Nature Futures 2 (30 page)

Is your name really Troy?

No.

Do you look anything like that photograph?

No.

Ok. Just wanted to establish an open and honest relationship. Cute photo, though.

Understood.

Did you read my description?

Yes.

So. Any ideas?

Are the batteries charged up?

Yes, they're charged up. It comes up green.

Sorry. You wouldn't believe some people.

I get a green, I press Transfer, Enter, zilch.

Do you have it there?

Yes.

Can you press Transfer, then hold down Enter for three seconds, then release Transfer and press it quickly two more times?

Ok, hang on. Wow, there's all this scrolling text and flashing lights.

That's right, now scroll right down to the bottom. What do you see?

‘The portal has rejected your application for access'.

OK, good.

What does that mean? How can it reject my application?

It's just the message that gets logged, what's really happening is they've shut down the portal.

‘They'? What ‘they'?

The guys in the other universe.

How can they do that?

It happens in the preferred alternate universes. There's going to be ones that are really crap and ones that are really cool, you know, like they have world peace and cake grows on trees and they still have unicorns and the dolphins can really talk. They end up with all these people arriving with attitudes from bad universes and bringing them all down. So they figure out how to close the portal.

I mean how can they do it? You can't close a wormhole can you?

No, I don't know, they do something with gravitons, kind of put a knot in the string, we're working on it.

Why don't you just go to their universe and find out what they did?

We would, but they've closed the portal.

Oh yeah. But it came up green.

We know, the next version fixes it.

When's that out?

We haven't announced the release date yet, that thing has so many bugs. Last week we had this major anomaly. Our branes weren't lined up totally parallel? Bulk issues. Those worms did not want to go back in the can.

Well, I don't want to upgrade, anyway.

OK, there's a workaround.

I'm listening.

What you do, you get your green, then you save the code in your favourites.

OK.

Then you go to your favourites and select the one you just saved.

Got it.

Then you choose ‘Show Me More Like This'.

Right.

Then you select the second one from the bottom every time.

Second one from the bottom.

And you keep doing that until you find one that's open.

How do you know there's going to be one?

There's an infinite number. Every zeptostate has its opposite. There has to be at least one of everything.

Has to?

It's uncountably infinite, high cardinality, like seriously a lot.

It's going to take a while to work through them then.

It doesn't take too long, there's some quantum statistical effect, I forget its name. Helmholtz?

Isn't that when someone's choking?

Heidegger?

Whatever.

Oh, and when you find one that's open, right, you press Transfer, Enter, and it goes yellow and says Confirm?

Yeah?

Press Enter again right away. I mean don't even hesitate for a second.

Why?

Just take my word for it.

Come on, Troy. Why?

Well, there's a chance that they'll shut the portal between the time you press the Transfer Enter, and the Confirm Enter. So you leave, but you don't arrive.

How likely is that?

Not very. Maybe in some universes it happens every time. Skip that universe, right?

And where are you, if you don't arrive?

It's hard to tell, we're trying to find someone who came back so we can put it in the manual.

What do you think happens?

We were talking about it next to the coffee maker and this one girl, Ray, says maybe you disperse into an evenly distributed interstitial pseudoneural net with simultaneous parapsychic access to all universes.

What made her say that?

She's always saying stuff like that.

So you would, like, be aware of every possibility of every moment.

I guess.

Could you trope?

Like, metonymise?

Yeah.

Search me.

That would be awesome.

It would be kind of cool.

So you just wait a while before you press Confirm Enter?

Listen, you don't know how long you're going to have to wait. And I'm not saying it does that anyway, you know, why believe Ray?

Anyway, I wasn't trying to turn myself into some Star Child or anything, I just wanted to find a store where they haven't run out of Ginseng and Lemon tea.

Oh, really? They have that in the MegaHealth downstairs.

Oh, really? Where are you?

Just checking where you are. Hey! I'm three blocks down in Station Street.

Ok, I'm just going to zap over. Why don't we get together for a coffee?

Sounds good.

Give me your coörds. Wait a minute, now this universe isn't coming up green. What does that mean?… Troy? Troy?

Neale Morison has finished working on the ASKAP radio telescope project and is contemplating the infinite.

George and Priti

Anand Odhav Naranbhai

Priti Sinvi, 59: “Oh, George.”

George Kwame, 67: “Oh, Priti.”

Priti, a Kenyan-born extremophile biologist doing postdoctoral work at the JS Moons Institute and recent recipient of the ‘African Academy of Science Young Scientist Award for Stellar Research': “I love you, George.”

George, the smartest engineering graduate on the continent, who discovered a new particle while on a summer elective on V645 Centauri and then, for his PhD, perfected the use of the particle as
the
next-generation fuel source: “I love you, Priti.”

They nestled in a quiet, hidden corner of the spaceship's maintenance floor, a wall of glass separating them from the loneliness of space. Two bodies fused into one, a shadow against the white splendour of a solar flare.

“George, can it be?”

“Yes, Priti. You are my life-force, my reason for breathing. I can't live without you.”

“Oh, George, I wish that were enough. But life is much more complicated than that. We have to think about the long term. You and I … we're so different. Not morally or habitually or like that, but culturally. You know what I'm talking about, George.”

“Priti, I've told you not to listen to your parents too much. I suppose we will have differences like all couples do, but we can work through them. Our only difference is the colour of our skin. I love you too much to let outdated opinions based on an ancient pigment get in the way.”

“You can say that easily now, George, but it will be very different once we have been together for a while and this dream that we are in senesces. And you know, my parents have been around for 200 years and both are on their third marriages, so they know how relationships work. [
Sighs
] I keep thinking about my twin aunts who ran away with handsome boys from Mars, only to end up in messy divorces. One of them is now an alcoholic theoretical dramatist and the other one is an artist-in-residence on Pluto!”

“It doesn't matter what happens to other people. I've told you, I don't care about that and I'm not like them. I love you for who you are on the inside and outside.”

Priti put her head on George's chest. George held her in his gloved arms.

“Oh, George. I don't know what to do. My heart is telling me one thing, and my brain another. Whenever I am confused about a decision, I always listen to my brain. I always try to do what's best for survival, what makes the most evolutionary sense. I try to do the most rational thing, because reason is the only thing that you can trust when your mind is wrought with emotional complexity.”

“Have you tried drawing those advantage and disadvantage tables you always use to help you decide?”

“I did, George. I spent days writing down everything and forced myself to go through every permutation. At the end, I just couldn't decide which column outweighed the other. Whenever I choose the second column, my heart just can't accept it. My subconscious neural circuits become restless.”

“That means it's love, Priti.”

“I know it's love, George. But love is an effervescent and evanescent thing.”

“Not mine!”

“Oh, George! Don't try to charm me. We have to be serious. We live at opposite ends of the Solar System. We'll only see each other once, maybe twice every five years.”

“I'm not trying to charm you, Priti. I'm being as honest as I can. We'll talk to each other every day and can see each other after work using the virtual conferencing function on that cellphone I gave you for your birthday. Even if we are light years apart, it'll be like we're right next to each other.”

“It's not the same. There's so much more that words alone can't possibly express. George, we have to think carefully about this. There'll be other girls that you'll meet, you know. Girls closer than me. Girls that will look prettier, younger, more qualified than me.”

“That's not fair. You know I don't even look twice at a girl with a short spacesuit. You're the only one I have eyes for, Priti. Hell, I never even thought about another woman before you. I just kept my head down and worked at my fuel cell. Priti, I may not be a suave, weight-pumping, grand-commander-type guy, but I know I am a good man, I know I am a smart man, I know I'm a man of principle, a man of science. I will take care of you for the next 200 million years. I will never let any water shortage or ship malfunction or stupid cancer take my life partner from me. I will never let anybody interfere with my girl's work out of professional jealousy. I will fly to the ends of the Universe without going to the loo once for you. I will suffer any pain, any punishment, any injury, any disappointment, anything, but not the pain of losing you. I want to make you the happiest women in the Universe … Priti Sinvi, will you marry me?”

“But what about children?”

“I'll post you my sperm.”

“Oh, George, I do!”

Anand Odhav Naranbhai is a medical doctor in Cape Town, South Africa. He was in his third year at medical school when he wrote this.

Frog in a Bucket

Gareth Owens

“I'm not a real frog,” said the frog.

Space Corps' founder and most celebrated explorer Horatio Strovic tapped his atmospheric O-meter. He was expecting hallucinations, but not this early in the process.

“I'm not going to talk to a ‘not-real frog',” he said, “even if it does pass the time before the air runs out.”

“Would you honestly prefer me to be an all croaking, fly-swallowing, living frog?” said the frog, sounding aggrieved. “You wouldn't get much of a conversation out of it. Trust me, I know.”

“Look,” said Strovic, exasperated at having to explain the nature of his own delusion to a delusion of his own. “You are merely a straightforward hallucination from the chemical build-up in my brain resulting from my air-scrubber having been sabotaged.”

“Have it your own way Captain,” and with that the frog said nothing further.

Strovic sort of expected the little apparition to vanish, but it persisted, sitting on his main-drive display, little froggy fingers resting on the coolant purge icon.

“Could you move over a bit, you're making me nervous, sitting just there.”

“Captain, you have done remarkably well.” The frog had obviously decided to try again. “Your ship is travelling at above 90% of the speed of light, and because you're in a Magueijo fast-track, your relativistic speed is actually 103% of
c
.” The frog sat back on his haunches and clapped his hands together in a little round of applause. “Congratulations Captain. You are the first human to break the light barrier.”

It was true: Strovic's vessel, the
Light Ship Highway
, was technically travelling faster than light. She powered through a naturally occurring corridor of space where the speed of light was slightly different from that in the rest of the Universe; fossilized space-time from a period when
c
had a higher value.

“Strictly speaking,” said the frog. “We think that you've cheated. Your understanding of the Universe is based on the fallacy of relativity. You believe one of the most basic truths in the Universe to be impossible. Yet you still managed to hurl yourself into the void above the speed of light. Our laws state that you are now, by definition, civilized. Personally, I think you fluked it.”

“Well, thank you very much. I take it that you are the Galactic Welcoming Committee — I don't suppose you bought a new set of silver filters with you by any chance?”

“Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Captain,” said the frog. “And I'm not from your galaxy, and we are separated by about a billion and a half years, but otherwise spot on.”

Strovic looked closer at the little frog. It looked exactly like a tree frog, the sort that lives in bromeliads, but there was a hint of something sharp and intelligent in its bright red eyes. Hesitantly he reached out and gently prodded the creature. His fingers registered cold leathery skin, something like a congealed jelly.