Michael Blumlein
LONGER
To Hilary
Although our information is incorrect, we do not vouch for it.
Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.
The true length of a person’s life… is always a matter of dispute.
–ONE–
Your vision is not limited by what your eyes can see, but what your mind can imagine.[1]
One life was enough. Two were more than enough.
It was time to end it.
Yes.
No.
It would end itself. The last mystery.
Yes.
No. Not the last. But a great one. A great mystery, unspooled.
Birth was the first, also great.
Rebirth, not so much, and jarring. Overrated.
The stars were bright in the heavens, no atmosphere to dim them. So many of them, and so many more unseen. So many worlds. So many questions. So many answers.
Yes to all possibilities. Infinity promised this.
But space was cold. Eternity, also.
He’d need a better coat.
He needed one now, because he was shivering.
He stood in the cupola, gazing at the Milky Way, observing in himself the balance between what he saw and what he felt, between the sensation of cold and his perception of the sensation, and in the latter the balance between awe and terror, which shifted as all things shifted, and which he had experienced his whole life when gazing at the stars and the infinity of space. Currently, terror held the upper hand: how else to explain the chill?
He called on awe to put in an appearance. Humbly, dispassionately, he requested an audience. Sometimes it listened.
Now was one of those times. He knew immediately, because instantly he felt better. Warmer. More hopeful and optimistic.
Gunjita was in the lab mod, pipetting. She hadn’t done this in years. Hadn’t needed to: postdocs and underlings did it for her. Later, as her once agile fingers became gnarled and crippled with age, she couldn’t have done it if she’d wanted to. She could barely hold a spoon. Now her fingers were fine. And there were no underlings. She was alone, but not lonely. Work, as always, was a faithful companion.
Thumbing the plunger was familiar, repetitive, and soothing—press release, press release. It felt good in and of itself, all the better because it freed her to think. She had juved at the age of eighty-two, which, all things being equal, was the current recommendation. Since all things were never equal, some people chose to do it at seventy, or sixty, or even ninety. But statistically speaking, eighty-two was optimal, representing the best balance between benefit and risk.
Broadly, statistics were helpful, but they lacked pinpointability. A single individual could easily fall outside the range of prediction. Following standard practice, a person might wait too long, or alternatively, juve too soon. Something more precise, impossible to ignore or misinterpret, would be useful.
An idea had been brewing in her mind, and when she was done with the pipette, she went looking for Cav, to run it by him. She found him where she expected she would, staring into space, which had been his main occupation of late, even before news that an extraplanetary probe was on its way. He was a wool-gatherer by nature, and she took a moment to observe him unannounced.
He was a handsome man, and to handsomeness age had added dignity, but it had bent his once fine, long frame, etched his face, slowed his step and also his brain. She wondered how long he was going to wait before juving. The longer he did, the greater the benefit, but also the greater the risk. She observed herself—thoughtful, deliberate, a person who set the bar high and left no stone unturned—pleased that she hadn’t waited.
“You know that thing mice and rabbits do before they’re sacrificed?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Cav?”
“Yes?”
“The way they go all calm and limp?”
“Mice? Do we have mice?”
“No. Not here. I’m just thinking about what happens.”
“The word, I believe, is resignation.”
“They know what’s coming. They have a premonition.”
“They teach us a valuable lesson. Terror can be tamed. The question: which is better? Which is braver? Resistance or surrender?”
He turned from the window, facing her. “The stars are beautiful tonight. Have you ever seen such beauty?”
“I’ve been working,” she said.
“Also beautiful.”
“When others do it.”
“I should help.”
“I’ve been remiss.”
“Do you need me?”
“I’m fine,” she said, having made her point. “I’m enjoying myself.”
He smiled, happy to hear it. “I’m a lucky man. I feel rich, Gunjita. Blessed in nearly every way. Does our probe have a name?”
“Eurydice. You don’t remember?”
“Who named it?”
“I have no idea.”
“I would have named it Orpheus. We should be able to see it soon. I wonder what it’s bringing us.”
The images the probe had sent back were hazy and of low resolution, showing an indistinct object lighter in color than the asteroid on which it had been found. Efforts to lift or otherwise dislodge it from the asteroid had failed, but in the process the asteroid had cracked, presumably along a fault line or cleavage plane, and a fragment had come loose. As luck would have it, the object, if it truly was an object and not a detection artifact, was on this fragment, which the probe had dutifully snapped up.
“A mineral of some kind, most likely. A discontinuity in the rock.”
Cav nodded. “Someone’s being careful.”
“Yes.”
“We should be careful, too. You were talking about premonitions. I’m having one now.”
He had his share of health problems, age-related stuff: heart, joints, pisser. As far as she knew, nothing serious, but she didn’t know much, because he didn’t talk about it much. Wasn’t a complainer. She didn’t think he was talking about it now.
“Not anything bad, I hope.”
“No. Not at all. The opposite.”
It was the probe then, as she suspected. “You’ve got stars in your eyes. The kind of premonition I’m thinking about isn’t some dream come true. It’s the kind that happens before a catastrophe. Like before a heart attack. Or a stroke. There’s a warning signal.”
“I’d imagine.”
“It’s brief. No more than a second or two. After that the damage is done. May or may not be reversible. What if the signal could be stretched out? Instead of seconds, make it last an hour, or a day, or even longer. A month, say. Give people time to do something about it. Take action.”
“Juve, for example.”
“For example.”
“A month of being in a continual state of alarm? Waiting for the ax to fall?”
“Highly motivating, no?”
“Terrifying.”
“And it won’t fall. That’s the beauty.”
“Look. There it is.”
Far away, a pinpoint of light had separated itself from the infinity of pinpoints around it by virtue of its motion. Slowly but steadily, it scribed its way toward them.
“How will you stretch out the warning signal?” he asked. “What is the signal?”
“It’s not any one thing. Catastrophe isn’t a single event, it’s a cascade. There’re multiple signals. Most are below our level of awareness. The trick will be to increase our awareness without triggering the cascade. Activate just the right pathways. Block the others.”