Latest / INSPIRE STORY / Beyond the Aquila Rift_ Full Story _ Sci-fi Horror

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Beyond the Aquila Rift_ Full Story _ Sci-fi Horror · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Beyond the Aquila Rift by Alistair Reynolds. Greta's with me
• 0:22
  when I pull Susie out of the search tank.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Why her?
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Greta asks, because I want her out first, I say,
• 0:31
  wondering if Greta's jealous. I don't blame her. Susie's beautiful,
• 0:37
  but she's also smart. There isn't a better syntax runner
• 0:41
  in a shanty industrial. What happened, Susie asks, when she's
• 0:46
  over the grogginess. Didn't we make it back? I asked
• 0:50
  her to tell me the last thing she remembers, customs.
• 0:55
  She says, those pricks on Archangel and after that anything else?
• 1:01
  The runes? Do you remember casting them? No? She says,
• 1:07
  then picks up something in my voice, the fact that
• 1:10
  I might not be telling the truth or telling her
• 1:12
  all she needs to know. Tom, I'll ask you again,
• 1:17
  did we make it back? Yeah? I say, we made
• 1:22
  it back. Susie looks back at the starscape, the air
• 1:26
  brushed across her search tank in luminous violet and yellow paint.
• 1:30
  She'd had it customized on Karellian. It was against REGs,
• 1:34
  something about the paint clogging intake filters. Susie didn't care
• 1:39
  She told me it had cost her a week's pay,
• 1:41
  but it had been worth it to impose her own
• 1:43
  personality on the Gray Company architecture of the ship. Funny,
• 1:49
  how I feel like I've been in that thing for months?
• 1:52
  I shrug, And that's the way it feels sometimes. Then
• 1:57
  nothing went wrong, nothing at all. Susie looks at Greta.
• 2:04
  Then who are you, she asks. Greta says nothing. She
• 2:10
  just looks at me expectantly. I start shaking and realize
• 2:14
  I can't go through with this, not yet, end it,
• 2:18
  I tell Greta. Greta steps towards Susie. Susie reacts, but
• 2:23
  she isn't quick enough. Greta pulls something from her pocket
• 2:26
  and touches Susie on the forearm. Susie drops like a puppet,
• 2:30
  out cold. We put her back into the search tank,
• 2:35
  plumb her back in, and close the lid. She won't
• 2:39
  remember anything, Greta says.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: The conversation never left her short term memory.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I can go through with this,
• 2:48
  I say. Greta touches me with her other hand. I
• 2:56
  was just trying to ease her into it gently. I
• 2:58
  didn't want to tell her the truth right now, I know.
• 3:02
  Curta says, you're a kind man. Palm, then she kisses me.
• 3:09
  I remembered Archangel as well. That was about where it
• 3:13
  all started to go wrong. We just didn't know it.
• 3:15
  Then we missed our first takeoff slot when Customs found
• 3:19
  a discrepancy in our cargo waybill. It wasn't serious, but
• 3:23
  it took them a while to realize their mistake. By
• 3:26
  the time they did, we knew we were going to
• 3:28
  be sitting on the ground for another eight hours while
• 3:31
  inbound control processed a fleet of bolt carriers. I told
• 3:35
  Susie and Ray the news. Susie took it pretty well,
• 3:39
  or about as well as Susie ever took that kind
• 3:41
  of thing. I suggested she use the time to scour
• 3:44
  the docks for any hot syntax patches, anything that might
• 3:47
  shave a day or two off our return trip. Company authorized.
• 3:52
  She asked, I don't care, I said, what about Ray?
• 3:57
  Susie asked, is he going to sit there drinking tea
• 4:00
  while I work for my pay? I smiled. They had
• 4:04
  a bickering love hate thing going on. No, Ray can
• 4:09
  do something useful as well. He can take a look
• 4:11
  at the Q planes. Nothing wrong with those planes, Ray said.
• 4:17
  I took off my old ashanti industrial bibcap, scratched my
• 4:20
  bald spot, and turned to the jibman. Right then, it
• 4:24
  won't take you long to check them over, will it? Whatever? Skip.
• 4:30
  The thing I liked about Ray was that he always
• 4:32
  knew when he'd lost an argument. He gathered his kit
• 4:35
  and went out to check over the planes. I watched
• 4:38
  him climb the jib ladder tools hanging from his belt.
• 4:42
  Susie got her face masked, long black coat, and left,
• 4:46
  vanishing into the vapor haze of the docks, boot heels
• 4:49
  clicking into the distance. Long after she'd passed out of sight,
• 4:53
  I left the Blue Goose, walking in the opposite direction
• 4:56
  of Susie. Overhead, the bulk carriers slid in, one after
• 5:00
  the other. You heard them long before you saw them.
• 5:03
  Mournful cetacean moans cut down through the piss yellow clouds
• 5:07
  over the port. When they emerged, you saw dark holes,
• 5:11
  scabbed and scarred by the blocky extrusions of syntax. Pattering
• 5:15
  jibs and cue planes retracted from landing in undercarriages, clutching
• 5:18
  down like talons. The carriers stopped over their allocated wells
• 5:23
  and lowered down a scream of thrust. Docking gantries closed
• 5:27
  around them like grasping skeletal fingers. Cargo handling sores planted
• 5:32
  out of their holding pens, some of them autonomous, some
• 5:34
  of them still being ridden by trainers. There was a
• 5:38
  shocking silence as the engines cut, until the next carrier
• 5:41
  began to approach through the clouds. I always liked watching
• 5:45
  ships coming and going, even when they're holding my own
• 5:48
  ship on the ground. I couldn't read the syntax, but
• 5:51
  I knew these ships had come in all the way
• 5:53
  from the rift. The Aquala Rift is about as far
• 5:56
  out as anyone ever goes at median tunnel speed. It's
• 6:00
  a year from the center of the local bubble. I've
• 6:03
  been out that way once in my life. I've seen
• 6:07
  the view from the near side of the rift like
• 6:09
  a good tourist. It was far enough for me. When
• 6:14
  there was a lull in the landing pattern, I ducked
• 6:16
  into a bar and found an aperture authority booth that
• 6:19
  took a shanty credit. I sat in the seat and
• 6:22
  recorded a thirty second message to Katerina. I told her
• 6:26
  I was on my way back, but that we were
• 6:27
  stuck on an archangel for another few hours. I warned
• 6:31
  her that the delay might cascade through to our tunnel routing,
• 6:34
  depending on how busy things were at the authorities end.
• 6:38
  Based on past experience, an eight hour groundhold might become
• 6:41
  a two day hold at the surge point. I told
• 6:44
  her I'd be back, but she shouldn't worry if it
• 6:46
  was a few days late. Outside, a diplodocus slouched by
• 6:50
  with a freight container strapped between its legs. I told
• 6:53
  Katerina I loved her and couldn't wait to get back home.
• 6:57
  While I walked back to the blue Goose, I thought
• 6:59
  of the message racing ahead of me, transmitted at light
• 7:02
  speed up system then copied into the memory buffer of
• 7:05
  the next ongoing ship. Chances were that particular ship wasn't
• 7:09
  headed to Baranquia or anywhere near it. The aperture Authority
• 7:14
  would have to relay the message from ship to ship
• 7:16
  until it reached its destination. I might even reach Baranquia
• 7:20
  ahead of it, But in all my years of delays,
• 7:22
  that had only happened once the system worked all right. Overhead,
• 7:27
  a white passenger liner had been slotted in between the
• 7:30
  bolt carriers. I lifted up my mask to get a
• 7:33
  better look at it. I got a hit of ozone
• 7:36
  fuel and dinosaur dung. That was archangel alright. You couldn't
• 7:41
  mistake it for any other place in the bubble. There
• 7:44
  were four hundred girls out there, up to a dozen
• 7:47
  surface ports on every planet, and none of them smelled
• 7:49
  bad in quite the same way. Tom. I followed the voice.
• 7:54
  It was Ray standing by the dock. You finished checking
• 7:57
  those planes, I asked. Ray shook his head. That's why
• 8:02
  I wanted to talk to you about. They were a
• 8:04
  little off alignment. So, seeing as we're going to be
• 8:07
  sitting here for eight hours, I decided to run a
• 8:09
  full recalibration. I nodded. That was the idea. So what's
• 8:15
  the prob. The prob is a slot just opened up.
• 8:20
  Tower says we can lift off in thirty minutes. I shrugged.
• 8:25
  Then we'll lift, but I haven't finished the recow. As
• 8:29
  it is, things are worse than before I started lifting.
• 8:31
  Now would not be a good idea. You know how
• 8:34
  the tower works, I said, Miss two offered slots. You
• 8:38
  could be on the ground for days. Well, no one
• 8:41
  wants to get back home sooner than I do, Ray said,
• 8:45
  so cheer up. She'll be rough in the tunnel. It
• 8:49
  won't be a smooth ride home. I shrugged. Do we care,
• 8:54
  we'll be asleep. Well, it's academic. We can't leave without Susie.
• 9:00
  I heard boot heels clicking toward us. Susie came out
• 9:03
  of the fog, tugging her own mask aside. No joy
• 9:08
  with the rune monkeys. She said, nothing they were selling.
• 9:12
  I hadn't seen a million times before, fucking cowboys. It
• 9:16
  doesn't matter, I said, we're leaving anyway. Race swore. I
• 9:22
  pretended I hadn't heard him. I was always the last
• 9:29
  one into a surge tank. I never went under until
• 9:32
  I was sure we were about to get the green light.
• 9:35
  It gave me a chance to check things over. Things
• 9:38
  could always go wrong, no matter how good the crew.
• 9:41
  The Blue Goose had come up to a stop near
• 9:43
  the AA beacon that marked the surge point. There were
• 9:47
  a few other ships ahead of us in the queue,
• 9:49
  plus the usual swarm of AA service craft. Through an
• 9:53
  observation blister, I was able to watch the larger ships
• 9:56
  to part one by one, Accelerating at maximum power, they
• 10:00
  seemed to streak toward a complete featureless part of the sky.
• 10:05
  Their jibs were spread wide, and the smooth lines of
• 10:07
  their holes were gnarled and disfigured. With the cryptic, alien
• 10:10
  ruins of the routing syntax. At twenty g's it was
• 10:13
  as if a huge, invisible hand snatched them away into
• 10:16
  the distance. Ninety seconds later, there'd be a pale green
• 10:20
  flash from a thousand kilometers away. I twisted around in
• 10:24
  the blister. There were the four shortened symbols of our
• 10:28
  routing syntax. Each ruin of the script was formed from
• 10:32
  a matrix of millions of hexagonal platelets. The platelets were
• 10:36
  on motors, so they could be pushed in or out
• 10:38
  from the hull. Ask the aperture authority and they'll tell
• 10:43
  you that the syntax is now fully understood. This is true,
• 10:47
  but only up to a point. After two centuries of study,
• 10:51
  human machines can now construct and interpret the syntax with
• 10:54
  an inacceptably low failure rate. Given a desired testimation, they
• 10:59
  can assemble a string of runes that will almost always
• 11:02
  be accepted by the aperture's own machinery. Furthermore, that can
• 11:06
  almost always guarantee that the desired routing is the one
• 11:10
  that the aperture machinery will provide. In short, you usually
• 11:15
  get where you want to go take a simple point
• 11:19
  to point transfer like the Hiraki run. In that case,
• 11:22
  there is no real disadvantage in using automatic syntax generators.
• 11:26
  But for long trajectories, those that may involve six or
• 11:30
  seven transits between aperture hubs machines lose the edge. They
• 11:34
  find a solution, but usually it isn't the optimum one.
• 11:38
  That's where sintax runners come in. People like Susi have
• 11:41
  an intuitive grasp of sintex solutions. They dream in ruins.
• 11:46
  When they see a poorly constructed script, they feel it
• 11:49
  like a toothache. It affronts them. A good syntax runner
• 11:53
  can shave days off a route for a company like
• 11:56
  a shanty industrial. That can make a lot of difference.
• 12:01
  But I wasn't a syntax runner. I could tell when
• 12:04
  something had gone wrong with the platelets, but I had
• 12:07
  to trust that Susie had done her job. I had
• 12:09
  no other choice, but I knew Susi wouldn't screw things up.
• 12:13
  I twisted around and looked back the other way. Now
• 12:16
  that we were in space, the qplanes had deployed. They
• 12:19
  were swung out from the hole on triple hundred meters
• 12:21
  long jibs like the arms of a grapple. I'd checked
• 12:26
  that they were locked in their fully extended positions, and
• 12:28
  that the status lights were all in the green. The
• 12:31
  jibs were Ray's area. He'd been checking the alignment of
• 12:34
  the ski shaped cuplanes when I ordered him to close
• 12:37
  up ship and prepare to lift. I couldn't see any
• 12:40
  visible indication that they were out of alignment. But then again,
• 12:43
  it wouldn't take much to make our trip home bumpier
• 12:45
  than usual. But, as I told Ray, who cared, the
• 12:50
  Blue Goose could take a little tunnel turbulence it was
• 12:53
  built to. I'd checked the surge point again, only three
• 12:58
  ships ahead of us. I went back to the surge
• 13:00
  tanks and checked that Susie and Ray were all right.
• 13:04
  Ray's tank had been customized at the same time that
• 13:06
  Susie had had hers done. It was full of images
• 13:09
  of what Susie called the BMV, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
• 13:15
  The BMV was always in a spacesuit carrying a little
• 13:18
  space suited Jesus. Their helmets were airbrushed gold halos. The
• 13:23
  artwork had a cheap hasty look to it. I assumed
• 13:26
  Ray hadn't spent as much as Susie. Quickly, I stripped
• 13:30
  down to my underclothes. I plumbed into my own unpainted
• 13:34
  surge tank and closed the lid. The buffering gel sloshed
• 13:37
  in within about twenty seconds. I was already feeling drowsy
• 13:42
  by the time traffic control gave us the green light.
• 13:45
  I'd be asleep. I've done it a thousand times. There
• 13:49
  was no fear, no apprehension, just a tiny flicker of regret.
• 13:54
  I've never seen an aperture. Then again, very few people
• 13:58
  have witnesses pour. A doughnut shaped lump of dark chondrite
• 14:02
  asteroid about two kilometers across. The entire middle section has
• 14:07
  been cored out, with the inner part of the ring
• 14:09
  faced by the quixotic matter machinery of the aperture itself.
• 14:13
  They say the q matter machinery twinkles and moves all
• 14:16
  the while like the ticking innards of a very complicated clock,
• 14:20
  But the monitoring systems of the aperture authority detect no
• 14:24
  movement at all. It's alien technology. We have no idea
• 14:28
  how it works, or even who made it. Maybe in hindsight.
• 14:31
  It's better not to be able to see it. It's
• 14:35
  enough to dream and then awake and know that you're
• 14:39
  somewhere else.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Try a different approach. Tell her the truth this time.
• 14:47
  Maybe she'll take it easier than you think.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: There's no way I can tell her the truth. Greta
• 14:53
  leans one hip against the wall, one hand still in
• 14:56
  her pocket.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Then tell her something halfway truthful.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: We unplumbed, Susie and hauler out of the searge tank.
• 15:06
  Where are we? She asks, then to Greta, who are you?
• 15:13
  I wonder if some of the last conversation did make
• 15:16
  it out of Susie's short term memory. After all, Greta
• 15:20
  works here, I say, where's here? I remember what Greta
• 15:25
  told me. A station in Sheddar sector. That's not where
• 15:31
  we're meant to be. Tom, I nod. I know there
• 15:36
  was a mistake, a routing error. Susie's already shaking her head.
• 15:42
  There was nothing wrong. I know it wasn't your fault.
• 15:47
  I help her in her ship close. She's still shivering,
• 15:50
  her muscles reacting to movement after so much time in
• 15:53
  the tank. The syntax was good, then what the system
• 15:58
  made a mistake?
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Not you.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Shud Our sector. Susie says that would put us about
• 16:07
  ten days off our schedule, wouldn't it. I try and
• 16:11
  remember what Greta said to me the first time, how
• 16:14
  to know this stuff by heart. But Susie's the routing expert,
• 16:16
  not me. That sounds about right, I say, But Susie
• 16:22
  shakes her head. Then we're not in shud Our sector.
• 16:28
  I try to sound pleasantly surprised. We're not. I've been
• 16:32
  in that tank for a lot longer than a few days, Tom,
• 16:35
  I know I can feel it in every fucking bone
• 16:38
  in my body. So where are we? I turned to Greta.
• 16:43
  I can't believe this is happening again, end it? I say.
• 16:49
  Greta steps towards Susie. You know that as soon as
• 16:57
  I woke up, I knew everything was wrong. Cliche. You've
• 17:01
  probably heard it a thousand times and a thousand bars
• 17:03
  across the bubble, wherever ship crews swamped tall tails over
• 17:07
  flat company's subsidized beer. The trouble is that sometimes that's
• 17:13
  exactly the way it happens. I never felt good after
• 17:17
  a period in the sarge tank, but the only time
• 17:20
  I had ever come around feeling anywhere near this bad was.
• 17:24
  After that trip, I took to the edge of the bubble,
• 17:28
  mulling this but knowing there was nothing I could do
• 17:31
  about it until I was out of the tank. It
• 17:33
  took me half an hour of painful work to free
• 17:35
  myself from the connections. Every muscle fiber in my body
• 17:40
  felt like it had been shredded. Unfortunately, the sense of
• 17:45
  wrongness didn't end with the tank. The Blue Goose was
• 17:49
  much too quiet. We should have been heading away from
• 17:52
  the last exit aperture after our routing, but the distant,
• 17:56
  comforting rumble of the fusion engines wasn't there at all.
• 18:00
  That meant we were in free fall. Not good. I
• 18:05
  floated out of the tank, grabbed a hand hold, and
• 18:08
  levered myself around to view the other two tanks. Ray's
• 18:13
  largest BMV stared back radiantly from the cowl of his tank.
• 18:18
  The bio indicas were all in The Green Ray was
• 18:21
  still unconscious, but there was nothing wrong with him. Same
• 18:25
  story with Susy. Some automated system had decided I was
• 18:30
  the only one who needed waking. A few minutes later,
• 18:34
  I had made my way to the same observation blister
• 18:37
  i'd used to check the ship before the surge. I
• 18:40
  pushed my head into the scuffed glass half dome and
• 18:43
  looked around. We'd arrived somewhere. The Blue Goose was sitting
• 18:49
  in a huge zero gravity parking bay. The chamber was
• 18:53
  an elongated cylinder hexagonal in cross section. The walls were
• 18:59
  a smear of service machinery, squat modules, sneaking umbilical lines,
• 19:05
  the retracted cradles of unused docking berths. Whichever way I looked,
• 19:10
  I saw other ships locked into cradles every make and
• 19:14
  class you could think of, every possible configuration of hull
• 19:17
  design compatible with aperture transitions. Service lights threw a warm
• 19:22
  golden glow on the scene. Now and then the whole
• 19:26
  chamber was bathed in the suttering violet flicker of a
• 19:29
  cutting torch. It was a repair facility. I was just
• 19:34
  starting to mole on that when I saw something extend
• 19:37
  itself from the wall of the chamber. It was a
• 19:40
  telescopic docking tunnel groping toward our ship. Through the windows.
• 19:45
  In the side of the tunnel, I saw figures floating,
• 19:48
  pulling themselves along hand overhand. I sighed and started making
• 19:53
  my way to the airlock. By the time when I
• 20:00
  reached the lock, they were already through the first stage
• 20:03
  of the cycle. Nothing wrong with that. There was no
• 20:07
  good reason to prevent foreign parties boarding a vessel. But
• 20:10
  it was just a tiny bit impolite. But perhaps they'd
• 20:15
  assumed we were all asleep. The door slid open. You're awake,
• 20:22
  a man said, Captain Thomas god Lapet of the Blue Goose,
• 20:27
  isn't it I guess so, I said, mind if we
• 20:32
  come in. There were about half a dozen of them,
• 20:36
  and they were already coming in. They all wore slightly time
• 20:40
  worn oh sure, overalls, flashed with too many company sigils,
• 20:46
  My hackles rose. I didn't really like the way they
• 20:49
  were barging in. What's up? I said, where are we?
• 20:57
  Where do you think? The man said he had a
• 21:00
  full face of stubble with bad yellow teeth. I was
• 21:04
  impressed by that. Having bad teeth these days took a
• 21:08
  lot of work. It was years since since seen anyone
• 21:11
  who had the same dedication to the art. I'm really
• 21:14
  hoping you're not going to tell me we're still stuck
• 21:16
  in archangel system. I said, no, you made it through
• 21:22
  the gate. And there was a screw up routing error.
• 21:28
  You didn't pop out of the right aperture. Ah Christ,
• 21:34
  I took off my bib cap. It never rains. Something
• 21:38
  went wrong with the insertion right, maybe maybe not? Who
• 21:43
  knows how these things happen. All we know is you
• 21:46
  aren't supposed to be here, right? And where is here?
• 21:53
  Sun Laki's station Shadar Sector. He said it as though
• 21:58
  he was already losing interest, as if this was a
• 22:01
  routine he went through several times a day. He might
• 22:05
  have been losing interest, but I wasn't. I'd never heard
• 22:09
  of Sumlaki station, but I'd certainly heard of Shadar sector.
• 22:13
  Shadar was a k supergiant out toward the edge of
• 22:17
  the local bubble. It defined one of the seventy odd
• 22:21
  navigational sectors across the whole bubble. Did I mention the
• 22:24
  bubble already? You know how the Milky Way galaxy looks.
• 22:35
  You've seen it a thousand times in paintings and computer simulations.
• 22:40
  A bright central bulge at the galactic core, with lazily
• 22:44
  curved spiral arms flung out from the hub. Each arm
• 22:47
  composed of hundreds of billions of stars, ranging from the
• 22:52
  dimmest slow burning dwarfs to the hottest supergiants teetering on
• 22:56
  the edge of supernova extinction. Now zoom in on one
• 23:02
  arm of the Milky Way. There's the Sun orange yellow,
• 23:07
  about two thirds out from the center of the galaxy.
• 23:11
  Lanes and folds of dust swaddle the Sun out to
• 23:14
  distances of tens of thousands of light years. Yet the
• 23:18
  Sun itself is sitting right in the middle of a
• 23:21
  four hundred light year wide hole in the dust, a
• 23:25
  bubble in which the density is about a twentieth of
• 23:29
  its average value. That's the local bubble. It's as if
• 23:34
  God blew a hole in the dust just for us, except,
• 23:38
  of course, it wasn't God. It was a supernova about
• 23:43
  a million years ago. Now look further out and there
• 23:48
  are more bubbles, their walls intersecting and merging, forming a
• 23:53
  vast froth like structure tens of thousands of light years across.
• 23:57
  There are the structures of Loop one and Loop to,
• 24:01
  and the Lindblad Ring. There are even super dense knots
• 24:05
  where the dust is almost too thick to be seen
• 24:07
  through it. All black calls like the Taurus or row
• 24:11
  Afaiucci dark clouds or the Aquila rift itself lying outside
• 24:18
  the local bubble. The rift is the furthest point in
• 24:21
  the galaxy we've ever traveled to. It's not a question
• 24:26
  of endurance or nerve. There simply isn't a way to
• 24:29
  get beyond it, at least not within the faster than
• 24:32
  light network of aperture lynks. The rabbit warren of possible
• 24:37
  routes just doesn't reach any further. Most destinations, including most
• 24:43
  of those on the Blue Gooses. Itinerary didn't even get
• 24:46
  you beyond the local bubble. For us, it didn't matter.
• 24:52
  There's still a lot of commerce you can do within
• 24:55
  a hundred light years of Earth. But Shadar was right
• 24:59
  on the periphery of the bubble where dust density began
• 25:03
  to ramp up to normal galactic levels, two hundred and
• 25:07
  twenty eight light years from Mother Earth. Again not good.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: I know this is a shock for you, but it's
• 25:17
  not as bad as you think it is.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I looked at the woman who had just spoken, medium height,
• 25:24
  a kind of face they called Elvin, with slanted ash,
• 25:28
  gray eyes and a bob of shoulder length chrome white hair.
• 25:33
  The face achingly familiar.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: It isn't I wouldn't say so, Tom, After all, It's
• 25:42
  given us the chance to catch up on old times,
• 25:45
  hasn't it?
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: She smiled. Greta, I asked, disbelievingly.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: She nodded for my sins.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: My God, it is you, isn't it.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: I wasn't sure you'd recognize me, especially after all this time.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: You didn't have much trouble recognizing me.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: I didn't have to. The moment you popped out, we
• 26:11
  picked up your recovery transponder, told us the name of
• 26:14
  your ship, who owned her, who was flying it, what
• 26:18
  you were carrying, where you were supposed to be headed.
• 26:21
  When I heard it was you, I made sure I
• 26:23
  was part of the reception team. But don't worry. It's
• 26:27
  not like you've changed all that much.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Well you haven't either, I said. It wasn't quite true.
• 26:36
  But who honestly wants to hear that they look about
• 26:38
  ten years older than the last time you saw them,
• 26:41
  even if they still don't look all that bad with it?
• 26:45
  I thought about how she had looked, naked, memories that
• 26:48
  had kept buried for a decade spooling into daylight. It
• 26:52
  shamed me that they were still so vivid, as if
• 26:55
  some furative part of my subconscious had been secretly awarding
• 26:58
  them through years of marriage and fidelity. Greta half smiled.
• 27:06
  It was as if she knew exactly what I was thinking.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: You were never a good liar, Tom, Yeah.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I guess I need some practice. There was an awkward silence.
• 27:20
  Neither of us seemed to know what to say next.
• 27:23
  While we hesitated, the others floated around us, saying nothing. Well,
• 27:29
  I said, who would have guessed we'd end up meeting
• 27:33
  like this? Gretta nodded and offered the palms of her
• 27:37
  hands in a kind of apology.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: I'm just sorry we aren't meeting under better circumstances. But
• 27:44
  if it's any consolation, what happened wasn't at all your fault.
• 27:48
  We checked your syntax and there wasn't a mistake. It's
• 27:52
  just that now and then the system throws a glitch.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Oy. No one likes to talk about that very much.
• 28:00
  I said, it.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Could have been worse, Tom, I remember what you used
• 28:05
  to tell me about space travel.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which particular pearl of wisdom would that have been?
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: If you're in a position to moan about a situation,
• 28:15
  you've got no right to be moaning.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Christ did I actually say that?
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: And I bet you're regretting it now, but look, it
• 28:24
  really isn't that bad. You're only twenty days off schedule.
• 28:29
  Colding says you'll only need a day of damage repair
• 28:32
  before you can move off again, and then another twenty
• 28:36
  twenty five days before you reach your destination, depending on
• 28:39
  routing patterns. That's less than six weeks. So you lose
• 28:43
  the bonus on this one big deal. You're all in
• 28:47
  good shape and your ship only needs a little work,
• 28:49
  So why don't you just bite the bullet and sign
• 28:52
  the repair paperwork.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: I'm not looking forward to another twenty days in the
• 28:57
  surge tank. There's something else as.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Well, which is I was about to.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Tell her about Katerina, how she'd have been expecting me
• 29:06
  back already. Instead, I said, worried about the others, Susie
• 29:12
  and Ray. They've got families expecting them. They'll be worried.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: I understand. Susie and Ray. They're still asleep, aren't they
• 29:21
  still in their surge tanks?
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, I said, guardedly.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Keep them that way until you're on your way. There's
• 29:30
  no sense in worrying them about their families either. It's
• 29:34
  kinder if you say so. Trust me on this one, Tom,
• 29:38
  This isn't the first time I've handled this kind of situation.
• 29:42
  Doubt it'll be the last either.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: I stayed in a hotel overnight in another part of Sumwacke.
• 29:50
  The hotel was an echoing, multi level prefab structure sunk
• 29:54
  deep in a bedrock. You must have had a capacity
• 29:58
  for hundreds of guests, but at the moment only a
• 30:00
  handful of the room seemed to be occupied. I slept
• 30:04
  fitfully and got up early. In the atrium, I saw
• 30:08
  a bib capped worker in rubber gloves removing diseased carp
• 30:11
  from a small ornamental pond. Watching him pick out the
• 30:16
  ailing metallic orange fish. I had a flash of deja vus,
• 30:20
  What was it about dismal hotels and dying carp Before breakfast,
• 30:26
  bleakly alert, even though I didn't really feel as if
• 30:29
  I'd had a good night's sleep, I visited colding and
• 30:32
  got a fresh update on the repair schedule two or
• 30:35
  three days. He said it was a day last night,
• 30:41
  holding shrugged. You've got a problem with the service. Find
• 30:44
  someone else to fix your ship. Then he stuck his
• 30:48
  little finger into the corner of his mouth and began
• 30:50
  to dig between his teeth. Nice to see someone who
• 30:54
  really enjoys his work, I said. I left colding before
• 30:58
  my mood worsened too much, making my way to a
• 31:00
  different part of the station. Gretta had suggested we meet
• 31:04
  for breakfast and catch up on old times. She was
• 31:07
  there when I arrived, sitting at a table in an
• 31:10
  outdoor terrace under a red and white striped canopy, sipping
• 31:14
  orange juice. Above us was a dome several hundred meters wide,
• 31:18
  projecting a cloudless holographic sky. It had the hard enamable
• 31:23
  blue of midsummer.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: How's the hotel, she asked.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: After I'd ordered a coffee from the waiter. Not bad.
• 31:32
  No one seems very keen on conversation, though, Is it me?
• 31:35
  Or does that place have all the cheery ambience of
• 31:38
  a sinking ocean liner.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: It's just this place. Everyone who comes here is pissed
• 31:43
  off about it. Either they got transferred here and they're
• 31:46
  pissed off about that, or they ended up here by
• 31:49
  a routing error and they're pissed off about that. Instead,
• 31:53
  take your pick.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: No one's happy, only the.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: Ones who know they're getting out of here soon.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Would that include you?
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: No, she said, I'm more or less stuck here, but
• 32:04
  I'm okay about it. I guess I'm the exception that
• 32:08
  proves the rule.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: The waiters were glass Mannikins, the kind that had been
• 32:13
  fashionable in the core worlds about twenty years ago. One
• 32:17
  of them placed a croissant in front of me and
• 32:19
  poured scalding black coffee into my cup. Well, it's good to.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: See you, you too, Tom.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Gretta finished her orange juice and then took a corner
• 32:28
  of my croissant for herself without asking.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: I heard you got married. Yes, Well, aren't you going
• 32:35
  to tell me about her?
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: I drank some of my coffee. Her name's Katerina, nice name.
• 32:41
  She works in the Department of Bioremediation on Kagawa Kids.
• 32:46
  Greta asked, not yet. It wouldn't be easy, the amount
• 32:50
  of time we both spend away from home. She had
• 32:53
  a mouthful of croissant.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: But one day you might think about it.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, nothing's ruled out, I said. As flattered as
• 33:01
  I was that she was taking such an interest in me,
• 33:04
  the surgical precision of her questions left me slightly uncomfortable.
• 33:09
  There was no thrust in parry, no fishing for information.
• 33:13
  That kind of directness unnerved, But at least it allowed
• 33:17
  me to ask the same questions. What about you? Then?
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Nothing very exciting. I got married a year or so
• 33:24
  after I last saw you. A man called Marcel.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Marcel, I said, ruminatively, as if the name had cosmic significance. Well,
• 33:36
  I'm happy for you. I take it he's here too.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: No, our work took us in different directions. We're still married.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: But Greta left the sentence hanging. It can't be easy,
• 33:51
  I said.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: If it was meant to work, we'd have found a
• 33:55
  way anyway. Don't feel too sorry for either of us.
• 34:00
  We've both got our work. I wouldn't say I was
• 34:03
  any less happy than the last time we met.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Well, that's good, I said. Redda leaned over and touched
• 34:10
  my hand. Her fingernails were midnight black with a blue sheen.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Look, this is really presumptious of me. It's one thing
• 34:19
  asking to meet up for breakfast. It would have been
• 34:22
  rude not to. But how would you like to meet
• 34:25
  again later? It's really nice to eat here in the evening.
• 34:30
  They turned down the lights. The view through the dome
• 34:34
  is really something.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: I looked up into the endless holographic sky. I thought
• 34:40
  it was faked.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Oh it is, but don't let that spoil it for you.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: She said. I settled in front of the camera and
• 34:52
  started speaking Katarina. I said, hello, I hope you're all
• 35:00
  all right. But now I hope someone from the company
• 35:03
  will have been in touch. If they haven't, I'm pretty
• 35:05
  sure you'll have made your own inquiries. I'm not sure
• 35:08
  what they told you, but I promise you we're safe
• 35:12
  and sound and that we're coming home. I'm calling from
• 35:16
  somewhere called Sumlaki Station, a repair facility on the edge
• 35:19
  of Cedar sector. It's not much to look at, just
• 35:23
  a warn of tunnels and centrifuges dug into a pitch
• 35:26
  black D type asteroid about half a light year from
• 35:29
  the nearest star. The only reason it's here at all
• 35:33
  is because there happens to be an aperture next door.
• 35:36
  That's how we got here in the first place. Some
• 35:39
  way or another, blue goose took a wrong turn in
• 35:41
  the network, what they call a routing error. The goose
• 35:46
  came in last night local time, and I've been in
• 35:49
  a hotel since then. I didn't call last night because
• 35:52
  I was too tired and disoriented. After coming out of
• 35:55
  the tank, and I didn't know how long we were
• 35:57
  going to be here. Seemed better to wait until more
• 36:00
  when we'd have a better idea of the damage to
• 36:02
  the ship. It's nothing serious, just a few bits and
• 36:05
  pieces buckled during the transit, but it means we're going
• 36:09
  to be here for another couple of days. Colding he's
• 36:13
  the repaired chief, says three at the most. By the
• 36:17
  time we get back on course, however, will be about
• 36:20
  forty five days behind schedule. I paused, eyeing the incrementing
• 36:26
  cost indicator before I sat down in the booth. I
• 36:30
  always had an eloquent and economical speech queued up in
• 36:33
  my head, one that conveyed exactly what needed to be
• 36:36
  said with the measure and grace of a soliloquy. But
• 36:40
  my mind always dried up as soon as I opened
• 36:42
  my mouth, and instead of an actor, I ended up
• 36:45
  sounding like a small time thief, concocting some fumbling alibi
• 36:48
  in the presence of a quick witted interrogator. I smiled
• 36:53
  awkwardly and continued, it kills me to think this message
• 36:57
  is going to take so long to get to you,
• 37:00
  But if there's a silver lightning, it's that I won't
• 37:02
  be far behind it. By the time you get this,
• 37:05
  I should be home only a couple of days later.
• 37:08
  So don't waste your money replying to this, because by
• 37:10
  the time you get it, I'll already have left Sumlaki station.
• 37:13
  Just stay where you are, and I promise I'll be
• 37:16
  home soon. That was it. There was nothing more I
• 37:20
  needed to say other than I miss you, delivered after
• 37:24
  a moment's pause. I meant it to sound emphatic, but
• 37:28
  when I replayed the recording, it sounded more like an afterthought.
• 37:32
  I could have recorded it again, but I doubted that
• 37:35
  I would have been any happier. Instead, I just committed
• 37:38
  the existing message for transmission and wondered how long it
• 37:41
  would have to wait before going on its way. Since
• 37:45
  it seemed unlikely that there was a vast flow of
• 37:47
  commerce in and out of Sumlaki, our ship might be
• 37:50
  the first suitable outbound vessel. I emerged from the booth.
• 37:56
  For some reason, I felt guilty, as if I had
• 37:58
  been in some way neglectful. It took me a while
• 38:02
  before I realized what was playing on my mind. I
• 38:06
  told Katerina about Sumlaki's station. I'd even told her about
• 38:10
  Colding and the damage to the Blue Goose. But I
• 38:13
  hadn't told her about Greta. It's just not working with Susie.
• 38:24
  She's too smart, too well attuned to the physiological correlatives
• 38:28
  of surge tank immersion. I can give her all the
• 38:31
  reassurances in the world, but she knows she's been under
• 38:34
  too long for this to be anything other than a
• 38:36
  truly epic screw up. She knows that we aren't just
• 38:40
  talking weeks or even months of delay. Here. Every nerve
• 38:44
  in her body's screaming that message into her skull. I
• 38:50
  had dreams, she says, when the grogginess fades. What kind
• 38:58
  dreams that I kept waking? Dreams that you were pulling
• 39:01
  me out of the surge tank, you and someone else.
• 39:06
  I do my best to smile. I'm alone, but Greta
• 39:09
  isn't far away. A hypodermics in my pocket now. Personally,
• 39:15
  I always get bad dreams coming out of the tank.
• 39:18
  I say, these felt real. Your story kept changing, but
• 39:23
  you kept telling me we were somewhere, that we'd gone
• 39:27
  a little off course, but that it was nothing to
• 39:29
  worry about. So much for Greta's reassurance that Susie will
• 39:34
  remember nothing after our aborted efforts at waking her. Seems
• 39:38
  that her short term memory isn't quite as fallible as
• 39:41
  we'd like. It's funny you should say that, I tell her,
• 39:47
  because actually we are a little off course. She's sharper
• 39:52
  with every breath. Susie was always the best of us
• 39:56
  at coming out of the tank. Tell me how far
• 40:00
  Tom farther than I'd like? She bawls her fist. I
• 40:07
  can't tell if it's aggression or some lingering neuromuscular effect
• 40:11
  of her time in the tank. How far beyond the bubble?
• 40:17
  Beyond the bubble? Yes, her voice grows small and childlike.
• 40:23
  Tell me, Tom, are we beyond the rift? I can
• 40:29
  hear the fear. I understand what she's going through. It's
• 40:33
  the nightmare that all ship crews live with on every trip,
• 40:36
  that something will go wrong with the routing, something so
• 40:39
  severe that they'll end up on the very edge of
• 40:41
  the network, that they'll end up so far from home
• 40:45
  that getting back will take years, not months, And that,
• 40:50
  of course, years will have already passed even before they
• 40:54
  begin the return trip, that loved ones will be years
• 40:58
  older when they reach home, if they're still there, if
• 41:03
  they still remember you, or want to remember if they're
• 41:06
  still recognizable or alive. Beyond the Aquila Rift, It's shorthand
• 41:14
  for the trip no one ever hopes to make by accident,
• 41:18
  the one that will screw up the rest of your life,
• 41:21
  the one that creates the ghosts you see haunting the
• 41:24
  shadows of company bars across the whole bubble, men and
• 41:29
  women ripped out of time, cut adrift from families and
• 41:33
  lovers by an accident of alien technology we use but
• 41:37
  barely comprehend. Yes, I say, or beyond the rift, Susie screams,
• 41:48
  knitting her face into a mask of anger and denial.
• 41:52
  My hand is cold around the hypodermic. I consider using it.
• 42:03
  I received a new repair estimate from Colding five six days.
• 42:07
  Maybe this time I didn't even argue. I just shrugged
• 42:11
  and walked out and wondered how long it would be
• 42:13
  next time. That evening, I sat down at the table
• 42:17
  where Greta and I had met over breakfast. The dining
• 42:21
  area had been well lit before, but now only illumination
• 42:24
  came from the table lamps and the subdued lighting panels
• 42:27
  set into the paving. In the distance, a glass mannequin
• 42:31
  cycled from empty table to empty table, playing Asturias on
• 42:36
  a glass guitar. There were no other patrons dining tonight.
• 42:41
  I didn't have to wait long for Greta.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm late, Tom.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: I turned to her as she approached the table. I
• 42:50
  liked the way she walked in the low gravity of
• 42:52
  the station, the way the subdued lighting traced the arc
• 42:56
  of her hips and waist. She eased into her seat
• 43:00
  and leaned toward me in the manner of a conspirator.
• 43:03
  The lamp on the table through red shadows and gold
• 43:06
  highlights across her face. It took ten years off her age.
• 43:12
  You aren't late, I said, And anyway I had the view.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: It's an improvement, isn't it.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: That wouldn't be saying much, I said, with a smile.
• 43:24
  But yes, it's definitely an improvement.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: I could sit out here all night and just look
• 43:30
  at it. In fact, sometimes that's exactly what I do,
• 43:34
  Just me in a bottle of wine.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: I don't blame you. Instead of the holographic blue, the
• 43:40
  dome was now full of stars. It was like no
• 43:43
  view I'd ever seen from another stationer ship. There were
• 43:47
  furious blue, white stars embedded in what looked like sheets
• 43:51
  of velvet. There were hard gold gems and soft red
• 43:56
  smears like finger smears and pastel. There were streams and
• 44:00
  currents of fainter stars, like a myriad of neon fish
• 44:05
  caught in a snapshot of frozen motion. There were bluffs
• 44:09
  of o sure dust, so rich in three dimensional structure
• 44:13
  that they resembled an exuberant impasto of oil colors, contours
• 44:19
  light years thick, laid on with a trowel. Red or
• 44:23
  pink stars burned through the dust like lanterns. Orphaned worlds
• 44:27
  were caught erupting from the towers, little sperm like shapes
• 44:31
  trailing viscera of dust. Here and there I saw the
• 44:36
  tiny eye like knots of birthing solar systems. There were
• 44:40
  pulsars flashing on and off like navigation beacons. Their differing
• 44:46
  rhythms seemed to set a stately tempo for the entire scene,
• 44:51
  like deathly slow waltz. There seemed too much detail for
• 44:55
  one view, an overwhelming abundance of richness, and yet no
• 45:00
  matter which direction I looked, there was yet more to see,
• 45:04
  as if the dome sensed my attention and concentrated its
• 45:08
  efforts on the spot where my gaze was directed. For
• 45:12
  a moment, I felt a lurching sense of dizziness, and
• 45:16
  though I tried to stop it before I made a
• 45:18
  fool of myself, I found myself grasping the side of
• 45:22
  the table as if to prevent myself from falling into
• 45:25
  the infinite depths of the view.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, it has that effect on people.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Greta said, it's beautiful.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: I said, do you mean beautiful or terrifying?
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: I realized I wasn't sure. It's big, was all I
• 45:43
  could offer.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: Of course, it's faked.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: Greta said, her voice soft now that she was leaning closer.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: The glass and the dome is smart. It exaggerates the
• 45:54
  brightness of the stars so that the human eye registers
• 45:57
  the differences between them. Otherwise the colors aren't unrealistic. Everything
• 46:03
  else you see is also pretty accurate, if you accept
• 46:08
  that certain frequencies have been shifted into the visible band
• 46:12
  and the scale of certain structures has been adjusted.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: She pointed out features for my edification.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: That's the edge of the Taurus dark cloud with the
• 46:22
  pleiades just poking out. That's a filament of the local bubble.
• 46:27
  You see that open cluster.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: She waited for me to answer. Yes, I said, that's.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: The hyadaes over there. You've got beetle juice and Bellatrix.
• 46:40
  I'm impressed, you should be. It cost a lot of money.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: She leaned back a bit so that the shadows dropped
• 46:47
  across her face.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Again, Are you all right, Tom, you seem a bit distracted, I.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Sighed, I just got another prognosis from your friend colding.
• 46:58
  That's enough to put a dent in an anyone's day.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry about that.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: There's something else, too, I said, something that's been bothering
• 47:08
  me since I came out of the tank. Mannikin came
• 47:12
  to take our order. I let Greta choose for me.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: You can talk to me about it, whatever it is, she.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Said, when the mannequin had gone. It isn't easy.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: Something personal. Then, Is it about Katerina?
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: She bit her tongue.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: No, sorry, I shouldn't have said that.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: It's not about Katerina, not exactly anyway. But even as
• 47:39
  I said it, I knew that, in a sense it
• 47:41
  was about Katerina and how long it was going to
• 47:44
  be before we saw each other again.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: Come on, Tom, this is.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Going to sound silly, but I wonder if everyone's being
• 47:54
  straight with me. It's not just Colding, it's you as well.
• 48:00
  When I came out of that tank, I felt the
• 48:02
  same way I felt when i'd been out to the rift, worse,
• 48:06
  if anything. I felt like I'd been in the tank
• 48:09
  for a long long time.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: It feels that way sometimes.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: I know the difference. Greta, trust me on this.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: So what are you saying?
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: The problem was that I wasn't really sure. It was
• 48:23
  one thing to feel a vague sense of unease about
• 48:25
  how long I'd been in the tank. It was another
• 48:28
  to come out and accuse my host of lying, especially
• 48:32
  when she had been so hospitable. Is there any reason
• 48:36
  you'd lie to me?
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: Come off it, Tom, What kind of question is that?
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: As soon as I had said it, it sounded absurd
• 48:44
  and offensive to me as well. I wished I could
• 48:47
  reverse time and start again, ignoring my misgivings. I'm sorry,
• 48:53
  I said stupid. Just put it down to messed up
• 48:57
  biorhythms or something. She reached across the table and took
• 49:02
  my hand, as she had done at breakfast. This time
• 49:06
  she continued to hold it.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: You really feel wrong, don't you.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Colding's games aren't helping, That's for sure. The waiter brought
• 49:16
  our wine, setting it down, the bottle chinking against his
• 49:20
  delicately articulated glass fingers. The Mannikin poured two glasses and
• 49:25
  I sampled mine. Maybe if I had someone else from
• 49:29
  my crew to bitch about it all with, I wouldn't
• 49:32
  feel so bad. I know you said we shouldn't weak
• 49:35
  Susie and Ray, but that was before a one day
• 49:37
  stopover turned into a week. Bretta shrugged.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: If you want to wake them, no one's going to
• 49:45
  stop you. But don't think about ship business. Now. Let's
• 49:51
  not spoil a perfect evening.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: I looked up at the starscape. It was heightened with
• 49:57
  the mad, shimmering intensity of a van and go nightscape.
• 50:02
  It made one feel drunk and ecstatic just to look
• 50:05
  at it. I could possibly spoil it, I asked. What
• 50:18
  happened is that I drank too much wine and ended
• 50:21
  up sleeping with Greta. I'm not sure how much of
• 50:24
  a part of the wine played in it for her.
• 50:27
  If her relationship with Marcel was in as much trouble
• 50:30
  as she'd made out, then obviously she had less to
• 50:32
  lose than I did. Yes, that made it all right,
• 50:37
  didn't it? She this seductress, her own marriage a wreck,
• 50:43
  Me the hapless victim. I'd lapsed, But it wasn't really
• 50:48
  my fault. I'd been alone, far from home, emotionally fragile,
• 50:53
  and she had exploited me. She had softened me up
• 50:56
  with a romantic meal, her trap already spred. Except all
• 51:03
  of that was self justifying bullshit, wasn't it. If my
• 51:08
  own marriage was in such great shape? Why had I
• 51:10
  failed to mention Greta when I called home. At the time,
• 51:14
  I justified that omission as an act of kindness toward
• 51:17
  my wife. Katerina didn't know that Greta and I had
• 51:21
  ever been a couple. But why worry Katerina by mentioning
• 51:24
  another woman, even if I pretended that we'd never met before.
• 51:29
  Except now I could see that I'd failed to mention
• 51:32
  Greta for another reason, entirely because in the back of
• 51:36
  my mind, even then, there had been the possibility that
• 51:41
  we might end up sleeping together. I was already covering
• 51:45
  myself when I called Katerina, already making sure there wouldn't
• 51:49
  be any awkward questions when I got home, as if
• 51:52
  I not only knew what was going to happen, but
• 51:55
  secretly yearned for it. The only problem was that Greta
• 52:00
  had something else in mind. Tom, Greta said, nudging me
• 52:13
  toward wakefulness. She was lying naked next to me, leaning
• 52:17
  on one elbow, with the sheets crumpled down around her hips.
• 52:22
  The light in her room turned her into an abstraction
• 52:25
  of milky blue curves in deep violet shadows. With one
• 52:30
  black nailed finger, she traced a line down my chest
• 52:33
  and said.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: There's something you need to know.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: What I asked?
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: I lied, colding light, we all lied.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: I was too drowsy for her words to have much
• 52:50
  more than a vaguely troubling effect. All I could say
• 52:53
  again was.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: What you are not in some lackey station. You're not
• 53:00
  in shadeer sector.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: I started waking up properly say that again.
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: The routing error was more severe than you were led
• 53:09
  to believe. It took you far beyond the local bubble.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: I groped for anger, even resentment, But all I felt
• 53:18
  was a dizzying sensation of falling. How far out.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: Farther than you thought possible?
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: The next question was obvious, beyond the rift, Yes, she said,
• 53:34
  with the faintest of smiles, as if humoring me in
• 53:37
  a game whose rules and objectives she found ultimately demeaning.
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: Beyond the Aquila Rift, A long long way beyond it.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: I need to know, Greta. She pushed herself from the bed,
• 53:53
  reached for a gown.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: Then get dressed. I'll show you.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: I followed Greta in a daze. She took me to
• 54:11
  the dome again. It was dark, just as it had
• 54:14
  been the night before, with only the lamp lit tables
• 54:17
  to act as beacons. I supposed that the illumination throughout
• 54:21
  Sumlaki's station, or wherever this was, was at the whim
• 54:26
  of its occupants and didn't necessarily have to follow any
• 54:29
  recognizable diurnal cycle. Nonetheless, it was still unsettling to find
• 54:35
  it changed so arbitrarily, even if Greta had the authority
• 54:40
  to turn out the lights when she wanted to. Didn't
• 54:43
  anyone else object? But I didn't see anyone else too object.
• 54:49
  There was no one else around, only a glass mannekin
• 54:53
  standing at attention with a napkin over one arm. She
• 54:57
  sat us at a table.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: I want to drink tom No thanks, For some reason,
• 55:04
  I'm not quite in the mood.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: She touched my wrist.
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: Don't hate me for lying to you. It was done
• 55:12
  out of kindness. I couldn't break the truth to you
• 55:15
  in one go.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: Sharply, I withdrew my hand. Shouldn't I be the judge
• 55:21
  of that? So what is the truth exactly?
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: It's not good, Tom, tell.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: Me, then I'll decide. I didn't see her do anything.
• 55:32
  But suddenly the dome was filled with stars again, just
• 55:35
  as it had been the night before. The view lurched,
• 55:39
  zooming outward. Stars flowed by from all sides like white sleet,
• 55:45
  nebulae ghosted past, and spectral wisps. The sense of motion
• 55:51
  was so compelling that I found myself gripping the table,
• 55:53
  seized by vertigo. Easy, Tom Greta whispered, lurched, swerved, contracted,
• 56:02
  A solid wall of gas slammed past. Now suddenly I
• 56:08
  had the sense that we were outside something that we
• 56:11
  had punched beyond some containing sphere, to find only in
• 56:16
  vague arcs and knots of curdled gas, where the interstellar
• 56:19
  gas density increased. Sharply, of course, it was obvious we
• 56:25
  were beyond the local bubble, and we were still receding.
• 56:32
  I watched the bubble itself contract, becoming just one member
• 56:35
  in the large froth of voids. Instead of individual stars,
• 56:40
  I saw only smudges and moats, aggregations of hundreds of
• 56:44
  thousands of suns. It was like pulling back from a
• 56:47
  close up view of a forest. I could still see clearings,
• 56:53
  but the individual trees had vanished into an amorphous mass,
• 56:58
  and we kept pulling back. Then the expansion slowed and froze.
• 57:04
  I could still make out the local bubble, but only
• 57:07
  because I had been concentrating on it all the way out.
• 57:11
  Otherwise there was nothing to distinguish it from the dozens
• 57:14
  of surrounding voids. So that how far out we've come?
• 57:21
  I asked. Greta shook her head.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: Let me show you something again.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: She did nothing that I was aware of, But the
• 57:30
  bubble I had been looking at was suddenly filled with
• 57:33
  a skein of red lines, like a child's scribble aperture connections,
• 57:40
  I said. As shocked as I was by the fact
• 57:44
  that she had lied to me, and as fearful as
• 57:47
  I was about what the truth might hold, I couldn't
• 57:50
  turn off the professional part of me, the part that
• 57:53
  took pride in recognizing such things.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: Greta nodded, those are the main commute the well mapped
• 58:02
  connections between large colonies and major trading hubs. Now I'll
• 58:07
  add all mapped connections, including those that have only ever
• 58:11
  been traversed by accident.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: The scribble did not change dramatically. It gained a few
• 58:17
  more wild loops and hairpins, including one that reached beyond
• 58:20
  the wall of the bubble to touch the sunward end
• 58:23
  of the Aquila Rift. One or two other additions pierced
• 58:26
  the wall in different directions, but none of them reached
• 58:30
  as far as the rift. Where are we.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: We're at the end of one of those connections. You
• 58:37
  can't see it because it's pointing directly toward.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: You, she smiled slightly.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: I needed to establish the scale that we're dealing with.
• 58:47
  How WHYAE is the local bubble tong four hundred light
• 58:51
  years give or take.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: My patience was wearing thin, but I was still curious.
• 58:58
  Sounds about right?
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: And while I know that aperture travel times vary from
• 59:04
  point to point, with factors depending on network topology and
• 59:08
  syntax optimization, isn't it the case that the average speed
• 59:13
  is about one thousand times faster than light give or take.
• 59:18
  So a journey from one side of the bubble might
• 59:21
  take what half a year, say five or six months
• 59:25
  a year to the Aquila rift.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: You know that already, Greta, We both know it all right.
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: Then consider this.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: And the view contracted again, the bubble dwindling, a succession
• 59:39
  of overlaying structures concealing it, darkness coming into view on
• 59:44
  either side, and the familiar spiral swirl of the Milky
• 59:48
  Way galaxy looming large, hundreds of billions of stars packed
• 59:55
  together in foaming white lanes of sea spume.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: This is the view, Greta said, enhanced, of course, brightened
• 1:00:05
  and filtered for human consumption. But if you had eyes
• 1:00:09
  with near perfect quantum efficiency, and if they happened to
• 1:00:13
  be about a meter wide, this is more or less
• 1:00:17
  what you'd see if you stepped outside the station.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: I don't believe you. What I meant was I didn't
• 1:00:24
  want to believe her.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: Get used to it, Tom, You're a long way out.
• 1:00:32
  The station's orbiting a brown dwarf star in the large
• 1:00:35
  Magellanic cloud. You're one hundred and fifty thousand light years
• 1:00:40
  from home.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: No, I said my voice, little more than a moan
• 1:00:45
  of abject, childlike denial.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: You felt as though you'd spent a long time in
• 1:00:51
  the tank. You were dead right. Subjective time, I don't
• 1:00:55
  know years easily, maybe a decade. But object of time,
• 1:01:01
  the time that passed back home is a lot clearer.
• 1:01:05
  It took Blue Goose one hundred and fifty years to
• 1:01:08
  reach us. Even if you turned back now, you'd have
• 1:01:12
  been away for three hundred years.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: Tom Katerina I said her name like an invocation.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: Katerina is dead, Greta told me she's already been dead
• 1:01:27
  a century.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: How do you adjust to something like that? The answer
• 1:01:39
  is that you can't count on adjusting to it at all.
• 1:01:42
  Not everyone does. Greta told me that she had seen
• 1:01:47
  just about every possible reaction in the spectrum, and the
• 1:01:50
  one thing she had learned was that it was next
• 1:01:52
  to impossible to predict how a given individual would take
• 1:01:55
  the news. She had seen people adjust to the revelation
• 1:01:59
  with little more than a world weary shrug, as if
• 1:02:02
  this were merely the latest in a line of galling
• 1:02:05
  surprises life had thrown at them, no worse in its
• 1:02:08
  way than illness or bereavement or any number of personal setbacks.
• 1:02:14
  She had seen others walk away and kill themselves. Half
• 1:02:17
  an hour later, but the majority, she said, did eventually
• 1:02:22
  come to some kind of accommodation with the truth, however
• 1:02:26
  faltering and painful the process.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: Trust me, Tom, I know you now. I know you
• 1:02:33
  have the emotional strength to get through this. I know
• 1:02:36
  you can learn to live with it.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: But why didn't you tell me straight away as soon
• 1:02:42
  as I came out of the.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: Tank, Because I didn't know if you were going to
• 1:02:45
  be able to take it.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: You waited until after you knew I had a wife.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: No, I waited until after we'd made love, because then
• 1:02:56
  I knew Katerina couldn't mean that much to you.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: Fuck you.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: Fuck me, yes you did.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: That's the point I wanted to strike out against her,
• 1:03:09
  But what I was angry at was not her insinuation,
• 1:03:12
  but the cold hearted truth of it. She was right,
• 1:03:15
  and I knew it. I just didn't want to deal
• 1:03:18
  with that anymore than I wanted to deal with the
• 1:03:21
  here and now. I waited for the anger to subside.
• 1:03:27
  You say we're not the first.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: I said, no, we were the first. I suppose the
• 1:03:35
  ship I came in, Luckily it was well equipped after
• 1:03:39
  the routing error. We had enough supplies to set up
• 1:03:42
  a self sustaining station on the nearest rock. We knew
• 1:03:46
  there was no going back, but at least we could
• 1:03:49
  make some kind of life.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: For ourselves here and after that.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: We had enough to do just keeping ourselves alive the
• 1:03:57
  first few years. But then another ship came through the aperture, damaged,
• 1:04:02
  drifting much like Blue Goose. We hauled her in, warmed
• 1:04:07
  her crew, broke the news to them.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: How'd they take it?
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: About as well as you'd expect.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Greta laughed hollowly to herself.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: A couple of them went mad, another killed herself, but
• 1:04:22
  at least a dozen of them are still here. In
• 1:04:25
  all honesty, it was good for us that another ship
• 1:04:28
  came through, not just because they had supplies we could use,
• 1:04:32
  but because it helped us to help them. Took our
• 1:04:37
  minds off our own self pity. It made us realize
• 1:04:41
  how far we'd come and how much help these newcomers
• 1:04:44
  needed to make the same transition. That wasn't the last
• 1:04:48
  ship either. We've gone through the same process with eight
• 1:04:52
  or nine others since then.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: Greta looked at me, her head cocked against her hand.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: There's a thought for you, Tom.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: There is, she nodded.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: It's difficult for you now I know, and it'll be
• 1:05:10
  difficult for you for some time to come, but it
• 1:05:13
  can help to have someone else to care about. It
• 1:05:16
  can smooth the transition.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: Like who I asked, like.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: One of your other crew members. You could try waking
• 1:05:26
  one of them now.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: Greta said, Greta's with me. When I pull Susie out
• 1:05:36
  of the search tank, why her, Greta asks, because I
• 1:05:42
  want her out first, I say, wondering if Greta's jealous.
• 1:05:47
  I don't blame her. Susie's beautiful, but she's also smart.
• 1:05:52
  There isn't a better syntax runner in a shanty industrial.
• 1:05:58
  What happened? Susie asks, when she's over the grogginess. Did
• 1:06:04
  we make it back? I asked her to tell me
• 1:06:07
  the last thing she remembers, customs. Susie says, thus, pricks
• 1:06:14
  on Archangel and after that anything else? The runes? Do
• 1:06:19
  you remember casting them? No, she says, then picks up
• 1:06:25
  something in my voice, the fact that I might not
• 1:06:28
  be telling the truth or telling her all she needs
• 1:06:31
  to know. Tom, I'll ask you again, did we make
• 1:06:36
  it back? A minute later, we're putting Susie back into
• 1:06:40
  the tank. It hasn't worked this first time. Maybe the
• 1:06:44
  next try, but it kept not working. With Susie, she
• 1:06:53
  was always more clever and quicker than me. She always
• 1:06:57
  had been. As soon as she came out of the tank,
• 1:07:01
  she knew that we'd come a lot further than Shadar sector.
• 1:07:05
  She was always ahead of my lies and excuses. It
• 1:07:10
  was different when it happened to me. I told Greta
• 1:07:14
  when we were lying next to each other again days later.
• 1:07:17
  Was Susie still in the tank? I had all the
• 1:07:20
  nagging doubts she has, I think, But as soon as
• 1:07:24
  I saw you standing there, I forgot all about that stuff.
• 1:07:30
  Greta nodded. Her hair fell across her face in disheveled,
• 1:07:34
  sleep matted curtains. She had a strand of it between
• 1:07:38
  her lips.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: It helped. Seeing a friendly face.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Took my mind off the problem. That's for sure.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: You'll get there in the end, she said. Anyway, from
• 1:07:50
  Susie's point of view, aren't you a friendly face as well?
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe, I said, but she'd been expecting me. You were
• 1:08:01
  the last person in the world I expected to see
• 1:08:03
  standing there. Greta touched her knuckle against the side of
• 1:08:08
  my face. Her smooth skin slid against stubble.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: It's getting easier for you, isn't it.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I said, you're a.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: Strong man, Tom. I knew you'd come through this.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: I haven't come through it yet, I said. I felt
• 1:08:28
  like a tight rope walker half way across Niagara Falls.
• 1:08:32
  It was a miracle I'd made it as far as
• 1:08:34
  I had. That didn't mean I was home and dry. Still,
• 1:08:41
  Greta was right, there was hope. I'd felt no crushing
• 1:08:45
  spasms of grief over Katerina's death or enforced absence, or
• 1:08:50
  however you wanted to put it. All I felt was
• 1:08:53
  a bitter, sweet regret, the way one might feel about
• 1:08:57
  a broken heirloom or long lost pet. I felt no
• 1:09:01
  animosity toward Katerina, and I was sorry that I would
• 1:09:05
  never see her again. But I was sorry about not
• 1:09:08
  seeing a lot of things. Maybe it would become worse
• 1:09:12
  in the days ahead. Maybe I was just postponing a breakdown.
• 1:09:18
  I didn't think so. In the meantime, I continued trying
• 1:09:23
  to find a way to deal with Susie. She had
• 1:09:26
  become a puzzle that I couldn't leave unsolved. I could
• 1:09:30
  have just woken her up and let her deal with
• 1:09:32
  the news as best she could, but that seemed cruel
• 1:09:35
  and unsatisfactory. Greta had broken it to me gently, giving
• 1:09:40
  me time to settle in my new surroundings and take
• 1:09:43
  that necessary step away from Katerina. When she finally broke
• 1:09:48
  the news, as shocking as it was, it didn't shatter me.
• 1:09:54
  I'd already been primed for it. The sting taken out
• 1:09:58
  of the surprise sleeping with Greta obviously helped. I couldn't
• 1:10:04
  offer Susi the same solace, but I was sure that
• 1:10:07
  there was a way for us to coax Susie to
• 1:10:09
  the same state of near acceptance. Time after time we
• 1:10:14
  woke her and tried a different approach. Greta said there
• 1:10:18
  was a window of a few minutes before the events
• 1:10:20
  she was experiencing began to transfer in a long term memory.
• 1:10:24
  If we knocked her out, the buffer of memories and
• 1:10:26
  short term storage was wiped before it ever crossed the
• 1:10:29
  hippocampus in a long term recall. Within that window, we
• 1:10:36
  could wake her up as many times as we liked,
• 1:10:39
  trying endless permutations of the revival scenario. At least that's
• 1:10:45
  what Greta told me. We can't keep doing this indefinitely,
• 1:10:50
  I said, why not. I mean, isn't she going to
• 1:10:55
  remember something? Greta shrugged.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: Maybe, but I doubt that she'll attach any significance to
• 1:11:03
  those memories. Haven't you ever had vague feelings of deja
• 1:11:07
  vus coming out of the surge tank sometimes? I muttered, Then,
• 1:11:13
  don't sweat about it. She'll be all right, I promise you.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: Perhaps we should just keep her awake, after all, that
• 1:11:21
  would be cruel. It's cruel to keep waking her up
• 1:11:25
  and shutting her down like a toy doll. There was
• 1:11:29
  a catch in her voice when she answered me, keep.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: At it, Tom, I'm sure you're close to finding a way.
• 1:11:36
  In the end. It's helping you focusing on Susie. I
• 1:11:41
  always knew it would.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: I started to say something, but Greta pressed a finger
• 1:11:47
  to my lips. Greta was right about Susie. The challenge
• 1:11:55
  helped me taking my mind off my own predicament. I
• 1:12:00
  remembered what Greta had said about dealing with other crews
• 1:12:03
  in the same situation before Blue Goose put in. Clearly,
• 1:12:07
  she had learned many psychological tricks, gambits, and shortcuts to
• 1:12:11
  assist the transition to mental well being. I felt a
• 1:12:15
  slight resentment at being manipulated so effectively, but at the
• 1:12:20
  same time I couldn't deny that worrying about another human
• 1:12:23
  being had helped me with my own adjustment. When days
• 1:12:27
  later I stepped back from my immediate problem of SUSI,
• 1:12:31
  I realized that something was different. I didn't feel far
• 1:12:35
  from home. I felt, in an odd way, privileged. I'd
• 1:12:40
  come further than almost anyone in history. I was still alive,
• 1:12:45
  and there were still people around to provide love and
• 1:12:48
  partnership in a web of social relations, not just Greta,
• 1:12:54
  but all the other unlucky souls who had ended up
• 1:12:56
  at this station. Anything, there appeared to be more of
• 1:13:02
  them than when I had first arrived. The corridors, sparsely
• 1:13:07
  populated at first, were increasingly busy, and when we ate
• 1:13:12
  under the dome under the Milky Way, we were not
• 1:13:15
  the only diners. I studied their lamp lit faces, comforted
• 1:13:20
  by their vague familiarity, wondering what kinds of stories they
• 1:13:24
  had to tell, where they'd come from, who they had
• 1:13:28
  left behind, how they had adjusted to life here. There
• 1:13:33
  was time enough to get to know them all, and
• 1:13:36
  the place would never become boring for at any time,
• 1:13:40
  As Greta had intimated, we could always expect another lost
• 1:13:44
  ship to drop through the aperture. Tragedy for the crew,
• 1:13:50
  but fresh challenges, fresh faces, fresh news from home for us.
• 1:13:57
  All in all, it wasn't really so bad. Then it clicked.
• 1:14:03
  It was the man cleaning out the fish that did it.
• 1:14:06
  In the lobby of the hotel. It wasn't just how
• 1:14:09
  familiar the process was, but the man himself. I'd seen
• 1:14:15
  him before, another pond full of diseased carp another hotel.
• 1:14:22
  Then I remembered colding's bad teeth and recalled how they'd
• 1:14:25
  reminded me of another man I'd met long ago. Except
• 1:14:29
  it wasn't another a man at all, different name, different context,
• 1:14:34
  but everything else was the same. And when I looked
• 1:14:38
  at the other diners, really looked at them, there was
• 1:14:43
  no one I couldn't swear I hadn't seen before, No
• 1:14:46
  single face that hit me with the force of utter unfamiliarity,
• 1:14:51
  which left Greta. I said to her over wine under
• 1:14:58
  the milky Way. Nothing year is real, is it? She
• 1:15:06
  looked at me with infinite sadness and shook her head.
• 1:15:13
  What about Susie I.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: Asked her, Susie's dead. Ray is dead. They died in
• 1:15:21
  their surge tanks.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: How why them and not me?
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: Something about particles of paint blocking intake fields. Not enough
• 1:15:31
  to make a difference over short distances, but enough to
• 1:15:36
  kill them on the trip out here.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: I think some part of me had always suspected. It
• 1:15:43
  felt less like a shock than brutal disappointment. But Susie
• 1:15:49
  seemed so real, I said, even the way she had
• 1:15:54
  doubts about how long she'd been in the tank, even
• 1:15:57
  the way she remembered previous attempts to wait. The glass
• 1:16:02
  mannequin approached our table, Greta waved him away.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: I made her convincing, the way she would have acted.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: You made her.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: You're not really awake, Tom, You're being fed data. This
• 1:16:18
  entire station is being simulated.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: I sipped my wine. I expected it to taste suddenly
• 1:16:27
  thin and synthetic, but it still tasted like pretty good wine.
• 1:16:33
  Then I'm dead as well.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: No, you're alive, still in your surge tank. But I
• 1:16:39
  haven't brought you to full consciousness yet.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: All Right, the truth this time I can take it.
• 1:16:49
  How much is real? Does the station exist? Are we
• 1:16:53
  really as far out as you said.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, the station exists just as I said it does.
• 1:17:00
  It just looks different, and it is in the large
• 1:17:04
  Magellanic cloud and it is orbiting a brown dwarf star.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: Can you show me the station as it is?
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: I could, but I don't think you're ready for it.
• 1:17:15
  I think you'd find it difficult to adjust.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: I couldn't help laughing, even after what I've already adjusted to.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: You've only made half the journey, Tom, but you made it.
• 1:17:31
  I did, Tom, But for me it was different.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: Greta smiled.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: For me, everything was different.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: Then she made the light show change again. None of
• 1:17:46
  the other diners appeared to notice. As we began to
• 1:17:48
  zoom in toward the Milky Way, crashing toward the spiral,
• 1:17:52
  ramming through shoals of outlying stars and gas clouds, the
• 1:17:57
  familiar landscape of the local bubble loomed large. The image froze,
• 1:18:03
  the bubble one amongst many such structures. Again it filled
• 1:18:09
  with the violent red scribble of the aperture network. But
• 1:18:13
  now the network wasn't the only one. It was merely
• 1:18:17
  one ball of red yarn amongst many spaced out across
• 1:18:21
  tens of thousands of light years. None of the scribbles
• 1:18:25
  touched each other. Yet in the way they were shaped,
• 1:18:29
  in the way they almost abutted against each other, it
• 1:18:32
  was possible to imagine that they had once been connected.
• 1:18:35
  They were like the shapes of continents on a world
• 1:18:38
  with tectonic drift.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: It used to span the galaxy. Greta said, Then something happened,
• 1:18:47
  something catastrophic which I still don't understand. A shattering into
• 1:18:53
  vastly smaller domains, typically a few hundred light years across
• 1:18:59
  whom I don't know. No one knows. They probably aren't
• 1:19:05
  around anymore. Maybe that was why it shattered out of neglect.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: But we found it, I said. The part of it
• 1:19:15
  near us still worked.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: All the disconnected elements still function. You can't cross from
• 1:19:21
  domain to domain, but otherwise the apertures work as they
• 1:19:25
  were designed to, barring, of course, the occasional routing error.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: All right, if you can't cross from domain to domain,
• 1:19:35
  how did blue Goose get this far out? We've come
• 1:19:39
  a lot further than a few hundred light years.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: You're right, But then such a long distance connection might
• 1:19:46
  have been engineered differently from the others. It appears that
• 1:19:51
  the links to the Magellanic cloud were more resilient. When
• 1:19:55
  the domains shattered from each other, the connections reaching beyond
• 1:19:59
  the gallo remained intact.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: In which case you can cross from domain to domain.
• 1:20:05
  I said, you have to come all the way out
• 1:20:08
  here first.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: The trouble is not many one to continue the journey
• 1:20:13
  at this point. No one comes here deliberately. Tom, I
• 1:20:18
  still don't get it.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: What does it matter to me? If there are other domains?
• 1:20:22
  Those regions of the galaxy are thousands of light years
• 1:20:25
  from Earth, and without the apertures, we'd have no way
• 1:20:27
  of reaching them. They don't matter. There's no one there
• 1:20:31
  to use them. Grit As smile was coquettish and knowing.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: What makes you so certain?
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: Because if there were, wouldn't there be alien ships popping
• 1:20:43
  out of the aperture here? You've told me Blue Goose
• 1:20:47
  wasn't the first through. But our domain, the one in
• 1:20:50
  the local bubble, must be outnumbered hundreds to one by
• 1:20:54
  all the others. If there are alien creatures out there,
• 1:20:57
  each stumbling on their own local domain, why haven't any
• 1:21:00
  of them come through the aperture the way we did?
• 1:21:04
  Again that smile, but this time it chilled my blood.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: What makes you think they haven't, Tom.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: I reached out and took her hand the way she
• 1:21:16
  had taken mine. I took it without force, without malice,
• 1:21:22
  but with the assurance that this time I really sincerely
• 1:21:26
  meant what I was about to say. Her fingers tightened
• 1:21:30
  around mine. Show me, I said, I want to see
• 1:21:36
  things as they really are, not just the station. You
• 1:21:41
  as well, because by then I'd realized Greta hadn't just
• 1:21:47
  lied to me about Susie and Ray, She'd lied to
• 1:21:51
  me about the Blue Goose as well. Because we were
• 1:21:54
  not the latest human ship to come through, we were
• 1:21:57
  the first.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: You wanted to see it?
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: She asked, Yes, all of it.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: You won't like it.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: I'll be the judge of that, all right.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: Tom, But understand this. I've been here before, I've done
• 1:22:17
  this a million times. I care for all the lost souls,
• 1:22:21
  and I know how it works. You won't be able
• 1:22:24
  to take the raw reality of what's happened to you.
• 1:22:27
  You'll shrivel away from it. You'll go mad unless I
• 1:22:31
  substitute a calming fiction, a happy ending. Why tell me
• 1:22:36
  that now, because you don't have to see it. You
• 1:22:40
  can stop now where you are with an idea of
• 1:22:43
  the truth and inkling. But you don't have to open
• 1:22:47
  your eyes.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: Do it, I said Greta shrugged. She poured herself another
• 1:22:58
  measure of wine, and may sure my own glass was charged.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: You asked for it.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: We were still holding hands, two lovers sharing an intimacy.
• 1:23:12
  Then everything changed. It was just a flash, just a glimpse,
• 1:23:19
  like the view of an unfamiliar room. If you turn
• 1:23:21
  the lights on for an instant, shapes and forms relationships
• 1:23:26
  between things. I saw caverns wormed out and linked, and
• 1:23:32
  things moving through those caverns, bustling along with the frantic
• 1:23:37
  industry of moles or termites. The things were seldom alike,
• 1:23:42
  even in the most superficial sense. Some moved via propulsive
• 1:23:47
  waves of multiple clawed limbs. Some wriggled smooth plaques of
• 1:23:52
  carapace grinding against the glassy rock of the tunnels. The
• 1:23:56
  things moved between caves in which lay the hulks of ships,
• 1:24:00
  almost all too strange to describe, And somewhere distant, somewhere
• 1:24:06
  near the heart of the rock, in a matriarchal chamber
• 1:24:10
  all of its own. Something drummed out messages to its
• 1:24:14
  companions and helpers, stiffly articulated antler like forelimbs beating against
• 1:24:21
  stretched timpana of finely veined skin, something that had been
• 1:24:26
  waiting here for centuries, something that wanted nothing more than
• 1:24:31
  to care for the souls of the lost Katerinas with
• 1:24:46
  Susi when they pulled me out of the surge tank.
• 1:24:49
  It's bad, one of the worst revivals I've ever gone through.
• 1:24:54
  I feel as if every vein in my body has
• 1:24:56
  been filled with finely powdered glass, And for a moment,
• 1:25:00
  a long moment, even the idea of breathing seems insurmountably difficult,
• 1:25:06
  too hard, too painful even to contemplate. But it passes,
• 1:25:12
  as it always passes. After a while, I cannot only breathe,
• 1:25:17
  I can move and talk where easy skip, Susie says.
• 1:25:24
  She leans over the tank and starts unplugging me. I
• 1:25:26
  can't help but smile. Susie's smart. There isn't a better
• 1:25:31
  syntax runner in a shanty industrial. But she's also beautiful.
• 1:25:35
  It's like being nursed by an angel. I wonder if
• 1:25:38
  Katerina's jealous? Where are we? I try again? It feels
• 1:25:45
  like I was in that thing for an eternity. Did
• 1:25:47
  something go wrong? Minor routing error. Susie says, we took
• 1:25:53
  some damage and they decided to wake me up first.
• 1:25:57
  But don't sweat about it. At least we're in one piece.
• 1:26:01
  Routing errors. You hear about them, but you hope they're
• 1:26:04
  never going to happen to you. What kind of delay?
• 1:26:09
  Forty days? Sorry, Tom BEng goes our bonus. In anger,
• 1:26:15
  I hammer the side of the search tank, but Katerina
• 1:26:19
  steps toward me and places a calming hand on my shoulder.
• 1:26:23
  It's all right, she says, you're home and dry. That's
• 1:26:28
  all that matters. I look at her, and for a
• 1:26:33
  moment I remember someone else, someone I haven't thought about
• 1:26:37
  in years. I almost remember her name, and then the
• 1:26:42
  moment passes. I nod home and dry.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: No no, no, no, no, no no