“Really?” Quinn asks. “Is it that bad? It wasn’t my idea, and it’s the least I could do. Is it too short?”
“Yes, but you’ve got good legs,” says Ada. “And those boots!”
“Darling, I have something for you.” Lise opens a small box. Inside is a crimson stone, a rough-cut pink diamond matching the one she’s wearing—a beautiful, rare, exquisite gem.
Overwhelmed, Quinn begins to protest.
“Nonsense,” says Lise, fastening the stone around her daughter’s neck. “Pink diamonds. We’re entangled qubits; always remember this.”
Their conversation is interrupted by a man wearing a Fourth Estate crest. The journalist is keen for an interview; 2050 is a Global Election year and Lise is politically active, a strong opponent of the high-profile New Federation Party and its leader, Dirac Devine. Lise is pro-science, and new scientific discoveries defy New Fed’s political agendas, which pine for past eras of hard right dominance and fundamentalist religious control over the population. A minority of economic elite finances the party, and they’re all anti-science.
Last week, Lise delivered a scathing speech on the party and its anti-science doctrines. It’s not surprising that Fourth Estate wants a follow-up remark.
“How does science fit into the political agenda of the mid-twenty-first century?” asks the journalist. The question drives to the heart of the political dissension between Lise and New Federation.
Lise smiles. “Let me be very clear. Science doesn’t fit into anything—science is fundamental to everything. It’s who we are. Now, let’s talk about my new book. I’m working on a mathematical algorithm to decode reality. You see, the world around us is an illusion, a fabrication of the brain. Put simply, there is no physical world—at least, not as we know it.”
“Yes, your latest book,” the journalist stammers, floundering. He projects a hologram onto his wrist and scrolls though his research. “It talks about . . . math, and algorithms, and the world being . . . an illusion.” He looks up at Lise, seeking confirmation. “That’s right isn’t it?”
Lise knits her brow. “Didn’t I just say that?”
“Yes. I think you did. Sorry, I do political rounds. I know next to nothing about science.”
“Then why don’t you ask me about my next book?”
“Okay, tell me something about your next book,” he says obligingly.
“Kind of you to ask. I’m investigating time travel. I’m sure we can go forward; that’s a given. It’s the past I’m interested in. Specifically, closed causal loops, like the Predestination Paradox—where an event in the past influences an event in the future.”
“The future sounds terrifying,” the journalist quips.
“No,” Lise says. “The future is easy; it’s the present that’s terrifying.”
The journalist departs, and Quinn turns to her mother. “Time travel. Really?”
“Yes. Really.” Lise smiles. “I’ve discovered a portal—a type of wormhole—and I know how to open it. I cracked the final piece of the code on my way here, while we were on the Transporter.”
Surely she’s kidding? “A time travel portal. Are you serious?”
“Do I look serious?”
“Yes. You look very serious, and it makes me very nervous.” Quinn shakes her head. “What are you going to do with your . . . time travel portal?”
“I’ve thought quite a lot about it. Time travel raises complex moral issues, and it throws the laws of cause and effect out the window. You see, going back in time could set up an Ontological Paradox, where you have no discernable origin—you just exist. It might make existence meaningless.”
“I thought it was already meaningless. Wasn’t that the point of your last book?”
“No. Existence has meaning—it just isn’t real. Anyway, it doesn’t sound like much fun, traveling back and forth in a loop—so easy to get stuck. I’m not sure I’ll use the portal.”
I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. “Good. I’m glad. Stay here in the ‘terrifying present’ with the rest of us.”
“I mean, I would use it if I absolutely had to. If it was an absolute necessity.”
“Absolutely necessities cover so many things,” Quinn muses. “Like, saving the planet, reversing climate change . . . that’s a given, right?”
“Fraught with danger. And we can still save the planet.”
“Okay, what about going back in time to meet Stephen Hawking?”
“Yes, that’s perfect. You could also use it to escape boring fools who try to eat their serviettes.”
“Agreed,” says Quinn.
Ada is engaged in conversation on the other side of the Ship. She waves at Lise to get her attention, and Lise casts a weary glance in her direction.
Ada points to her empty glass. Then she turns the glass upside down—there’s not a drop left in it. Apparently, she needs another drink, and she’d like Lise to fetch it for her.
Quinn turns back to her mother. “Or you could use the portal to escape annoying ex-lovers. Surely that’s an absolute necessity.”
“I think that goes without saying,” says Lise.
***
Two guests declined the invitation to the wedding in the clouds. Quinn’s father, Matt, didn’t even open the card. “Not my thing,” he said, and Quinn knew what he actually meant was, “It’s fucking ridiculous and it’s over the top.” She countered with the fact that it wasn’t her thing either; it was Mori’s thing.
“And the Coin? What’ll it cost?” he asked.
“Not sure, maybe a hundred.”
“Fuck!”
“Maybe not that much.”
He opted out. She understood. Matt lives an isolated, hermit-style, Low-Tech life in the forest. He likes to watch the sun come up and he likes to watch it go down, and some days that’s about as complex as his life gets. He’s a songwriter, but he calls himself a poet, an aging ex-rocker with existential angst. AI compose jingles and melodies and they play instruments with flawless precision, but they are feeble with lyrics and vain with rhyme. They don’t know what it’s like to lose your job to a machine or live in a world of ten billion people and still feel lonely. They don’t understand the effect of the incessant heat, and they can’t long for rain or a cool breeze. They can’t sing about breakups or the mother of your child leaving you for a woman. They can’t write anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-corporate choruses that students chant in the streets. In the years around the War, the sad years, Matt was in his element, at his peak.
Quinn thinks Matt would have liked Kerguelen, the harsh and isolated scenery. He would have admired the reserved population of farm-fishermen. He’s a signed-up Humanist; people, nature, the planet, these are the only things that matter to him. He has no time for High-Tech or Transhumans. To him the Earth is sacred, and he doesn’t see the logic in traveling to Titan. Humanists will never leave this planet and nothing will dissuade them, not scorching temperatures or rising sea levels. They believe they are connected to every rock, tree, and river, and if they left Earth they’d shrivel up and die. Transhumans, on the other hand, see no future on Earth; they see their future in the stars, in the universe. Mars didn’t work, but Titan waits for them.