If anyone could, they would seem like magical creatures to us. That’s why this is a fairy tale.
Time is a Kelvin—Helmholtz function. You know, like the clouds in Van Gogh’s Starry Night. We surf the waves, the whorl, the crush of energies that cause time, that cause us. You may disagree with it, but that’s our present theory. It seems that our particular neighborhood of time, which created us, is the only weather in which consciousness can survive. We are the products of a very fragile environment.
We are the magic beans Jill climbs the beanstalk to find.
We are life.
Pele, two days older than one hundred and five, waits in crowded Galaxies Bar on Moku, the Entertainment, Amusement and, much less importantly, R&D Exoplanetary Exploration Ship. Robotic and print construction commenced in 2030, when Pele was forty, during one of the rare confluences of available capital and passionate interest in space.
Pele’s hands are folded in her lap in an attitude of calm, but she simmers, despite the faint scent of gardenia, the low tones of a flowing music specifically designed to generate a state of relaxed attention, and the zen landscaping. A tube of green tea floats unopened near her shoulder, its tether clipped to the table. Dr. Zi, Chief Safety Engineer, is late for this meeting, one that Pele requested and that the ship’s scheduling algorithm arranged.
Lights are always low in Galaxies, unlike other bars on Moku designed for dancing or the roar of a hundred unheard conversations. As usual, it’s two-thirds populated by tourists and crew. The Velcro floor is scattered with zabutons and low, gently glowing cylinders that serve as tables. A row of portholes affords a spectacular view of Mars rising as Moku slowly spins.
“Sorry I’m late, Dr. Hsu.” Zi, in full quasi-military Chief Safety Engineer regalia, billed hat and all, drops onto a zabuton. Peering over his shoulder, he unbuttons his shirt pocket, removes his ever-present salad tube, takes a pull, and slips it back into his pocket, which he buttons.
Pele says, “I want to discuss last week’s report, in which I raise serious issues. You didn’t respond.”
Zi is busy scanning the room. “Ah! There she is. Eleven o’clock.” He waves, showing most of his teeth in a camera-ready smile that beams from his well-tanned, rugged face.
Stormy, a raven-haired reality star, threads her way around seated groups of people toward them, encased in a retro space suit that emphasizes her long legs and shapes her breasts into pointy weapons. The camera drones trailing her blink like synchronous fireflies, as required by law.
Pele shakes her head emphatically in Stormy’s direction, uninterested in being dragged into the kind of propaganda puff pieces with which Zi is building his celebrity.
Stormy pivots as quickly as the Velcro on the two contact points of her very high heels allows and heads off at a right angle, trolling for the perfect feel-good space chat.
Zi frowns. “You just blew a perfect opportunity to communicate with the public.”
“I communicate very well with the public, except when you bump my podcast, like you did yesterday.” Pele, temporary liaison between the many factions on board, sees new fault lines daily, foresees minor disasters and deflects them before they emerge, furnishes solutions, and shares concerns in forceful, direct language with those on the ship and on Earth who need to know. She also drops a weekly public podcast, working hard to present this information gracefully, so as to avoid being characterized as an alarmist crank by the all-powerful entertainment industry.
“You need to re-slant it.”
“I said exactly what I meant to say. The issues I raised concerning the Gifted Child Congress are urgent. There have been thirty-seven of these children on board for six weeks now, and I’ve sent you five related Concern Communiqués—each with two red exclamation points—thus far. Should I try using more?”
“So say something nice for a change. Your campaign against them failed.”
“Just because everyone, including their parents, were snowed regarding the very real health risks—”
“We are completely protected by nanotech shielding.”
“No meaningful sample for that conclusion, despite all the glossy advertising, but here they are, so we can gather information for more meaningful studies for the rest of their lives—and ours. However, my present concerns are about something different.”
“I’ve read your CC’s. They contain weird assertions. Rumors, in fact, that don’t rise to the level of requiring a CC. Yes—these children are not normal— that’s their strength! They’re the superstars of the future. This is the third Congress in the past ten years. Wildly successful. Great publicity. They’re bringing in billions of dollars. Flip your concerns, for Christ’s sake. Valentina actually had a paper accepted by Space Life Journal, one she completed while here. She is amazing—ten years old! Grew up on the Argentinian pampas, on an estancia. Home-schooled. Discovered by a competition she entered. I was planning to steer the interview you just blew off in that direction.”
Pele knows Valentina as Bean, as do the other children. “Valentina is amazing.” She does not ask if Zi has read Valentina’s startling paper. She does not want to embarrass him. “They all are amazing. That’s part of my concern.”
“Why concern? We need to talk them up.”
“I talk about my job, which is to be a crank, if that’s what you want to call it. An honest, vocal crank, and I am worried. Doesn’t it matter at all that Moku is a disaster waiting to happen? In so many ways?”
“We’ve got backups galore.”
Sometimes Pele cannot believe that he is a many-degreed engineer. But too ambitious; a young fifty-something on the make. So many luminaries have springboarded out of Moku that it’s regarded as a pipeline to fame.
On the instant, Pele decides to have him removed. He is smart enough to understand that he is ignoring key issues not just
