replied, 'Korolov.' Korolov --which I guess would be K-O-R-O-L-O-V. A Russian
name, no? Does it mean anything to you?"
Theo shook his head. "No." A pause. "So you were --are --going to eliminate this
Korolov, too?"
"That's an obvious interpretation, yes. But I have no idea who he or she might
be."
"He."
"I thought you said you didn't know this person?"
"I don't --but Korolov is a male last name. Female Russian last names end in
-ova; male ones in -ov."
"Ah," said Cheung. "In any event, after the man I was speaking to said 'Korolov,' I
replied, 'Well, I can't imagine anyone else is after him.' And my associate replied, 'No
need to be apprehensive, Ubu --' Ubu being a nickname I allow only close friends to
use, although, as I said, I have, as of yet, not met this man. 'No need to be
apprehensive, Ubu,' he said. 'The guy who got Procopides can't have any possible
interest in Korolov.' And then I said, 'Very well. See to it, Darryl' --which, I presume
was the name of the man I was speaking to. He opened his mouth to speak again,
but then I was suddenly back here, in 2009."
"And so that's all you know? That you and a man named Darryl will be out to get
several people, including myself and someone named Korolov, but that someone
else, a man, who will have no designs against this Korolov, will kill me first?"
Cheung shrugged apologetically, but whether with regret over the frustrating
holes in the information or over the fact that he would one day apparently want to
see Theo dead, Theo couldn't say. "That's it."
"This Darryl --did he look like a boxer? You know, a prizefighter?"
"No. I would say he was too paunchy to be any sort of athlete."
Theo leaned back in the couch, dumbfounded. "Thank you for letting me know,"
he said at last.
"It was the least I could do," said Cheung. He paused, as if assessing the
prudence of saying more, then: "Souls are about life immortal, Dr. Procopides, and
religion is about just rewards. I rather suspect that great things await you, and that
you will appropriately be rewarded --but only, of course, if you manage to stay alive
long enough. Do yourself a favor --do us both a favor --and do not give up your
quest."
24
Theo returned to New York, telling Lloyd all about his encounter with Cheung.
Lloyd was as perplexed as Theo was about what the old man had said. Theo and
Lloyd stayed in New York for another eight days, while the United Nations continued
to heatedly debate their proposal.
China spoke in favor of the motion to authorize replication of the experiments.
Even though it was now clear that the future was not fixed, the fact that during the
first set of visions China's totalitarian government still clearly reigned with an iron
hand had done an enormous amount to quell dissidents in that country. For China,
that was the key issue. There were only two possible versions of the future: either
Communist dictatorship continued, or it did not. The first visions had shown that it
had indeed continued. If the second visions showed the same thing --that, even
with foreknowledge of a malleable future, Communism would not be brought down -then
the dissident spirit would be crushed: a perfect example of what, in an English
pun in questionable taste, The New York Times had called "taking a Dim view of the
future," in honor of Dimitrios Procopides, who, having had his spirit broken by what
he saw of tomorrow, gave up on ever being able to change it.
And what if the second visions showed Communism having fallen? Then China
would be no worse off than it was before the first Flashforward, with its future in
question. It was a worthwhile gamble, in the view of Beijing government.
The European Union ambassadors also were clearly going to vote as a block in
favor of replication, for two reasons. If replication failed, then the unending stream
of lawsuits being filed against CERN and its member countries would possibly be
stemmed. And if replication succeeded, well, this second glimpse of the future would
be free, but subsequent glimpses could be sold to humanity for billions of euros
apiece. True, other nations might try to build atom smashers capable of producing
the same sorts of energies unleashed by the LHC, but the first set of visions had
shown a world of plentiful Tachyon-Tardyon Colliders, and still, it seemed, visions
couldn't be invoked easily. If CERN was responsible, it was apparently uniquely
responsible --some specific combination of parameters, unlikely to be reproduced at
another accelerator, had made the Flashforward possible.
Objection to replication was most vehement in the western hemisphere --those
countries in which people had mostly been awake when consciousness departed for
A.D. 2030 and, therefore, in which large numbers of people had been injured or
killed. The objections were based mostly on outrage over the damage done the last
time, and fears that similar carnage and destruction would accompany a second set
of visions.
In the eastern hemisphere, comparatively little damage had been done; in many
nations, more than ninety percent of the population had been asleep --or at least
safely recumbent in bed --when the Flashforward had occurred; very few casualties
had occurred, and only negligible property damage had been sustained. Clearly, they
argued, an organized, announced-in-advance replication wouldn't put many people
at risk. They denounced the arguments against replication as more emotional than
rational. Indeed, surveys worldwide showed that those who had visions were
overwhelmingly pleased that they had had them, even though they had now been
shown to not reveal a fixed future. Indeed, now that the world was sure the future
could be changed, those who had seen what they regarded as a negative personal
future were on average even more pleased to have had the insight than those who
saw what they described as a positive future.
Although he had no formal voice in the UN debate, Pope Benedict XVI weighed
into the fray, announcing that the visions were fully consistent with Catholic doctrine.
That attendance at masses had swollen enormously since the Flashforward was
doubtless a factor in the pontiff's stance.
The prime minister of Canada likewise endorsed the visions, since they showed
Quebec still a part of her country. The President of the United States was less
enthused: although America clearly continued to be the world's leading power two
decades hence, there was substantial concern among the President's advisors that
the first glimpse had already done much to damage national security, with people -children,
even --who were not yet bound by oaths of secrecy having access to all
sorts of back-room information. And, of course, it rankled the Democrat incumbent
that the Republican Franklin Hapgood, currently a political-science professor at
Purdue, was apparently destined to hold the office in 2030.
So the American delegation continued to argue against replication: "We're still
burying our dead," said one ambassador. But the Japanese delegation countered by
claiming that even if the visions hadn't portrayed the actual future, they clearly
represented a working future. The U.S. --a country in which a very high percentage
of people had had meaningful, daytime visions --was trying to hoard to itself the
technological benefits to be gleaned from those visions. The first Flashforward had
been to 11:21 A.M. in Los Angeles, and 2:21 P.M. in New York, it had been to 3:21
A.M. in Tokyo; most Japanese had had visions of nothing more exciting than
themselves dreaming in the future. America was capitalizing on new technologies
and new inventions portrayed in its citizens' visions; Japan and the rest of the
Eastern hemisphere was being unfairly left behind.
That set off the Chinese delegation again; they had apparently been waiting for
someone to raise this very issue. The Flashforward had been to 2:21 A.M. Beijing
time; most Chinese likewise had simply had visions of themselves asleep in the
future. If another Flashforward was to be invoked, surely, they argued, it should
begin at a time offset twelve hours from the last attempt. That way, if consciousness
jumps ahead the same fixed twenty-one years, six months, two days, and two hours,
then those in the Eastern hemisphere would reap the most benefits this time,
balancing things out.
The Japanese government immediately supported the Chinese on this point. India,
Pakistan, and both Koreas chimed in that this was only fair.
The east was perhaps right about America trying to gain the technological upper
hand: if there was going to be replication, the U.S. argued strongly that it should be
at the same time of day. They couched their argument in scientific terms: replication
was, in fact, replication, so as much as humanly possible, every experimental
parameter must be the same.
Lloyd Simcoe was called back to address the General Assembly on this point. "I
would caution strongly against changing any factor needlessly," he said, "but, since
we don't yet have a full working model for the phenomenon, I cannot say
categorically that doing the experiment at night instead of during the day would
make any difference. The LHC tunnel is, after all, heavily shielded against radiation
leakage --and that shielding has the effect of keeping solar and other external
radiation out as well. Still, I would argue against changing the time of day."
A delegate from Ethiopia pointed out that Simcoe was an American, and therefore
likely to be trying to protect American interests. Lloyd countered that he was, in fact,
a Canadian, but that didn't impress the African; Canada, too, had benefited
disproportionately from the glimpses its citizens had had of the future.
Meanwhile, the Islamic world had mostly embraced the visions as ilham (divine
guidance directly exerted upon the human mind and soul), rather than wahy (divine
revelation of the actual future), since, by definition, only prophets were capable of
the latter. That the visions turned out to indeed be of a malleable future apparently
confirmed the Islamic view, and, although Islamic leaders did not invoke the Scrooge
metaphor, the concept of receiving insight that would allow one to improve oneself
along religious and spiritual lines was interpreted by most as being fully congruent
with the Qur'an.
Some Muslims held the dissenting view that the visions were demonic, part of the
unfolding destruction of the world, rather than divine. But either way, the Islamic
spiritual leaders rejected wholeheartedly the notion that a physics experiment had
been the cause: that was a misguided secular, Western interpretation. The visions
clearly were of spiritual origin, and hardware was irrelevant to such experiences.
Lloyd had feared that the Islamic nations would oppose replication of the LHC
experiment on that basis. But first the Wilayat al-Faqih in Iran, then the Shayk al-
Azhar in Egypt, and then shaykh after shaykh and iman after iman across the Muslim
world came to favor attempted replication, precisely so that when the attempt failed,
the infidels would have it proven to them that the original occurrence had indeed
been spiritual, not secular, in nature.
Of course, governments in Islamic nations were often at odds with the faithful in
their lands. For those governments that kowtowed to the west, supporting
replication, so long as it was offset, as the Asians were insisting, by twelve hours
from the first occurrence, was a win-win scenario: if replication failed, the Western
scientists would end up with egg on their faces, and the secular worldview would
take a drubbing; if it succeeded, the economies of Muslim nations would get a boost,
by having their citizens attain the same sort of insights into future technologies that
Americans had already received.
Lloyd had expected those who had had no vision --those who were apparently
dead in the future --to be against replication, too, but, in fact, most of them turned
out to favor it. Younger people who were visionless --dubbed "The Ungrateful Dead"
by Newsweek --often cited a desire to prove that some other explanation besides
their own deaths explained their lack of visions the first time. The older visionless,
mostly already resigned to the fact that they would be dead twenty-one years hence,
were simply curious to learn more, through others' accounts, about the future they
would never otherwise live to see.
Some nations --Portugal and Poland among them --argued for delaying
replication for at least a year. Three compelling counterarguments were presented.
First, as Lloyd pointed out, the more time that elapsed, the more likely some
external factor would change sufficiently to prevent replication. Second, the need for
absolute safety during a replication was clear in the public's mind right now; the
more the severity of the accidents that occurred last time faded into memory, the
more likely that people would be cavalier in their preparations. Third, people wanted
new visions that confirmed or denied the events portrayed in their first visions,
letting those with disturbing insights see if they were indeed now on track to
avoiding those futures. If the new visions would also be of a time twenty-one years,
six months, two days, and two hours ahead of the moment at which the replicated
experiment began, each passing day diminished the chances that the second vision
would be sufficiently related to the first to make a comparison between the two
possible.
There was also a good economic argument in favor of rapid replication, if
replication were to happen at all. Many businesses were currently operating at
reduced capacity, because of damage to equipment or personnel that had occurred
