“I remember a different Drake. It was you, wasn’t it, who once had a quite different opinion?”
Drake knew it was no question. She was teasing him. Ana was well aware who had thought what. And she must have been happily plundering his data banks of memories for longer than he had been aware of her presence, because he had never spoken aloud the words that she said next. “’Science has come so far. Surely no one believes that it can go no further.’ Remember thinking that?”
“That was when there was time, what seemed like an infinite amount of it. Now there’s no time. Not for new science, not for anything but us.”
“Once you knew next to nothing, Drake, and you were able to work a miracle. Now that you have all the information in the cosmos available to you, who knows what you’ll be able to do. The universe is ending because it’s closed, right? It doesn’t care — but we do. So
Ana picked him up and carried him with her. He found himself cascading through space in all directions at once, while ghostly data banks swirled to him and through him, an accumulation of knowledge unimaginable at any earlier epoch. He recognized within them a million bare possibilities; but they were no more than that.
“We can’t avoid the eschaton, Ana. It’s there. It’s a feature of our universe, a global reality.”
“I thought the eschaton only existed in a closed universe.”
“It does. If the mass-energy density had been below the critical value, this universe would be open. But the density is too big.”
“So. Reduce it.”
“That’s impossible.” Except that before the thought was complete, Drake had seen a way to do it. The caesuras, created so long ago in the struggle to contain the Shiva, sat as scattered and forgotten relics across space-time. They could still be used to receive any amount of mass and energy.
She was inside his mind, and she had caught the idea as it came into being. “Well, Drake. What are you waiting for?”
He could not reply. He was engaged on a dizzying involution of calculation, every one of his selves operating at its limit. The answer, when he had it, was not one that he wanted her to hear.
“It’s still no, Ana. We can dump enough mass-energy into the caesuras to form an open universe. A tiny fraction would reemerge into this universe, although not enough to make a difference. But we would have to go far beyond that to do any good. We need enough structural bounce-back to avoid a final singularity here.”
“So that’s what we do. You say the caesuras can handle any amount of energy and mass.”
“They can.” The irony of the situation was revealing itself to Drake. “But there’s one insoluble problem. Information is equivalent to energy. And I — with all my selves and all my extensions and all my composites — represent enough energy equivalence to make the bounce-back impossible. It’s the ultimate catch: Any universe that I am in must be closed.”
“You mean with the physical laws that apply in
He was already looking. There was speculation in the data banks but no solid information.
“Ana, it’s still no. Even if we had all the information possible in this universe, it would not be enough to tell us what lies in other universes. There’s no way to find out.”
“Not true. There’s one very good way. We go and see. Come on.”
Suddenly they were hurtling through space, faster and faster. Dangerously fast. Relativistically fast. At this speed, a few subjective minutes would bring them months closer to the eschaton. The little time they had together was melting away. Drake coordinated his countless selves. All would have to fly, exactly in unison, into
At the edge of the caesura horizon, he slowed and hesitated. Mass and energy was swirling past them into the infinite maws, draining from the universe. But as long as he remained there, the final singularity could not be avoided.
“Second thoughts?” Ana was tugging at him, urging him on toward blackness. “Bit late for those.”
“Not second thoughts. I was thinking, it would be just our luck to emerge into some place where the laws of physics are too different to permit life. Or some of us might find ourselves right back here.”
“What’s so bad about that? If we do come back here, won’t it be to an open universe? You worry too much.” She was bubbling within his mind, an effervescence that he could never resist. “ ‘Life is a glorious adventure, or it is nothing.’ You were the one who first quoted that to me. Have you changed so much?”
“I don’t know. I can’t bear to lose you again.”
“You won’t lose me.” She was reaching out, enfolding him, confident as he was nervous. “This universe or another one, wherever we go, we go together. You’ll have me for as long as there is time. Come on, Drake. You always said you wanted to live dangerously, now’s your chance.”
They were on the brink of the spiraling funnel of oil and ink, close to the point of no return. Ana was laughing again, like a child at the fair. “Here we go,” she said, “into the Tunnel of Love. And don’t forget now, make a wish.”
“I already did.” It was too late to turn back. Ahead lay total, final darkness. Behind them he imagined the radiance dimming, easing with their departure away from the hellfire of ultimate convergence. The universe they were leaving would become open, facing an infinite future. Not bad, for a man and woman who only wanted each other and had no desire to change anything. “I wished that—”
“Don’t tell me, love — or it won’t come true!”
“Won’t matter if I do tell.” They were passing through, heading for the unknown, the last question, birth canal or final extinction. Was it imagination, or did the faintest glimmer of light shine in the vortex ahead?
Drake reached out to embrace Ana, squeezing her as hard as she was holding him. “Won’t matter if I do, love. Because it already has.”
