Nature Futures 2 (35 page)

Hopelessly naive! So I was told, repeatedly.

“Don't you watch television? Have you
ever
seen an ad for
any drug
that
cured
anything? It costs scores of millions to get any new drug out on the market, and that means we've got to keep selling it until the patent runs out. And chemotherapy drugs for cancer that the customers have to take indefinitely to stay alive are the profit centre that keeps this industry in the black. Your silver bullet cure would pull the rug out from our major profit centre and you expect us to
pay for killing our own golden goose
?

“What are you, some kind of
Communist
?”

No, I'm not, but the Cuban government still is, isn't it? Or, at least, their health-care system and their drug industry is government financed, and so their economic self-interest is in cutting health-care cost, not inflating it to maximize profit.

That's
why I'm on my way to Cuba.

That's why I can't risk revealing the location of the cancer-free populations I've discovered. Do I want to find out how far those whose economic self-interest is the opposite direction will go to protect their golden goose from my silver bullet?

I'm a scientist, neither a capitalist nor a Communist.

But
that
naive I no longer am.

Norman Spinrad is the author of more than 20 novels, something like 60 short stories collected in half a dozen volumes. The novels and stories have been published in about 15 languages. His most recent novel-length publication in English is
He Walked Among Us
. He's written teleplays, including the classic
Star Trek
, ‘The Doomsday Machine', and produced two feature films:
Druids
and
La Sirene Rouge
. He is a long-time literary critic, sometime film critic, perpetual political analyst, and sometime songwriter. He's recently adapted his novel
Greenhouse Summer
as a theatrical/screenplay script. He's been president of the Science Fiction Writers of America and World SF. He's posted more than 30 YouTube videos to date.

Dark They Were, and Strange Inside

Vaughan Stanger

If it weren't for the boffins who resurrected the Large Hadron Collider I wouldn't be placing flowers on my best friend's grave. For once, Marcie followed my advice. I wish she hadn't.

Marcie's journey to the hereafter began when she leaned across my kitchen table and fixed me with the kind of look she usually reserves for guys with performance issues.

“You did what?”

“I signed up for Internet dating!”

“Why'd you do that, Jen?”

“Cos I'm thirty-five.”

Marcie rolled her eyes. “You're just having a cold spell. Everyone gets those.”

Excepting Marcie, of course. She's never had to go shopping to get men. Big boobs and Beyoncé hair do the job for her, whereas I rate as ‘presentable' in a good light. Admittedly, I did select
Attractive
on the web-form, but then who wouldn't?

“Okay,” Marcie said with a sigh. “Let's take a look.”

I fired up my laptop. Marcie chuckled her way through the website's blurb.

“‘Fundamentals.com: your portal to a multiverse of love.' Yeah, right!”

I scrolled through my profile, highlighting those difficult-to-write personal bits. Marcie waved me onwards.

“Never mind that drivel. What about your ideal man?”

I showed her.

“I see you've selected
Dark
.”

“So?”

“I'm just saying.” Her expression suggested she remembered my adventures with Ahmed.

“I did also select
Attractive
and
Solvent
.”

“Which will get you
Tubby
and
Tightwad
.” Marcie shook her head before giving me a wink. “Go for it girl!”

*   *   *

“So, you gonna tell me what happened?”

I could tell Marcie was excited because she didn't make her usual crack about Botox even though I was frowning.

“Well, I turned up at All Bar One wearing my —”

“I know what you were wearing!”

I blushed but said nothing.

“What did he look like?”

“It's hard to say.”

Marcie groaned. “You did pick one with a photo, right?”

I shook my head. “No, but…”

“Have I taught you nothing?”

Quite the opposite in fact, but I wasn't about to say so. I sighed and continued my account.

“There were lots of men there, but no standalones. So I sat at a corner table and waited. After half an hour of cooling my heels, I was about to go when … the best way I can put it is that I felt a presence. I couldn't see him properly or work out what he was saying; yet I knew someone was sat next to me. But take it from me, you feel a right fool talking to thin air, so pretty soon I made my excuses and left.”

“Good call.”

“But walking to the bus-stop, I could feel someone holding my hand. And when I finally got into bed, well…”

“Omigod, you pulled!” Marcie high-fived me before asking the inevitable question: “So, was he any good?”

“Well, I did enjoy a very nice buzz.”

I could tell Marcie wasn't convinced by the way she frowned at me. And who could blame her? But I knew I'd been to bed with a man, even if I hadn't actually clapped eyes on him at any stage.

I sipped my Chardonnay in silence while I awaited Marcie's verdict. Finally she delivered it.

“I bet he wasn't even dark, never mind tall and handsome.”

On that point she couldn't have been more wrong.

*   *   *

The official news about our exotic friends broke the next day.

According to the hot-looking guy on Sky News, the Large Haddock Colander (the pride of CERN, as rechristened by Marcie) hadn't opened up a planet-swallowing black hole as some had predicted, but it had definitely opened up a gateway to something. Within days, an MIT boffin announced that he'd built a dark matter delineator. Once the portable model hit the stores, my dates got a lot easier to spot. Fortunately I've always preferred the silent type.

I was dating my fourth dark guy by the time Marcie decided to join in the fun. My best friend asking me for dating advice; now that was a first!

“Okay, let's build your profile,” I said. “And no, you can't upload those photos of you wearing nothing.”

Marcie waggled her tongue at me before clicking her way through the options so expertly I wondered whether she was quite as inexperienced at this kind of thing as she claimed.

“I see you didn't select
Dark
,” I said.

Marcie grinned like a snake hypnotizing a mouse.

“I'm looking for something a lot stronger than a ‘very nice buzz'!”

*   *   *

After three days with no phone calls or messages, I felt sick with worry. I texted Marcie a lurid description of my latest date, but didn't receive a reply. Either she was having such a good time it had left her speechless — another first — or her alley-cat morals had finally landed her in trouble.

As I drove into Marcie's street a fleet of fire engines and ambulances wailed past. Some hundred metres from her home, a police-boy with a volcanic complexion waved me back. He needn't have bothered. One glance at the huge pile of smoking rubble where Marcie's apartment block had once stood was enough.

*   *   *

Last I heard the death toll had topped 50. Needless to say, Fundamentals.com has withdrawn its
Energetic
option. It seems that some guys really are too dangerous to date, especially those made of antimatter. According to the boffins, the containment field needs more work.

Once the dust has settled I'll resume dating. Marcie would want me to. I miss her terribly but remember her well. Say what you like about my best friend, but she definitely went out with a bang.

Vaughan Stanger wishes to make it clear that any visits he might have made to dating websites were purely in the interests of researching this story.
For further writing excuses, please visit
http://www.vaughanstanger.com
.

Survivors and Saviours

Philip T. Starks

The airlocks close behind me, but I can't hear them. My ears register nothing but the radio and my breathing. White noise, the rhythmic acceptance and expulsion of recycled air, and my own inner dialogue keep me company as I take my first step. The ground compresses beneath my foot, but my protective gear mutes the full experience.

I was selected for this mission not because I'm the oldest or youngest, weakest or strongest, smartest or dimmest, but because I'm expendable. When you're a dead-end vehicle in an evolutionary war, your job is to die first. I've been awarded this step because I'm sterile.

Sterile not only describes me, but also the environment that I've survived in. I won't say, ‘lived in', although the others seem hopeful enough to equate survival with living. I don't. Up until now, I've been surviving. However, with each step taking me farther from the enclave into the real world, I feel more alive.

And I'm not alone. Out here, the world is teeming with life. Some teams collaborate, some hold ground in extended battle and others triumph. The skeletal remains splintering beneath my feet, serving as coral-like scaffolding for microbial masters, remind me that when one team triumphs, another fails. I might be advancing, but my team is losing.

Many teams have lost, but I suppose the majority have survived. It's just my own bias that elevates birds over biofilm. But I find no comfort in these thoughts. So, while ploughing through this microbial minefield, I focus on stories of long extinct beasts: of mammals, birds, reptiles and insects. I recite parables explaining how the loss of honeybees was an ignored bioindicator of a New Age, and how financial and political interests handcuffed a timely response. I fill my mind with these details to shield me from my fears.

My mission is to find survivors, but the unspoken hope is to find females. That hope isn't buoyed by data or experience. Of almost 10,000 embryos, only 1,500 survived. Even this pathetic number stressed our pool of viable uteruses, forcing us to transfer as many as three to the younger soldiers. Most failed to implant, or perished shortly thereafter. Our hopes were pinned on 350 fetuses, 280 of which survived birth; 165 enjoyed their ninth birthday, and prior to their tenth, we released them. Only 68 were female.

Now I'm searching for at least one. I understood that this trip would be long, and that the first steps would reveal our past failures. Despite these warnings, I didn't anticipate the boneyard I'd trample. The beauty of the growth encompassing them notwithstanding, these were my kin. Still, the horror of the eviscerated, cleanly consumed bodies was infinitely preferable to what I feared came next.

I pass through the final gateway, frightened but hopeful, but ultimately unprepared. My fears, developed and nourished in isolation, paled against this sight. Extinction nestles into one's arms more easily than a dead child. And I can't possibly hold all of the dead children.

Most of the food and water packets littering the ground are untouched. I am pleased, actually, by the advanced decomposition: most died immediately. Some of the bones, however, hold flesh. These children had survived, but not long enough to rejoin us. I mourn them, mutter a silent prayer, and wish they were never born.

I begin tallying the dead, then stop and radio in: “I count at least 150, I'm coming back.” I turn down the volume and don't wait for an answer. We fertilized the eggs, developed the embryos and reared the young. We took the survivors and released them, unprotected, into this world. We killed them: I just couldn't count every last dead child.

If I had, my count would have fallen short. My walk back to my sterile tomb was not solitary, and before I reached the airlock I felt a delicate hand tug my gloved finger.

“Don't leave me.”

She is beautiful: eleven years old, fit, and without protective gear. Her words are stronger than she knows: with them, she has sealed both our fates. I am overcome with joy and grief: I am thrilled she breathes, but I wish I was dead.

“I won't leave you,” I promised her. “Where are your friends?”

“Gone,” she said. I understood. She was the lone survivor of our challenge test. She has endured our abuse, and now I'll deliver her back to her abusers.

“So many people are looking forward to meeting you!” I confess to her the truth, but not its depth. I know that delivering her to the airlock will kill her freedom. She has survived, but only to be an egg donor. The goal of our research has always been to produce a generation that could thrive without protection. If she carries alleles that protect her against extinction-level pathogens, we need them.

I bring her to the airlock, call in the news and lie to her. “I'm going to step aside and protect the site, so I know you make it in.” As she enters our crypt, I remove my mask, remember those we saved and mourn those we killed. As a dead-end vehicle, I am happy to reach my end. I breathe deeply, taste the Age of Microbes, and convince myself that the Age of Man is not over.

Philip T. Starks is an associate professor of biology at Tufts University. His research focuses mostly on the behaviour of social insects, but he has recently been exploring microbial communities.

The Day We Made History

Ian Stewart

I should have known better than to draw Wesley's attention to the advertisement in
Spiritual Physics
. Our chairman had no intention of spending his life running the Mixatap Centre for Quantum Appliances at the University of Central Sidmouth. Seizing his opportunity, he cornered us at the coffee machine.

“Have you seen Godwit and Pond's paper on strong decoherence?” he said, waving a copy of
Qubit
.