She’s scouted this line many times; she’ll travel eight kilometers in three minutes, with a top speed of over two hundred kilometers an hour. Normally she jumps with heat pads strapped to her torso, feet, and hands, but today she forgot and the blood drains quickly from her fingers. Tingling numbness. It’s rare to feel so cold. Of course, it should be cooler, considering the altitude and the season, but cool weather abandoned the planet decades ago. Today there are no frosts, no ice-covered puddles, and no flurries of snow on cold winter nights. Outside the Polar Regions, snowflakes, snow-covered mountains, and clouds have vanished entirely. Life is one long, continuous, monotonous, never-ending summer. The heat is here and it’s here to stay, but the cold weather is greatly missed: chunky knits and hats with pompoms, mittens, and scarves; rugging up for long walks, feeling warm in the auto, and knowing it’s cold outside; feeling warm in an apartment Pod and knowing it’s freezing outside; lying late in bed on winter mornings and the sound of falling rain—yes, she misses this most of all. The pragmatists and Transhumans say complaining won’t help: “Nostalgic cold-weather yearnings are pointless, it’s warm, there’s nothing we can do, we tried to fix the planet, and we made it worse.” For two years, 2030 to 2032, the Earth’s atmosphere was systematically seeded with reflective particles—stratospheric aerosol injections, which create a cooling effect—and it worked; the planet began to cool. Then the regional jet streams changed course, shifted toward the poles, and the clouds began to disappear.
Transhumans don’t see the point of another attempt. They don’t see a future for Earth, and they want Coin allocated to the Leaving Project, not the remaining-behind-and-staying-fixed-to-the-spot project, because terraforming Titan is going to cost trillions. Quinn disagrees; sentimental cold-weather longings give her something to aspire to. The weather is just a science problem, and all problems have a solution. Earth Optimism is growing; it’s never too little or too late. All you need is a plan and some time alone, preferably falling through space.
As Quinn falls, she considers her marital options. Plan A: Have a go at it, get married, and see how it turns out. People who aren’t in love couple up all the time, and they make it work. She could make it work. Once they’re married, things might improve. She’ll wake up one morning and realize the way Mori pronounces it An-ta-tic, instead of Antarctic, or Sil-i-cone instead of silicon—Honestly, they’re two completely different materials—no longer bothers her. Instead of lovers, they’ll be colleagues working alongside one another, solving the mysteries of the universe, uncovering new scientific discoveries. It’ll be a marvelous time for humanity; he can be her assistant and together they’ll discover a new form of modified gravity. The people of Earth will be forever grateful. Or, they’ll drive each other crazy, one of them will have an affair, and then, they’ll conspire with their new partner to kill the other, and modified gravity will remain decades away. The people of Earth deserve more.
Plan B: Be less judgmental. She likes him, she likes him a lot, he’s very likable, and she’ll learn to love his likability. And he’s funny— that’s important. Humor is an essential element in any relationship. What was it he said the other day? Something about the weather, the climate, it was quite funny. Yes, she remembers, he said, “We still have four seasons: Warm, Hot, Hotter, Scorching.” Disaster averted; he’s funny and likable. Except for the “learn to love him” part—that’s not something anyone should be thinking on their wedding day. And he’s too old for her. And there is no sex—probably because he’s too old for her.
Plan C: Get the fuck out while I can. Pull up her big-girl climate pants and call the whole thing off. Sit him down and say, “You’re likable and funny, both important elements in any relationship, but I can’t marry you.” Problem solved. She’s not in love, she was never in love, and there will be no wedding inside a big, white, fluffy cloud today.
***
Her landing site is a grassy field close to the coast, elevated, north-facing, and partially protected from the southerly winds. On a good day, without wind, it’s the perfect place to land. But today the southerlies rush in brief but forceful bursts along the coastline.
Regardless, she deploys her chute, brakes hard, glides low over the field, and drops down, feet first, onto the soft, wild grass. A burst of crosswind surges, and the floundering chute vacillates. She hauls it into submission, securing and fastening the billowing silks. Then she peels off her wingsuit and lies down on the grass to rest.
She breathes. Problem solved: There will be no wedding in a cloud today.
A shadow passes overhead, blocking her light. It’s a bird, an unfamiliar species, perhaps a type of gull or dove. Its head and wings are a typical tawny brown, but its belly is orange and its neck streaked yellow and ochre. She’s not seen anything like it before; it’s a stunning creature, a triumph of beauty and natural selection. She lies still on the ground, the bird stays fixed to its spot, caught in the headwind, and both appear as two motionless bodies in the universe.
Quinn knows the bird’s speed has no fixed frame of reference and their static positions are relative to their perceptions of each other. She learnt that from her mother, Lise, and obviously Lise learnt that from Albert Einstein. Some parents teach their children how to cook, or how to swim, or fish, or drive, but Lise taught Quinn that motion affects her perception of how time passes, and that this depends entirely on her perspective. Quinn knows the only thing that doesn’t change with perspective is the speed of light. The speed of light is fixed.
She rolls over. She should holo Mori and let him know her whereabouts. He loves her. She doesn’t know how that happened, one person in love and the other person not. Love should be an even equation. Two positives or two negatives, then you get an even result. That’s the way it should work. You can’t have one person in love and the other person not in love; it makes no sense, it’s not logical.
Quinn activates her Band. She only has the one, a highly conductive combination of lithium and graphene, wrapped around her wrist. It’s synced to her brain electrodes. Software in the Band translates her thoughts to either text or a holographic vision. It took a week for the device to create a file of her speech patterns when she first got it, but now it’s 86 percent correct, most of the time.
Consolidating her thoughts, she launches a message: Text Mori, tell him I woke early, went for a jump, be home soon.
“The speed of light is absolute?” the Band suggests.
What the fuck? No. She tries again, I’ll be home soon. An hour, I’ll be home in an hour.
“A hour with Mori feels like a week?”
Fuck. No. Don’t send that. Forget it.
Briefly she considers a dialogue message, then drops the idea; she’ll see him soon enough. Her mother will arrive on Kerguelen later this morning; she’s hired a private transporter for the event. Soon, they’ll gather together on the lawn with Mori for introductions. She has an hour. The grass underneath her is fresh and cool, the morning sun is warm, and she’s spent. It will be a long day. She closes her eyes.
Two
Her mother is
sort of famous.