Time

Michael had one possession he cared about. It was the flashlight Stef had given him. Michael used the flashlight sparingly, and the new batteries had hardly dimmed.

At night, he would crawl under his bed, in utter silence. He had some pieces of scrap metal into which he had knocked small holes with a headless nail.

He shone the flashlight on one metal scrap and looked at the spot of yellow light he cast on the wall. He saw a bright central spot surrounded by a band of half shadow, and darkness beyond. Then he put another scrap in that spot, punctured by a second hole, so that the light he cast was stretched thinner.

The spot of light cast by the second hole was different. He saw the central spot and the outer darkness, but between them there were intricate patterns of light and dark, concentric rings. There was color here, blue and orange and red rings overlapping. The rings, in the silent dark, were quite beautiful. He was seeing waves, like ripples on a pond, places where the bits of light — photons — were washing against each other, falling together in the bright places or nudging each other out of the way in the dark.

He found a scrap of cellophane, bright blue, and put that over one of the holes. Now he saw a simpler system of concentric rings, painted in blue only. He found the blue circles comforting. He imagined they were doors painted on the wall, and that he might pass through them, to go home to the village, or somewhere even better.

He kept pulling his apparatus apart. Perhaps he could stretch it so much that only one light bit at a time, one photon, would pass through the holes. He never managed that, but it didn’t matter; he could see in his mind what the result would be.

He would see a stream of photons speckling against the wall, nudging and jostling, working together to make the glowing bands.

But one photon, alone, separate from the others, was like a thrown stone. What was affecting itl How could it know which parts of the wall to land on, and which not?

The answer was obvious. The photon was being nudged and jostled into the right place, just as it had been when part of a flood. So there must be things coming from the holes to jostle the photon, even when only one photon at a time passed through the holes. Those things behaved exactly like photons, except he could not see them.

They were ghost photons, he thought. Partners of the “real” one, the one he could see. The real photon reached forward in time, inquiring. And a flood of ghosts from the future came crowding back in time, along every possible path it could take. And yet they were real, for they jostled the genuine photon just as if it were part of a dense, bright beam.

For every photon, there was an uncounted flood of ghosts, of possible futures, just as real as the photon he saw.

And so, surrounding every person, there must be a flood of future ghosts, representing all the unrealized possibilities, all equally real.

Michael, with his flashlight and metal scraps, surrounded by ghosts, smiled in the dark. Perhaps the future Michaels were happy.

One day a Brother found his food cache, and the flashlight, and the scraps of metal, all buried in the wall.

The children in the dormitory were made to stand in a line, before their beds, while the Brother barked at them. Michael did not understand the words, but he knew what would happen. The Brother wanted the owner of the cache to step forward. If nobody volunteered as responsible, all the children would be beaten. And then, when the Brothers were gone, the other children would beat Michael.

Still, he waited. Sometimes a child, one who was not responsible, would step forward and take the punishment for another. Anna often did this, but today she was not here. Michael had done it once, to spare a sickly boy.

Today, nobody came forward.

Michael took a step.

His punishment was severe.

And later the Brother stamped on the flashlight, smashing it. Michael was made to sweep up the pieces, the bits of broken glass, with his bare hands. The fragments of glass that stuck in his fingers made them bleed for days.

Shit Cola Marketing:

Adopt a baby space squid!

Thanks to Shit’s commercial tie-up with the Bootstrap corporation we can offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchasers of Shit Cola or other Shit products to become official adopters of one of the infant squid on the asteroid Cruithne.

Every squid is different. We have recognition software, designed in conjunction with leading scientists, that can distinguish your baby squid by its shape, markings, and characteristic movements. You can name him/her, monitor his/her progress, even (pending legal approval) send him/her messages and tell him/her something of yourself.

Numbers are limited!

To apply, laser-swipe one hundred pull tabs from cans of Shit Cola or related soft drink products and mail the codes, together with your completion in no more than ten words of the phrase: Shit will be the downstream drink of choice because… to the following e-address…

Maura Della:

When the storm broke about the baby squid, Maura flew straight

out to Vegas to confront Malenfant and Emma.

She found them in Emma’s office. Emma was sitting at her desk, her head in her hands. Malenfant was hyped up, pacing, hands fluttering like independent living things.

Maura said quietly, “You fool, Malenfant. How long have you known?”

He sighed. “Not long. A couple of weeks. Dan had suspicions before we got confirmation, the actual pictures from Cruithne. Imbalances in the life-support systems—”

“Did you know she was pregnant before the launch?”

“No. I swear it. If I’d known I’d have taken her off the mission.”

She looked skeptical. “Really? Even given the launch window constraints and all of that technical crap? It would have meant scrubbing the mission.”

“Yes, it would. But I’d have accepted that. Look, Congress-woman. I know you think I’m some kind of obsessive. But I do notice how the world works. A mission like Bootstrap needs public support. We’ve known the ethical parameters from the beginning.”

“But we’re not sticking to those parameters any more, are we? We’d got to the point where the bleeding-heart public would have accepted Sheena’s death. The asteroid colony, a permanent tribute to a brave and wonderful creature. But this has changed everything.”

It was true. Since the latest leak, support for Bootstrap’s Cruithne project and its grandiose goals had evaporated.

All the tabloid-fed hysteria, the religious ravings, the pompous and hostile commentaries, made no sense, of course. If to abandon ten or a thousand sentient squid was a crime, so was abandoning one.

But when, she thought sourly, had sense and rationality been a predominant element in public debates on science and technology?

Malenfant spread his hands. “Look, Representative, we spent the money already. We have the installation on Cruithne. It’s working. Baby squid or not, we have achieved the goal, begun the bootstrap.”

“Malenfant, we are soon going to have an asteroid full of sentient-squid corpses up there. People will think it is… monstrous.” She blinked. “In fact, so will I.”

He thought that over. “You’re talking about shutting us down?”

“Malenfant, the practical truth is you’re already dead. The body hasn’t gone cold yet, is all.”

“It isn’t your decision. The FAA, the White House people, the oversight committees—”

“Without me, and a few others like me, Bootstrap would have been dead long ago.” She hesitated, then reached for his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Malenfant. Really. I had the same dream. We can’t sell this.”

“We’ll do it with decency,” Emma said slowly. “We won’t kill Sheena. We’ll let her die in comfort.”

“And the babies?”

She shrugged. “We’ll turn away the communications dishes and let nature take its course. I just hope they forgive us.”

“I doubt that,” Malenfant said, and he began pacing again, back and forth, compulsively. “I can’t believe we’re going to be blocked by this: this one small thing.”

Maura said to Emma, “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes.” Emma looked up and contrived a smile. “We’ve been lower than this. We’ll manage.”

Meaning, Maura realized, she will manage Malenfant. Bring him through this. You don’t deserve your friends, Malenfant, she thought.

They began to go through details.

Sheena 5:

She could feel the soft tug of Cruithne’s gravity field pulling her to the dark base of the habitat. She drifted, aching arms limp, dreaming of a male with bright, mindless eyes.

There were no fish left, scarcely any krill or prawns. The water that trickled through her mantle was cloudy and stank of decay. She felt life pulse through her, ever faster, as if eager to be done. And she seemed so weak, as if her muscles themselves were being consumed; it was a long time since the great ring muscles of her mantle had been strong enough to send her jetting freely, as once she had done, through this ocean she had brought across space.

But the young wouldn’t let her alone. They came to her, shook her limbs, seeking guidance. She summoned the will to open her chromatophores.

I am grass. I am no squid.

No. Smart eyes swam into her vision. No. Danger near. You die we die. They were flashing the fast, subtle signals employed by a shoal sentinel, warning of the approach of a predator. There was no predator here, of course, save the ultimate: death itself, which was already consuming her.

And it would soon consume these hapless young, too, she knew. Dan and Bootstrap had promised to keep her alive. But they would shut down the systems when she was gone. She wondered how the young knew this. They were smarter than she was.

When they swam out of her field of view, oddly, she forgot they were there, as if they ceased to exist when she could not see them. Her mind itself was weakening. She knew she could never hunt again, even if she had the strength.

But then the children would return, clamoring, demanding.

Why, they said. Why here now this. Why die.

And she tried to explain it to them. Yes, they would all die, but in a great cause, so that Earth, the ocean, humans, could live. Humans and cephalopods, a great world-spanning shoal. It was a magnificent vision, worthy of the sacrifice of their lives.

Wasn’t it?

But they knew nothing of Dan, of Earth. They wanted to hunt in shoals and swim through the ocean, unhindered by barriers of soft plastic.

They were like her. But in some ways they were more like their father. Bright. Primal.

She could see them chattering, rapidly, one to the other, too fast for her to follow.