That was what it felt like to Salma.
Salma felt unbalanced, shocked – suddenly dizzy.
Feathers, never far from Salma in this place, clung still tighter to her, and buried her face in Salma’s neck. Through the light fabric of their suits, Salma could feel the slight rasp of plumage. But Salma felt giddy herself, and was glad of the support, one living being to another, the feel of her, the weight. She looked around for their heaps of gear, all of which seemed unblemished. We brought our stuff with us. That was something.
Terminus hovered, silent, as if nailed in place beneath the streaming sky.
Meriel, the doctor, was the first to move, to take charge.
She went to Vasta first. The scientist was glaring up at the changing sky, as Salma had been. Meriel tapped the side of Vasta’s helmet, and Salma recognised the protocol – checking that Vasta’s life support was working as it should. Then she pushed her own faceplate close enough to touch Vasta’s, and evidently spoke to her, the sound transmitted through the visors.
Then Meriel approached Doria, but the Consortium ambassador waved her away, and spoke for all to hear. ‘Suit fine. I’m fine.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ Meriel said gently. ‘These – jumps – are hugely disorienting. I have a feeling we might all need a little anchoring after this.’ She looked around. At her companions. Up at the sky once more, where those stars were streaming, passing over her head. Ever faster.
Doria snorted. ‘I just hope you aren’t going to suggest we go inside the shelter and do a couple of hours of yoga.’
Vasta still gazed up at the sky. ‘Well, I’d say we should keep that as an option. This is all – overwhelming – and is likely to get more so, not less. We are only human.’ She grinned at Feathers. ‘With an honourable exception.’
Meriel glanced around. ‘OK, a compromise. Nobody wants to go indoors. But let’s bring out stools, pallets. At least we can rest, rather than stand here like heroes defying the storm. Food, water …’ She eyed Terminus. ‘For your information, O godlike tourist guide, we also have sanitary facilities in our suits.’
Which Salma for one had used several times already during this excursion. She had to laugh.
Terminus did not respond. It just hung in the sky, patiently waiting.
Meriel grinned through her faceplate. ‘Hasn’t got much small talk, has he?’ She moved towards Salma. ‘Your turn for a check over, kid.’
Salma gently released Feathers – and she saw that Feathers went straight to Vasta. Elizabeth smiled widely, and tentatively stroked Feather’s back with a gloved hand. Feathers stood closer, bowing her head.
Terminus hovered.
When Meriel was done with her brief inspections – including, in the end, Feathers – they set out fold-out chairs, and assembled a little heap of food and drink packets, brought out of the habitat, all accessible through ports in their suits. A blanket on the ground for Feathers, which Salma shared.
‘Some picnic this is,’ Doria said.
Vasta was staring hard at the sky. ‘The stars rushing by … How close can they be? How realistic is this depiction? Terminus?’
The images you see are acceptable to your sensorium. Yet they show the essential truth—
Doria snorted. ‘Acceptable. Adjusted? Edited, for the low-browed apes?’
Vasta glanced at her. ‘A message tailored for the audience. That’s just good communication strategy.’
‘If patronising.’
‘Maybe it’s no wonder you of the Consortium always lose the argument—’
Salma was growing exasperated. ‘Oh, shut up.’
Meriel grinned. ‘Seconded. Look – what is this now, Terminus? What are we meant to understand?’
What do you see?
Vasta stared up. ‘Stars. Rushing by. Or, we are rushing by them. And – are they fading? I hope our systems are catching all this. Those are old stars now, I think – very old stars. And getting older as we – travel? If that’s what we are doing.’
In the end, all stars die.
‘Yes, yes … But – according to our theories, our models, we humans haven’t seen any of the extreme ageing of the stars, because our universe is too young. We thought they might keep burning for ten, a hundred trillion years. Ten thousand times the age of the universe when we lived? But these stars …’ She thought it over. ‘Are the stars we are seeing now older than what we saw before?’
Correct. You are being brought to – a pit, if you like.
Salma didn’t like that word. Pit …
This universe is one of continuous creation, as you have seen. Its fabric is continually renewed through the creation nodes – which are in turn fuelled by the energies of the quantum substrate – indeed, spacetime itself is rejuvenated. And so there are places in this universe which are younger than most others. But there are places—
‘Which are older than most others,’ Vasta said. ‘Older than other parts. That’s logical. And it’s also logical that there must be places which are …’ She seemed hesitant to say what came next. ‘Infinitely old. Terminus – is that where you’re taking us?’
There was no immediate reply.
Her voice had been tinged with wonder, Salma thought. She had a stab of jealousy – and of fear. How might it be to know so much, to be able to grasp so much, so quickly?
And it grew dark, quite suddenly.
Salma saw that the last of the stars had faded out now. Was the sky black, utterly? No, not quite. She saw what looked like a quasar, far away, a galaxy disc with those characteristic plumes of shining gases. Another node?
That was the only feature in the sky.
Vasta said calmly, ‘We spoke of the far future. We have analytical models of our own universe, at least. Projections.
‘So we think that, beyond the age of star formation, the sky would be filled with stellar remnants – cooling husks of dead stars. The very last of them will decay to iron, the dead end of the fusion processes. Iron stars, and inert planets, and black holes. The galaxies will evaporate eventually, the stars and planets drifting out, or sling-shotting away … Each dead star, each cold planet, alone.
‘But still there should be continuing processes. Matter itself decays. The planets will turn to atomic dust, and even the dust itself will crumble as the very atoms break up, the protons and neutrons of their nuclei evaporating away.
‘And meanwhile the black holes will evaporate too. The bigger they are the longer they last. We thought the largest black holes, the biggest galaxy-centre monsters – a hundred billion solar masses or more – would be the last to go, after a trillion trillion trillion … six or seven times over … trillion years. After such a long time, even our numbering system becomes absurd. And after that …’
Terminus spoke at last. You are approaching a part of this universe which is older still.
Where all has decayed.
Where the only ongoing process is the flicker of quantum uncertainty. And yet—
‘And yet information processing can continue,’ Vasta said. ‘Can it? We’ve modelled this too. At the rate of, what, a bit at a time every billion years—’
Slower than that. Yet thought can continue, slow, slow, even at such a rate—
‘Minds can work, you’re saying,’ Vasta said. ‘Actions can be taken, perhaps. Processes can continue … Oh. And agents like you – created?’
Salma could only stare.
I was not created.
Over still longer timescales, I – emerged. I and others.
‘Yes,’ Vasta said slowly. ‘I think I understand. You are a mind created by, supported by an almost impossibly rare sequence of chance events. Like throwing a pack of cards up in the air: do it often enough and eventually they land in four perfect bridge hands. Do you play bridge? … No matter. Wait long enough, and anything can happen, no matter how unlikely. And even some kind of brain, supporting some kind of mind, of consciousness, could spontaneously assemble. Out of the drifting litter of dead stars and dried-out husks of planets.
‘A Boltzmann brain. That’s our name for it. You would just – wake up – in the middle of the darkness, alone.’
This idea seemed monstrous to Salma. She clung tighter to Feathers.
It is impressive that you understand the concept, Terminus said.
‘And that is how you were born?’ Meriel asked. ‘And in this … place? Just spontaneously, out of all this darkness, this emptiness?’
Salma, struggling to follow this, asked, ‘And were you alone?’
Alone, yes. In this emptiness, yes. Alone for almost as long as the lifespan of the originating universe that survived to birth me.
Alone, yes.
But then, not alone.
There are others. Some much older than me. Orders of magnitude more. And some of them found each other. At first just an awareness, at last a way to talk, slowly, slowly – and eventually a way to reach each other. To act.
And to form a common purpose.
Suddenly Salma felt overwhelmed. Standing on this barren planet, under an empty sky. All these words, from an entity whose nature she barely understood. She wondered if she was going insane.
But Vasta was still, doggedly, interrogating the floating sphere.
‘So, this … league of Boltzmann brains. This pit in the sky is a place older than we can envisage. And yet – and yet, in a sense, it empowers. It creates these ghastly slow brains, like bizarre parentless offspring, these minds … Terminus. Is this place truly infinitely old? This location here?’
If it has a limit we have yet to discover it, to plumb it. Even we children of eternity. In there may be more hierarchies of minds, deeper yet. Even more unlikely creations of chance. Pursuing unimaginable projects. If so, even we cannot see them, contact them. And perhaps there are ranks of entities older even than—
‘Do you fear them?’ Doria asked. ‘These older ones?’
It is rational for the finite to fear the infinite. And even we are finite – even we quantum minds, born in the stillness.
Feathers was cringing closer to Salma now. Salma wondered how much she could understand. Or perhaps Terminus, this mundane monster, was talking to her too, relating all this in some language inside her head.
‘Then be clear,’ Elizabeth Vasta said boldly. ‘What do these hierarchies of infinitely old entities want of us?’
Doria leaned over towards Salma and whispered, ‘Now that is a woman who is used to browbeating governments.’
Terminus seemed to hesitate.
Then it said, They want to give you what they have.
They wish to give you eternity.
Salma immediately recoiled at that.
On impulse, she drew a little closer to Meriel, one of her faux parents from the Shadow. She muttered, ‘To be like you? An eternity in a hole in the sky? Muttering and scheming—’
Meriel said, ‘And one thought per trillion years, a twitch as some quantum continuum decays a little further. How will you give us eternity?’
Doria said, ‘I think I’ve followed it that much. They want to give us a creation node. Or rather—’
‘They want us to help turn our galaxy into a creation node,’ Meriel said. ‘Into a super-quasar. That’s what this is all about. Finishing what they started, right?’
You are correct, Terminus said. You have seen how the end result will be – the mature node you witnessed. You know now that your young cosmos can be manipulated, to host such a node. Young cosmoses are more suitable for modification—
‘So that’s it,’ Salma said, more sharply than she had intended. ‘In fact even before you spoke to us you went ahead and modified our galaxy without consulting us, or anybody else who lives there. By building the quasar that’s now threatening the Earth.’
Vasta sighed. ‘But he knew that nobody else does live there, Salma. There’s only us. In our universe. We know that now. I think we can trust him on that. Which is why we were … chosen.’
Meriel admitted, ‘I’m not sure if I understand. Are these eternals not gods?’
‘No,’ Vasta snapped. ‘Not gods. Hold on to that. We can’t let ourselves become … worshippers. They needed us, you of the Shadow, to, umm, activate Planet Nine. The artefact. Remember – Terminus here has told us as much. What god needs you to turn a switch?’
That much is accurate. Conscious mind is needed to activate such a link. Even just one such mind. All of this project is about one consciousness reaching out to another, across abysses of reality.
‘So it was a fishing expedition. And we swallowed the bait.’
You deliberately, consciously, operated the link. Some of those individuals here were involved in that moment of decision—
Meriel said, ‘We could have had no idea of the consequences.’
Doria said gently, ‘But you did it anyhow. And you are Conservers! We miner types are supposed to be the meddlers.’
Vasta said, ‘Not to mention us home-loving types who are still getting the rap for wrecking the Earth.’
It is in the nature of consciousness to explore – of tool-making consciousness at least.
‘Maybe,’ Vasta said. ‘And so you lured us in. And now you need us to do more, if this sky rebuild is to go ahead, correct? If you’re to assemble a creation node in our universe? A node in the heart of our galaxy?’
To activate the link was your choice. You were free to ignore it. Now we need your help to bring you the gift of eternity, yes. To bring that gift to all your people, all your worlds – all of your universe for the eternity to come.
‘Nice advertising pitch—’
Salma burst out, ‘What about Feathers? Feathers comes from a tool-making, conscious species also, right? And you used her to – to make us understand, or at least give us hints about this multiverse we all have to believe we inhabit now. Did you reach out to her people? Did you promise them immortality? Or was she just a tool to you, a useful pet animal to bait and trap?’
There was a shocked silence among the humans.
Terminus seemed to hesitate.
‘Good point,’ Meriel whispered. ‘And well made.’
More than a tool. But it is true that we did not reach out to her people. More than one intelligence inhabited her universe. The other was – dominant. And it had come to dominate the world, the ecosystem from which Feathers evolved.
Vasta said, ‘Let me guess. And you negotiated with the other lot, the dominators, the slavers? You’re attracted to strength, to power—’
To rebuild a universe is not a trivial task—
‘Did you go ahead with these – others? The parasites, the slavers? Did you remake their sky?’
The experiment failed.
And that stopped the conversation. If briefly.
Vasta stamped over to the heap of supplies, found a flask of water, plugged it into her suit, took a sip through a tube. ‘Well, we’re learning a lot. Why did the experiment with these … others … fail?’
Terminus seemed to hesitate.
It said at last, The failure was not unique, not unprecedented. In some cases the agents chosen for uplift have proved unsuitable. In other cases the target universes themselves have proved unsuitable—
Vasta said, ‘And what became of these other “agents”? You presumably completely disrupted whatever their own development would have been. Even their evolution? Did they survive contact with you? What about Feathers’ people? Are they extinct? All of them?’
Terminus failed to reply.
There was a long, frozen moment.
Then Vasta said, ‘I think we need another break from this. Some food. Sleep, even. This is getting too ugly for me.’
The rest stood, nodded.
Salma, holding Feathers tight, looked back. She saw Terminus hovering implacably against the black sky. She wondered what it was thinking. She wondered if it was communicating with still stranger entities in that pit of eternity in the sky.
She wondered how it thought. A creature born of randomness, born into this strange disorderly multiverse. A creature born without kin, without ancestry of any kind. And yet the fate of a world, of worlds – no, of a galaxy, perhaps even a universe – was hanging in the balance of its judgement.
She did not envy it.
Troubled, she followed the others to the shelter.
Once they had stripped off their surface suits, washed a little, eaten a little, and talked a lot, they all seemed drained of the last of their energy, Salma thought. And when Meriel suggested they should try to get some sleep, there was no objection.
But Elizabeth Vasta, angrier than the rest, asked for sleep medication.