role to play, a destiny to fulfill, is much older than the concept of free will." A pause.
"Yes, I really believe the future is as fixed as the past. And surely the Flashforward
bears that out; if the future wasn't fixed, how could everyone be having visions of a
coherent tomorrow? Wouldn't everyone's vision be different --or, indeed, wouldn't it
be impossible for anyone to have any visions at all?"
Michiko frowned. "I don't know. I'm not sure. I mean, what's the point of going on
if it's all already fixed?"
"What's the point of reading a novel whose ending has already been written?"
She chewed her lower lip.
"The block universe concept is the only thing that makes sense in a relativistic
universe," said Lloyd. "Indeed, it's really just relativity writ large: relativity says no
point in space is more important than any other; there is no fixed frame of reference
against which to measure other positions. Well, the block universe says no time is
more important than any other --'now' is utterly and completely an illusion, and if
there's no such thing as a universal now, if the future is already written, then free
will is obviously an illusion, too."
"I'm not as certain as you are," said Michiko. "It seems as if I've got free will."
"Even after this?" said Lloyd. His voice was growing a little sharp. "Even after the
Flashforward?"
"There are other explanations for the coherent version of the future," said
Michiko.
"Oh? Like what?"
"Like it's only one possible future, one roll of the dice. If the Flashforward were to
be reproduced, we might see a completely different future."
Lloyd shook his head, his hair rustling against the pillow. "No," he said. "No,
there's only one future, just as there's only one past. No other interpretation makes
sense."
"But to live without free will ... "
"That's the way it is, all right?" snapped Lloyd. "No free will. No choices."
"But --"
"No buts."
Michiko fell silent. Lloyd's chest was rising and falling rapidly, and doubtless she
could feel his heart pounding. There was quiet between them for a long time, and
then, at last, Michiko said, "Ah."
Lloyd raised his eyebrows even though Michiko couldn't see his expression. But
she must have registered somehow that his facial muscles were moving.
"I get it," she said.
Lloyd was irritated, and he let his voice show it. "What?"
"I get why you're adamant about the immutable future. Why you believe there's
no such thing as free will."
"And why is that?"
"Because of what happened. Because of all the people who died, and all the other
people who were hurt." She paused, as if waiting for him to fill in the rest. When he
didn't, she went on. "If we have free will, you'd have to blame yourself for what
happened; you'd have to take responsibility. All that blood would be on your hands.
But if we don't --if we don't, then it's not your fault. Que sera est. Whatever will be
already is. You pushed the button that started the experiment because you always
had and always will push that button; it's as frozen in time as any other moment."
Lloyd said nothing. There was nothing to say. She was right, of course. He felt his
cheeks growing flush.
Was he that shallow? That desperate?
There was nothing in any physical theory that could possibly have predicted the
Flashforward. He wasn't some M.D. who had failed to keep up to date on side
effects; this wasn't physics malpractice. No one --not Newton, not Einstein, not
Hawking --could have predicted the outcome of the LHC experiment.
He'd done nothing wrong.
Nothing.
And yet --
And yet he'd give anything to change what had happened. Anything.
And he knew that if he allowed for even one second the possibility that it could
have been changed, that it could have gone down differently, that he could have
avoided all those car crashes and plane crashes and botched operations and falls
down stairs, that he could have prevented little Tamiko from losing her life, then he'd
spend the rest of his life being crushed by guilt over what had happened. Minkowski
absolved him of that.
And he needed that absolution. He needed it if he were to go on, if he were to
follow his light path up through the cube without being tortured.
Those who wished to believe that the visions didn't portray the actual future had
hoped that, taken collectively, they would be inconsistent: that in one person's
vision, a Democrat would be president of the United States, while in another's a
Republican would be in the Oval Office. In one, flying cars would be everywhere; in
another, all personal vehicles would have been banned in favor of public transit. In
one, perhaps aliens had come to visit Earth; in another, we'd found that we really
are alone.
But Michiko's Mosaic Project was a huge success, with over a hundred thousand
postings a day, and it all combined together to portray a consistent, coherent,
plausible 2030, each reported vision a tile in the greater whole.
In 2017, at the age of ninety-one, Elizabeth II, Queen of England, Scotland,
Northern Ireland, Canada, the Bahamas, and countless other places, died. Charles,
her son, at that time sixty-nine, was mad as a loon, and, with some prodding from
his advisors, chose not to ascend to the throne. William, Charles's eldest son, next in
line, shocked the world by renouncing the throne, leading Parliament to declare the
Monarchy dissolved.
Quebec was still part of Canada; the secessionists were now a tiny but ever-vocal
minority.
In 2019, South Africa completed, at long last, its post-Apartheid crimes-againsthumanity
trials, with over five thousand people convicted. President Desmond Tutu,
eighty-eight, pardoned them all, an act, he said, not just of Christian forgiveness but
of closure.
No one had yet set foot upon Mars --the early visions that suggested the contrary
turned out to be virtual-reality simulations at Disney World.
The President of the United States was African-American and male; there had
apparently yet to be a female American president in the interim. But the Catholic
Church did indeed now ordain women.
Cuba was no longer Communist; China was the last remaining Communist
country, and its grip on its people seemed as firm twenty-one years hence as it was
today. China's population was now almost two billion.
Ozone depletion was substantial; people wore hats and sunglasses, even on
cloudy days.
Cars couldn't fly --but they could levitate up to about two meters off the ground.
On the one hand, road work was being curtailed in most countries. Cars no longer
required a smooth, hard surface; some places were even dismantling roads and
putting in greenbelts instead. On the other hand, roads were getting so much less
wear and tear that those left intact required little maintenance.
Christ had not come again.
The dream of artificial intelligence was still unfulfilled. Though computers that
could talk existed in abundance, none exhibited any measure of consciousness.
Male sperm counts continued their precipitous drop worldwide; in the developed
world, artificial insemination was now common, and was covered by the socialized
medical programs in Canada, the European Union, and even the United States. In
the Third World, birth rates were falling for the first time ever.
On August 6, 2030 --the eighty-fifth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic
bomb on Hiroshima --a ceremony occurred in that city announcing a worldwide ban
on the development of nuclear weapons.
Despite bans on their hunting, sperm whales were extinct by 2030. Over one
hundred committed suicide in 2022 by beaching themselves at locales all over the
world; no one knows why.
In a victory for common sense worldwide, fourteen of North America's largest
newspapers simultaneously agreed to stop running horoscopes, declaring that
printing such nonsense was at odds with their fundamental purpose of disseminating
the truth.
A cure for AIDS was found in 2014 or 2015. Total worldwide death count from
that plague was estimated at seventy-five million, the same figure the Black Death
had killed seven hundred years previously. A cure for cancer still remained elusive,
but most forms of diabetes could be diagnosed and corrected in the womb prior to
birth.
Nanotechnology still didn't work.
George Lucas still hadn't finished his nine-part Star Wars epic.
Smoking was now illegal in all public areas, including outdoor ones, in the United
States and Canada. A coalition of Third World countries was now suing the United
States at the World Court in the Hague for willfully promoting tobacco use in
developing nations.
Bill Gates lost his fortune: Microsoft stock tumbled badly in 2027, in response to a
new version of the Year-2000 crisis. Older Microsoft software stored dates as thirtytwo-
bit strings representing the number of seconds that had passed since January 1,
1970; they ran out of storage space in 2027. Attempts by key Microsoft employees
to divest themselves of their stock drove the price even lower. The company finally
filed for Chapter Eleven in 2029.
The average income in the United States seemed to be $157,000 per year. A loaf
of bread cost four dollars.
The top-grossing film of all time was the 2026 remake of War of the Worlds.
Learning Japanese was now mandatory for all M.B.A. students at the Harvard
Business School.
The fashion colors for 2030 would be pale yellow and burnt orange. Women were
wearing their hair long again.
Rhinoceroses were now bred on farms specifically for their horns, still highly
prized in the East. They were no longer in danger of extinction.
It was now a capital crime to kill a gorilla in Zaire.
Donald Trump was building a pyramid in the Nevada desert to house his eventual
remains. When done, it will be ten meters taller than the Great Pyramid at Giza.
The 2029 World Series will be won by the Honolulu Volcanoes.
The Turks and Caicos Islands joined Canada in 2023 or 2024.
After DNA tests conclusively proved one hundred previous cases of wrongful
execution, the United States abolished the death penalty.
Pepsi won the cola wars.
There will be another huge stock market crash; those who know what year it will
take place are apparently keeping that information to themselves.
The United States will finally go metric.
India established the first permanent base on the Moon.
A war is under way between Guatemala and Ecuador.
The world's population in 2030 will be eleven billion; four billion of those were
born after 2009, and so could never have had a vision.
Michiko and Lloyd were eating a late dinner in his apartment. Lloyd had made
raclette --cheese melted and served over boiled potatoes --a traditional Swiss dish
he'd grown fond of. They had a bottle of Blauburgunder with it; Lloyd was never
much of a drinker, but wine flowed so freely in Europe, and he was at the age at
which a glass or two a day was beneficial for his heart.
"We'll never know for sure, will we?" said Michiko, after eating a small piece of
potato. "We'll never know who that woman you were with was, or who the father of
my child was."
"Oh, yes, we will," said Lloyd. "You'll presumably know who the father is
sometime in the next thirteen or fourteen years --before the child is born. And I'll
know who that woman is whenever I do finally meet her --I'd certainly recognize
her, even if she were years younger than she was in my vision."
Michiko nodded, as if this were obvious. "But I mean we won't know in time for
our own wedding," she said, her voice small.
"No," said Lloyd. "We won't."
She sighed. "What do you want to do?"
Lloyd lifted his eyes from the table and looked at Michiko. Her lips were pressed
tightly together; perhaps she was trying to keep them from trembling. On her hand
was the engagement ring --so much less than he'd wanted to get her, so much
more than he could really afford. "It's not fair," he said. "I mean, Christ, even
Elizabeth Taylor probably thought it was 'till death do us part' each time she got
married; nobody should have to go into a marriage knowing it's bound to fail."
He could tell Michiko was looking at him, tell that she was trying to seek out his
eyes. "So that's you're decision?" she said. "You want to call off the engagement?"
"I do love you," said Lloyd, finally. "You know that."
"Then what's the problem?" asked Michiko.
What was the problem? Was it divorce that so terrified him --or just a messy
divorce, like the one his parents had gone through? Who would have thought that
such a simple thing as dividing up community property could have escalated into
out-and-out warfare, with vicious accusations on both sides? Who would have
thought that two people who had scrimped and saved and sacrificed year after year
to buy each other lavish Christmas presents as tokens of their love would end up
using legal claws to pry those presents back from the only person in the world to
whom they meant anything? Who would have thought that a couple who had oh-socutely
given their children names that were anagrams --Lloyd and Dolly --would
turn around and use those same children as pawns, as weapons?
"I'm sorry, honey," said Lloyd. "It's tearing me apart but, I just don't know what I
want to do."
"Your parents long ago booked flights to come to Geneva, and so did my mother,"
