* * *
Late
twentieth-century Earth. A tiny place, but one full of troubles:
crime, disease, poverty, hatred, riots, Los Angeles, Saddam Hussein,
the Middle East, oil, fire, the Greenhouse Effect, ozone depletion,
AIDS, nuclear weapon, over population …
My biological family
was poor, even by the standards of the time, trashy poor some would
say though we never knew it, never though that way, were in fact
proud of what we had and did. Pa worked in the ball bearing factory
all day, ma did housecleaning and other odd jobs when she could find
them. There was almost always enough to eat, a roof over our heads,
and a church. Especially a church.
I can still see that
church clearly: a vast crumbling eggshell of a structure, high up on
a hill, gazing down on us like a portrait, watching you wherever you
went. Every Sunday the folds packed us up, and one by one we walked
the dusty road up the hill and filed into the great eggshell where we
sat. A sea of noisy black faces on silent white pews, all listening
to the Reverent Stetson telling us about God and Jesus and the
hereafter and the faith of little children.
Faith was the
central element in our lives, the fulcrum about which those lives
turned. I know that it difficult to believe, or even to imagine now,
but it is true. Faith was our air and water and food; it burned the
hearth, and sent smoky tendrils up into the cosmos. It vibrated in
the walls of our beings. Pa came home every evening coated with it,
a grime that no amount of soap and water could ever quite wash off.
Ma beat an upbringing into us with it.
Sitting on his
lap, looking up into those moist old eyes. I was five or six, maybe
younger, small for my age but nanorzor sharp even then. He knew it
from the expression in those eyes, the way he saw opportunity and
danger in the words that had just come from my mouth – I knew I had
asked the forbidden question.
“You must find
Jesus in your heart,” he answered it; “you must open your heart
to Him, and then He will fill you with His love. That is the only
way you can know Him; the only way to heaven. There is no other
way.”
* * *
I’ve cheated
you, the accusation screams through my head, like a cry of
damnation. But the brown eyes are still on me, still innocent,
trusting, still moist with expression. Mine are filled with tears.
I was the youngest
of seven, or eight – or was it nine? That I don’t clearly
remember anymore. Also the brightest. Maybe it was my brother and
sisters beating on me too. Whatever, I got a full scholarship, got
packed off to the university. Hugs and kisses from everybody,
including the Reverend Stetson himself, now a doddering old man.
Myself, I was seventeen.
Could I really have
been seventeen once? It’s a misty dream to me now; no, a nightmare
in a swirling fog: urban warfare, deindustrialization,
MacPherson, Green Revolution, animal rights, resistant tuberculosis
and smallpox, desertification, global cooling, mass extinctions,
Moscow, South Africa, Kotube …
And yet in the midst
of all this now inconceivable carnage, flowers did bloom, just as
they bloom, in the desert. Remember cancer from your history
plugins? This was when it was at last licked for good. And a host
of other genetic slow deaths. Other important developments to
recall: the first permanent space station; a return to the moon; the
commercialization of fusion power; the first truly practical
human-computer interfaces. Of course its seems like hell now, yes it
was hell by any decent standards, but a few rungs of the
ladder were climbed. More importantly, we climbed them.
My major was
engineering, with minors in astronomy and bionics, not a common
combination even then but I’d always had my own ideas. I’d grown
up in an isolated backwater of a world, and when I realized there was
more I wanted it. Joined the National Space Society, the L-5
Society, you name it I joined it. I became determined – no,
obsessed – for a life on the High Frontier. Ma didn’t
understand, of course; she though it was my duty to spend my life
improving the lot those “down here, where all th’ needin’ ‘n’
suff’rin’ is; why, there’s nothin’ ‘n’ no one up there to
help.” Reverend Stetson just shook his head indecisively, and said
he’d pray for me.
Pa wasn’t there
anymore. The bearing factory had shut down a year ago, replaced by
robots in Korea or Mexico, or some place like that, and the
government had sent him to a school in another state, to learn
computer programming on twenty-year old machines nobody used anymore.
I never saw him again. I assumed was at last with God.
I was on the first
International Mars expedition in 2036, just before the big
breakthroughs in age control occurred. We stood on the ocher sands
of Mars and looked into the twilight, and felt a billion years and an
entire cosmos leech into our bones. Earth was a tiny, still in many
ways tragic, sapphire in the darkening sky, its moon a tinier and
fainter diamond beside it. There are moments in each life that
remain fresh with you forever; that was one of mind (as, of course,
will be the one now). The expedition had cost almost a trillion
dollars, about five percent of the world’s gross economic product,
but any fool could see that it had been worth it; at that moment ten
billion faces were gazing up at hope instead of down on their
troubles. It was a moment that set the pace of humanity for
centuries to come. I wouldn’t have traded it for all the gods in
all the scriptures in history.
I stroke the furry
face before me, and curse myself for having thought that though. I’m
sorry.
* * *
We could have stayed
in orbit. We could have contented ourselves looking down with our
telescopes and probes and sniffers. We would have learned just as
much, and they would never have known.
But we couldn’t do
that. No, we had to be gods. Of course, we don’t tell ourselves
that; we persuade ourselves instead that are doing them a great
favor, in showing them what is possible. That they will take hope
from our example, that same hope those ten billion too so long ago.
But deep inside, we all know it is a fraud. We know they wouldn’t
see it that way. And that that is the real reason we came down –
to be worshipped. God damn us all to hell.
I returned from the
Mars expedition to learn that Reverend Stetson had passed on to this
reward. A heart attack in the middle of delivering his Sunday
sermon. He was one hundred and two years old.
Ma had just reached
her seventieth year herself. I comforted her – I tried to comfort
her – by talking about the future, about the developments going on
in the biogenics laboratories. “In another decade they’ll be
able to reverse the aging process completely. You’ll have eternal
life – and eternal youth.” But ma was horrified at such a
prospect: “All mah life I been getting’ ready t’meet the Lord,
’n’ now you want t’take it away from me? What’s matter with
you, boy?”
I tried arguing,
until I realized it was hopeless, that this person had spent her
entire life preparing to face her Maker, and the to steal that moment
was to steal the life, too. It was a theft I’d no right to make.
That night I cried like a child, cried myself to sleep for the first
time in as long as I could remember.
That was the last
time I even went home, at least physically. Talents like mine were
needed elsewhere that on a miniscule planet, especially one so long
on problems and short on hope. I spent the next half century
expanding and developing humanity’s first empire: L-5, Mare
Imbrium, Cydonia, the Belt, Ganymede, the Rings of Saturn, Titan …
I was a planner, a builder, a solver, a trouble shooter (and
sometimes maker), an explorer and a rogue. And I was successful
everywhere, at all of these things. Successful and happy. I even
became famous, so much so that you know what happened next: I forgot
where I’d come from. I forgot everything.
It was glorious and
exhilarating and an awful fat lot of fun, but of course it didn’t
last forever. For at the periphery of every frontier there is to be
found, invariably, yet another frontier, and the spirit inevitably
yearns for that too. Ye – the stars! Even the closest was ten
thousand times farther away that the farthest distance I had yet
travelled. It was a journey I could not comprehend. Even
immortality seemed too short a time cross such gulfs. Yet cross them
I would, of that I had no doubt; I just did not know how yet.
* * *
The moment they came
bounding out of their huts toward us we knew we had make a tragic
mistake. We’re the answer to their prayers; the
realization, at once undeniable and irrevocable, flashed through all
our minds. We didn’t even have to look at each other to know that
all had picked up of the thought simultaneously.
Perhaps if we had
been expecting intelligent life … but that had been the furthest
thing from our expectations when we’d entered their system. After
all, didn’t the experiments of Barkley and Beigh prove once and for
all that life – even at the simplest level – was so improbable
that it would occur in more that one in a million galaxies? And
didn’t the Fermi Paradox (if intelligence were common in the
universe, it would have come to us long ago) confirm our solitude?
Where, and how, had we so badly miscalculated? Or was it just our
misfortune?
Our misfortune?!
To the α
Centauri system and back was a little over seventy years that first
time. When we got home, we discovered that Earth had finally solved
her population problems, and thus her resources problems, once and
for all time. For by then space for sentient minds in the WorldNet
was essentially infinite, and people who still wanted families could
raise virtual ones to their hearts’ content.
Many did, as well as
live other lives fulfilling to them, but for us it was an empty life,
devoid of – of – to tell the truth, we could not have told you
what it was devoid of. All we knew was that if humanity had solved
all the problems, has conquered all the dangers of living in the Sol
system, that system was not the place for us anymore.
We need faster
starships. We needed to press as close to the light barrier as
possible. No, not really; with our essentially infinite live, and
youths, it shouldn’t matter how long took us to fill the universe.
But matter id did, terribly. For were still human though our bodies
no longer were, all too human, with minds sculpted by natural
selection to think in terms of years, or decades at most. We were
far too impatient in the pursuit of what gave us joy. So we labored
toward our dreams.
And succeeded.
A thousand years
later. It will seems like eternity to us, when we think it out
loud. Yet it is but an eye blink: Homo sapiens (to the extent
we can still be called that) is but one half of one percent older;
the Atlantic Ocean another part in a hundred thousand, our Sun has
completed one four-hundred thousandth of its orbit about our Galaxy.
We have touched some ten thousand systems, yet a hundred times that
many lie within our reach, and a trillion times that sum lay beyond.
It is only arrogance that makes us feel old and wise.
* * *
We should have known
better. The moment we saw the tiny sapphire, and the tinier diamond
beside it, we should have sopped, pulled back, and reached into our
stores of accumulated wisdom. Hell, we should have been on our guard
the moment we entered the system: a G2 single, age approximately
three billion years, low angular momentum, metals, an Oort cloud and
even a Kuiper belt. The fact that we’d been through a hundred
similar systems should have made us lax.
But it did. And
when we tasted water in all three phase, we lost our grip on reality.
We swooped in for a closer look. When we found free oxygen and a
form of chlorophyll, we dove closer still.
And found them.
The sculpted hives
of vegetation, clustered around lakes and rive deltas, were clearly
visible from orbit. Through our scopes we could easily make out the
mud and straw huts they dwelled in, and the dirt or clay roads they
travelled upon.
They are much like
us, in many ways. Forget the fur, and the six digits on each
hand/foot (including fully opposable thumbs) on each their six limbs,
and the short stubs of tails no doubt left over from their
tree-dwelling ancestors. They’re still eggheads with big binocular
eyes and face that glow brightly with curiosity and intelligence. It
will take time to completely decipher their languages, but is
complexity is instantly obvious in the richness of vocabulary and
bodily expressions. The emotion range the human spectrum quite
closely, from simple fear and anger all the way to humor and
reverence (don’t ask me how – you can tell, that’s all). And
if all this isn’t enough, then know that at night they sit and gaze
at their moon – larger and more spectacular than Earth’s – and
the stars and wonder, and argue, or at least seem to argue.
Yes, they are
children, but in another ten thousand years or so, they will be where
we are now.
Excuse us, for a
moment I forgot. But looking into those eyes reminds me again, with
stark cruelty: would have been where we now are.
Lord, can you
forgive us?
* * *
Where would we be
now, if ten thousand years ago, or even a thousand years ago, our
gods had descended from the sky, and saved us with their reality? Of
course, maybe the had. Maybe that is why the journey had taken ten
thousand years. And do many billions of live of lives that might
have been spare. We have been too content to sit back and for
salvation to come to us.
Where would ma, or
pa, or the Reverend Stetson, be now if …
No; you’re
evading your own guilt. The present.
The brown eyes gaze
softly into mine, the most innocent of trusts. I’m not sure why,
but I reach out again, and touch that face with crooked fingertips,
as though I could reach right into the mind and pull out the memories
if what it has experienced today.
Do not despair,
young one.
I pull away, jolted
by the lightning of the thought. My breathing is suddenly fast and
ragged. “What …?”
It says nothing, but
takes my hand and placed the fingers carefully around its temple and
forehead. There, that’s better. Soon you will not need
physical contact, perhaps in another million years or so of your
years, but its is not a great encumbrance for now. It is comforting,
in a way.
“How – who –
did you say a million years?”
A day in the
lifetime of the cosmos. Which, as you have chosen me for the honor,
allow me to welcome you into. Your first steps were certainly
exciting to watch!
I try to say some
intelligible, but my throat only gurgles in incomprehension.
Oh come one, you
did really think we would allow you take such terrible mistake, did
you? We didn’t’ allow it to happen to you, and we would never
permit you to do it to another species. No, these beings will reach
adulthood just as you have, by their own glorious efforts.
Adulthood?
Well, let us say,
provisional adulthood. Adolescence. You’ve made it.
Congratulations. Your folks must be proud of you.
Before I can react
to that statement, I am standing God’s carpeting, with the sun on
my face the soft breezes in my hair. I am not alone: ma and pa, and
Reverend Stetson, are beside me, and many others. I suddenly realize
that I am seventeen again.
“This is cruel!”
I protest.
Limited
perception always is. That too, you will outgrow.
I am on ocher
Martian sands, a pair of words cupped in my outstretched hands.
Faith has
sustained you this far. But now it is time to move on. Your first
responsibility. I am back with reality again, the warmth of fur
upon me. Here. Making sure they don’t run around with
scissors, or put unclean things in their mouths, and learn how to
share their toys. Discreetly, of course. You know how to do that …
Strangely enough, I
do. More importantly, I am ready.
