Nature Futures 2 (31 page)

“Why am I seeing a frog?” he asked.

“It's really very simple,” said the frog. “The Universe is spinning. Does that give you a clue?”

“The Universe is not spinning,” said Strovic. “And I refuse to believe it is just because a frog tells me so.”

“Please yourself, but the truth is that the Universe is a finite physical structure made up as a super-fluid condensate. It has a physical boundary and a finite distance from edge to edge. The Universe and the space-time condensate are entirely contained within what you charmingly refer to as a ‘black hole'. Extra-universal space is to all intents and purposes infinite, so your whole Universe is a finite subset of an infinite data set.

Strovic blinked once.

“Tell me about Zeno, Captain Strovic.”

“Zeno? The philosopher?”

“Yes Captain, the man who almost broke the light barrier when your world was wearing togas.”

“You're the frog in the pond?”

“Ah,” said the frog. “Light dawns.”

“A frog in a pond swims towards the edge of the pond,” began Strovic as if reciting. “But he first has to cover half of the distance, and then half of the remaining distance, and then half that distance and so on ad infinitum, but it's a paradox because the frog eventually does get to the edge.”

“Doesn't that give you a clue about the nature of space?” The frog sounded a little exasperated. Strovic answered him with a blank shrug.

“Travelling across a finite distance there will always be a remainder left over,” the frog insisted. “Therefore it is not possible to cover a finite distance.”

“But we live in a space where this does not apply. Converging wotsits, and the Greeks not having a word for zero and all that.”

“Hmmm, that sounds likely doesn't it?” sniffed the frog. “Work it out Horatio, you can do it. It's impossible to cross a finite distance. The Universe is a finite physical structure set in a non-finite space. Come on, Captain, make the leap.”

“So what you're saying is that all distances within the Universe are a finite fraction of an infinite whole, and that a finite number divided by transfinite number is equal to zero, so therefore all distances must be equal to zero. The whole Universe exists within a singularity?”

The frog slapped one of his little hands over his face in a gesture of total exasperation.

“Well I suppose you've got time to work it out,” he said.

“If you hadn't noticed,” said Strovic a little more sharply than he intended. “I'll be dead in two hours time, sabotaged by the Orbital separatists.

“Oh didn't I mention?” said the frog innocently. “We've been on the lawn of the White House for the past five minutes. If you want a breath of fresh air, all you have to do is open the door.

“Welcome home Captain Strovic, you have a lot to think about.”

With that the not-a-real frog disappeared in a little puff of not-smoke.

Since appearing in
Nature
, Gareth has gone on to be nominated for a BSFA award (twice) and is now an active member of the SFWA. His collection of short stories,
Fun with Rainbows
, is available from Immersion Press and even contains a spiffy introduction from Dr Gee. Follow him on Twitter @straightspear.

For Your Information

Conor Powers-Smith

When Allison came in, Jennifer muted the TV, and asked, “Well?”

Allison shrugged. Only when she was seated on the sofa, under Jennifer's smiling scrutiny, did Allison's determinedly fixed expression give way to a wide grin.

Jennifer's smile widened in sympathy with her roommate's. She prompted, “Good?”

“Yeah.”

“What'd you do?”

“A movie. Walked around for a while.” They could've been picking up trash by the side of the road for all Allison cared. She heard herself blurt, “I really like him.”

“I seem to get that impression. But this was only date two, right?”

Allison felt like she'd known Kevin for years, her whole life, longer. Still, she had to nod. “But we're going out again tomorrow.”

“So this is a thing now,” Jennifer said. “Officially.”

“I guess. I hope.”

“So, don't you think it's time we checked him out?”

“Jen…”

“He's got a profile, hasn't he?”

“Yeah. You pretty much have to now, or you're some kind of weirdo.”

“So…?”

“I don't know.”

“Allie, it's not being nosy. It's right there for everyone to see. It's just being responsible. I mean, if this is going to be a thing, you owe it to yourself to go in with your eyes open.”

“I guess. But —”

“And admit it: you're just the tiniest bit curious.”

Allison could hardly deny that. “Well … all right.”

*   *   *

Jennifer sat in front of the computer, Allison behind her, on the edge of Jennifer's bed, craning her neck to see the screen.
Geno-Me
was slick and inviting, as befitted one of the world's most popular social media sites. The stylized double helices bordering each page glowed their soft greens and blues.

“Okay,” Jennifer said. “The physical stuff's locked out, unless he's friended you.” She glanced over her shoulder.

Allison shook her head. “We didn't talk much about it.” In her mind, she was reviewing the few dismissive words they'd spoken on the subject, trying to determine whether they'd established a tacit understanding that neither would look at the other's profile. Kevin had called it ‘a marginally more accurate horoscope' but didn't people sometimes read horoscopes just for fun?

“The personality stuff's more fun anyway,” Jennifer said. “Okay, let's see: H11Bβ, that's cool. He has a good sense of humour?”

“Definitely.”

“But he has his serious side,” Jennifer said. Her hand and wrist were busy working the mouse. As the cursor slid across the 23 pairs of rather cartoonish chromosomes on the screen, small sections lit up, boxes of text appeared beside them, and other sections, seemingly unrelated, glowed in sympathy. “And — Uh oh.”

“What?”

“HOPPER9, B2F11, WELLER-WYMAN and no 17J-CROSSHAIRS. That's got stubbornness written all over it. Have you noticed that?”

“No. I mean, he didn't want to see the movie I did. But I didn't care.”

“Well, you better get used to that. He'll be picking the movies.”

Allison couldn't imagine a thing like that bothering her. Still, it was disconcerting to find a stain, however small, on her previously spotless conception of Kevin.

“And, look, Allie: NICKEL7. That'd be okay if he had JIB4, or the elongated DONALDSON-HARVEY, but, nope. That means highly confrontational.
Highly
.”

“Huh,” Allison said, remembering the business of Kevin shushing the pair of obnoxious teenagers who'd been talking during the movie. But wasn't it admirable to stand up for one's self, when the situation dictated? Then again, the kids hadn't been
so
loud.

“Oh, Allie: 76UNION-Y-SAIL. Hostility towards authority. Look, that's linked to oppositional disorder … all kinds of things …
crime
.”

Allison could come up with nothing to corroborate that, which somehow made it worse. She sounded unconvincing even to herself when she said, “But you can't tell how these things are going to express themselves. Environment's just as important. Right? Free will? What's the saying? It's a list of ingredients, not a recipe.”

“Yeah, but look at the ingredients. You can't make a cake with … sawdust and broken glass.”

When Allison came in, Jennifer set aside her magazine, and said, “So?”

Allison's stoical expression faltered before she reached the sofa. By the time she was seated beside Jennifer, her mouth was bent in a steep frown, and her eyes were welling up.

“It's over.”

“Oh, Allie. You broke it off? It's probably for the best. Considering.”

“He did.”

“What? Don't tell me he didn't like
your
profile. That's some nerve, with —”

“He never looked at my stupid profile. But he knew I looked at his. He said he could tell right away, I was treating him differently. I could hear myself doing it, too, but I couldn't stop. It's like, when you know those things about someone … when you
think
you know…”

“What was it, some kind of trap? Remember, he has VIKING-F11? They list that as strategic thinking, but one of the corollaries is deceit.”

“It's a trap, but he didn't set it. The whole thing's a trap.”

“Was he very … confrontational?”

“Stop it, Jen. It wasn't even him we were looking at.”

“We got the wrong profile?”

“It was his profile, but not his genome. He posted a different one. One of those historical reconstructions they do.”

“What? Who?”

“Gandhi.”

Jennifer stared. Finally she said, “Well, I'd call that deceitful. I bet he has VIKING, at least.”

Allison stared back for a moment, then stood. “I'm going to bed.”

Conor Powers-Smith lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, where he works as a reporter and writes fiction in his spare time.

Invisible

João Ramalho-Santos

He slid out of bed as the door closed behind the nurse who regularly came by to check if he was still breathing. Avoidance was always best; unlike academia, this was a place where quick wits were greeted, not by admiration, but with increased doses of meds. Keeping them controlled was the only goal. Nurses weren't impressed by who their charges had been; they dealt with ex-politicians, ex-actors, ex-chief executives, ex-everything, focus on the ‘ex'. The trick was to be invisible, to walk the fine line between polite privacy and anti-social sullenness. Rather than musing on ‘how it had come to this', he took it for what it was: a new challenge.

Today, however, the wait had been excruciating, a package beckoning just outside the door. The nurse never brought the mail in, not part of the job description. But it was there; he knew it, next-day shipping never failed. Fifteenth edition. Two shelves on the bookcase held the fourteen previous ones, a steady increase in bulk following the chronology. In fact, these were the only books he had bothered to bring. He opened the door, trying to will away telltale creaks in hinges and joints, avoid any possible attention. But a small envelope was all that awaited.

A sudden surge of adrenaline-flavoured fear gushed through him. The publishing company had gone all-digital. Inside the envelope would be a DVD, a USB pen, a code to access some website far away. No longer the heaviness of textbooks, the rustle of knowledge to be thumbed through, the smell of fresh ink; just jumps, links and animations, information beaten into easy morsels. Yet another challenge, he mused, firing up the laptop, searching for glasses, battling arthritis for the envelope's contents.

The chapter was not where he expected; the new authors had wanted to shift things around, leave their mark. Wouldn't work: by now the book was known by a sole last name, and that original author had been dead since the tenth edition, his name transitioning from scholar to brand. But even creative authors couldn't escape the obvious organizations in science, he thought, finding what he was looking for.

One introductory line. “It has long been well established that…” No references were given. The chapter then proceeded to describe what had recently happened in the field. Why, the new authors must have thought, reference the obvious at the beginning? They had merely added what seemed like a million links at the end, for those with a taste for the historical. He grinned, gazed at the bookcase.

The first four editions he forgave, only the drive for completeness justified their purchase. He was in high school when the first two came out, in college for the others. The fifth he had learned to understand. When it was published he had only presented at a meeting, and at the time hadn't even been fully aware of what the data meant. It was the sixth and seventh he had real issues with. By then his PhD thesis had been completed, the data published, their implications clear. Yet it remained ignored, just a few odd details that didn't quite fit accepted dogma, certainly not enough to warrant the rewriting of textbooks, as one helpful professor candidly explained. So he formed his own lab to work on the ‘odd details'. Luckily these were the old days, funding for non-canonical work was still easy, if off the beaten prestige path. He published like mad, bothered editors, made sure the eighth and ninth editions had to reluctantly state: “Despite a general consensus this may not be the case in very particular circumstances.” Finally he was referenced, the work tangible; even though any casual reader understood the textbook was being, at best, charitable. By edition number ten his relentless campaign had got others to pay attention, to try out his hypotheses. No longer the ramblings of a lone maverick, the text finally admitted that there were competing views, suggested that resolving this issue would be a challenge for the future.

And the future came through in editions eleven to thirteen, his work gradually becoming the “general consensus”, the previous fading into afterthought. The thirteenth edition was particularly satisfying because he had since retired, the ideas no longer dependent on his own stubbornness, but on the best truth available.

Five years ago, when he first read the fourteenth, he had to admit to a twinge of disappointment. “Initial theories were contradicted by work that clearly established…” the chapter said, still referencing his papers. Nothing else. It was as if the fiery battles discussed in previous editions, and that his entire career was based upon, hadn't happened at all. But slowly he understood the bigger picture, realized what the next edition, what all future versions, would have to say.