On the last day I said, Fuck it, it’s not coming, and climbed a hill to look out over the village. In the way these things often go, the second you stop concentrating on the problem it solves itself. This story kindly fell into my head.

  There's a special irony to writing a short story criticising selfie-culture. It's one indulgent medium laughing at another. But every now and then when you go to a gig and you can't see the fucking band because there are so many people taking videos with their phones that they're never going to watch, ever — well, it's just ridiculous.

  The Girl and the Pit

  I had by far the most fun writing this one. Sometimes stories are architecture and the beginning and the end are already in your head, you just need to flesh it out. This one started totally openly though as a situation: the first archaeologist to dig up an ancient civilisation. I began it early in the morning having no idea where it would go and finished it off by the evening. This kind of easy writing almost never happens in my experience, and when it does it feels lovely.

  Be Awake, Be Good

  Years ago I was listening to a podcast about floating habitats. They were supposed to be aid stations, and could move from coast to coast helping people out. I thought that was a great idea and it got me wondering if people would use them in the distant future, but on an ocean planet. Someone reminded me Waterworld existed and that made me sad. Still, I really wanted to do something with it. (I spent about 6 months of last year quietly trying to turn it into a novel, but it just didn’t work. I can’t explain why, it just didn’t. I had to let it go. Still, I liked the idea too much to put it to sleep without at least turning it into a short story.) Incidentally, nothing would make me happier than Bulgaria becoming a prominent influence in intergalactic space history.

  The Caretaker

  While reading this one back to edit it, it occurred to me the ending has a strong resemblance to the White Bear episode of Black Mirror. This really, really wasn’t intentional. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or just subconscious plagiarism, but I hope you’ll forgive me in either case.

  Lullaby for the Empire

  I am largely of the opinion that all we really have down here on our little watery sphere is each other. Generally in times of national or global crises we appreciate that more. It seemed like if the entire galactic empire was dying, people would covet an even stronger bond, especially during passing friendships.

  We really are still up against the old problem: shall we be clever or happy? That’s not to say you can’t do both, but hot damn are we getting clever, and yet it’s not clear that we’re much happier than our ancestors yet. Technological progress is wonderful, but what a shame it would be if in a few thousand years we’re living on distant worlds and floating about in the sky and summoning objects from the air by thought alone, and still a bit miserable on a daily basis. Anyway, I sort of liked the idea that after all of our machinations and expansion, everyone was still just trying to carve out a spot of happiness for themselves, even at the end of the human empire.

  Whatever happens, however clever we eventually become, there will be an end to our trials and projects. Whether we’re superseded by our creations or just put to sleep by exhaustion, the end of history will approach eventually. When that occurs, all the statues and books and paintings in the world won’t save our legacy. Better then that we just enjoy the time we have, living in a wonderful age like the one we find ourselves in now.

  I can confirm you've reached the end of this book. I can confirm I've reached the end of my patience for writing, and ultimately my sanity. It's a lovely day in Sofia. I'm going to step away from the computer and go for a walk now. If it's a nice day or evening wherever you are, may I suggest you go for a walk too. And when you do, I'd like you to spare a moment to consider the almost infinite
chain of ancestry that stretches behind you, and the almost infinite chain of descendancy that stretches ahead; the thousands and thousands of ancestors who were kind enough to hand you their genes and the thousands and thousands of descendents who will one day — perhaps — inherit yours. But right now, we're standing in the exact middle of the chain.

  The mayfly lives for about 24 hours. From the perspective of the universe, perhaps the human race is on a similar fleeting timescale. It took a long time to get to this point. There have been enormous sacrifices. We're all sat around being the product of billions of years of chance and millions of years of biological evolution. But today, this moment, now, we're here. We can wander around and do stuff and make stuff and have a jolly old time if we like. We're alive and we're looking damn fine. We have enormous, self-aware brains. We inhabit very clever fleshy suits designed by the universe herself. We've got the capability for greatness. We've got the capacity to enjoy a million unique stimuli. We've arrived at the party. We exist. And we can take walks if we want. So please go take a walk; I hope it's a nice one. And let’s not waste our day out in the cosmos.

  Exurb1a runs a YouTube channel of the same name, centred around philosophy, theoretical physics, and dick jokes. He has also written a book of short stories you might like called The Bridge to Lucy Dunne, and two novels: The Prince of Milk, and Logic Beach: Part I.

  Table of Contents

  Introduction