Tomorrow and Tomorrow

“Are they alive?”

“I would say yes; but not in any form that would be recognizable to you. Patience, Drake Merlin. Much has happened, and much needs to be said and done. First, however …”

The man did not move, but at his side a familiar sphere topped by a metal whisk broom blinked into existence.

“With profound apologies.” The Servitor nodded its eyeless head toward Drake. “Your instructions to me upon freezing were quite explicit: only when new information was available concerning Ana’s condition were you to be resurrected. However, upon reflection I judged it necessary to interface with you before taking certain other required actions. I recognize that an argument could be made that you have not in fact been reanimated, and therefore that your instructions have not been disobeyed. However, I reject that as a form of special pleading on my own behalf.”

“You are Milton? You don’t sound at all as you used to.”

“I am Milton, but in composition more than Milton. I appear in this form only for your convenience. Although much time has passed, I remain your Servitor and obey your commands.”

“How much time?” Drake sat up straight, aware that his real body deep in cryosleep could not move a micrometer. What miracle of science gave him total control of this other body, in derived reality? What magic permitted his supercooled brain to think? “Don’t offer me the same runaround as I had last time. How long has it been since I returned to the cryowomb?”

There was a perceptible hesitation before Milton answered. “There is no deception. By your standards, it has certainly been a long time; but there have also been changes in the perception and measurement of time. And there have been… discontinuities … in human history and development.”

“You mean a collapse of human civilization? I worried about that, before I first went into cryosleep.”

“There has been no collapse in the sense that you imply, with complete loss of technology. However, on three occasions human development has proceeded in other directions — what we now consider to have been false directions. During two of those periods, the idea of technology lacked meaning.”

“You can tell me about that later. How long since I went to the cryowomb? Are you going to say, or aren’t you? Forget the ‘temporal shock’ nonsense and tell me. You say that you obey my commands. That is a command.”

“Even without reinforcement from the composite, I am obliged to reject any command you give me that is provably contrary to your ultimate well-being. However, I will answer. Your body has been within the cryowomb for a period which, in your most familiar units of Earth orbital revolutions, equates to fourteen million years.” The Servitor paused. When Drake did not move or speak, it continued: “Fourteen million years. Which is to say, a period equal to—”

“I know what fourteen million years is.” Drake laughed, a humorless bark of disbelief, while he tried to comprehend such a length of time. In his original innocence, he had imagined being frozen for up to a thousand years. He had thought of that as a huge interval.

It was a huge interval, a period long enough for civilizations to flourish and fall, for cities and dynasties to rise from the earth and return to it. Rome had endured and ruled for a thousand years. Once that had been regarded as a model of human stability. But while he slept, fourteen thousand Roman Empires could have appeared, one after another. A hundred thousand Caesars, enough to fill a football stadium, could have conquered, ruled, and been brought down. Fourteen thousand Gibbons could have chronicled their rise and bloody fall.

“Or maybe you’re right,” he said at last. “I don’t know what fourteen million years means. And I guess I was wrong. I’m not immune to temporal shock. I’m in temporal shock. Give me a minute or two, Milton.”

“As long as you need.” The Servitor rolled backward a few feet, and the fair-haired man in the armchair continued, “We assume that you refer to subjective minutes. One advantage of a superconducting interface is speed. This meeting is taking place with subjective time rate equal to less than one thousandth real time—”

“I need to know,” Drake interrupted. “I need to know what’s happened to the solar system — why you woke me — if there has been progress with Ana’s problem.” He had a thrilling thought. “Is it possible to interface with her brain, the way you have with mine?”

“Unfortunately, it is not. We made contact with the residue, long ago. There are many intact brain cells, as you might imagine. But the connectivity, the whole that permits the concept of mind, has been destroyed.”

“Let me try it for myself.” Drake found that he was trembling with eagerness. “I know her better than anyone. Put me in touch with her, let me make my own evaluation.”

“We judge that would be most unwise.” Ariel’s face was calm but compassionate. “Unwise for your sake. Just as it is unwise to expose you, immediately, to humankind as it exists today. There must be a period of adjustment. Your strength and mental resilience are extraordinary by any standards, but we do not wish to push it too far. We feared that you might retreat to insanity immediately after being contacted. You have . not done so. But a meeting with the sad, muddied remnant of mind that sits now within Anastasia’s body would try your sanity past bearing.”

“Has there been other progress, though? If her original brain cannot be repaired—”

“We will come to the question of scientific progress in due course. For the moment, we judge it best for you to begin with something familiar. Your Servitor will show you around the solar system. Then it will be time for us to talk again.”

“I don’t want a stupid tour of the solar system. Last time, that made me feel worse. I’m interested in people, not planets. I want to know what changes in the past fourteen million years might affect Ana’s return.”

Drake leaned forward, ready to argue. He was given no chance to do so. With one final wave of his hand, Ariel vanished; in the same moment, Drake was on board a ship.

Although Drake’s frozen body remained in the cryowomb, the illusion that he had been reanimated was quite perfect. He and Milton seemed to be traveling together in a real ship, its motion and progress constrained by the laws of dynamics and solar system geometry. He experienced real hunger and fatigue. After eighteen or twenty hours of subjective wakefulness, he would begin to yawn and feel the need for sleep.

It was the new solar system that seemed to lack reality.

They had begun close to the Sun, where the familiar, steady beacon offered constancy and comfort. A few million years were nothing within the lifetime of a G-class star. It had looked down on Drake’s birth, and it would probably look down unchanged on his final death, whenever that might be.

But unlike his birth, final death would not take place on Earth. Drake had stared from the ship’s ports unmoved as they swept out past the hot cinder of Mercury and the garden world of Venus, with its blue-white atmosphere, placid seas, and sculpted continents. The transformation of the second planet might have been surprising and wonderful to those in Drake’s own time, but it had been predicted since the era of Par Leon; the transformation had been well underway during his last resurrection.

His interest was focused on Earth long before they arrived there. The near-disastrous environmental runaway whose consequences he had seen on his last visit had lasted a few tens of thousands of years, but that was a mere blip on the long scroll of Earth’s history. Ana had assured him that the correction was made. She had been sure that a similar mistake would never be allowed again.

So what would the home world have become, after so many millions of years of habitation and development?

As they drew closer, Drake looked and looked again. Something was wrong, but what was it?

The Earth-Moon doublet was growing in the ship’s displays. The proportions were right, Earth’s disk bulking more than ten times the area of its satellite; but the colors were peculiar. The smaller world was an angry red tinged with yellow smears. The larger one, instead of the familiar blue gray of Earth, gleamed a dull and mottled white that was naggingly suggestive and familiar.

He stared hard at that pale orb. The perspective shift took place within his mind.

“That big one’s the Moon, the markings are changed but it has just the right color! But then where’s Earth? Unless it was changed to look like the Moon, and the Moon… Milton, I know this is a simulation. Does this represent reality, or are you playing tricks?”

The Servitor was at his side. It had spoken little since the journey began, but now the response was immediate. “It is not a simulation in the usual sense. It is a representation. By which I mean, although our whole