Matter fell asleep within the cube. Natural biological processes, including ageing, slowed by a factor of 1,023.367. Which annoyed a few scientists, who’d much have preferred an interesting number, perhaps even the cosmological constant times a thousand. 1,023.357 was just so blah, even meh. Until someone commented that the aliens who built the damn thing probably used a different type of numbering system, even a different mathematics, so no reason to feel superior.
That’s what the cube did. No one understood how. There were no apparent moving parts except for sliding walls – not telescopic, you pressed and pushed upwards and they simply got larger without thinning out. The same in reverse: push, pull down and they diminished without getting thicker. And you only had to push, or pull down one side for all the other five sides to also shrink or expand. It was metal – a dull coppery sort, impervious to anything but behaved like fast ice. It made theoretical physicists – despite the boring number – laugh and engineers even more convinced the universe had a cruel sense of humour. As for why? What it was meant for? The theory behind the technology? That’s when theoretical physicists stopped laughing and went out for a beer, to find engineers already propped against the bar.
Here’s the kicker: apparently anyone within the stasis field ceased to exist on any possibility/probability matrix accessed by pre-cogs. The universe no longer recognised them. Possibly also all the other universes, but that would only be conjecture. That part was understandable. Also an out-of-sight, out-of-mind phenomenon that posed a question some found troubling: just as we observe the universe, does the universe also observe us? And if yes, does it do so in a state of self-awareness, or as a simple, automatic information collection/exchange? And if so, could it be rebooted, and what about the threat from a virus?
* * *
“She became the Sleeping Beauty,” Kara said, a note of anger in her voice
“What?” Greenaway sounded surprised by her reaction. “Oh, that was centuries ago. Someone’s wife with a fatal disease, put into stasis until a cure was ready. Word leaked out and a legend was born.”
“Who was the wicked stepmother?”
“I’ve no idea...” a sudden perception, more often used to dominate. “It wouldn’t have helped with your sister.”
Kara had been thinking how ugly was the life support system used for Call-Out Fees, a human melded with plastic tubing and metal probes. Referencing a fairy tale had been a distraction from sadness and anger.
“More dignity,” she said. “So what else?”
* * *
There was a fire that left few human remains. DNA analysis showed that they were once Tatia. In reality it was cloned DNA. Tatia would spend the next ten years neither dead nor properly alive. She emerged still a three-year-old orphan, to be adopted as Tse had promised. Kara mentally kicked herself: she, Tatia and Marc were all effectively orphans. Not a coincidence. “Orphans show up on this possibility matrix?”
“They’re easier to hide. Less of a trail, I think. There’s no real past, present or future as you and I understand it.” Said with the resignation of a man who’s accepted he’ll never understand the “how” of the universe, let alone the “why”. “Here’s a fun fact. Apparently the pyramids, Stonehenge and other great stone structures were built to anchor reality. All that effort, all that physical matter to make the outcome more probable. But still cheaper than war.”
He was avoiding a truth. “So, did you ever visit Tatia? When she was in stasis.”
“Three times,” he said quietly. “More would have been too risky.” There was far more than a decade of longing in his voice.
“You didn’t tell her the last time you met?” Unlikely, Tatia would have said.
“She wasn’t in a mood to listen.”
“You bottled it.”
He turned to look at her. “Yes,” he said bleakly. “I did.” He paused, shrugged briefly. “Something else you need to know. The Wild don’t use call-out fees.”
The world stopped for Kara. “Never?”
“It was one reason we split from the city states and Earth Central.”
“You fucking are Earth Central!” Because GalDiv was the real power.
“You think? Several city states have their own colonies, GalDiv not welcome. So they have their own SUTs.” He was into senior-officer-explains-all mode. “All of them trying to do their own deals with the Gliese. GalDiv keeps an edge by playing them off against each other. By controlling virtscrip and most off-world trade. Being the nastiest kid on the block...”
“Nothing to do with fees!”
“Wild pre-cogs figured out how to trade for a new engine. Something, anything with a human connection. Like an old sweater, a book, whatever...”
“And the Gliese go along because they get all the humans they need!”
“Aliens, who knows.” He sounded immeasurably sad. “Something else. We have better space-drives, too. Much smaller. Each Wild ship carries two spares.”
“Why are you telling me this!” She was close to blind fury.
“You’d find out anyway. Best from me. We promised total honesty.”
“My sister could... could...” Tears prickled her eyes. How can I kill the bastard if I can’t focus?
“Alien pre-cogs want humans. We can’t stop them. If not GalDiv, individual city states will supply.”
She heard his own anger and pain.
“We are a space-faring civilisation,” he said. “We’re colonising the galaxy, like I said last night. Maybe other galaxies. No more star drives and it all collapses. Wars break out. I don’t know why the Gliese accept trades from the Wild. I don’t know what happens to the humans they take. Small comfort, but the Gliese once asked far more for each type of drive. We managed to reduce the cost. Would your sister be alive? I don’t know. The trade would still exist.”
We managed to reduce the cost. The words echoed in her mind. There’d always be people who wanted to be a
