No Early Birds: A Short Story (4 page)

We took another cruise together, but this one went around a distant star and visited a desert world famous for wind carved stones. Each of us has found romance again, but that comes and goes like changes in language. Anybody who would choose one of us for a companion had better understand we have our girlfriends with whom we have a bond of years, stronger than we will ever form with a single person.

Life is still good, and we actually need intervention from the future less as time goes along. But we are still friends with each other forward as well as backward. On occasion we get a heads up that we'll need to change our thinking on something. When you get past the first thousand years it can be difficult to accept social changes. If we get prepped ahead of it, something that can't be changed doesn't upset us so much. The future us still cares about us now. We have done things none of us could have imagined, and had secondary pursuits. Faye was famous as a painter for awhile. Anna wrote some books that are still famous even if under a past name, and after a break is doing it again. Edna has worked with people as her palette, helping those who needed a loving person to become whole. She often has two or three adopted children in her household, and the occasional distressed adult. Under a different name she has written the definitive manual for such care giving. She had a long time to see what actually works.

I've developed an interest in the sciences I never had as a youth. Perhaps the little time machine gave me a nudge that way. It does provoke all kinds of thoughts and makes you reason on things to have it in your life. Knowing it exists has let me reject with certainty models which reject such intervention as impossible. And of course it drives me nuts that nobody knows how it works yet, because I do watch any research about time very closely. It's still our secret and we haven't ever revealed it to anybody. Human nature doesn't change and I can't imagine when it will ever be safe to show it to others. At the very least we'd lose the use of it, at worst be considered criminal for keeping it to ourselves for so long.

* * *

I'll be gone, off on my own for this weekend, to the center of the our galaxy. There's an observation post there watching a black hole. It's not unusual for one of us to take off a few days away from the others. We're friends, not joined at the hip. It's hardly a spa, and the other girls declined to go, declaring it will be boring, looking at a black smudge in the sky that doesn't visibly do anything. I'm quite interested to see what they are reporting first hand. I understand that near the black hole they have observed it doing some strange things to time.

* * *

The first thing that struck me when I boarded, was that there were only six passengers going to the observation post. It was the firm custom now to publically list all the passengers on a long range conveyance. That might change again in a few decades or centuries, and there were undoubtedly local cultures that rejected it. There isn't anywhere now that is really remote in the sense it takes a long time to travel there. But there are still lots of places where outsiders are unwelcome, and places that are simply boring or of no benefit to visit.

There wasn't anyone aboard who could be called crew. An expert AI was more than sufficient to handle routine flights. The vessel appeared more like a lounge than a cabin, with several bathrooms and an automated snack bar. There were a couple isolation rooms for anyone who wanted to avoid even being seen. If anyone was using them they would already be in them, given first opportunity to board. With six passengers in sight it was obvious they were unused this trip.

I got a coffee, which was still a common choice in menu selections. The only real change was that the quality was uniformly superb now. We only expected about a half hour journey. That would be the local maneuvering and docking at both ends, with no discernible transition time in between. I didn't try to work or entertain myself. By the time I got my thoughts engaged on a task it would be time to stop.

A young man sitting alone looked at me when I sat on a sofa. You might wonder, given the state of medical science, how I concluded he was young. When you are my age you can read a person's demeanor better than their face. I can look at a person for a few minutes and most of the time tell you their age within a century.

I like to sit into the corner at an angle rather than a narrow single seat. He stood up and approached. He had a drink also and brought it along. That was a little pushy by current social standards. It telegraphed he intended to intrude on my privacy, and that he was unduly confident I'd accept. It would have been better form to leave the drink and ask permission first, then go back for it if I granted him to visit.

Nevertheless, he did stop well back and lift a finger like testing the wind to ask permission to approach and speak with me, as was the custom now.

I granted his request with a nod and indicated the other end of the couch if he wish to join me. That wasn't a given and he moved a little table around and put his drink on it.

"Aren't you Violet Collins?" he inquired.

"I am," I readily agreed. I didn't have any reason to avoid being known. I had various times in the past. But it had been ages since I'd needed to avoid arrest or legal service. Indeed, I'd dropped the name and resumed it a few times.

"My name is Gao Qiang," he offered politely. "We have not been introduced, but I was at a seminar on temporal issues about fifty years ago, right after I graduated traditional university. I was impressed with the certainty with which you spoke. I realize it isn't terribly polite to run veracity software on other's speech, but I assume you know it has become a common practice in the younger generation. It showed you believed what you reasoned out for the audience with deeper conviction than most of the other speakers. It left a lasting impression on me.

"I casually inquired about your academic credentials, But I found a oddly eclectic list of classes you took in various arts and sciences. It had as much philosophy as hard science. And you taught almost as many course in the last couple centuries as you took. Are you going to observe the black hole for temporal anomalies, as I am, or for other phenomena?"

"I'm interested in the time aspects," I agreed. "Although you didn't ask directly, I'll say my studies are mostly for my own curiosity. I wouldn't say that I've made them my life work. Neither am I interested in accumulating credits and honors from institutions or other authorities. A lot of my studies have been auditing, private tutoring or from institutions far enough in the past they no longer exist. I
am
quite interested in gaining knowledge."

"Ah...You are older than I realized. Do you attribute your firm conviction to experience then?"

"Yes, but from observing unique events which I won't make public. An anecdote is not a datum, and repeating unrelated unique events any number of times doesn't make them into data. When I have something repeatable, that won't paint me a fool to announce, then I'll be happy to tell everyone," I promised.

"That seems like a wise course to me," Gao agreed. Then he showed surprising maturity by not prying for details or trying to make small talk, and retreated to his seat.

* * *

Violet found the station people were polite to her. Part of that was somebody looked up how much she contributed to the financial support of their work. They actually assigned one of the newer researchers to her for a day to guide her around, see to her needs, and help her navigate the local data system if she had any difficulty. She really didn't need anything but data access, but the woman was pleasant and her time block was assigned for the day, so Vi kept her.

The volume of sensor data was far more than could reasonably carried by ship to a distant world. The computer Vi brought along to try to interpret the portions in which she was interested would have filled a city when she was a young woman. Even the young researcher was impressed when she realized just how expensive and powerful the little hockey puck was that Violet removed from her pocket.

After a couple hours work she left the computer digesting the data and retreated to the station commissary with her guide to have a meal. The room was almost empty, and her guide had a very light snack, so she must be off the local shift hours.

"Let me say what I believe your observations suggest in non-mathematical terms, and see if you agree," Vi suggested. "The way light travels from one observation satellite to another, all the way around the black hole, suggests there is a time differential, because it goes around faster in the direction of rotation than the other way."

"When I was in school they jumped all over me for saying a black hole rotated," the young woman said. Vi found it charming she wasn't afraid to contradict her.

"Let us say angular momentum then. A distinction lost to my understanding," Vi said.

"Yes, and it isn't making any sense to us. I mean, not just me, but the people who have been working with the hole for decades." That still seemed a long time to the girl.

"Has anybody taken measurements the other way, across the poles?" When she could see from the girl's face that she was going to argue it didn't exactly have poles, Vi altered her statement. "In a plane containing the axis of angular momentum that is." Violet said, holding up a thumb with curled fingers to illustrate.

"No. We don't have the equipment to do that," she said sadly.

"Is it conceivable such equipment can be fabricated in the future?" Vi asked.

"Oh, it could be, right now. But it would take a tremendous amount of money."

"Is that all?" Vi said laughing. "Well that's a problem I've already learned to solve."

* * *

When she retreated to the rather compact room they provided for the night Vi was tired. She took a long time in the shower and let it pulse on her neck set on high. It was almost as good as a masseuse. She was afraid to ask if they had one here, least she sound like a pampered urban girl.

All the data was interesting, but she wanted to see how their little machine reacted to being near the black hole. In the privacy of her room there shouldn't be any problem. She would simply look at the com screen clock and set the machine to take her forward five minutes. They'd learned to do that within a month of finding it, and it worked flawlessly with them all sitting at Anna's table in her courtyard.

Violet enter the small time shift and looking at the room's time display pressed the enter icon. The screen went blank for at least three full seconds. It had never worked that long before. Then their little machine displayed an error message just like it had before:

Temporal potential and energy level too high to process. Extremely dangerous local complexity of branes and branching. Too close to primary locus and power source.

Device has defaulted to safe mode. Please remove from the present location before pressing the reset button under the back cover.

The case had a visible seam around the perimeter. All these years none of them had suggested opening it up. The possibility they could learn anything from such a casual examination seemed to be close to zero, and the slimmest chance that they would make it stop working and lose every benefit had seemed far too great a risk to take.

But here it was telling her it was made to be easily opened. If there was a reset button she could just look for now, and not actually push the button until later. After careful thought Vi couldn't see any hazard to satisfying her curiosity.

The seam was tight but not so tight she couldn't get a nail in it near one corner. The she got another in beside it and ran it to the opposite corner. With two points along one side held open it released with and audible snap. She carefully tilted the back off and put it aside.

Inside there was a button deep in a protective recess to protect against accidental activation. There was also a rectangular area of contrasting color with deeply engraved printing. It made Violet gasp in shock, but it was very satisfying, because it made everything clear to her.

This device is registered as a protected design and item of intellectual property in all jurisdictions of the Worlds of Man.

Rights holder Violet Jeanne Collins & Associates.

Use and possession restrictions are automatically local law by treaty.

Link to Mac's current releases, both novels and collections of shorts on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004RZUOS2