Deep Sky

Garner nodded again. “Same fight, for all the same reasons: broad political and religious ideologies grown out of centuries of ingrained hate; control of primary resources like territory, access to fossil fuel reserves, seaports. Somebody would’ve ended up banging the podiums over it. Different leaders might’ve been far less cruel, might’ve conducted the war in entirely different ways, but you could probably swap out the leadership of every country in the world at that time, and the middle of the twentieth century would’ve still been a nightmare. In which case you might ask yourself if it’d just be a mug’s game, trying to change things. Aboard this ship we asked ourselves that question, and not as some academic brain teaser. The answer meant a great deal to us.”

Suddenly Travis understood. Or thought he did.

“You and the others planned to bring that computer with you,” he said, “back to Earth in 2016. You could use it to identify people who’d eventually be responsible for wars, all kinds of atrocities, long before they took power. Then you could just . . . kill them?”

“We could. And after that we could use the computer again to find out who was now on course to fill their shoes. And if we killed those people, we could look for their historical replacements, and so on. Beyond a certain point, we’d be killing people who originally wouldn’t have done anything wrong. People who might’ve never ended up in positions of power at all, if we hadn’t already killed the first several layers of troublemakers. You can see how the morals of the thing get tangled.”

Whoever it affects, Ward had said, it’s not their fault. Not really. Under the wrong conditions, anyone could end up the worst person on Earth.

“I thought it was about me,” Travis said, almost to himself. “I thought I was on track to become . . . someone bad.”

“Not you,” Garner said. “Others. Many, many others.”

Travis looked up at him. “Twenty million.”

Garner’s mouth seemed to have gone dry. He swallowed with a little difficulty, then nodded. “That’s the rough number we came up with, every time we simulated it. If you chose them very precisely, the removal of some twenty million specific people from the world population would leave things unusually stable. Conflicts already under way in places like Congo and Sudan would suddenly lack not only leaders and instigators, but anyone able and willing to fill the vacuum left by them. All the suitable candidates would be dead. The same would be true of every saber-rattling regime in the world, including more than a few that don’t call themselves regimes. The result of all this would be something uncanny. To any observer who didn’t know better, for the next century the human race would seem, by sheer luck, to dodge every potential flashpoint that came along. Every dangerous stare-down between nations would happen to have a JFK or two in the right places to defuse it, instead of the various alphas who’d have normally held those positions. All those aggressive men—and a few women—would’ve been strained right out of history by then. Filtered.”

“Jesus Christ,” Travis said. He heard a tremor in his own voice.

“Every one of our simulations showed that a century like that would be enough—would let us get the world on the right track forever. Like a cast for a shattered bone.”

“Aren’t there easier ways?” Travis said. “If you’re taking that computer to Earth in 2016, can’t you just ask it, once you’re there, for a more benign approach? There has to be something else it could think of.”

“There’s no end to what it can think of, and many of the alternate ideas would work—but all of them carry even higher death tolls than this one. However you go about it, you’re talking about changing the world. It just doesn’t happen without conflict. Believe me, we’ve had time to consider every approach, and the filter is the benign one. We’re lucky the numbers aren’t worse.”

“Twenty million people,” Travis said. He went silent, listening to his pulse thudding in his ears. Then he said, “How is it even possible to kill them all?”

“That’s the function we developed for the computer, taking advantage of how it works: interaction with material at a distance—a whole planet’s worth.”

“Only at the smallest scale,” Travis said. “Elementary particles. Not even atoms. Quarks.”

“With the right programming it can do a bit more than that. I told you, it took us forever to set it up. We borrowed a few tricks from the evolution of parasite signals—ways of moving lots of particles all at once.”

“To do what?”

“Create simple vibration, mostly—to generate heat. A little point-source of it, about a thousand degrees Celsius, anywhere in the world we choose. Inside someone’s brainstem, for example.”

Garner saw Travis’s expression and continued quickly: “It’s painless. They don’t even know they’re dying. They just drop where they stand.”

“All twenty million,” Travis said.

“In perfect unison.”

A long silence drew out. Travis stared at Garner, then looked away at nothing. He could feel his heartbeat in his chest now. It sounded like drumming in some vast, empty place.

“You see now why your role is central to this thing,” Garner said. “It’s your decision whether we come through the channel at all. If you do let us through, we’re going to trigger the filter the moment we arrive. I tell you that for clarity’s sake.”

“You didn’t have to tell me at all,” Travis said. “You could’ve given me the card and sent me back unaware.”

“We debated that. Even voted on it. The outcome was pretty close to unanimous. The way we see it, the Earth at the far end of that tunnel isn’t strictly our world. We had ours, and we lost it. The world we’d be coming to is yours. We couldn’t ask you to let us in without knowing the consequences. We believed at least one of you should have the option to veto the idea. I’m sorry it falls to you, Travis. I really am.”

Travis thought to ask why it did fall to him. Of all the people on Earth in 2016 who had counterparts aboard this ship, there could hardly be a riskier bet to put all the chips on. A young adulthood spent among violent criminals. His own criminal actions and all their consequences. He’d been lucky to reach his forties at all.

But he didn’t ask the question. After a second’s thought he didn’t need to. He recalled the wooded slope outside the mine shaft. The contractors crouched behind their Humvees. The near-total lack of emotion he’d felt, approaching them with the chef’s knife.

Necessity pushing remorse aside.

An animal thing from way back.

Something he maybe had more of than he should.

Garner’s eyes took on understanding; he could see that Travis had made the connection for himself.

“You’re the guy if anyone is,” Garner said. He was quiet a beat. Then: “I’ve said all that it makes sense to say. Go back, and take all the time you need. If you never want this to happen, it never will.”

He held Travis’s gaze a few seconds longer, then gave him a last nod and walked away, back through the doorway he’d come from.

Travis stared after him, then looked down through the glass floor again. He watched until the yellow speck of Earth’s sun emerged once more into the frame.

I really can’t get there, he’d said to Paige. Keeping you in the dark about anything at all—I can’t imagine it.

He still couldn’t. Not in this or any timeline. He could imagine nothing other than going back and immediately telling Paige every detail. Garner and a few others, too, but Paige first. He would share everything with her except the weight of making the choice. That would be his alone. He could spare her even the stress of trying to sway him one way or the other, by simply leaving for a while. Going off by himself, maybe for weeks. Or months. Or years. Just thinking it all through, the card folded in his pocket at all times. He could use it from anywhere on Earth, as soon as he made up his mind.

He thought he knew which side of the choice he’d eventually come down on.

He imagined Paige would know too.

He thought about all that, and five seconds later he understood everything: all that’d transpired between the future versions of himself and Paige. Why she’d sent her message. Why he’d sent his. There’d been no misunderstanding at all.