"No, thanks."
Dimitrios was quiet for a few moments. He walked into the living room; Theo
followed. Dim sat on the couch, pushing some papers and clothes onto the floor to
make room. Theo found a chair that was reasonably free of clutter and sat on it.
"You've ruined my life," said Dimitrios, his eyes meeting then avoiding his
brother's. "I want you to know that."
Theo felt his heart jump. "How?"
"These --these visions. Dammit, Theo, don't you know how hard it is to face the
keyboard each day? Don't you know how easy it is to become discouraged?"
"But you're a terrific writer, Dim. I've read your work. The way you handle the
language is beautiful. That piece you did about the summer you spent on Crete -you
captured Knossos perfectly."
"It doesn't matter; none of that matters. Don't you see? Twenty-one years hence,
I won't be famous. I won't have made it. Twenty-one years hence, I'll be working in
a restaurant, serving souvlaki and tzatziki to tourists."
"Maybe it was a dream --maybe you're dreaming in the year 2030."
Dim shook his head. "I found the restaurant; it's over by the Tower of the Winds.
I met the manager; he's the same guy who'll be running it twenty-one years from
now. He recognized me from his vision and I recognized him from mine."
Theo tried to be gentle. "Many writers don't make their living writing. You know
that."
"But how many would go on, year after year, if they didn't think that someday -maybe
not today, maybe not next year, but eventually --that they would break out?
That they'd make it?"
"I don't know. I've never thought about it."
"It's the dream that makes artists go on. How many struggling actors are giving
up today --right now --because their visions proved to them that they'll never make
it? How many painters on the streets of Paris threw away their palettes this week
because they know that even decades hence they'll never be recognized? How many
rock bands, practicing in their parents' garages, have broken up? You've taken away
the dream from millions of us. Some people were lucky --they were sleeping in the
future. Because they were dreaming then, their real dreams haven't been shattered."
"I --I hadn't thought about it that way."
"Of course you hadn't. You're so obsessed with finding out who killed you that you
can't see straight. But I've got news for you, Theo. You're not the only one who's
dead in the year 2030. I'm dead, too --a waiter in an overpriced tourist joint! I'm
dead, and so, I'm sure, are millions of others. And you killed them: you killed their
hopes, their dreams, their futures."
18
Day Eight: Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Jake and Carly Tompkins could have met at TRIUMF, but they decided not to.
Instead, they met at the Chapters superstore in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby.
This one still devoted about half its space to actual pre-printed books that were for
sale: guaranteed bestsellers by Stephen King, John Grisham, and Coyote Rolf. But
the rest of the facility was taken up by individual display copies of titles that could be
printed on demand. It took only fifteen minutes to produce a single copy of any
book, either in mass-market paperback or as an octavo hardcover. Large-print
editions could be had, as well, and computer-translated editions in any one of
twenty-four languages could be produced in only an additional few minutes. And, of
course, no title was ever out of stock.
In a brilliant bit of preadaptive evolution, book superstores had been building
coffee shops into their facilities for twenty years now --giving people the perfect
place to spend some pleasant time while their custom books were printed, Jake got
to Chapters early, entered the attached Starbucks, ordered himself a tall
decaffeinated Sumatra, and found a seat.
Carly arrived about ten minutes after the appointed time. She was wearing a
London Fog trench coat, the sash pulled smartly about her waist; blue slacks; and
low heels. Jake rose to greet her. As he approached, he was surprised to see that
she wasn't as pretty as he'd remembered.
But it was definitely her. They looked at each other for a moment, he wondering,
as he expected she was, how you should greet someone whom you know for a fact
you will one day have sex with. They were acquaintances, already; Jake had
encountered people he'd known less well at various times and had either bestowed
or received a kiss on the cheek --especially, of course, in France. But Carly decided
the matter, extending her right hand. He managed a smile and shook it; her grip was
firm, and her skin cool to the touch.
A Chapters employee came around to ask Carly what she wanted to drink; Jake
remembered when Starbucks used to have only counter service, but of course
someone had to deliver your books to you when they were printed. She ordered a
grande Ethiopia Sidamo.
Carly opened her purse and reached in to fish out her wallet. Jake let his gaze fall
inside her purse. The entire coffee shop was non-smoking of course; all restaurants
throughout North America were these days; even in Paris, such rules were coming
into effect. But he was relieved to see no pack of cigarettes hiding in the purse; he
didn't know what he would have done if she'd been a smoker.
"Well," she said.
Jake forced a smile. It was an awkward situation. He knew what she looked like
naked. Of course --of course that was twenty years hence. She was about his age
now, twenty-two, twenty-three. She'd be in her early forties two decades from now;
hardly run down, hardly a hag. And yet --
She had been lovely twenty years hence; surely, though, she was even lovelier
now. Surely --
Yes, yes, there was still anticipation, still wonder, still tension.
Of course, she'd seen him naked, too, twenty years further down the road. He
knew what she looked like --her chestnut hair color was natural, or at least dyed in
both places; wine-colored nipples; those same enchanting freckles painting
constellations across her chest. But him? What did he look like twenty years hence?
He was no athlete even now. What if he'd put on weight? What if his chest hair had
gone gray?
Maybe her present reluctance was based on what she'd seen of the future him. He
couldn't promise he'd work out, couldn't promise he'd keep trim, couldn't promise
anything --she knew what he'd be like in 2030, even if he himself did not.
"It's good to see you again," said Jake, trying to sound calm, trying to sound
warm.
"You, too," said Carly. And then she smiled.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"No, come on. Tell me."
She smiled again, then lowered her eyes. "I was just picturing us naked," she
said.
He felt his features stretching into a grin. "Me, too."
"This is strange," she said. And then: "Look, I never go to bed with anyone on the
first date. I mean --"
Jake lifted his hands off the tabletop. "Me neither," he said.
She smiled at that. Maybe she was as beautiful as he remembered after all.
The Mosaic Project didn't just reveal the futures of individual human beings. It
also had a lot to say about the future of governments, companies, and organizations
--including CERN itself.
It seemed that in 2022, a team at CERN --Theo and Lloyd were on it --would
developed a whole new kind of physics tool: the Tachyon-Tardyon Collider. Tachyons
were particles that traveled faster than the speed of light; the more energy they
carried, the closer to light-speed they traveled. As their energy went down, their
speed went up --to almost infinite velocities.
Tardyons, on the other hand, were ordinary matter: they traveled at speeds below
that of light. The more energy you pumped into a tardyon, the faster it would go.
But, as old Einstein had said, the faster it goes, the more massive a tardyon gets.
Particle accelerators, such as CERN's Large Hadron Collider, worked by imparting
great energies to tardyons, thereby boosting them to high speeds, and hurtling them
together, releasing all that energy when the particles collide. Such machines were
huge.
But imagine taking a stationary tardyon --a proton, say, held in place by a
magnetic field --and getting a tachyon to collide with it. You wouldn't need huge
accelerator rings to get the tachyon up to speed --it was naturally whipping along at
superluminal velocities. All you needed to do was make sure that it hit the tardyon.
And so the TT Collider was born.
It did not require a tunnel twenty-seven kilometers in circumference, as the LHC
did.
It did not cost billions of dollars to build.
It did not demand thousands of people to maintain and operate it.
A TTC was about the size of a large microwave oven. The early models --the ones
available in 2030 --cost about forty million American dollars, and there were only
nine in the world. But it was predicted that they'd eventually be cheap enough that
every university would have its own.
The effect on CERN was devastating; more than twenty-eight hundred people
were laid off. The impact on the towns of St. Genis and Thoiry was also great -suddenly
over a thousand homes and apartments became available as people moved
away. The LHC would apparently be left operational, but would rarely be used; it was
so much easier to do, and redo, experiments using a TTC.
"You know this is crazy," said Carly Tompkins, after taking a sip of her Ethiopian
coffee.
Jake Horowitz looked at her, eyebrows raised.
"What happened in that vision," said Carly, lowering her eyes, "that was
passionate. It wasn't two people who had been together for twenty years."
Jake lifted his shoulders. "I never want it to get stale, to get old. People can have
a good love life for decades on end."
"Not like that. Not ripping each other's clothes off in the workplace."
Jake frowned. "You never know."
Carly was quiet for a moment, then: "You want to come back to my place? You
know, just for coffee ... "
They were sitting in a coffee shop, of course, so the offer made little sense. Jake's
heart was pounding. "Sure," he said. "That would be nice."
19
Another night at Lloyd's apartment, Lloyd and Michiko sitting on the couch, no
words passing between them.
Lloyd pursed his lips, thinking. Why couldn't he just go ahead and commit to this
woman? He did love her. Why couldn't he just ignore what he'd seen? Millions of
people were doing just that, after all --for most of the world, the idea of a fixed
future was ridiculous. They'd seen it a hundred times in TV shows and movies:
Jimmy Stewart realizes that it's a wonderful life after watching the world unfold
without him. Superman, incensed at the death of Lois Lane, flies around the Earth so
quickly that it spins backwards, letting him return to a time before her demise,
saving her. Caesar, son of the chimpanzee scientists Zira and Cornelius, sets the
world on a path of interspecies brotherhood, hoping to avoid Earth's destruction by
nuclear holocaust.
Even scientists spoke in terms of contingent evolution. Stephen Jay Gould, taking
a metaphor from the Jimmy Stewart movie, told the world that if you could rewind
the skein of time, it would doubtless play out differently, with something other than
human beings emerging at the end.
But Gould wasn't a physicist; what he proposed as a thought experiment was
impossible. The best you could do was a riff on what had happened during the
Flashforward --move the marker for "now" to another instant. Time was fixed; in the
can, each frame exposed. The future wasn't a work in progress; it was a done deal,
and no matter how many times Stephen Jay Gould watches It's A Wonderful Life,
Clarence will always get his wings ...
Lloyd stroked Michiko's hair, wondering what was written above this slice in the
spacetime block.
Jake was lying on his back, one arm bent behind his head. Carly was snuggling
against him, playing with his chest hair. They were both naked.
"You know," said Carly, "we've got a chance for something really wonderful here."
Jake lifted his eyebrows. "Oh?"
"How many couples have this, in this day and age? A guarantee that they'll be
together twenty years from now! And not just together, but still passionately in ... "
She trailed off; it was one thing to discuss the future, it was quite another,
apparently, to give premature voice to the L-word.
They were quiet for a time. "There isn't somebody else, is there?" asked Carly,
finally, her voice small. "Back in Geneva?"
Jake shook his head, his red hair rustling against the pillow. "No." And then he
swallowed, working up his courage. "But there's someone else here, isn't there? Your
boyfriend --Bob."
Carly exhaled. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know a lie is a terrible way to begin a
relationship. I --look, I didn't know anything about you. And male physicists are
such hound dogs, really they are. I've even got an old wedding band I sometimes
wear to conferences. There is no Bob; I just said there was so I'd have a convenient
out, you know, if things didn't seem to be going well."
Jake didn't know whether to be offended or not. Once, when he'd been sixteen or
seventeen, he was chatting to his cousin Howie's girlfriend on a July night, out front
of Howie's house. There were a bunch of people around; they'd been having a
