They drew near along a liquid thread. Their wings, gray shawls trimmed in black, arched and fell. The long dark tips of their primary feathers flexed like spectral fingers. They flew outstretched, an arrow from beak to claws. And in the middle, between the slender necks and legs, came a bulge of body that seemed too bulky to get airborne, even with all the pumping of those great wings.
The sound came again, and Robbie grabbed my arm. First one, then another, then all three birds unspooled a chilling chord. They came so close we could see the splashes of red across the bulbs of their heads.
Dinosaurs, Dad.
The birds passed over us. Robbie held still and watched them wing away to nothing. He seemed frightened and small, unsure how he got here on the edge of woods, water, and sky. At last his fingers loosened their grip on my wrist. How would we ever know aliens? We can’t even know birds.
-
WE SAW SIMILIS FROM A LONG WAY AWAY. It was a ball of perfect indigo, glinting with the light of the nearby star it captured.
What’s that? my son asked. People must have made that.
“It’s a solar cell.”
A solar cell that covers the whole planet? Crazy!
We made a few rotations around the globe, confirming him. Similis was a world trying to capture every photon of energy that fell on it.
That’s suicide, Dad. If they hog all the energy, how do they grow their food?
“Maybe food is something else, on Similis.”
We went for a look, down to the planet’s surface. It was as dark as Nithar, but much colder, and silent aside from a steady background hum, which we followed. There were lakes and oceans, all frozen under thick ice. We passed underneath scattered, blasted snags that must have been thick forests once. There were fields of nothing, and grassless pastures of slag and rock. The roads were abandoned, the towns and cities empty. But no sign of destruction or violence. Everything had fallen into decay slowly, on its own. The world looked as if all the residents had walked out and been taken into the sky. But the sky was covered in solar panels, pumping out electrons at full tilt.
We followed the hum down into a valley. There we found the only buildings still intact, a vast industrial barracks guarded and repaired by ever-vigilant robots. Great conduits of cabling channeled all the energy captured by the solar shell into the sprawling complex.
Who built this?
“The inhabitants of Similis.”
What is it?
“It’s a computer server farm.”
What happened to everyone, Dad? Where did the people go?
“They’re all inside.”
My son frowned and tried to picture: a building of circuitry, infinitely bigger on the inside than on the outside. Rich, unlimited, endless, and inventive civilizations—millennia of hope and fear and adventure and desire—dying and resurrecting, saving and reloading, going on forever, until the power failed.
-
FOR HIS TENTH BIRTHDAY, the boy who once could not be roused in the morning without wailing like a howler monkey brought me breakfast in bed: fruit compote, toast, and pecan cheese, all artfully arranged on a platter accompanied by a painted bouquet of mums.
Get up, dude. I’m training today. And I have so much homework to do before we go. Thanks to you!
He wanted to walk to Currier’s lab. The lab was four miles from our house, a two-hour walk in each direction. I wasn’t crazy about spending half a day on the adventure, but that was all the birthday present he wanted.
Maples blazed orange against the sky’s deep blue. Robbie took his smallest sketchbook. He held it in the crook of his arm, scribbling into it as we walked. He slowed down for the most banal things. An ant mound. A gray squirrel. An oak leaf on the sidewalk with veins as red as licorice. He and his mother had left me far behind, Earthbound. I needed a moment alone with Aly myself, to visit that ecstasy whose source she never revealed to me. Currier had turned me down for the training once before. But this morning felt like ultimatum time.
Despite my constant prodding, we got to the lab ten minutes late. I came in the door apologizing. Ginny and a pair of lab assistants were huddled in conversation. They broke off, startled to see us. Ginny shook her head, distressed. “I’m so sorry, guys. We need to cancel for today. I should have called.”
I couldn’t tell what was up. But before I could press her, Currier appeared from the back hallway. “Theo. Can we talk?”
We headed to his office. Ginny snagged Robin by the shoulder. “Want to check out the sea slugs?” Robin lit up, and she led him away.
I’d never seen Martin Currier move so slowly. He waved for me to sit. He remained standing, hovering near the window. “We’ve been put on hold. The Office for Human Research Protections sent an interdiction letter last night.”
My first thought was for my son’s safety. “Is there a problem with the technique?”
Currier swung to face me. “Aside from how promising it is?” He waved an apology and composed himself. “We’ve been told to halt all further experiments funded in whole or part by Health and Human Services, pending a review for possible violations of human subject protection.”
“Wait. HHS? That doesn’t happen.”
His mouth soured again at my quaint objection. He crossed to his desk and sat. He pecked at his keyboard. A moment later, he read from the screen. “‘There is concern that your procedures may be violating the integrity, autonomy, and sanctity of your research subjects.’”
“Sanctity?”
He shrugged. It made no sense. DecNef was a simple, self-modulating therapy showing good results. Labs across the country were conducting far dodgier trials. More drastic experiments were being run inside the bodies of hundreds of thousands of kids every day. But someone in Washington was keen to enforce the new human protection guidelines.
“The government doesn’t arbitrarily shut down reasonable science. Did you do something to alienate someone in power?”
Currier inhaled, and it dawned on me. He hadn’t done anything. My meme of a son had. The elections were coming, and the parties were neck-and-neck. In a single gesture, designed to make the news, agents of the chaos-seeking administration had played to the Human Sanctity Crusade, slapped down the environmental movement, pissed on science, saved taxpayer money, thrown red meat to the base, and shut down a novel threat to commodity culture.
Marty held my gaze—a neural feedback all its own. He was having as much trouble with the idea as I was. The law of parsimony demanded a simpler explanation. But neither of us had one. He pushed his rolling chair away from the computer and massaged his face with both hands. “Needless to say, this kills any chance of licensing the technique. If I were a paranoid person…” He was paranoid enough to leave the thought unfinished.
“What will you do?”
“Comply with the investigators and make my case to the appeals board. What else can I do? Maybe it’ll turn out to be a short-lived nuisance.”
“And in the meantime…?”
He looked at me askance. “You want to know what will happen to him, without any more treatments.”