Creation (27 page)

“When I was a kid, my grandfather used to take me fishing,” Sam said. “That was before such things were outlawed. I used to love the way the river would make gurgling and splashing noises. Happy sounds and happy memories.”

Dr. Shot gave Sam a moment to enjoy the memory. “Ever watch the whirlpools while you were fishing?”

“Yeah, there was this one river. A little waterfall, maybe four feet high, dumped into this big pond. Right where it hit, there was a rock that swirled the water. One of the biggest fish I ever caught swam up from that eddy.”

“Vortexes rotate. Imagine our time river again, running up against that black energy riverbed. Imagine the spinning that friction might create.”

Sam shook his head. “But you’re mixing up time and energy. Energy and matter are related, but you’re talking about time whirlpools.”

“Exactly right, exactly right.” The way the doctor bounced in his chair made Sam wonder if Ellie had spent much time in this office. “Do you know one of the easiest ways to increase energy? Feed it back on itself. If you take time and turn it back on itself, like in a whirlpool, you end up with tremendous energy. Enough to create matter.”

Sam scratched his head. “So you’re saying planets are running along the side of the river? That’s why they rotate and why they exist?”

“Sort of. You’re thinking of the river in three dimensions, which isn’t quite right. All that dark energy doesn’t flow past the edges of the galaxy; it flows past us at an atomic level—or even more fundamental than that, I suspect, but I haven’t come up with a good vocabulary for that level of existence yet.”

“Then why isn’t there matter all over the place? Why only in galaxies?”

The old man sat back. “At the center of every galaxy is a black hole. From our perception of time, we see a planet-eating destroyer. But if you were to reverse time, we’d see black holes as galaxy creators. They’re the rocks in the time stream that create the whirlpools.”

Dr. Shot drew a figure eight on the chalkboard. At the bottom he wrote
Big Bang
, on the top
Black Hole
and, where the lines crossed in the middle,
matter
. “Maybe time isn’t so much straight lines as curved lines that intersect. One side is our forward-moving time, and the mirror opposite is time moving backward. Something like this would allow for matter only in the here and now. Funny that it would resemble an infinity sign.”

Sam smirked as he looked at the drawing. “Reminds me of the way man used to think he was the center of the universe. Here, you’re saying matter is the center of time.”

Light reflected off the bald head as the old man inspected his own drawing more carefully. “Matter only exists where the future and the past meet, whether that’s time moving forward or backward. So why wouldn’t that intersection be all important?”

“Sure puts a new spin on the old saying,
The present is all that matters
.”

Dr. Shot looked up from his chalkboard. “I’ve always enjoyed linguistic coincidences. Gives me hope for time travel. Like someone sent these little sayings and ideas back in time for us to discover.”

Sam picked up the chalk and drew two wheels inside the loops of the infinity sign. “But wouldn’t this idea negate time travel? You could move the wheels faster or slower, but that would only affect how fast you moved through the present. Or is this what you’ve been trying to tell me? Is this how you can be so old?”

Light twinkled in Dr. Shot’s eyes. “It’s still mostly theory. Whatever it is that’s happening to me isn’t something I did in the past.”

Sam nodded as he put his finger on the intersection of past and future. “If I imagine these wheels moving, I can only see them rotating in one direction. So how would something you do in the future effect how you live now? You can’t throw an idea out there then turn the wheels backward to send it into the past.”

The old man nodded slowly as he picked up the chalk. From the point of intersection, he made a series of dots leading out along the future line until they circled the wheel. “Ideas moving forward in time eventually catch back up with us.” The dots continued around the wheel, eventually coming back into contact with the present.

Sam shook his head. “But that’s not something tangible. From your speculation, it can’t be physical matter. I’m not even sure that would be energy. It’s just the passage of time.”

The fingers of the old man’s hand showed remarkable dexterity as he twirled the chalk. “There’s no time without matter, and there’s no matter without energy.”

Sam pressed his lips tightly together. “Why wouldn’t there be time without matter? Seems like time would be something that would exist independent of anything else.”

Dr. Shot drew wavy lines before the words
Big Bang
and after
Black Hole
. “The accepted theory is that there was no time in these regions. Without matter, there’s nothing to define time. Time, at least as we know it, is the record of matter being subjected to energy. How fast does something move, decay, or develop? Time, matter, and energy are intricately connected.”

Sam accepted the unknown. It was nice to have someone speculate on answers without being so emotionally invested they couldn’t consider other points of view. “Do you think that’s why universes are flat disks—energy ramming head-on into energy going back in time? I mean, that intersection would create round objects, but the whole collision of past and future would be uniform across the universe at least.”

The old man nodded. “Yes, I think so. If you have two forces directly opposed to each other, you get a more or less flat surface. But they aren’t equal, and they don’t stop each other. They pass through each other, creating these whirlpools. Take a spinning object and subject it to bombardment from a force differing in direction from its axis, and you get a sphere. Not all galaxies spin on the same plane.”

Sam felt dizzy. There were too many swirling forces in too many directions. Somewhere, the old man had contradicted himself, but Sam’s brain was too tired to figure it out. Dr. Shot would undoubtedly say any discrepancy was the result of the problem existing in a different dimension. Scientists were always making up answers.

Dr. Shot didn’t seem to notice. “The current question I’m working on is gravity. If you take time, turn it back on itself, and multiply that by—well, by a planet—you might get a vortex. Such strange things, vortexes. Centrifugal force would indicate that we should all be thrown off this rock. But a vortex pulls you in. If matter is little more than a time vortex, maybe that will lead to an answer.” The man took a drag on the glass pipe.

Sam sipped at the tequila. “Then why wouldn’t planets be large funnel shapes?”

The leather chair made scrunching sounds as Dr. Shot settled back into it. “Interesting. Energy spins in time. The vortex created is what we know as gravity. After all, anything in a river that encounters a whirlpool gets sucked in like gravity. But the center of that vortex is where all the energy would accumulate. And turning around an object inside a vortex would create a sphere. So maybe mass and gravity are just two effects from the same cause, not actually one causing the other.”

Sam didn’t want to interrupt some great understanding that might be taking place. The man handed over the pipe, but Sam refused. It was becoming hard enough to follow along.

The man’s eyes returned to Sam, who waited for the next great revelation. “You hungry? I have a fridge here in the office with some fruit and cheese. Good organic stuff. I can’t stand that synthetic food-like crap.”

Sam stifled a laugh at the change of pace. As he took a bite out of a hunk of cheese, the muscles around his temples worked out their tension. Had his mind ever worked this hard? The food was quite good and a welcome break.

The doctor resumed his seat in the large chair. “So that’s the theory that I work from. If you think about it, we’re all time travelers. We’re all moving from the big bang toward some black hole. We’re just mostly all traveling at the same speed, so we don’t think of it as unusual. But even within the confines of the solar system, there are some of us moving faster than others. The bigger the planet, the slower you go. For the most part, that difference doesn’t play enough of a role to really affect a person’s lifetime relative to someone on a different planet. That time vortex we all share, known as the solar system, makes all the changes in the vortexes’ speeds from planet to planet barely big enough to notice.”

Sam snorted. “
Lifetime.
I like that.”
Was that even a joke? Or am I just really baked?

Dr. Shot smiled politely. “What people really mean by time travel is going back in time. Or shooting far enough into the future that they miss some of the in-between time. I don’t imagine you’ve ever seen a hummingbird.”

“Only in videos,” Sam said.

That damn high-school course in extinct species had had a really depressing effect on everyone. It was a good place to pick up girls, though. Let them think all life could end, and they’d have sex with just about anyone.

“Hummingbirds experienced time very differently than people. You could say tortoises might be on the other end of the scale, moving very slowly through their very long lives.”

Sam snapped his fingers. “So you’re a tortoise?”

Dr. Shot shook his head. “I’m not a tortoise but more like the kid sticking his hand out the hovercraft window, catching the wind.”

Sam grew serious. “You’re saying you can drag your body along that dark energy? Slow down your path through time? That’s how you can be so old?”

“Very well done, my boy, very well done indeed. Now, if I can just do the hard part of figuring out how.” The twinkling old smile reminded Sam of his grandfather at Christmas. “All I can tell you is it’s not a machine. And I’m hardly the first to discover the secret of peace.”

Some idea played at the corner of Sam’s mind. “Would this explain the trouble the Tobes have communicating with their Jovian brothers and sisters? We can adjust to differences. A tortoise can supposedly communicate with a hummingbird. But beings based on technology would have real problems if their time signatures didn’t match up.”

“Yes, I believe so. It’s the language barrier, as Joshua describes it.” Dr. Shot flipped the switch on the desk. The window view screens resumed their display of the palatial garden. Sam’s head began to buzz again with the familiar noise of the Tobes’ silent connection. The older man put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Best not to discuss these ideas for the time being. I still like playing some thoughts close to the vest.”

Sam had no idea why anything Dr. Shot had discussed should be a secret, but then, having the secret to the fountain of youth might attract a lot of attention. He fidgeted in the chair, attempting to find a way back up to his feet.

“One other thing. Might not mean much, but then again, it might prove useful. You remember how I said Rendition had bought my company? And how my company had bought up other companies and so on?”

It hadn’t been that long ago. “Sure.”

“Well, that process goes back to some of the first computer operating systems. Early on, someone got the bright idea of not selling the systems, just leasing them. So when someone would buy a computer, they weren’t actually buying the operating system, just the license to use it.”

Sam wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything. “Okay.”

Dr. Shot leaned his head to the side. “Well, legacy software and all. Take these systems all the way out to the present day—”

Sam figured out where this was headed. “No one owns the Tobes. People are just licensing their use.”

“Technically, Rendition owns the Tobes, but yes, individual buyers do not. It’s really old legacy systems that the lease applies to, but everything is built on the past. No way to pull that brick out of the base of the pyramid.”

T
he meeting room
for Rendition’s board of directors was unlike any Sam had encountered. View screens not only covered every wall but also every other surface as well. Transparent displays stood in front of every chair on the conference table. The floor and ceiling concealed all manner of projectors and light enhancers.

Lud leaned in toward one of the table displays. “Set the room for eight attendees.”

Like a house of mirrors, the seven-sided table divided into eight. Each station reminded Sam of the bridge on
Persephone
. Transparent screens surrounded every high-backed leather chair.
You could run the world from one of these locations.

Exactly right.
The confirmation didn’t give him any comfort. Watching eight of the most powerful people in the solar system vie for control didn’t sound like a fun way to spend the afternoon.

“I wanted to give you a peek at what you’ll be in for,” Lud said. “I’ll sit on one side of you, Dr. Shot on the other. Jacques will be next to me. The board’s used to the two of us being in charge. Hector Delcourt, the representative of the Mars Consortium, will be next to Dr. Shot. Then Michael Baldwin from the North American Government because the continent’s largest corporation—the government—demanded a seat on our board. And finally, the two members from the Moons of Jupiter: Jayde Zuri from the Europa Corporation and Rolf Hartman from Callisto Corps.”

Sam lowered his body into the luxurious chair. Miniature cushions inflated, the area supporting his back grew firm, and the chair rose by an inch.
A throne meant to enhance the king. Nice.

Anything for you.
The response confirmed that the chair was actually Tobe adjusted.

Screens lit up around him from every angle: information on his wealth, Rendition’s stock price, the status of the Jersey City redevelopment project, everything he’d want to know.
At least it’s not all in my head.
Given the chance, the Tobes would happily make his daily life exactly that complex.

Lud put his beefy hand on Sam’s shoulder. “You’ll be the only one to see this information, but each board member will be seeing their own version of what they want. You, me, Jacques, and Dr. Shot will be the only ones physically present. The rest will hologram in, though like the Tobes, they will appear perfectly solid to you. As you focus on their images, the screens will bring up whatever you want to know about each member.”

“What can we expect?” Sam asked.

“Everyone has their own agenda. I’ll be on your side, of course, though if you want me more involved with The Foundation, I’ll have to step back from Rendition. That’ll leave Jacques in charge, which he’ll love, but he’ll press the corporation more firmly toward taking over the world.

“The Moons of Jupiter aren’t going to like that development. They already think we have too much power, and neither of their board members likes Jacques. We press them too hard, and they’ll start pulling away from some important agreements. That’ll make Michael nervous. Earth and the Moons, at a governmental level, have been at odds for some time. Earth still maintains a separation of governing body and big business, in theory anyway. The Moons never struggled with that inconvenience. The corporations are the government out there.”

“Put those agreements at risk, and we’ll pull in Hector from the Mars Consortium.”

Sam didn’t need to blink at the monitor. The Tobes were all too happy to display the real threat as they saw it. The Consortium ran the solar transfer array. Lines connected Mars to Venus and Mercury. The three planets controlled the power, the real solar power, that allowed life to exist on every once-barren rock in the solar system. Without that network of collectors and transfer stations, terraforming would have been impossible. Every rock that supported life beyond Earth owed its very existence to the Mars Consortium. “And where do they stand?”

“There’s no love lost between the Moons of Jupiter and the Mars Consortium. Both are vying with Earth to be the major power in the solar system,” Lud said.

Sam turned from the view screens to his longtime friend. He’d never adequately appreciated the man’s intelligence or his skills at running the most powerful corporation on Earth. The large, jovial, high-school-linebacker persona had a way of distracting attention from his perceptive cunning. Add those smarts to someone with a natural tendency toward action, and you ended up with a powerful CEO. The Tobes couldn’t have picked a better person to run Rendition, including Sam. “I probably haven’t said it enough, but I’m damn glad to have you by my side.”

Lud shrugged off the compliment, as he often did. “I always felt a little bad about leaving you down in that computer tube on
Leviathan
.”

Sam turned back to the various chairs around the conference table. To say more would only embarrass Lud. One chair remained unaccounted for. “And what’s Dr. Shot’s stance?”

“He’s the wild card,” Lud said with obvious relief. “The other board members call him the invisible man. Every time they look at their monitors, expecting to see information on him, all they get are transparent screens. The only other person I know who the Tobes keep that secret is you.”

Makes sense. He had a bigger hand in their creation than I did.
But that wasn’t a secret anyone wanted revealed.

“He’s typically more interested in what Rendition is developing than the politics,” Lud continued. “I’ve caught him playing solitaire more than once during a board meeting. But I suspect he’ll be attentive this time. Not much happens involving the Tobes that he lets go unnoticed.”

How does anything get done with such a fragmented board of directors?
Sam thought he had problems with how the Tobes related on Earth. God? That was a joke. At best, he was the figurehead for one little anthill.

* * *

S
am wished
he were the invisible man as board members began appearing around the table. Each stared him straight in the eye then darted a glance to some unseen information that apparently circled his head.

A striking woman with jet-black skin lit up on the display screen opposite him. The perfect shape of her oblong, shaved head glistened in the light of the room she chose for the broadcast. He attempted to stare into her deep-set, mysterious eyes but found the action more embarrassing to him than her. A quivering of her lips indicated a passing smile as he broke eye contact. The information screen about Jayde Zuri from Europa failed to convey anything helpful.
Damn it. All that time in the human-interaction lab, and you guys still can’t tell me anything that might start a conversation?

Do you really want to talk with her?

Sam shook his head. The meeting would be awkward enough without the burden of small talk to start things off.

“You must be looking forward to returning to Chariklo. I’d miss my two sons and daughter terribly if I had to be separated from them for over a year. But then, I seldom leave Europa if I can avoid it.” Jayde’s voice carried a musical transition from word to word, as if she were singing the sentence more than speaking it.

“Jess and I have found the time productive. We’ll stay as long as we’re needed.” He couldn’t tell if her observation was meant to be cordial or probing.

The woman smiled at his comeback. In the corner of the screen, Ellie and Joshua put on a mock tennis match. Ellie, having darkened her skin, just lost the point.
Knock it off. This is going to be hard enough already.

Just wanted to see you smile.

Lud gaveled the meeting to order. “You’ve all had a chance to look over the proposal. The Samuel and Jessica Adamson Foundation will be a subsidiary of Rendition. The money used will come from Jess and Sam, but it’ll be funneled through the corporation. That way, we’ll get the good public relations and tax breaks without any associated costs. Should be pretty straightforward.”

A man in a rumpled suit, the North American government representative, chuckled. “Ludlow, any time you tell me something’s straightforward, I start reading the fine print.”

“There isn’t anything in this proposal that should bother the government,” Lud said. “If anything, I’d think you’d be the first in favor. Some of the foundation’s projects will directly benefit cities and people.”

“I can see that. My question is where does this money come from?” Michael Baldwin asked. “It’s easy to say Sam and Jess, but it’s not like there’s a storehouse of cash somewhere with their names on it. You’re talking about liquidating stock to start off and then redirecting their income from the market to the foundation. That’s going to give a hit to the stock market. A lot of people depend on that economic indicator not going down. Ever. History has shown the only way to maintain a healthy economy is for the market to never show weakness.”

Screens lit up around Sam. A measuring gauge displayed his percentage of ownership in Rendition and the relative dollar figure. As his personal salary—one he didn’t know he had—was taken out of stock purchases, his stake in Rendition hardly moved while the dollar figure available to the foundation skyrocketed. Different gauges, however, showed a less rosy outlook for the other board members. The stock would still go up but not as fast. The rich would still get rich even if their piece of the economic pie didn’t get any bigger. As for the poor unfortunate souls who relied on Rendition stock for their security, there weren’t any. The foundation absorbed the blow, buying up their stock before they suffered any loss.

A middle-aged man in a bright-yellow shirt leaned in toward his monitor. His white skin contrasted with that of Jayde, who sat next to him. “From the updated corporate structure spreadsheet, it appears you’d be taking a leadership role in this foundation. How will that affect Rendition without you at the helm?” The question from the Callisto representative sounded just a little too staged.

“I’ll remain CEO,” Lud explained. “But Jacques will take over more of the day-to-day tasks.”

“Then I can’t agree with this proposal.” The man sat back so far in his chair that his hologram became translucent.

Jayde spoke to her Moons of Jupiter comember through gritted teeth. “We agreed we’d listen.”

The yellow shirt hurt Sam’s eyes as the man scooted back up to the table. That would be one firm no, not that it would matter. Not for the first time, Sam wondered why he needed to be a part of this charade. He owned the majority of stock. His one vote made all the others pointless.

You need the board. Do you really want to replace members? Do you have any idea how much work we went through pulling these people together?
The Tobes were right, of course.

Yes, yes, I know.
It was either rely on these people, or take the reins himself. And that would prevent him from ever returning home.
Clever minx. That’s what Jayde was doing—reminding me I needed these board members if I ever hope to return to my daughters.

“I’d like to hear from Sam. After all, he’s the primary stockholder and founder of Rendition.” Hector from the Mars Consortium wore no shirt, displaying his bronzed, muscular chest. Jess would have loved the sight. He could have posed for a cover of
The Adventures of Martian Billionaires
series she’d read as a kid.

Sam scanned the screens, wondering if there’d been a question he’d missed. “What would you like to know?”

“All of us around this table are aware of the new beings known as the Tobes. Since they are property of Rendition, are you intending to reimburse us for their use in your foundation?” Hector asked. “I’m not seeing anything regarding compensation. Even though Tobes aren’t referred to in these documents, the sparse nature of the foundation’s structure indicates to me you intend on taking them for your use.”

Out of the corner of Sam’s eye, he caught Dr. Shot’s intense stare. Sam had hoped the question of the Tobes wouldn’t be raised. But he’d come prepared. “I’ve had discussions with Dr. Shot regarding the status of these new entities. It was his firm that originally held the rights to the operating systems that form the base of their existence.”

Sam put his hands on the conference table, thus shutting off all his displays. “I will not own slaves. I’ve worked with the Tobes over the last months, and it’s past time they were given the respect and recognition they deserve as self-aware, living beings. To consider them any less sentient than humans would be foolish. The entire basis for Rendition’s ownership of the race known as Tobes stems from a single patent. There was an odd clause in the purchase of Dr. Shot’s company. He retains the sole discretionary transaction of that one patent. In other words, we own its use, but only he can authorize its transfer.”

Hector Delcourt shared a look of confusion with all the other board members except Dr. Shot. “So only Elliot can allow your new foundation to use the Tobes? I don’t understand how that negates your compensating Rendition for their services.”

Dr. Elliot Shot put down his glass pipe. “I hereby free all Tobes. The patent has been assigned to them in perpetuity.”

The ruckus that erupted around the conference table was drowned out in Sam’s mind by the screams of joy from an entire race of beings just being told they’d been set free.