“Most important to who?”
“Most important for what I’m proposing to do next. The SI mode allows a person to take the place of his or her own Fax, inside the model. I’ve never done it before with the Seine in operation, but I’ve tried it with a reduced model in a limited environment. I know it’s feasible. I’m going to enter the model, as myself. For me it will feel like just another VR environment, same as in the media shows.” He gestured to one of the half-dozen VR helmets on the bench in front of the displays.
“Alex, you’re out of your mind. Your model runs at umpteen-million times real-time.”
“About a million, in SI mode.”
“A million, then. So the model simulates a year every thirty seconds. There’s no way your brain can possibly keep up.”
“I won’t even try. For most of the interactions, my Fax will be making decisions. Once a simulated year, I’ll have thirty seconds to review where I am, make decisions, and hand control back to my Fax. I won’t be able to change much, because my Fax isn’t powerful or influential enough for that. But with me in the program, you lose exact repeatability.”
“But why do it at all? What will you get that you can’t see right here?” Kate gestured at the displays.
“I don’t know. Immediacy? Perspective? Perhaps nothing at all. Don’t worry, I’ve done this before. It was never very enlightening, because the model was oversimplified and aggregated so much that the setting felt bogus and artificial. I’m hoping it won’t be that way now.”
“Not artificial — when you’re being jerked forward a year at a time, every half minute? Give me a break.”
“I built in a smoothing function and a neural connector designed to help with that. It ought to be that I’ll feel like I remember whatever my Fax has been experiencing.” Alex picked up one of the VR helmets. “We can talk about all this when I come out. Once I wave my hand, start the model running.”
“And then do what?”
“Watch, and wait. We’re going to run for sixty years. That’s half an hour in real-time. If I’m still in the helmet after that, drag it off me.”
“Alex!” But the helmet was going on, and Kate’s cry of protest sounded far-off and muffled. The inside of the VR helmet was totally black. The only sound was Alex’s own breath in the oxygen supply tube.
He waved his hand. Nothing at all happened. He sat for a few seconds and was on the point of removing the helmet when he realized that this was exactly what he should expect. Time was blurring along in the computer model, but his first one-year snapshot was thirty seconds in the future.
It came to him not as some form of description or image, but as memory. He remembered the whole of the past year, but with a variable degree of detail. System politics were far-off and vague, while anything that affected him personally was clear. He had persuaded the bosses that his models were the right way to approach prediction, he had been promoted, and he had moved in with Kate — over the screams and protests of his mother and the rest of the family.
Was this the program, or mere wishful thinking? He was still trying to decide that when — memories — another year sprang full-blown into his mind.
So much for his smoothing function! It didn’t seem to work at all. The merger of the Ligon and Mobarak families had taken place — but how and when? Who had married whom? Alex could not remember, although he was somehow sure that he himself was not married to Lucy-Maria.
Here was other news, confusing and muddled, coming from the farther reaches of the Jovian system. Signals had been received there, perhaps from the stars. It could mean the discovery of aliens. The message was being looked at — had been looked at — had been dismissed as bogus. Or had it? It still seemed to be there. Alex felt his own confusion beginning. The future was filled with an infinity of branch points, and the model could not pursue all of them. He had the nagging feeling that he disagreed with some of the program’s choices, but before he could analyze his reasons — memories — another snapshot came pouring in.
Was this only three years out, or were multiple years somehow being crushed together? The solar system had escaped a great disaster that would have ended all life, from Mercury to Neptune and beyond. This was not the gradual dying-off that the model runs had predicted. This one would have been quick, extreme, and total. But it had not happened. So why was it here at all? The program was responsible. The non-event must have been on a high- probability path, otherwise it could not be in Alex’s memories at all. He tried to dig for details and a better understanding, but he was too late. Memories. Something — war, natural disaster, technological failure? — on Earth. Discoveries on Triton, Neptune’s giant moon. Loss of the Oort Cloud explorers. A dozen more events crowding all at once into his mind. He ought to have known this was impossible, even the highlights of a full year could not be comprehended in half a minute. Kate had been the realist, he had not. (Did they live together now? He could not say.) Memories. The tempo was increasing, a year was shrinking to nothing. What had happened to his thirty seconds per year? A trip to Venus — for what possible reason? A death, someone in the family. He could not tell who it was. A great rain of comets, sweeping in from the Oort Cloud and endangering the whole System. Was this the source of humanity’s disaster? No, some form of deflection shield had operated. Memories. Of a meeting, with the population chart of the System spread out before him. Ten billion people — as many as had ever been predicted in the models. But the total was decreasing. Memories. His mother, face changing color and melting like hot wax. Cousin Juliana, shriveling, dying — along with all the Commensals? The data were not there. Destructive forces unleashed around the solar system, as powerful as they had been during the period of the Great War. But he saw only their shadow, an unrealized potential. Was this the warning of coming holocaust? Memories. They came not as individual images, but as a great collective tide. The Seine had collapsed, the Jovian worlds were uninhabitable, Mars did not communicate, battered outposts on the moons of Uranus clung on to diminished life. And Alex himself. Where was he? He had committed a major blunder in planning the model. He had not allowed for his own death. If his Fax “died” within the model, what would happen to the connection? Could he die too? Memories. The worlds of the solar system were dark. He sat on the outer fringes, alone, beyond the planets, beyond the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt, looking in toward the weak spark of the distant Sun. Memories. Of solitude and silence. Had he come here hoping to be safe? He knew, through an unexamined accumulation of doomed memories, that his was the only life within light-years. How long had he been alone? How long would he remain here?
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie…
The VR helmet was ripped from his head. Light, world-filling light so bright that he was forced to squeeze his eyes tightly shut, burned around him. He heard the voice of a stranger, calling through the effulgence.
“It’s been more than half an hour, and you were mumbling to yourself. I couldn’t understand what you were saying. I had to get you out. Alex? Alex? Are you all right?”
He was not all right. He had swept far forward in time, to the death of humanity and beyond. He had hovered alone on the rim of the universe. How could anyone be all right after that?
“I knew I shouldn’t have let you do it,” the voice said. “I’m a total bloody fool. Here. Sniff this.”
An acrid vapor filled his nostrils. Alex gasped and gagged. His heart raced, he opened his eyes, and the room flickered and reeled around him.
“Alex!”
“Sa’ right. I’m — mm — a’ right.”
“You don’t sound it. Who are you? Tell me your name, where you are and who you are.”
“I am Alex — Ligon.” The room steadied. He was sitting hunched in a chair, with someone — Kate. Kate… who? — gazing down at him. “I’m — I — where am I? I’ve… been…”
“Alex! What happened to you? When I removed the VR helmet your eyes looked ready to pop and your pupils were all dilated.”
Alex shook his head, not to disagree but to try to clear it. “Dunno. Can’t think straight. Gimme a boost.”
“No. Alex, that’s a bad idea.”
“Need it. Got to have it. Mental overload, too many futures. Too much, too fast.”
“You’ll regret it. You’ll feel terrible later.”
“Give it.”
Alex closed his eyes and lay back. Hours seemed to pass before he felt the cool spray of the Neirling boost on his temple. The world inside his head steadied and came into focus.
He opened his eyes. Kate was frowning down at him.
“I’m all right, Kate. I’m fine. But it’s going to take days to sort out what I experienced. My head was spinning
