Far futures, p.46
Far Futures, page 46
In a closed universe, a final point of collapse lay at the end of time. The eschaton, the Omega Point, the space-time c-boundary—in his own original era it had been given a variety of names, and its main properties had been defined. From his point of view, two of those properties now were paramount. First, as the universe came close to its final convergence the density of mass-energy would increase dramatically and so would the overall temperature, heading for a singularity of infinite heat and pressure; second, and more important for Drake’s purpose, close to the c-boundary all information—everything that ever could be known— would become accessible. Everything that ever could be known; and everything that had ever been known.
It was what he had been told, long ago. But now he understood in detail what had before been a vague general concept. If he could survive far enough into the future, and gather and absorb enough information there, a time would come near the end when the accumulation would be sufficient. At that time Ana, the true Ana whom he had known and loved, could by his own efforts be restored to him.
He knew it was infinitely desirable. It even seemed possible in principle. But was it possible in practice?
Drake at this point was far from omniscient. He did not know the answer to his own question. Worse than that, his knowledge of the nature of the c-boundary did not offer any idea as to how to begin.
All he could do was collect information and try to keep intact his myriad components. As time went on that became harder. The universe was shrinking. Contact between far-separated elements was easier, and the need for long-term electronic hibernation lessened—but that merely made more important every difference of component outlook and background. Soon he was scrambling, working nonstop to hold a single point of view and a single goal.
Meanwhile, the collection of information could not stop. Drake slaved on, endlessly collecting, collating, comparing, sorting, and merging, while the sky became brighter and the more distant sources of light glowed steadily bluer. Constantly, he was forced to download more copies of himself to deal with increased volumes of data. The number of his components grew steadily. Contact with some of them, entering from far across the sweep of galaxies, was baffling. He had already been forced to deal with and try to understand the Shiva as part of his information gathering. Now he found some components of his own self no less alien. The effort of assimilation became greater and greater.
The cosmos shrank faster, imploding toward the final singularity. The sky had become one violent actinic glare when Drake became aware of a new presence, a strangely different voice rising to speak from among his endless sea of selves.
It emerged from the white noise that formed the edge of Drake’s consciousness and steadily approached his central nexus. And as it neared it seemed to touch and merge with each one of his components. Even before direct contact was possible, he sensed who it might be. The thought spread through all of his extended self and resonated there in wild surmise.
“Ana!”
“Who else?”
“But where did you come from? Can you be real? I mean, to just appear . . .”
“We’ve really got to stop meeting like this, eh? I think I’m real.” The cosmos filled with quiet laughter. “I think therefore I am. I think I’m me, Drake, I really do. But you know the theory as well as I do; as the universe converges towards the c-boundary, there’s no limit to what you can know about anything. So it’s not beyond question that I am just your simulation, a construct of your mind. You think, therefore I am.”
“You are not a simulation.” Drake suddenly hated his own suggestion that Ana might not be real. “You can’t be. Don’t you think I would know it if I was creating a simulation?”
“You might. But maybe other powers come with knowledge. I’ll answer your question with another: Is self-deception possible, even for an omniscient being?”
“I don’t know. All I can say is it doesn’t matter. When you are with me, nothing else is important.”
“All right, let’s avoid an argument by agreeing that I’m here and I’m real. So before I do anything else, let me say thank you. Now I have another question. How much time do we have?”
She had always been the practical one, the clear-eyed realist, raising issues that Drake was happy to push under the rug. And as usual she was asking the right question.
Drake looked beyond himself, to the universe that he had been ignoring. It blazed with energy. The cosmic background had become almost as bright as the stars around which the quadrillions of composites clustered. And still the pace of collapse was accelerating, rushing giddily on to the final singularity.
“A few more years of proper time, at most, then we’ll hit the c-boundary.” He found it impossible to worry. Ana was with him, never again would she leave him.
“Is that all?” The visual construct that she had chosen was frowning. “Just a few years? I mean, it’s more than I ever expected, but it’s not much of a return on investment for you, after all your efforts.”
“It’s enough. We’ll stretch it subjectively. We can run in electronic mode and stay out of hibernation.”
“I still don’t like it.” She was inside his mind, gently feeling her way around. It was the delicious touch of knowing fingers, exploring his most private regions. “A few years isn’t nearly enough time to get to know each other again. Don’t you think you ought to do something about it?”
“Ana, you’re talking about the end of the universe.” Drake laughed, still delirious with his own happiness. He could feel music welling up inside him, for the first time in eons. “It’s the end of everything. The Omega Point. That’s all she wrote.”
“I remember a different Drake. It was you, wasn’t it, who once had a quite different opinion?”
Drake knew it was no question. She was teasing him. Ana was well aware who had thought what. And she must have been happily plundering his data banks of memories for longer than he had been aware of her presence, because he had never spoken aloud the words that she said next. “Science has come so far. Surely no one believes that it can go no farther. Remember that?”
“That was when there was time, what seemed like an infinite amount of it. Now there’s no time. Not for new science, not for anything but us.”
“Once you knew next to nothing, Drake, and you were able to work a miracle. Now that you have all the information in the cosmos available to you, who knows what you’ll be able to do. The universe is ending because it’s closed, right? So open it. The knowledge you need already exists. We just have to look.”
Ana picked him up and carried him with her. He found himself cascading through space in all directions at once, while ghostly data banks swirled to him and through him, an accumulation of knowledge unimaginable at any earlier epoch. He recognized within them a million bare possibilities; but they were no more than that.
“We can’t avoid the eschaton, Ana. It’s there. It’s a feature of our universe.”
“I thought the eschaton only existed in a closed universe.”
“It does. If the mass-energy density had been below the critical value, this universe would be open. But the density is too big.”
“So. Reduce it.”
“That’s impossible.” Except that before the thought was complete, Drake had seen the way to do it. The caesuras, created so long ago in the battle with a mortal enemy, sat as scattered and forgotten relics across the whole of space-time. Once they had served to eject the Shiva completely from the universe. They could provide a similar function again, for any amount of mass and energy.
She was inside his mind, and she had caught the idea as it came into being. “Well, Drake. What are you waiting for?”
He could not speak at once. He was engaged on a dizzying involution of calculation, every one of his selves operating at its limit. The answer, when he had it, was not one that he wanted her to hear.
“It’s still no, Ana. We can dump enough mass-energy into the caesuras to form an open universe. But we would have to go far beyond that to do any good. We need enough structural bounce-back to avoid a final singularity here.”
“So that’s what we do. You say the caesuras can handle any amount of energy and mass.”
“They can.” The dreadful irony of the situation was revealing itself to Drake. “But there’s one insoluble problem. Information is equivalent to energy. And I—with all my selves and all my extensions and all my composites—represent enough energy equivalence to make the bounce-back impossible. It’s the ultimate catch: Any universe that I am in must be closed.”
“You mean with the physical laws that apply in this universe. What about other universes, the ones that form the end point for caesura transfer? Look at those, Drake.”
He was already looking. There was speculation in the data banks, but no solid information.
“Ana, it’s still no. Even if we had all the information possible in this universe, it would not be enough to tell us what lies in other universes. There’s no way to find out.”
“Not true. There’s one very good way. We go and see. Come on.” Suddenly they were hurtling through space, faster and faster. Dangerously fast. Relativistically fast. At this speed, a few subjective minutes brought them months closer to the eschaton. The little time they had together was melting away. Drake coordinated his countless selves. All would have to fly, exactly in unison, into the myriad caesura that gaped black against the cosmic background.
At the edge of the caesura horizon, he slowed and hesitated. Mass and energy was swirling past them into the infinite maws, draining from the universe. But as long as he remained here, the final singularity could not be avoided.
“Second thoughts?” Ana was tugging at him, urging him on toward blackness. “Bit late for those.”
“Not second thoughts. I was thinking, it would be just our luck to emerge into some place where the laws of physics are too different to permit life—or be thrown to a universe that’s full of the Shiva.”
“You worry too much.” She was bubbling within his mind, an effervescence that he could never resist. “Life is a glorious adventure, or it is nothing. You were the one who first quoted that to me. Have you changed so much?”
“I don’t know. I can’t bear to lose you again.”
“You won’t lose me.” She was reaching out, enfolding him, confident as he was nervous. “Wherever we go, we go together. You’ll have me for as long as there is time. Come on, Drake. You always said you wanted to live dangerously, now’s your chance.”
They were on the brink of the spiraling funnel, close to the point of no return. Ana was laughing again, like a child in a fairground. “Here we go,” she said, “into the Tunnel of Love. And don’t forget now, make a wish.”
“I already did.” It was too late to turn back. Ahead lay total, final darkness. Behind them he imagined the radiance dimming, easing with their departure away from the hellfire of ultimate convergence. The universe they were leaving would become open, facing an infinite future. Not bad, for a man and woman who only wanted each other and had no desire to change anything. “I wished that—”
“Don’t tell me, love—or it won’t come true!”
“Won’t matter if I do tell.” They were passing through, heading for the unknown, the last question, birth canal or final extinction. Was it imagination, or did the faintest glimmer of light shine in the vortex ahead?
Drake reached out to embrace Ana, squeezing her as hard as she was holding him. “Won’t matter if I do, love. Because it already has.”
Anthology, Far Futures
