Dancing with Eternity by John Patrick Lowrie

Author:John Patrick Lowrie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: space travel, telepathy, hard science fiction, immortality, starship, space ship, gallactic travel, fortieth century, 40th century
Publisher: Coffeetown Enterprises
Published: 2013-10-31T04:00:00+00:00

“I think I see the ledge!” It had taken me forever to get to where I was, but I’d just caught a glimpse of something as I’d followed a piece of falling ice.

[Great, Mo!] Alice’s voice cheered me, [It’s not far once you get there.]

I turned on my instrument lights and checked my suit’s power: twenty per cent. Not good, but it might be enough to get me down. I fought the ice a few more meters until my feet touched rock. “This is it, I’m down! I’m down on the ledge.” I looked down at my feet. “No, wait—” I stood on a narrow slab of rock, bordered by blackness. I looked for the rest of the ledge—it was wide, covered with scree and talus, I remembered. I thought maybe the snow was just too thick in the air for me to see very far, that the blackness of the night was swallowing up the light from my headlamp. It took me a long time to accept that I had only reached the upper, narrow ledge, that I still had twice as far to go as I had already come to reach the lower one.

“Oh, Shiva.”

[What’s wrong?]

“It’s—It’s not the—I’m on the upper ledge. The narrow one.”

Alice’s voice fell, [Oh.]

The wind just kept beating at me as I tried to think. Fortunately, Steel came online and did my thinking for me:

[Mo, you’re going to have to bivouac where you are.]

“Yeah, I guess so.” She’s writing me off, I thought. She’s gonna let me freeze and re-boot me on the way back up. “I guess this is it, huh?”

[No. Listen. You have to tie yourself in. Now.]

“Right. Right.” This wasn’t going to be fun. Freezing. Jesus.

[Do it now, while you still have power. Tie yourself in and then power down.]

“Yeah, all right.” I was pretty lethargic about the whole thing, but I set a couple of bolts. What was better, I thought, freezing? Or just taking a dive into the night and logging off quick and clean? It takes the same three months to re-boot, either way.

And Steel was going to re-boot me. I wondered if she would leave me my past. She had to take the recent stuff, my memories of her, of Alice, Neuschwanstein, Kindu—I understood that, security and all, but I wondered if she’d leave me the rest, or if she’d just make a clean sweep, just to be safe. Mary. Sheila. “Don’t take my wife ...” I mumbled.

[What?]

“Nothing. Nothing.”

[Mo. I don’t want you to hurry, but I want you to keep moving. Tie yourself in.]

“Okay, okay.” I clipped into both of the bolts, turned around and sat down on the ledge, my feet dangling into the flurried void.

[Are you tied in?]

“Yeah.”

[I want you to lie down on the ledge, on your side, with your feet into the wind and your back to the cliff. Do you understand?]

“Why?”

[Don’t hurry, but do it quickly. Now.]

“Okay.”

[Your air intake is on your backpack, right between your shoulder blades. Your CO2 vent is back there, too.

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