Maybe those who did what you're suggesting are simply keeping quiet about it."
"If a few dozen people had visions," said della Robbia, "that might be possible.
But with billions? Someone would have said that that was what they were doing. In
fact, I firmly believe almost everyone would be trying to communicate with their past
selves."
Lloyd looked at Theo, then back at della Robbia. "Not if they knew it was futile;
not if they knew that nothing they said could change things that were already carved
in stone."
"Or maybe everyone forgot," said Theo. "Maybe, between now and 2030, the
memory of the visions will fade. The memories of dreams fade, after all. You can
recall one when you first wake up, but hours later, it's gone completely. Maybe the
visions will erase themselves over the next twenty-one years."
Della Robbia shook his head emphatically. "Even if that were the case --and
there's no reason at all to think it might be --all the media reporting about the
visions would still survive until the year 2030. All the news reports, all the TV
coverage, all the things people wrote about themselves in their own diaries and in
letters to friends. Psychology isn't my field; I won't debate the fallible nature of
memory. But people would know what's happening on October 23, 2030, and many
would be attempting to communicate with the past."
"Wait a minute," said Theo. His eyebrows were high. "Wait a minute!" Lloyd and
della Robbia turned to look at him. "Don't you see? It's Niven's Law."
"What is?" said Lloyd.
"Who's Niven?" said della Robbia.
"An American science-fiction writer. He said that in any universe in which time
travel is a possibility, no time machine will ever be invented. He even wrote a little
story to dramatize it: a scientist is building a time machine and just as he gets it
finished, he looks up and sees the sun going nova --the universe is going to snuff
him out, rather than allow the paradoxes inherent in time travel."
"So?" said Lloyd.
"So communicating with yourself in the past is a form of time travel --it's sending
information back in time. And for those people who tried to do it, the universe might
block the attempt --not by anything as grandiose as blowing up the sun, but simply
by preventing the communication from working." He shifted his gaze from Lloyd to
della Robbia and back again. "Don't you see? That must have been what I was trying
to do in 2030 --I'd been attempting to communicate with myself in the past, and so,
instead, I simply ended up having no vision at all."
Lloyd tried to make his voice sound gentle. "There seems to be a lot of supporting
evidence from other people's visions that you really are dead in 2030, Theo."
Theo opened his mouth, as if to protest, but then he closed it. A moment later, he
spoke again. "You're right. You're right. Sorry."
Lloyd nodded; he hadn't really realized before just how hard all of this must be on
Theo. He turned and looked at della Robbia. "Well, Franco, if the visions weren't of
our future, then what did they portray?"
"An alternative timeline, of course. That's completely reasonable, given MWI." The
many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics says that every time an event can go
two ways, instead of one or the other way happening, both happen, each in a
separate universe. "Specifically, the visions portray the universe that split from this
universe at the moment of your LHC experiment; they show the future as it is in a
universe in which the time-displacement effect did not occur."
But Lloyd was shaking his head. "You don't still believe in MWI, do you? TI
demolishes that."
A standard argument in favor of the many-worlds interpretation is the thought
experiment of Schr.dinger's cat: put a cat in a sealed box with a vial of poison that
has a fifty-fifty chance of being triggered during a one-hour period. At the end of the
hour, open the box and see if the cat is still alive. Under the Copenhagen
interpretation --the standard version of quantum mechanics --until someone looks
in, the cat is supposedly neither alive nor dead, but rather a superposition of both
possible states; the act of looking in --of observing --collapses the wave function,
forcing the cat to resolve itself into one of two possible outcomes. Except that, since
the observation could go two ways, what MWI proponents say really happens is that
the universe splits at the point at which the observation is made. One universe
continues on with a dead cat; the other, with a living one.
John G. Cramer, a physicist who had often done work at CERN, but was normally
with the University of Washington, Seattle, disliked the Copenhagen interpretation's
emphasis on the observer. In the 1980s, he proposed an alternative explanation: TI,
the transactional interpretation. During the nineties and aughts, TI had become
increasingly popular amongst physicists.
Consider Schr.dinger's hapless cat at the moment it is sealed in the box, and the
observer's eye, at the moment, an hour later, that it looks upon the cat. In TI, the
cat sends out an actual, physical "offer" wave, which travels forward into the future
and backward into the past. When the offer wave reaches the eye, the eye sends out
a "confirmation" wave, which travels backward into the past and forward into the
future. The offer wave and the confirmation wave cancel each other out everywhere
in the universe except in the direct line between the cat and the eye, where they
reinforce each other, producing a transaction. Since the cat and the eye have
communicated across time, there is no ambiguity, and no need for collapsing wave
fronts: the cat exists inside the box exactly as it will eventually be observed. There's
also no splitting of the universe into two; since the transaction covers the entire
relevant period, there's no need for branching: the eye sees the cat as it always was,
either dead or alive.
"You would like TI," said della Robbia. "It demolishes free will. Every emitted
photon knows what will eventually absorb it."
"Sure," said Lloyd, "I admit that TI reinforces the block-universe concept --but
it's your many-worlds interpretation that really demolishes free will."
"How can you possibly say that?" said della Robbia, with expressive Italian
exasperation.
"There's no hierarchy among the many worlds," said Lloyd. "Say I'm walking
along and come to a fork in the road. I could go left, or I could go right. Which one
do I choose?"
"Whichever one you want!" crowed della Robbia. "Free will!"
"Nonsense," said Lloyd. "Under MWI, I choose whichever one the other version of
me didn't choose. If he goes right, I have to go left; if I go right, he has to go left.
And only arrogance would lead one to think that it was always my choice in this
universe that was considered, and that it was always the other choice that was
simply the alternative that had to be expressed in another universe. The manyworlds
interpretation gives the illusion of choice, but it's actually completely
deterministic."
Della Robbia turned to Theo, spreading his arms in an appeal for common sense.
"But TI depends on waves that travel backward in time!"
Theo's voice was gentle. "I think we've now abundantly demonstrated the reality
of information traveling backward in time, Franco," he said. "Besides, what Cramer
actually said was the transaction occurs atemporally --outside of time."
"And," said Lloyd, warming to the fight now that he had an ally, "your version of
what happened is the one that demands time travel."
Della Robbia looked stunned. "What? How? The visions simply portray a parallel
universe."
"Any parallel MWI universes that might exist would surely be moving in temporal
lockstep with ours: if you could see into a parallel universe, you'd still see today,
April 26, 2009; indeed, the whole concept of quantum computing depends on parallel
universes being precisely in lockstep with ours. So, yes, if you could see into a
parallel universe, you might see a world in which you'd gone over to sit down with
Michael Burr, over there, instead of with me and Theo, but it'd still be now. What
you're suggesting is adding contact with parallel universes on top of seeing into the
future; it's hard enough to accept one of those ideas without also having to accept
the other, and --"
Jake Horowitz had appeared at their table. "Sorry to interrupt," he said, "but
there's a call for you, Theo. Says it's about your posting on the Mosaic web site."
Theo hurried away from the table, abandoning his half-eaten kebab. "Line three,"
said Jacob, trailing behind him. There was an empty office just outside the lunch
room; Theo ducked in. The phone's caller ID simply said "Out of Area." He picked up
the handset.
"Hello," he said. "Theo Procopides here."
"My God," said the male voice, in English, at the other end of the phone. "This is
weird --talking to somebody you know is going to be dead."
Theo didn't have any response for that, so he simply said, "You have some
information about my murder?"
"Yes, I think so. I was reading something about it in my vision."
"What did it say?"
The man recounted the gist of what he'd read. There were no new facts.
"Was there anything about survivors?" asked Theo.
"How do you mean? It wasn't a plane crash."
"No, no, no. I mean, did it say anything about who survived me --you know,
about whether I had a wife or kids."
"Oh, yeah. Let's see if I can remember ... "
See if I can remember. His future was all incidental; nobody really cared. It wasn't
important, wasn't real. Just some guy they'd read about.
"Yeah," said the voice. "Yeah, you'll be survived by a son and by your wife."
"Did the paper give their names?"
The person blew air into the mouthpiece of his phone as he thought. "The son was
--Constantin, I think."
Constantin. His father's name; yes, Theo had always thought he might name a
son that.
"And the boy's mother? My wife?"
"I'm sorry. I don't remember."
"Please try."
"No, I'm sorry. I just don't remember."
"You could undergo hypnosis --"
"Are you crazy? I'm not going to do that. Look, I called you up to help you out; I
figured I'd do you a good turn, you know? I just thought it'd be a nice thing to do.
But I'm not going to be hypnotized, or pumped full of drugs, or anything like that."
"But my wife --my widow ... I need to know who she is."
"Why? I don't know who I'll be married to in twenty-one years; why should you
know?"
"She might have a clue as to why I was killed."
"Well, I guess. Maybe. But I've done all I can for you."
"But you saw the name! You know the name!"
"Like I said, I don't remember it. I'm sorry."
"Please --I'll pay you."
"Seriously, man, I don't remember. But, look, if it comes to me, I'll get back in
touch. But that's all I can do."
Theo forced himself not to protest again. He pursed his lips, then nodded
solemnly. "All right. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Can I just get your name,
though, for my records?"
"Sorry, man. Like I said, if anything else occurs to me, I'll call you."
And the phone went dead.
15
Michiko returned that night from Tokyo. She seemed if not at peace at least no
longer about to go to pieces.
Lloyd, who had spent the afternoon going over a new round of computer
simulations, picked Michiko up at Geneva airport, and drove the dozen kilometers to
his apartment in St. Genis, and then -
And then they made love, for the first time in the five days since the
Flashforward. It was early evening; the lights in the room were off, but there was
plenty of illumination seeping in around the blinds from outside. Lloyd had always
been more adventurous than her, although she was coming up to speed nicely.
Perhaps his tastes had been a little too wild, a little too Western, for her liking
initially, but she had warmed to his suggestions as time went by, and he always tried
to be an attentive lover. But today it had been perfunctory; the missionary position,
nothing more. The sheets were usually damp with sweat when they were done, but
this time they were mostly dry. They were even still tucked in along one side.
Lloyd lay on his back, looking up at the dark ceiling. Michiko lay next to him, a
pale arm draped across his naked, hairy chest. They were quiet for a long time, each
alone with their thoughts.
At last, Michiko said, "I saw you on CNN when I was in Tokyo. You really believe
we have no free will?"
Lloyd was surprised. "Well," he said at last, "we think we have it, which amounts
to the same thing. I guess. But inevitability is a constant in lots of belief systems.
Look at the Last Supper. Jesus told Peter --Peter, mind you, the rock he'd said he
would build his church on --Jesus told Peter that Peter would renounce him three
times. Peter protested that there was no way that would ever happen, but, of course,
he did it. And Judas Iscariot --a tragic figure, I always thought --was fated to turn
Christ in to the authorities, whether he wanted to or not. The concept of having a
