The singularity began taking on serious weight. The mass gauge whirled. Kilograms converted into tons. Tons into kilotons. Boulders, hillocks, mountains poured forth, a torrent flowing into the greedy mouth.
When Stan was young, they said you weren’t supposed to be able to make something from nothing. But nature did sometimes let you borrow. Alex Lustig’s machine was borrowing from vacuum, and instantly paying it all back to the singularity.
That was the secret. Any bank will lend you a million bucks … so long as you only want it for a microsecond.
Megatons, gigatons … Stan had helped make holes before. Singularities more complex and elegant than this one. But never had anyone attempted anything so drastic or momentous. The pace accelerated.
Something shifted in the sinuses behind his eyes. That warning came moments before the gravimeters began singing a melody of alarm … full seconds in advance of the first creaking sounds coming from the reinforced metal walls.
Come on, Alex. You promised this wouldn’t run away.
They had come to this lab on a distant asteroid on the off chance something might go wrong. But Stan wondered how much good that would do if their meddling managed to tear a rent in the fabric of everything. There were stories that some scientists on the Manhattan Project had shared a similar fear. “What if the chain reaction doesn’t stay restricted to the plutonium,” they asked, “but spreads to iron, silicon, and oxygen?” On paper it was absurd, but no one knew until the flash of Trinity, when the fireball finally faded back to little more than a terrible, glittering cloud.
Now Stan felt a similar dread. What if the singularity no longer needed Lustig’s machine to yank matter out of vacuum for it? What if the effect carried on and on, with its own momentum …?
This time we might have gone too far.
He felt them now. The tides. And in the quartz window, mediated by three hundred half mirrors, a ghost took shape. It was microscopic, but the colors were captivating.
The mass scale spun. Stan felt the awful attraction of the thing. Any moment now it was going to reach out and drag down the walls, the station, the planetoid.… and even then would it stop?
“Alex!” he cried out as gravitational flux stretched his skin. Viscera migrated toward his throat as, uselessly, he braced his feet.
“Dammit, you—”
Stan blinked. His next breath wouldn’t come. Time felt suspended.
Then he knew.
It was gone.
Goosebumps shivered in the tidal wake. He looked at the mass gauge. It read zero. One moment it had been there, the next it had vanished.
Alex’s voice echoed over the intercom, satisfaction in his voice. “Right on schedule. Time for a beer, eh? You were saying something, Stan?”
He searched his memory and somewhere found the trick to breathing again. Stan let out a shuddering sigh.
“I …” He tried to lick his lips, but couldn’t even wet them. Hoarsely, he tried again. “I was going to say … you’d better have something up there stronger than beer. Because I need it.”
2.
They tested the chamber in every way imaginable, but there was nothing there. For a time it had contained the mass of a small planet. The black hole had been palpable. Real. Now it was gone.
“They say a gravitational singularity is a tunnel to another place,” Stan mused.
“Some people think so. Wormholes and the like may connect one part of spacetime with another.” Alex nodded agreeably. He sat across the table, alone with Stan in the darkened lounge strewn with debris from the evening’s celebration. Everyone else had gone to bed, but both men had their feet propped up as they gazed through a crystal window at the starry panorama. “In practice, such tunnels probably are useless. No one will ever use one for transportation, for instance. There’s the problem of ultraviolet runaway—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Stan shook his head. He poured another shot of whiskey. “What I mean is, how do we know that hole we created hasn’t popped out to become a hazard for some other poor bastards?”
Alex looked amused. “That’s not how it works, Stan. The singularity we made today was special. It grew too fast for our universe to contain it at all.
“We’re used to envisioning a black hole, even a micro, as something like a funnel in the fabric of space. But in this case, that fabric rebounded, folded over, sealed the breach. The hole is just gone, Stan.”
Stan felt tired and a little tipsy, but damn if he’d let this young hotshot get the better of him. “I know that! All causality links with our universe have been severed. There’s no connection with the thing anymore.
“But still I wonder. Where did it go?”
There was a momentary silence.
“That’s probably the wrong question, Stan. A better way of putting it would be, What has the singularity become?”
The young genius now had that look in his eyes again—the philosophical one. “What do you mean?” Stan asked.
“I mean that the hole and all the mass we poured into it now ‘exists’ in its own pocket universe. That universe will never share any overlap or contact with our own. It will be a cosmos unto itself … now and forever.”
The statement seemed to carry a ring of finality, and there seemed to be little to say after that. For a while, the two of them just sat quietly.
3.
After Alex went off to bed Stan stayed behind and played with his friends, the numbers. He rested very still and used a mental pencil to write them across the window. Equations stitched the Milky Way. It didn’t take long to see that Alex was right.
What they had done today was create something out of nothing and then quickly exile that something away again. To Alex and the others, that was that. All ledgers balanced. What had been borrowed was repaid. At least as far as this universe of matter and energy was concerned.
But something was different, dammit! Before, there had been virtual fluctuations in the vacuum. Now, somewhere, a tiny cosmos had been born.
And suddenly Stan remembered something else. Something called “inflation.” And in this context the term had nothing to do with economics.
Some theorists hold that our own universe began as a very, very big fluctuation in the primordial emptiness. That during one intense instant, superdense mass and energy burst forth to begin the expansion of all expansions.
Only there could not have been anywhere near enough mass to account for what we now see … all the stars and galaxies.
“Inflation” stood for a mathematical hat trick … a way for a medium or even small-sized bang to leverage itself into a great big one. Stan scribbled more equations on his mental blackboard and came to see something he hadn’t realized before.
Of course. I get it now. The inflation that took place twenty billion years ago was no coincidence. Rather, it was a natural result of that earlier, lesser creation. Our universe must have had its own start in a tiny, compressed ball of matter no heavier than … no heavier than …
Stan felt his heartbeat as the figure seemed to glow before him.
No heavier than that little “pocket cosmos” we created today.
He breathed.
That meant that somewhere, completely out of touch or contact, their innocent experiment might have … must have … initiated a beginning. A universal beginning.
Fiat lux.
Let there be light.
“Oh my God,” he said to himself, completely unsure which of a thousand ways he meant it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have a reputation for passing around my work a lot as I rewrite a novel and then rewrite it again. Seeking reality (or plausibility) checks was particularly important for this book. So, although I claim all errors and inconsistencies as my own, there are many people to thank for their help in making this a better novel better than it might have been.
For readability and general criticism, my appreciation goes out to Dr. Cheryl Brigham, Amy Thomsen, George Alec Effi
nger, Dr. Charles Sheffield, Dr. Gregory Benford, Jonathan Post, Dean Ing, Christie McCue Harmon, Dan Brin, Steven Mendel, Michael Cassutt, John Ensign, Janice Gelb, Celeste Satter, Betty Hull, Diane Clark, Elizabeth Oakes, Shiela Finch, Greg and Astrid Bear, Daryl Mallett, Barbara Neale, Rachel Neumieir, Robert Jolissaint, Jane Starr, managing editor Diane Shanley, designer Barbara Aronica, and my exceptional copy-editor, Len Neufeld.
For their special advice on countless technical details, I’d like to thank especially Professor John Cramer, Dr. Jim Moore, Karen Anderson, Dr. Gary Strathearn, Dr. Martyn Fogg, Dr. Steven Gillett, Joseph Carroll, Carole Sussman, and Dr. David Paige.
The Caltech literary and SF club, SPECTRE, was particularly helpful in circulating and discussing an early manuscript, with special thanks to Mark Adler, Ben Finley, Ken McCue, Steinn Sigurdssen, Ulrika Anderson, Amy Carpenter, David Palme, David Coufal, Paul Haubert, James Cummings, Douglass Bloomer, Erik Russell, Earl Hubbell, Yair Zadik, Eric Johnson, Gorm Nykeim, Eric Christian, Richard Achterberg, Matt Fields, Erich Schneider, Douglas Bloemer, and Dick Brown. In similar fashion, the ENIGMA Club, at UCLA, was most helpful, especially Scott Martin, Phil Adler, Robert Hurt, Pat Mannion, Wayne Bell, Andy Ashcroft, and Tamara Boyd. The fine listeners of the New Zealand SF Society were most helpful in getting some of the Kiwi stuff right.
For their great patience, the editorial staff at Bantam Spectra Books have my admiration, especially Lou Aronica, for gritting his teeth and waiting, knowing I’d outgrow my declared intention to make this novel “gonzo.” For helping make it worth my while to devote so much time to one book, I want to thank my agent, Ralph Vicinanza.
To Cheryl and Dan, my deep gratitude simply for keeping me sane while I finished this monster.
And of course, I’d be remiss not to include Sol and Gaea, who together kept me alive all this time. I particularly appreciate the air to breathe, the sunshine, and that good, clean water. Don’t know what I’d do without them. Thanks again.
Early portions of Earth were written on an ancient Apple II computer with 48K of memory—coal fired, steam powered, with a serial number only five digits long. It was finished using a really neat Macintosh II with four megabytes RAM, a forty-megabyte hard disk, laser printer, and WordPerfect software, supplemented by the wonderful program QuicKeys. In prior lives I used to chip these tomes in stone or write them on clay tablets. What a difference! And there are still some who insist there’s no such thing as progress.
Reading List
Man on Earth, by Charles Sheffield (published by Sidgewick & Jackson, U.K.) This coffee-table book contains startling and beautiful scenes of the planet as viewed from space. The text, by a well-regarded scientist and novelist, is informative and insightful.
Earth, by Anne H. Ehrlich and Paul R. Ehrlich. Not to be confused with this novel! The Ehrlichs’ non-fiction paean to a planet in trouble is moving and stimulating. (There are also many geology texts with the same title.)
“Managing Planet Earth.” This special 1989 edition of Scientific American describes the most recent work by scientists studying the Earth’s systems, and strategies toward a sustainable world. The publishers of Scientific American have a series of excellent special volumes on topics ranging from geology to ecology. Ask for their order list.
Oasis in Space, by Preston Cloud. This well-regarded recent book by a professor at the University of California surveys the history of the planet, from the origins of life all the way to the present crises.
Global Warming: Are We Entering the Greenhouse Century? by Stephen Schneider (published by Sierra Club Books). Offers an overview of the entire climate debate, along with an extensive bibliography.
Fifty Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth. You may have to order this concise little guidebook, filled with advice that can save you money and safeguard your health, too. Write to the Earth Works Group, Box 1400 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, California.
Proxy Power
“What can I do? How can just one person do anything about the fate of the world.”
That’s the common complaint of people today, who worry about the future, but who are already overwhelmed by the daily grind of a busy life—work, family, and a myriad of modern distractions. Polls show a clear majority of North Americans, and people in many other lands, care deeply about the state the Earth is in, and want to see something preserved. But who has the energy or time to go out and become an activist?
Trust contemporary society, though. For the convenience of busy moderns, there is now the social action equivalent of the microwave oven and the frozen dinner. In other words, you can hire people to go out and save the world for you! Pick a problem and there’s probably some organization already in tune with your agenda that will add your small contribution to others’ and leverage it into serious effort. I list just a few below, but there are so many. How can anyone complain that they can’t influence the future of the world when it’s so easy to get involved?
Some cliches are true: either you’re part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.
Environmental Organizations
The Sierra Club. One of the oldest and most active environmental organizations. Membership, $33 per year ($15 for students). Department J-169, P.O. Box 7959, San Francisco, CA 94120-7959.
The Nature Conservancy. Forget the middlemen and politicians. This excellent group actually purchases tracts of rain forest, to preserve them directly. Membership, $15 per year. 1800 North Kent Street, Arlington, VA 22209.
Greenpeace. The famous “Greeners” take on polluters, head-on. Membership, $25 per year. 1436 U Street NW, Box 3720, Washington, D.C. 20007.
Pro-Space Lobbying Groups
The National Space Society. Membership, $30 per year ($18 for students). 922 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Washington D.C. 20003.
The Planetary Society. Membership, $25 per year. Pursues projects aimed at exploration. 65 North Catalina Ave., Pasadena, CA 91106.
Human Rights Organization
Amnesty International. Donation—any amount. Fights to free political prisoners of every persuasion. 322 8th Ave., New York, NY 10001.
DAVID BRIN is the author of many other novels, Sundiver, The Uplift War, Startide Rising, The Practice Effect, The Postman, Heart of the Comet (with Gregory Benford), Earth, Glory Season, and Brightness Reef as well as the short-story collections The River of Time and Otherness. He has a doctorate in astrophysics and has been a NASA consultant and a physics professor. He lives in southern California, where he is at work on the third novel in the new Uplift trilogy.
David Brin, Earth
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