Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman

Author:Joe Haldeman [Haldeman, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction, Hard Science Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780441012855
Google: wle-AAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0441013430
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 2005-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

QUESTIONS

A black couch in a beige room, two tittle cameras and one big one. A big floating screen showed the activity inside and outside Ars while they maneuvered into the welding phase. Tomorrow Mentos, then Sanitas, and us on Monday. I had a feeling of foreboding, unjustified.

When the interviewer came in, I left a cup of cold coffee by the couch and sat with him in front of the big camera.

The studio was tuned to look like a picnic table in the woods, New England fall foliage. It was funny to look into the monitor and see that, seated on a hard metal chair with my bare elbows on a cold metal table.

"I guess we have to start with a couple of obvious questions," the interviewer said. It was Sky Golding, a sociologist I'd known since Earth. He was a stocky white intense man with his head shaved. "First, have you found anything specific that implicates the time machine in the death?"

"Well, we're not ready to say it was just a coincidence that Alyx died in the machine." One of the small cameras slid closer, as if curious. "It does put stresses on the body and mind that don't occur in nature. But the basic mechanisms haven't changed in over a century and the time machine is historically one of the safest ways possible to waste your time—safer than bicycling; safer than walking."

"But people did die in the machine before the war."

"Well, of course. You spend twenty hours a week doing anything, and your chance of dying during that twenty hours is what, one in 8.4? That doesn't make it intrinsically dangerous.

"I don't want to play devil's advocate here. Anybody who wants to put off using the time machine until we can say for sure that it's safe... I'd call that sensible. I recommend it."

"Yet you're not in favor of closing it down."

"No... well, yes and no. It's closed now, for a couple of days. We're in the process of modifying the machine so that it will look for vital signs changing in such a way that might precede a stroke or heart attack, and immediately end the session. Alyx probably had a blood-pressure spike before her stroke. If we had pulled her out then, who knows?

"Sanitas is supplying a round-the-clock medic for the time machine, just in case. We've suspended operations until the system's in place and tested."

"But you used the machine yourself without the fail-safes and medic in place."

"Day before yesterday, and will again tomorrow. I suppose it's a matter of faith, or statistics. I've probably used the machine two thousand times. Hasn't killed me yet."

"The other thing is Alyx's age."

"Of course. She was one of the originals, and an old one; older than my mother. But about a third of us aboard are originals, and as you know, we're all getting complete physical checkups. So far, nothing odd."

"Maybe Earth will have some insight?"

"We should know something in about ten days. They've been sent all the autopsy data and the records of two of us who were observers during the session.

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