Lee said. "Our solitude has made the uncertainty unbearable. We don't know many other people here, and no one could be as important to us as you and Lucia are."
"Carla did take the news badly," Tony said. "She had helped Lucia take care of Milly when she was an infant. She has always stayed close to Milly. Will was almost as upset as Carla. I hadn't realized how much he cared about Milly, because he was so much older. But he also played a role in getting her and Sam hired by the Air Force, and feels both guilty and angry."
Lee sat down in the chair on the other side of a card table. There were two books on the table, one in English, the other in Korean. Lee seemed about to say something more than once but remained silent.
"My daughter," Tony said, needing to break the silence. "I talked to her about Sam, because I wanted to know all about him. Milly said Sam had a great imagination, that he was a kind person, and she loved him deeply. I wanted to know more, but I guess that was what mattered to her. My direct impressions of Sam were excellent but I wish I had had the chance to know him better. I hope you can tell me more about him one of these days, after we all finally accept... what is now so unacceptable."
"Yes, I want to do that," Lee replied. He paused thoughtfully. "Minji and I had given up hope of having a baby, after trying for many years. We came to America, we worked hard and forgot about having a family, and one day Minji looked down at her stomach and knew she was pregnant! Samuel was a miracle to us. We spent most of our savings putting him through college and he did not disappoint us. But choosing Milly as his wife may have been his greatest achievement."
"I can barely imagine your pain," Tony said, "losing your only child. Milly was our own miracle, arriving in our middle age and free of any birth defects. It was like starting over as newlyweds. Everything we should have already learned as parents seemed forgotten with Milly. Milly pushed us to our limits! Carla and William could only stand aside and admire Milly as the irresistible force she was. Yes, maybe I can imagine the pain of loss that you and Minji suffer! There is no more Milly in our lives! Two years without a word from her...! We have to believe...! OH, GOD!"
Tony wept quietly and shaking. Lee got up and came around the card table to hold Tony's shoulders, lifting a hand to wipe at his own wet face. Lucia and Minji rushed out of the trailer and held onto both men.
Perhaps the warmth of friendship could never help them forget the shared grief. Perhaps the physical exhaustion could never make them forget the reason for their grief. But nothing is forever, including tears. The four old people - husbands and wives, parents - eventually calmed themselves. Lee Chung-Hee fetched two more chairs from inside the trailer, waited for the women to sit, and then sat down by Tony. It became a quiet Saturday morning in which to suffer.
Minji stood up quickly.
"What is it?" Lucia asked.
"I hear the mail truck," Minji answered. "But I'm not going! There is no reason to go!" Yet Minji remained standing and moved toward the screened door. She opened the door enough to see the mailbox cluster. The mail truck drove up and stopped. Minji eased through the doorway without opening the door much wider. The others watched her step over to where she could clearly see what boxes were receiving mail.
After several more minutes the mail truck backed up and turned around, leaving the trailer park. Minji turned to Lucia with fear on her face.
"Minji?" Lucia queried, standing up.
"She put a brown envelope in our box!" Minji said with dread.
1-03 2090CE - Constant
"Are you sure?" Milly asked me.
"And this," I replied, "is coming from a scientist who knows very well that observation collapses binaries."
"That's only on the quantum level, not on the people level," Milly said, pulling a dirty gray blanket around her torso, leaving her dead legs exposed to the cold.
"I feel like one of a pair of quanta," I remark. "Or is it quantums? If one quantum sees another quantum, do they collapse into just one? I don't think so."
"Because you have seen the future?"
"Because I have seen one future," I reply, adding emphasis to what I hope I still believe, to what I hope is true. "I didn't see this part of it! Besides, this is your future, not mine. This is still in my past, when I was infinitely far away. Although, subjectively, I suppose it is my future."
"And time is also collapsed by observation," Milly argued. "It is always now and it is always subjective. Yet we somehow share the now - unless you are not any more real than the rest of my universe."
"And observation collapses as time collapses - if you want to give up on the question of reality. Why are you suddenly so nervous, Milly? You've seen me now for a hundred years, off and on. I'm still here. I'm still real. And you saw the letters."
"They were mailed a hundred years ago! I could hardly believe what they said! Now I can't be sure they even existed!"
"For you it was almost yesterday," I argued. "For me it seemed like a thousand years ago!"
"I'm sorry, Constant!" Milly cried. "I know what you must have been through, all alone in this hole in the mountain! I know what we've been through together! I know it, I know it, I know it! Yet I always wake up not believing it! And I stay awake, terrified that I'm not really awake, or that you will disappear forever!"
Milly was almost in tears. I would have given her a hug but I was in the first stage of letting the spacesuit wrap me in its golden amorphous rolling glob of semi-sentient protection. Did I really need protection - from myself? Milly loved the golden spacesuit and I was taking it from her again. But she needed to be a human for Constant to meet and I needed to feel different from - myself. I also needed the suit to make a deep fast drop to the South Circuit.
"This isn't like you, Milly," I said, finally wrapped in the golden spacesuit. I had learned a long time ago to control my feelings for Milly, especially right after she had shed the spacesuit and was waking up to reality again. Usually, by the time she had to go back into the golden suit I was the one who needed a tranquilizer and Milly was the one who was in control of her emotions. But this time she seemed more upset than usual. She knew this was the time that mattered the most.
"Did the suit talk to you in your sleep?" I inquired, making her think about concrete things rather than that future we both feared. "I don't trust it, myself. It's a little too smart."
"I don't know," Milly answered, gazing at me with utmost attention. "I trust it with my life and it makes my legs work. I know it can read my mind. But even if it does speak to me subconsciously, I think my nightmares are still my own. It's always a shock waking up naked and crippled. And you know I'm a tough bitch, even if I don't act like I am."
"And so am I," I said, "but neither of us sounds like it right now."
"And we both know that what you are about to experience is impossible!" Milly declared.
"That isn't a change for me," I replied. "My life has been an impossibility ever since I met Sam. This is just one more impossible event. And, like you have always complained to me, I wonder if I can go on believing what-comes-next!"
"I think I can imagine your state of mind, Constant," Milly said, wiping tears and her nose on the ancient blanket. "No more scrounging for used junk - if we have the real nature of space and time figured out. Go on! Get it done! Bring her up to see me, if you think it will help. And don't hurt her!"
"I know myself too well, Milly," I said ruefully. "It's all Sam's fault! I was nothing until Sam came into my life. All of us were nothing! We lost Sam but now we have you. This other Constant will be just as stupid as I was. I'll make her smarter - after I get her attention."
"Constant, please don't..."
"I won't kill her! Geez! Her! I'm using female pronouns for us Servants!"
"You are female," Milly said. "You loved a man, both emotionally and physically. I've always thought of you as female."
"I'm not sure now that female is the better sex, unless you can prove to me that men are really the wimps you often say they are. Where is my helmet?
I'm ready and we're just wasting our time now."
"Here." Milly fetched the bubble helmet from under her blanket and handed it to me. "Be careful! Be good."
I kissed Milly on the cheek and covered her skinny bare legs with another blanket. She had just shed my golden spacesuit and it seemed to have cleaned her up and even added a pleasant scent to her pale skin. I looked into Milly's brown eyes which were almost the same color as Sam's. That old familiar feeling of love for Milly swept over me, and - not for the first time - I admitted to myself that even though I had known Sam, then knew Petros even more so, it would not be impossible for me to love Milly as a man would love her. But I would keep that idea to myself. Why did gender even matter? Love was love.
Full of love and fear, I turned and hurried out of the room. Ten minutes later I landed at the bottom of the empty elevator shaft and stepped through the doorway into the intersection between the two test sites. The golden spacesuit provided a view of what the heavily-cabled tunnels looked like if the lighting fixtures were working - which almost none of them were. I know it smelled like the abandoned coal mine that it was, despite all the bare rock being sealed behind thick concrete walls and above a ceiling constructed to suspend large cable troughs.
I walked to the South Circuit access ladder and climbed up to the airlock. The golden spacesuit possibly could have teleported