Accidental Gods (9 page)

If this grew into a billion-dollar-plus line of business—and based on MC2’s expectations, it was almost certain that it would—the royalties alone would be a hundred million dollars a year. IACP could move off campus into a facility with far higher security and a massive data center. Even more important, these kinds of royalties would give IACP the financial freedom to continue their research for a decade or more without any restrictions or interference from outsiders. They could now hire the extended staff they needed to support the expanding research.

Now they could push the envelope.

Chapter 12

Year 4

I think that travel comes from some deep urge to see the world, like the urge that brings up a worm in an Irish bog to see the moon when it is full.

—Lord Dunsany

Thomas woke up, startled by something. It was still dark, and it took him a few minutes to focus in the darkness.

He heard a faint chuckle, a familiar woman’s chuckle, next to him. He reached beside him, and his hand touched a warm body.

Then it all came rushing back to him. He was at the Park Hyatt Goa…in India…at Ajay’s wedding. Everyone had gotten overly drunk at the reception.

“Oh shit,” he mumbled.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “It’s not so bad.”

He smiled. He had really missed being with her. He ran his hand along her warm, naked body, still concealed beneath the sheets. He felt her shift slightly in response to his touch.

“Don’t get used to it,” Lisa said, and he knew from the exact sound of her words that she was smiling.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Nothing’s changed. You still care more about your work than me. Or anything else for that matter. The most interesting thing I’ve learned in the last few years is that it almost doesn’t matter what the work is—although I would definitely say the work we’re doing now is at least something worth getting excited about.”

“It is.”

“Maybe one day you’ll understand,” she said with a sigh. Then she rolled onto her side facing him and propped herself up with an elbow.

“I hope so,” he said, and he really meant it.

“Well, for now, let’s make the most of the fact that we are far away from reality,” she said and pulled him down toward her.

***

A few bungalows down, Catherine was sitting up in her bed wondering what she had been thinking. It appeared neither an Ivy League education nor a PhD was a shield against alcohol. The problem she was struggling with now was whether this was a mistake induced by too much drinking or some other subconscious thing that had just been facilitated by it.

Sunlight was starting to find its way past the billowy drapes, giving the room the hint of an orangey glow. The dark hardwood covering the floor and the earth tones of the room only amplified this effect, creating a comforting embrace that gave her a good feeling.

The form next to her rustled, drawing her back to her dilemma. He opened his eyes. Catherine had expected him to be surprised or startled, but he wasn’t. He simply reached out and took her hand. Then his eyes closed again. She almost wasn’t sure he had woken up at all. Then he gently rubbed the back of her hand. She smiled. He was full of surprises.

***

They had spent the day before relaxing around the hotel’s beautiful pool, a hundred yards from and affording a sweeping view of the Indian Ocean. Dunes, palm trees, and a well-groomed garden provided a buffer between them and it. Wooden bridges stretched out, like tendrils, from the resort to the beach. The occasional guest made the trek out to the actual ocean. The IACP crowd had found the bar at the pool to be more appealing after a few excursions.

That night, they had gathered on the beautiful outer patio of Masala, the Goan restaurant in the hotel. Goa had been a Portuguese colony for almost four hundred and fifty years, starting in 1510. The mingling of Portuguese and Indian cultures was readily apparent in the architecture and food—and this restaurant showcased them both. It was largely open air by design with a large patio that featured a beautifully crafted and exquisitely colorful tile pattern that was clearly infused with Portuguese influence.

The food was unique, spicy dishes of prawns and other seafood, combined with traditional Indian breads. It was a delicious combination that kept the IACP crowd eating and drinking well into the night.

Ajay and his new bride, Chunni, had been entertaining them all evening. The funniest moment had come when it had been revealed that Chunni roughly translated to “star.” The entire IACP group, which was about a quarter of the small wedding party, had a good laugh at that. Ajay had actually blushed a little.

As the evening began to wind down, people trickled away. Most of Ajay’s and Chunni’s families were the first to go. Then Ajay and Chunni themselves politely bowed out, and they were wished well with too many not-so-subtle hints. As the crowd began to thin, there were a lot of furtive glances. Thomas thought it was almost like some spy game.

The previous night, everyone had been so drunk that no one even remembered leaving—much less who had left with whom. Tonight, it seemed, would require more cloak-and-dagger work. He and Lisa had already agreed that this trip would be a “special exception,” so she was going to make her way to his room shortly after he left. He wasn’t so concerned about himself; rather, he was more curious about the others. Stephen, Larry, Catherine, Jenn, and Jules—none of them had brought dates.

He was enjoying watching the interaction. It was pretty entertaining. Lisa kept catching his eye, so he didn’t want to linger. But he didn’t want to be the first to leave. Eventually, Catherine stood up and took her leave. She wandered into the dark paths back toward her bungalow after saying her good nights.

Larry left next. Thomas couldn’t believe it. Maybe it was a coincidence. He couldn’t believe Larry and Catherine could have hooked up.

Strange bedfellows indeed,
he thought.

He got up to leave as well, proving to be the final straw that broke up the group, sending everyone wandering into the darkness.

***

Lisa basically followed him to his room since everyone had dispersed and her room was near his anyway. Once inside, they both laughed.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

“Catherine, then Larry!”

“Yeah, who would’ve thought?”

They laughed for a moment longer before they were drawn into more interesting things.

***

It was a few minutes longer before Catherine heard the knock on her door. She smiled. Her internal struggles had eventually decided in his favor. She still wasn’t sure whether this was just a one-time thing on the trip or not, but she had found she really enjoyed spending time with him. They had had a long breakfast—only this morning, she realized; it seemed so long ago. Another quiet knock, quickly followed by a more urgent knock, summoned her to the door.

She opened it, and Stephen stepped through, smiling at her. He put a hand on her waist and turned slightly. She kissed him on the ear as he briefly turned away from her to shut and lock the door.

***

Catherine was glad Stephen wasn’t on the flight back with her. It would have been hard to conceal their budding relationship if he had been. Ajay had convinced Thomas and Stephen to spend a few more days in India, particularly Bangalore, to look at outsourcing opportunities. So only Lisa, Larry, and Jules were on this flight.

Catherine noticed that Lisa kept looking at her. She wondered if Lisa knew. Her look did have that hint of conspiracy to it, as if she had some secret information. What Catherine couldn’t figure out was why Lisa also kept looking at Larry the same way. Who knew? Maybe this crowd was getting a little too close.

Chapter 13

Year 5

Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge.

—Lord Byron

Ajay sat in Rendering Room 3. The new rooms were amazing, far better than wearing that VR helmet, which really got irritating after about thirty minutes. Now they could spend much more time in the SU, and, perhaps best of all, multiple people could share the experience. The room boasted a projection system that effectively made giant screens of all four walls, the ceiling, and even the floor up to the edges of the centered floor panel where a half dozen or so people could sit or stand and move somewhat about. The room had environmental audio and some new device that supposedly simulated smell. They hadn’t turned that on yet—no one wanted to find out what a computer thought outer space should smell like. But Thomas had found the technology on a trip to Japan, in Tokyo’s Akihabara District, and had insisted on integrating it into the new rendering rooms; he wanted them to create as much of an immersive reality as possible.

In the new building, they had nine rendering rooms that could run in parallel. They were all independent and universe agnostic, so theoretically, they could all be looking at completely different universes. Ajay wasn’t entirely sure why Thomas had had the engineers set it up like that, since they only had one simulated universe. Thomas liked to overbuild—especially now that they had the money—and always had some deeper vision that wasn’t readily obvious. Though Ajay didn’t know how Thomas had managed to get so much money into IACP, he liked it, especially since Thomas had given him a small amount of stock in both IACP IP Holding Corp. and Nanogrids, Inc. Physics wasn’t generally lucrative, but this venture had been—and not just lucrative, but fun as well.

The fun of this project had restored Ajay’s belief in physics and his belief that there were new things to discover. Not every new discovery required splitting a small thing into a slightly smaller thing. Building stuff and turning theories into something that could be seen was so much more fulfilling to him than playing the reductionist game.

He wanted to experiment more deeply with the SU concept—starting a universe with nonstandard parameters for instance, maybe a different speed of light or different gravitational constant, just to see what might happen. Thomas hadn’t acquiesced to Ajay’s repeated requests yet, but Ajay figured the time would come. He had been careful to ask only in private, because on this topic, he didn’t want to stir things up in the group. Still, the curiosity was killing him. He had to hope that if he waited patiently, Thomas would let him try eventually.

SU Time: +4,000,000,000 Years

Galaxies and stars were developed now. Ajay watched a very zoomed-out view of the universe, with just enough clarity to visually distinguish galaxies, which dotted the screens all around him like stars in the night sky. There were easily thousands of them and many more still forming. It was spectacular. Ajay still couldn’t believe that everything in their simulated universe seemed to work the way it was supposed to.

A vertical line of light split the universe and widened into a view of the hallway outside the rendering room, and Thomas, with someone in tow that Ajay hadn’t seen before, stepped from the hallway into the universe and sealed the split behind them.

“Ajay!” Thomas said. “Glad to find you. I want you to meet Don Ward.”

Ajay clenched his teeth in irritation at being interrupted and froze the simulation.

Don was in his early thirties and wore jeans, an untucked shirt, and some thick-rimmed hipster glasses.

“Don,” Thomas said, “this is Ajay, our lead physicist.”

Don smiled and extended his hand. “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Great to meet you as well.” Ajay shook his hand, confused.

Don turned and looked around the room.

“Wow! These are galaxies?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Incredible. Mostly spirals, a few elliptical. The ones around the edges are deformed. Were they the first ones to develop?”

“Yes,” Ajay said, still confused.

“And look at the spacing.” Don waved his hand in a big circle that followed a roughly aligned ring of galaxies.

“Yes…” Ajay said and looked at Thomas for a clue on just how much to reveal.

Thomas smiled and nodded.

“It looks,” Ajay continued, “as if sound waves created during the early days before photons were released rippled throughout the universe, creating a clumping of matter that led to embryonic universes.”

“Wow! Just as theorized.”

Thomas said, “I’m trying to convince Don to come work on the project. He’s a top astrobiologist from the University of Washington.”

“Astrobiologist?”

“I focus specifically on what it takes to form life—planetary systems and positioning, planetary evolution, early life, et cetera.”

“Oh. Interesting.” Ajay nodded to himself as another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

***

Thomas was apparently very convincing because Don started work at IACP a month later. Thomas wasted no time tossing him into the fire. Thomas and Don met up with the team in one of the conference rooms. Ajay, Lisa, Stephen, and Catherine were already there. Over the last five years, Catherine had never adopted a more formal look. If anything, the others had swayed toward Catherine’s more laid-back attitude about dress. Ajay’s bow tie had gone on hiatus some time ago, though he still wore the tweed jacket and his shirts were still as starched as ever. Lisa’s lab coat had disappeared somewhere around year 3, and a streak of gray had gained a visible foothold in her hair, which was now tamed with only a scrunchie. Only Stephen seemed not to have significantly changed, except for not tucking his shirts in anymore and having a hairline that only knew how to retreat.

“OK, everyone,” Thomas said. “Make Don feel welcome. His first job is to find planetary systems where the development of life is most likely.”

Lisa, Stephen, and Catherine appeared startled. Ajay, however, looked entertained.

“Wait,” Catherine said. “We’re looking for life now?”

“Yes,” Thomas answered nonchalantly. “The universe is about five billion years old. Earth started to develop about seven or eight billion years into the development of our own universe. The time seems right to start looking.”

“Why?” Catherine asked.

“Why?” Thomas paused, like he couldn’t understand why someone would even ask the question. “Intellectual curiosity. Because we can. Or perhaps, most important of all, understanding how life develops and whether it is a regular occurrence in a universe rather than an exceptional one are some of the most important questions science can answer—that our system can answer.”

Lisa said, “Seems reasonable.”

Catherine asked, “What if you find it?”

Thomas was beginning to regret hiring her.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said. “If life can develop in our universe, it will be there whether or not we know about it. Wouldn’t it be better to know about it?”

“Maybe,” she said, “but that brings up all sorts of questions.”

“Like what?” Thomas quipped.

“Like, can we ever shut the system down?”

“Why would that matter?”

“Well, if life existed, shutting down the system would destroy their universe. It’d be killing all life in it.”

“I suppose, but it
is
just a simulation, Catherine, so it really isn’t the same thing.”

“In your view, then, it would not be life?”

“It’s a simulation, Catherine, bits expressed as pixels on a screen,” Thomas explained in his most condescending voice. He used it to conceal the real truth: that he was, in fact, not ready to have this conversation openly. “It’s a colorful expression of data and a mathematical formula.”

“Formu
lae
,” Stephen corrected with a polite cough.

Thomas spun around to him. “Excuse me?”

Stephen sank back to the flats of his feet. “Um, plural. Formu
las
, then.”

Thomas huffed and turned back to Catherine. “Formulae, formulas—regardless. Pixels,” he said, “on a screen.”

Ajay interjected, “Technically, to us, it is pixels on a screen. I suppose if they were sentient, we’d have a very large bridge to cross, shall it come to that. The implications would be huge. Besides, if life develops—particularly in a way that is familiar to us—we’d have more information and knowledge about our universe and physics in general than anyone else on Earth—the
real
world. Though, at the end of the day, their presumptively hypothetical ‘lives’ remain pixels on a screen.”

Catherine said, “Sorry for the interruption, then.” She waved dismissively toward Don, obviously pissed at being talked down to by Thomas and Ajay. “By all means, proceed.”

Thomas inhaled deeply and picked up where he had left off. “Don’s going to walk us through a process we can use for finding planetary systems that might be suitable for life.”

“Thanks,” Don said.

He glanced at everyone and turned tentatively to the dry-erase board. These dry-erase boards, unlike the ones in the Rack, were frosted glass, mounted flush in the walls, and lit from behind. Perhaps the neatest thing about them was the button on the bottom right corner—simply pressing it released a charge of static electricity, and the boards would “erase” themselves. Of course, before they erased themselves, a snapshot was taken and placed in a shared folder to be viewed by anyone with the proper security clearance for that room.

Don drew a rough representation of a galaxy.

“This is an average spiral galaxy. It is one of the three main types of galaxies—”

Ajay yawned audibly. In the last few years, he had grown more dismissive of the need for academics to want to teach, or in many cases, pontificate as part of this process. He, of course, was entirely unaware of his own tendency to do this.

Don ignored him. “The other two types,” he said, “are elliptical and irregular. Gotta love the sweeping catchall classifications like ‘irregular.’ Anyway, life is much more likely to appear in a spiral galaxy because of the way stellar systems cluster and the fact that they are more likely to have more dense elements.”

“So to narrow our search, we will look specifically at spiral galaxies. I won’t draw it, but there are also certain areas in the universe, based mostly on age, where galaxies are probably at the right point in their development process. Closest to the edge of the universe are the oldest galaxies, but they are light on the heavy elements that are necessary for life and even most planets to develop. The opposite is also true. Too close to the center of the universe and things aren’t fully formed. Lots of activity can impact the stability of stellar systems, even galaxies.

“The problem is that there are hundreds of billions, maybe even a trillion or more, of galaxies. In our universe, the Hubble space telescope project estimated one hundred and seventy-six billion galaxies. Another study says there are over five hundred billion. Eventually, we’ll be able to count the galaxies in our simulated universe, but that work is not even close to being done.

“Once we identify some galaxies that might be good targets, we’ll be able to narrow our search. We’ll focus in the spiral arms. Stars will populate these areas less densely, which is good. Too many stars in close proximity, such as a globular cluster or areas closer to a galactic core, could result in planets that never have a night or can create overlapping gravity wells. These could possibly result in only minor effects, but I believe that possibility is too small to risk. I suspect instead that these effects will, probably dramatically, impact planetary bodies—pulling them out of a system, making them unstable over very long time periods, et cetera.”

He paused. No one interrupted.

“That is very important because we are looking for a planetary system with a very specific planet that is stable over a long period of time. It takes billions of years for evolution to run its course. If we are going to devote a lot of time and effort to analyze the course of one planet’s development, we should focus on a planet that isn’t going to fall prey to cosmic malfeasance.”

Everyone in the group had intense interest in what Don was saying, except Catherine. She was visibly upset.

Don continued, “Most importantly, our planet needs to be in the HZ—the habitable zone. Recently, there has been some debate on that, so we’re going to focus on what is now being called the AHZ—the animal habitable zone. Microbial life can probably develop much more widely, but it’s a lot less interesting. On the other hand, the AHZ is a very small band. For example, if Earth were five percent closer to the sun, the oceans would boil. Fifteen percent farther away, and Earth would freeze. Microbial life, however, would probably be OK. Obviously, this is not as interesting to observe. Oh, and ideally, the planet has to be in the middle or outer parts of the AHZ—since stars tend to get brighter over time, which moves the edge of the AHZ away from the star. For instance, our sun has gotten thirty percent brighter since Earth formed.”