Twelve Tomorrows by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780262535427
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2018-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

Paul McAuley

6

Mike and Alice waited for the second sun.

They gazed at the distant Sun, the old one, through the rear viewport ofFields of Gold. From here, the deep space in the vicinity of Neptune’s orbit, the Sun appeared as just another star, barely a disk. Although its light was still sufficiently intense to cast shadows against the cabin walls, it no longer provided those inside the spaceship with any warmth. Mike glanced at Alice, who was in her spacesuit next to him, and thought that she was like another sun. It was her presence that endowed the cold, empty space 4.5 billion kilometers from the Earth with meaning, and made his own life meaningful. Alice had awakened an hour earlier. This was her longest hibernation—lasting a whole year—since her departure from the Earth.

A new, second sun appeared. Initially, it looked no different from any other star, but its luminosity grew rapidly, like an opening eye, until it was brighter than the Sun itself. In a moment, the universe had awakened. This was the fusion flame generated by the deceleration ofOrion.

Mike cheered. The interior ofFields of Gold was so cramped that he didn’t even have the room to wave his arms. He wanted to hug Alice, but he knew that was impossible.

“It’s a wonderful sight, isn’t it?” said Alice, smiling at him through the visor of her helmet.

Suddenly, everything turned blue, with a single line of white text:Network congestion detected. Please switch to 2D display or try again later.

Mike took off his VR helmet and found himself back in his tiny studio apartment, which was still far more spacious than the cabin ofFields of Gold. He picked up his laptop and switched the display mode to 2D, but the connection was still so slow that Alice’s smile on the screen remained frozen.

He knew, as he had always known, that Alice’s smile wasn’t just for him. Just now, several hundred million people had been with her in the tiny cabin, and all of humanity was connected to her. Besides, the Alice he had seen was from four hours earlier, the time it took for radio waves to travel 4.5 billion kilometers back to the Earth.

Cheers in the streets told him that the whole world was celebrating.

“Nineteen years,” muttered Mike as he stared at the image of Alice on the screen. “I’ve gone from eighteen to thirty-seven, but you’re still so young.”

For Mike, that day nineteen years earlier sometimes seemed like a distant memory, and sometimes as clear as though it had happened yesterday.

Without any warning, the Ether rocket at the Mojave Space Port had lifted off, carrying the spaceshipFields of Gold. Barely ten hours had passed since the car accident that had killed Alfred Miller.

As a young man, Miller had not shown much interest in space exploration. His enormous fortune had been built on pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. Everything changed, however, with the invention of a drug nicknamed “Winter.” Winter was the product of LifeVision, one of Miller’s many companies. It took

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