Diamonds in the Sky (7 page)

The professor was wrapping up her lecture. “To summarize our modern understanding of cosmology, the universe began 13.7 billion years ago in an infinitely hot cauldron of creation we call the Big Bang. That initial fireball expanded, cooled, with dark matter and normal matter collapsing under gravity into galaxies, each full of stars and planets, where life like butterflies and bacteria, people and puppy dogs, could arise.”

Students in the lecture hall began fidgeting as they did when the prof grew poetic toward the end of class, as she often did. Unperturbed, she pressed on. “The universe will continue expanding, forever, and now we know that the expansion is accelerating. The future we face could be described as the big empty, when the Milky Way and all galaxies become totally isolated, but it’s also possible that this repulsive, expansive force we refer to as dark energy will increase its power and eventually rip even individual atoms apart. It will be an utterly complete destruction.”

The professor stood there in the ensuing silence, seemingly trying to get the shifting and restless students to consider the philosophical import of these grand pronouncements about the future of everything. “Any questions or comments?”

That was when he spoke up. He hadn’t been fidgeting, shifting, or restless, but uncharacteristically contemplative. “If the universe is just going to keep expanding into nothingness, even destroying itself, then, well, what’s the point?”

“What do you mean, exactly?” the professor asked, frowning but leaning forward.

Turmoil brewed within him, and he suppressed his shyness at speaking out in front of such a large class. “What’s the point of doing anything? My homework, for starters?”

That raised a few chuckles.

The professor stepped back, smiling and appearing to relax. “Your grade, for starters. But this is a question we all have to face. Nothing is forever. We all die, sooner or later. Some turn to religion. Others to, I don’t know, their work, family, partying, something. Myself, I consider how lucky I am to even be alive. Out of all the people that could have existed, and that number exceeds the grains of sand on every beach on Earth, here I am. Me. Getting to be, to live. I’m going to take advantage of that by spending my time doing things I love, and I suggest all of you do as well. And do your homework, too.”

She dismissed them then amidst mild laughter, and as he grabbed his backpack and stood to leave, he found a tall raven-haired girl glaring at him.

“You stole that from Woody Allen,” she said.

“What?” he answered.

“In the face of an expanding universe, what’s the point?” she persisted. “Annie Hall. I’m surprised the prof didn’t call you out on it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, truthfully.

She looked at him hard for a long moment, then tilted her head and smiled at him. “You’re a liar or a little neurotic then. Either way, we’re going to get to know each other.”

“We are?”

“We are. And you’re going to watch Annie Hall with me tomorrow night.”

She was cute, so they did.

And they did more than just that, too. They did the things that young humans do together. They dated, loved, married, and raised children, more or less in that order.

There were good times, and bad times. But more good than bad.

In 2031, they vacationed in a space hotel, and discovered that making love in zero gravity wasn’t all that wonderful. Still, it was an experience that they cherished. It was hard to believe from that unique perspective that the Energy Wars were devastating so much of the world. Earth was a calm, blue swirl as seen from space, and the suffering distant, even invisible.

In 2041, the first in a series of significant life-extension drugs was released to the general public. The fifty-something American couple remained looking and feeling fifty-something, and celebrated the births of several grandchildren.

In 2061, they vacationed on the Moon.

Cody realized that the times, they were a changin’, in a qualitatively profound manner. A lot of the promises of the futurists were coming true, although he still didn’t have a flying car or a jet pack like his retired dad ranted about on occasion. But a man could delay aging, vacation on the Moon, and access all the knowledge of the world in seconds via brain implant.

In 2071, when global temperatures had skyrocketed and the fight to preserve Florida’s coastline was given up as lost, Cody and Vanessa received medical nanotechnology into their bloodstream that restored their youth. Smooth skin, dark hair, with muscle tones and metabolisms to match. It was a tremendous excuse to dance.

Then things got weird.

In the decades and centuries that followed, technology allowed them to change appearance, change sex, even change species to a certain extent. The population alternatively fought and rejoiced over such things.

Intelligent computers thought for people. Intelligent robots worked for people. People lived and loved.

In the 23rd century, Cody and Vanessa moved to Mars and rarely regretted it. The sunsets on Mars were lovely then.

They decided not to homestead an asteroid, and skipped the first several interstellar colonizations. Finally in 2554, they accepted the challenge of taming Tau Ceti III, named Georgia by popular vote.

Those were a few good centuries, and he barely fought with Vanessa at all.

They did separate, however, eventually. Who could stay together for so long with so many opportunities? Cody visited the Orion star-forming region, while Vanessa remained on Georgia for a time before taking the plunge into the Galactic center to study the supermassive black hole there, weighing some three million times the sun, and its exotic environment.

When Cody and Vanessa met again, it was the second age of Cytannus, a regional empire in the Sagittarius arm, in the year 4432, as reckoned by their calendar. They fell together again like no time had passed, even though one was an android and the other was a space mermaid. Sometimes life is like that.

They compromised and settled together as sea leviathans on a water world and sang symphonies to each other for several centuries. Post-human existence had its possibilities.

Together they traveled to watch dwarf novas, novas, supernovas, and hypernovas, all from appropriately safe distances. Explosions were always good entertainment.

They made the trip to Andromeda and met the alien species that had colonized that galaxy from rim to core. The aliens smelled bad, but were very nice people.

Three point seven million years after the astronomy class in which Cody and Vanessa had first met, they shed their corporeal bodies entirely in favor of distributed pan-dimensional intelligences and entered a different realm of existence where even more was possible.

Over the following billions of years, time moved on, and the universe expanded in an accelerating fashion.

They would have cried, if they could have, when some five billion years after their astronomy class, just as their professor had predicted, the sun expanded into a red giant. All life on Earth died in a slow, intense roast.

Billions of years further along, after the Milky Way and Andromeda had merged and galaxies beyond the Local Group had vanished from sight, Cody knew that the game was winding down and it was only a matter of time. But what a grand time!

Cody loved Vanessa in a mental, physical, and emotional way that was incomprehensible in the century that they had met. What is it really like when you can know someone in every way possible, and accept them as you do yourself? Someone you had spent billions of years knowing? No one in the 21st century could have articulated the nature of their relationship. He knew it now, at the end.

“I remember,” he thought, back in the end times of the present.

Vanessa sent him another thought to echo through his extended mind. “Did you get the point?”

“Yes,” he thought, “I got the point,” appreciating what he was and where he had gone, where they had gone.

The universe continued to rip itself apart in its death throes, and together they shared the unique experience.

©
Mike Brotherton

Meyer felt his brain
squish
into being in his new biobod.

A struggling investigator, he never could have afforded the exotic light-speed transport himself, but his client, Benton Reege —
Time and Space
magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year for 36 years running since the mag named him Architect of the Milky Way in 2100 — dropped as many solcreds on his weekly haircut.

“First time, huh?” A high male voice boomed directly in front of him, but Meyer only saw a too-bright yellow haze and closed his eyes.

“It takes a few minutes for your mind to adjust to your new biobod,” the man recited. “You’ve just had your brain mapped, flung through space on an encoded light wave, and rewired from scratch into this brand-spanking-new brain matter; you can’t expect to see clearly right off the bat. Your mind needs to learn the physical connections first.”

After several failed trials, Meyer was able to open his eyes long enough to get a clear look at the medtech, a stumpy blond casually inspecting his fingernails. He wore a simple white lab coat, with the Reege company emblem embossed on the chest.

“Ready?”

Meyer nodded. His neck felt thicker than he’d expected; in fact,
everything
felt too large. “I’m big,” he said, raising his right arm. Surprisingly, it didn’t
feel
heavy — more like what he was used to on Earth.

The medtech chuckled. “That’s how we make biobods for Mercury. The gravity here is about a third of Earth’s; if we grew bodies with the same mass as your Earth body
was
, you’d feel like you were a third the weight, too. Your biobod’s three times the mass of your Earth body — not volume, thankfully, since your skin, flesh and organs are much heavier! By adapting your biobod for the gravity, instead of forcing your mind to retrain to a low-g environment, we eliminate the need for extensive physical training like the old-time astronauts had to do.”

Meyer didn’t like the emphasis on the word
was
. “My Earth body?”

“Didn’t Mr. Reege tell you? Your old body was destroyed at the other end. It’s a side
benefit
of squisher travel — you get new bodies wherever you go, gravity-adapted and maintenance-free. The only downside is you don’t know who’s looking back at you in the mirror.” The medtech laughed. “Want to see?”

He thrust a mirror in front of Meyer.

The face looking back at him was big and strange, with a wide nose and mouth below tiny black eyes. Meyer had gotten used to seeing a deep, jagged scar near his left ear — he’d hoped one day to scratch together enough solcreds for the medbots to fix it. That wouldn’t be needed now.

“When can I see Mr. Reege?”

“Now; the transition is pretty quick. Stand up.”

Despite the medtech’s explanation, Meyer was surprised to find that climbing out of the chair felt remarkably as he’d remembered on Earth. Walking was similar as well.

Meyer glanced out a passing window. “Are we going outside?”

“No. Your biobod’s adapted for gravity, but not Mercury’s incredible temperature swings — starts close to 200 below, Celsius, up here on the 85th parallel, and goes over 100 above — more than boiling water on Earth.”

Meyer whistled.

“Down at the equator, where most of Mr. Reege’s high-temperature experiments are, it gets up well over 400 — enough to incinerate your Earth body without protection.”

As they passed a window, Meyer remarked on a worker outside, wearing full-body space suits.

The medtech paused. “Mercury’s atmo is flaky — not enough gravity to keep it here, so parts keep floating off. Supply tanks create a breathable atmo in the buildings, but you need a suit outside. It’s like the Moon, only
much
hotter.”

Meyer stared out the window. It was gray everywhere. “Is that steam?”

“Water comes out of nowhere; it vaporizes or freezes, depending on the temp. They tell me there’s hydrogen and oxygen in both the vaporized Mercury rocks and the solar wind, and sometimes they combine.”

The medtech nudged Meyer and led him down a hallway to Reege’s office. Inside, he found Mr. Reege at his desk, working. He looked remarkably like a larger Reege — same face and body structure, same pencil mustache, just bigger.

Reege grinned, stood and offered a meaty hand. “I’ve been expecting you. How was your trip?”

Meyer shrugged. “Different. You do this squisher thing often yourself?”

Laughing, Reege said, “Rarely any more. I did, of course, in the early days of each colony, but it got tiring after a while. Believe it or not, all those colonies were set up the old-fashioned way, with materials transported on laser fusion drives developed over a hundred years ago. I spent more decades than you can imagine making those colonies fly, which also meant creating an economy from nothing for hundreds or thousands.” He leaned back in his chair and rocked. “The medbots developed mid-21st are the only reason I’m still alive and kicking today at 160.” Reege smiled. “I don’t think I’ve squished in ten, fifteen years now.”

“You didn’t come out with me?” Meyer was confused. “I saw you back on Earth a few hours ago.”

Reege nodded, leaned far over his desk and said conspiratorially, “You saw my
Earth
presence. After squishing a few too many times for my tastes, I came up with an idea.” He sat back and rocked his chair. “You’ve heard of full-body repairers?”

“Replicators?” The best Meyer could hope for one day were medbots, tiny repairers injected directly into your bloodstream that navigated your body to repair things at a cellular level. “I thought they were just rumor.”

“They exist. But you have to plan ahead. You can’t just grow a biobod overnight, you know — it takes
years
, even with rapigrow medbots. Did you know they’re grown from common DNA elements until puberty, when they introduce the DNA variants? That’s when you can make a custom biobod for yourself, rather than walking around in a generic one like yours.”