Chasing Shadows: Visions of Our Coming Transparent World, Page 5

  The hall outside your room is lined with candles—tall ones, squat ones, thick, thin and patterned; propped on tables and rising from the floor, in multiple colors. Notes and cards carry wishes for a speedy recovery. A single amber flame hovers above each wick, giving off warmth.

  You have never seen earth candles before. They are startling and magnificent, beautiful in a way the tiny blue spheres from the orbitals could never hope to be. Your eyes water as you look at them, but not from your own emotions. The ripples from your feed have changed. You realize with astonishment that there are earth-dwellers listening, thousands of them. They must have been drawn by the news coverage. Their minds are subtly alien, but their enthusiasm buoys you as you complete your trek down the hallway, one foot in front of the other, one breath of air at a time.

  There are no air filters on the doors. You push the handle and step outside for the first time. Into open-ness.

  The crowd surrounding the hospital shimmers like a restless beast. You try to focus on it, but the clear blue sky beyond the tops of the buildings locks your joints and sets your thoughts staggering. It is vast, stretching from one end of your vision to the other, daunting beyond anything you’ve ever seen and even though your brain knows it’s impossible, you can’t help feeling that every step, every jump, every motion might propel you into that uncorralled realm of open-ness, that you’ll float upward and outward, untethered. Forever.

  It is a phantom terror. Illusory, like early spacewalkers who feared falling toward the hazy blue globe far below. But that doesn’t stop your heartbeat from washing through your ears.

  The sky hangs overhead, unbounded and terrifying. The crowd shuffles anxiously. You moisten your lips and creep forward, ignoring the cameras and microphones, sustained by the enthusiasm on your backflow. Questions ring out from reporters: Who paid your medical bill? How long are you staying on Earth? Will you attend the trial of your attacker?

  You shake your head and keep walking. Those questions don’t matter now. The divide between grounders and floaters, that’s what matters. The way gravity is yanking your species in two directions.

  Bodies crowd the police barrier. Hands reach toward you. You find yourself reaching out in turn. Skin on skin, palm against fingers; you look into the eyes of your fellow humans. Hair and jewelry points stubbornly toward the concrete, but the faces no longer seem unusual. You shake hands in the grounder fashion, greeting a maladroit teenager; an old woman with cyber-piercings; a man who introduces himself as a physicist; a little girl wearing glasses …

  Two hours later you are in a car on your way to the local capital. The world rolls past outside your window: buildings and grassy fields, solar parks and vistas. You can’t stop thinking about the crowd outside the hospital. Many of them are still with you, tapped into the Vastness. They share your thoughts, send muted responses via backflow.

  The car keeps rolling. A flat, gray surface approaches, sliding across the horizon. At first you assume it’s a tarmac. Then a pair of wild ducks settles on it, and you realize that it’s water. Pure, rippling water, held in place by the collective fist of gravity.

  Your breath catches in your lungs.

  Gravity is the heart of everything here. It is the mighty unifier. Nothing on this planet does anything without making obeisance.

  Even the orbitals, those graceful floating habitats where you spent your childhood—even there, this planet holds you. Gravity slings the habitats through their orbits, makes transport to and from the surface so expensive. It holds all of humanity in its grip. It will never let you go.

  Your mind spins, muscles trembling as the car rolls to a stop and you struggle to disembark. The atmosphere presses around you, and you feel as if you are clawing your way through history, forward and backward at the same time, to the roots and branches of humanity.

  More cameras wait for you outside the vehicle. More faces awaiting recognition. Your backflow ripples, floaters and grounders lending fragments of emotion. You are the focal point, the place where disparate minds come together.

  You are not the answer to humanity’s problems.

  But you are the beginning of the place where it can be found.

  The sky flows overhead, amazing and terrifying and awe-inspiring all at once. The crowd cheers as you move forward. The elation on your backflow is overpowering.

  This is who we can become, you think to the listening multitude. Who we were always meant to become. A people with the courage to look in each others’ faces, and hear each others’ voices, and seek each others’ welfare. People willing to defy the laws of the universe.

  The people who will stand against gravity.

  And when tech frees us completely?

  What kind of people …

  … will we choose to be?

  THE RIGHT’S TOUGH

  ROBERT J. SAWYER

  “The funny thing about this place,” said Hauptmann, pointing at the White House as he and Chin walked west on the Mall, “is that the food is actually good.”

  “What’s funny about that?” asked Chin.

  “Well, it’s a tourist attraction, right? A historic site. People come from all over the world to see where the American government was headquartered, back when there were governments. The guys who own it now could serve absolute crap, charge exorbitant prices, and the place would still be packed. But the food really is great. Besides, tomorrow the crowds will arrive; we might as well eat here while we can.”

  Chin nodded. “All right,” he said. “Let’s give it a try.”

  * * *

  The salon Hauptmann and Chin were seated in had been the State Dining Room. Its oak-paneled walls sported framed portraits of all sixty-one men and seven women who had served as presidents before the office had been abolished.

  “What do you suppose they’ll be like?” asked Chin, after they’d placed their orders.

  “Who?” said Hauptmann.

  “The spacers. The astronauts.”

  Hauptmann frowned, considering this. “That’s a good question. They left on their voyage—what?” He glanced down at his weblink, strapped to his forearm. The device had been following the conversation, of course, and had immediately submitted Hauptmann’s query to the web. “Two hundred and ten years ago,” Hauptmann said, reading the figure off the ten-by-five-centimeter display. He looked up. “Well, what was the world like back then? Bureaucracy. Government. Freedoms curtailed.” He shook his head. “Our world is going to be like a breath of fresh air for them.”

  Chin smiled. “After more than a century aboard a starship, fresh air is exactly what they’re going to want.”

  Neither Hauptmann nor his weblink pointed out the obvious: that although a century had passed on Earth since the Olduvai started its return voyage from Franklin’s World, only a couple of years had passed aboard the ship and, for almost all of that, the crew had been in cryosleep.

  The waiter brought their food, a Clinton (pork ribs and mashed potatoes with gravy) for Hauptmann, and a Nosworthy (tofu and eggplant) for Chin. They continued chatting as they ate.

  When the bill came, it sat between them for a few moments. Finally, Chin said, “Can you get it? I’ll pay you back tomorrow.”

  Hauptmann’s weblink automatically sent out a query when Chin made his request, seeking documents containing Chin’s name and phrases such as “overdue personal debt.” Hauptmann glanced down at the weblink’s screen; it was displaying seven hits. “Actually, old boy,” said Hauptmann, “your track record isn’t so hot in that area. Why don’t you pick up the check for both of us, and I’ll pay you back tomorrow? I’m good for it.”

  Chin glanced at his own weblink. “So you are,” he said, reaching for the bill.

  “And don’t be stingy with the tip,” said Hauptmann, consulting his own display again. “Dave Preston from Peoria posted that you only left five percent when he went out to dinner with you last year.”

  Chin smiled good-naturedly and reached for his debit card. “You can’t get
away with anything these days, can you?”

  * * *

  The owners of the White House had been brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

  The message, received by people all over Earth, had been simple: “This is Captain Joseph Plato of the U.N.S.A. Olduvai to Mission Control. Hello, Earth! Long time no see. Our entire crew has been revived from suspended animation, and we will arrive home in twelve days. It’s our intention to bring our landing module down at the point from which it was originally launched, the Kennedy Space Center. Please advise if this is acceptable.”

  And while the rest of the world reacted with surprise—who even remembered that an old space-survey vessel was due to return this year?—the owners of the White House sent a reply. “Hello, Olduvai! Glad to hear you’re safe and sound. The Kennedy Space Center was shut down over a hundred and fifty years ago. But, tell you what, why don’t you land on the White House lawn?”

  Of course, that signal was beamed up into space; at the time, no one on Earth knew what had been said. But everyone heard the reply Plato sent back. “We’d be delighted to land at the White House! Expect us to touch down at noon Eastern time on August 14.”

  When people figured out exactly what had happened, it was generally agreed that the owners of the White House had pulled off one of the greatest publicity coups in post-governmental history.

  * * *

  No one had ever managed to rally a million people onto the Mall before. Three centuries previous, Martin Luther King, Jr. had only drawn 250,000; the four separate events that had called themselves “Million-Man Marches” had attracted maybe 400,000 apiece. And, of course, since there was no longer any government at whom to aim protests, these days the Mall normally only drew history buffs, whose automatic looky-charges let the individuals or clubs who owned the various museums and lawns spend well on maintenance. Tourists would stare at the slick blackness of the Vietnam wall, at the nineteen haunted soldiers of the Korean memorial, at the blood-red spire of the Colombian tower—at the stark reminders of why governments were blunt, often brutal tools. Even at their best, they had been artifacts of a barbaric era, before each individual had the tech-ability to enforce his or her own rights, without paying professionals to do it for them.

  Today, Hauptmann thought, it looked like that magic million-marcher figure might indeed have been reached: although billions were doubtless watching from their homes through virtual-reality hookups, it did seem as if a million people had come in the flesh to watch the return of the only astronauts Earth had ever sent outside the solar system.

  Hauptmann felt perfectly safe standing in the massive crowd. His weblink would notify him if anyone with a trustworthiness rating below 85% got within a dozen meters of him; even those who chose not to wear weblinks could be identified at a distance by their distinctive biometrics. Hauptmann had once seen aerial footage of a would-be pickpocket moving through a crowd. A bubble opened up around the woman as she walked along, people hustling away from her as their weblinks sounded warnings.

  “There it is!” shouted Chin, standing next to Hauptmann, pointing up. Breaking through the bottom of the cloud layer was the Olduvai’s lander, a silver hemisphere with black legs underneath. The exhaust from its central engine was no worse than that of any VTOL aircraft. One of the safety clubs crafted some nannybots, on the spot, that urged people back a reasonable distance. Like a lot of unmarried males, Hauptmann didn’t much like safety clubs, and might have ignored the busybodies. But there were lots of children about. Anyway, such clubs had their uses. So he and Chin backed up a bit.

  The lander grew ever bigger in Hauptmann’s view as it came closer and closer to the ground. Hauptmann applauded along with everyone else as the craft settled onto the lawn of what had in days of yore been the president’s residence.

  It was an attractive ship—no question—but the technology was clearly old-fashioned: engine cones and parabolic antennae, articulated legs and hinged hatches. And, of course, it was marked with the symbols of the pre-freedom era: five national flags plus logos for various governmental space agencies.

  After a short time, a door on the side of the craft swung open and a figure appeared, standing on a platform within. Hauptmann was close enough to see the huge grin on the man’s face as he waved wildly at the crowd.

  Many of those around Hauptmann waved back, and the man turned around and began descending the ladder. The mothership’s entire return voyage had been spent accelerating or decelerating at one g, and Franklin’s World had a surface gravity twenty percent greater than Earth’s. So the man—a glance at Hauptmann’s weblink confirmed it was indeed Captain Plato—was perfectly steady on his feet as he stepped off the ladder onto the White House lawn.

  Hauptmann hadn’t been crazy enough to camp overnight on the Mall in order to be right up by the landing area, but he and Chin did arrive at the crack of dawn, and so were reasonably close to the front. Hauptmann could clearly hear Plato saying, “Hello, everyone! It’s nice to be home!”

  “Welcome back,” shouted some people in the crowd, and “Good to have you home,” shouted others. Hauptmann just smiled, but Chin was joining in the hollering.

  Of course, Plato wasn’t alone. One by one, his two dozen fellow explorers backed down the ladder into the summer heat. The members of the crowd—some of whom, Hauptmann gathered, were actually descendants of these men and women—were shaking the spacers’ hands, thumping them on the back, hugging them, and generally having a great time. There were lots of clubs, too, pressing forward in costumes from dozens of eras. This seemed to bemuse the astronauts. But they clearly grasped the concept and smiled, signing autographs for a while.

  At last, though, Captain Plato turned toward the White House; he seemed somewhat startled by the holographic “Great Eats” sign that floated above the Rose Garden. He turned back to the people surrounding him. “I didn’t expect such a crowd,” he said. “Forgive me for having to ask, but which one of you is the president?”

  There was laughter from everyone but the astronauts. Chin prodded Hauptmann in the ribs. “How about that?” Chin said. “He’s saying, ‘Take me to your leader’!”

  “There is no president anymore,” said someone near Plato. “No kings, emperors, or prime ministers, either.”

  Another fellow, who clearly fancied himself a wit, said, “Shakespeare said ‘kill all the lawyers’; we didn’t do that, but we did get rid of all the politicians … and the lawyers followed.”

  Plato blinked more than the noonday sun demanded. “No government of any kind?”

  Nods all around; a chorus of “That’s right,” too.

  “Then—then—what are we supposed to do now?” asked the captain.

  Hauptmann decided to speak up. “Why, whatever you wish, of course.”

  * * *

  Hauptmann actually got a chance to talk with Captain Plato later in the day. Although some of the spacers did have relatives who were offering them accommodations in their homes, Plato and most of the others had been greeted by no one from their families.

  “I’m not sure where to go,” Plato said. “I mean, our salaries were supposed to be invested while we were away, but…”

  Hauptmann nodded. “But the agency that was supposed to do the investing is long since gone, and, besides, government-issued money isn’t worth anything anymore; you need corporate points.”

  Plato shrugged. “And I don’t have any of those.”

  Hauptmann was a bit of a space buff, of course; that’s why he’d come into the District to see the landing. To have a chance to talk to the captain in depth would be fabulous. “Would you like to stay with me?” he asked.

  Plato looked surprised by the offer, but, well, it was clear that he did have to sleep somewhere—unless he planned to return to the orbiting mothership, of course. “Umm, sure,” he said, shaking Hauptmann’s hand. “Why not?”

  Hauptmann’s weblink was showing something he’d never seen before: the word “unknown” next to the text, “Trustwo
rthiness rating for Joseph Tyler Plato.” But, of course, that was only to be expected.

  * * *

  Chin was clearly jealous that Hauptmann had scored a spacer, and so he made an excuse to come over to Hauptmann’s house in Takoma Park early the next morning.

  Hauptmann and Chin listened, spellbound, as Plato regaled them with tales of Franklin’s World and its four moons, its salmon-colored orbiting rings, its outcrops of giant crystals towering to the sky, and its neon-bright cascades. No life had been found, which was why, of course, no quarantine was necessary. That lack of native organisms had been a huge disappointment, Plato said; he and his crew were still arguing over what mechanism had caused the oxygen signatures detected in Earth-based spectroscopic scans of Franklin’s World, but whatever had made them wasn’t biological.

  “I really am surprised,” said Plato, when they took a break for late-morning coffee. “I expected debriefings and, well, frankly, for the government to have been prepared for our return.”

  Hauptmann nodded sympathetically. “Sorry about that. There are a lot of good things about getting rid of government, but one of the downsides, I guess, is the loss of all those little gnomes in cubicles who used to keep track of everything.”

  “We do have a lot of scientific data to share,” said Plato.

  Chin smiled. “If I were you, I’d hold out for the highest bidder. There’s got to be some company somewhere that thinks it can make a profit off of what you’ve collected.”

  Plato tipped his head. “Well, until then, I, um, I’m going to need some of those corporate points you were talking about.”

  Hauptmann and Chin each glanced down at their weblinks; it was habit, really, nothing more, but …

  But that nasty “unknown” was showing on the displays again, the devices having divined the implied question. Chin looked at Hauptmann. Hauptmann looked at Chin.

  “That is a problem,” Chin said.

  * * *

  The first evidence of real trouble was on the noon newscast. Plato watched aghast with Chin and Hauptmann as the story was reported. Leo Johnstone, one of the Olduvai’s crew, had attempted to rape a woman over by the New Watergate towers. The security firm she subscribed to had responded to her weblink’s call for help, and Johnstone had been stopped.