45
Crags make chronotons. Ask anyone who has had one.
Friday’s words kept coming back to him.
Like all good diplomats, Atilano played his hand close to the vest. In the interest of those he represented, he dared not let on how horrified he was that anyone at all must be chosen for elimination.
He may have had little or no time left, true, but there was a 50% probability he and the rest of the humans would be around until that Friday, about 60 hours, and counting, from his bedtime on this Tuesday evening.
Crags make chronotons. Ask anyone who has had one. Had he been thinking about this very thing already this evening? He noticed a strange feeling of déjà vu.
Again.
He realized he had been having these feelings sporadically for several days now. Perhaps not so sporadic. Perhaps the feelings corresponded, he reasoned with horror, to the serial minichronic booms that had been occurring along a collapsing rectangle of Fibonacci curve points. The minicollapses.
He slept terribly that night, as did all of the humans all the way out to Lagrange 1. In his shower the following morning, he did excellent thinking, as he always did in the shower. First of all, he realized, he was still there to take a shower and was thankful for that. Although he was finished washing himself, he stood—a naked human being—under the water. Naked and scared. Naked—as good a metaphor for helpless and unprotected as there could ever be.
He did his most excellent thinking.
The Martians after synbiosis were superior in both intellect and, seemingly, in what many on Earth might call humanity. What we could learn from them! We hadn’t even scratched the surface, and now the human default position of self-preservation would send them back to extinction, back to oblivion.
Like they never were. Like their non-existent fossils.
On the one hand, allowing them co-existence with the Earth-bound humans until TNULL meant annihilation of the colony. Men, women, and children—all who never were. Not even dust to dust, or as the Martians might say, light to light. And probably all children of colonists, even back on Earth, might join the oblivion. But annihilation for Atilano, the rest of the colonists, and even those few on Earth who were the progeny, meant both races would persist.
People of Mars, welcome to the Solar System!
After all, human history would remain. Probably. The Louvre, the Vatican, the Rijksmuseum, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Confucius, Jefferson, Locke, the Pyramids, Tour d’Eiffel, the Taj Mahal, and on and on. Persisting.
Probably.
Beautifully persisting along with the wonders of the achievements of the Martian race. Who on Earth would care about 2700 colonists—mere adventurers who knew the risks when they had signed on and deserved whatever their risks would bring?
People of Mars, welcome to the Solar System!
Oblivion would spare Earth. Probably. But “probably” still meant some uncertainty. For Earth’s safety, Kubacki’s mistakes could only be upgraded from his disturbing possibly to Friday’s reassuring probably not.
Still there was the chance that all humans—possibly all the way to Earth, might be assigned to oblivion.
Oblivion hurts.
And because it hurt on the front end, as Atilano once said, he wanted to cry.
Crags. “Ask anyone who has had one,” Friday had said. Atilano wasn’t deluded that this decision was his alone. Or was it? That would be WalshThink, he groaned. But this begged an important consideration: who had the right to weigh in?
The whole colony? There wasn’t enough time to evacuate everyone to Lagrange 1 before Friday, although some evacuations could begin and continue to Lagrange capacity. (Even if there was so little as a 1% chance of collapse not occurring before 60 days, shouldn’t that window be used to load up the perennials?)
The MCPSC? Should they make their case? Didn’t they run Mars? Weren’t they entrusted for things like this?
The NOE back on Earth? There was a possibility, however small, that all of Earth was at risk.
No, no, no! he realized, realized severely. What would their capitalism say about it? Martian technology would change everything, of course. The whole colony had been an NOE business venture by nations and corporations, a hybrid politico-fiscal enterprise, with the associated responsibilities to shareholders. God, he thought. Imagine making this a business decision. Which way would profit vote? Which way would a return-on-investment vote? It certainly wouldn’t be in favor of the 2700 colonists when there was a millennial technology available for consumers.
Furthermore, there were nations in the NOE who had made no contributions to the colony, yet they were fully entitled say in all NOE decisions. The NOE, its members as enmeshed in perpetually fruitless gainsaying as they were, would turn the decision into an offensive farce. Some of its members still struggled with other members over the right to exist, so how could they qualify to consider the same of another world?
Should the Chronarchy decide? According to charter, this would probably mean input from the languid Bureau of Prisns, which was hardly qualified to run a cafeteria or laundry much less judge for or against genocide. As it was, only one other person, Dr. Jay Kubacki, was privy to the current field measurements.
Indecisive and emotional missteps could not rule the day. Could not rule the planet. Should not rule the future or the past. Not if Gavin Atilano had anything to do with it.
Atilano shivered, but it was not because his hot water had run out. He shivered because he realized any participants in the decision by the pro-profit Earth-centric would sound the death knell for any consideration for colonists’ survival. The colonists would be hard pressed to find champions. On the other hand, any colony-centric decisions would end the dream of tempconciliation, alien co-existence, and quantum leaps in human civilization. How could the colony ever be exciting again after having walked in the gardens of the gods?
Ask anyone who has had one. Atilano knew now how the decision should be made.