Rollback

Sarah remembered being in grade eight, and getting her first calculator. Such things had only just started to appear on the market, and everybody was debating whether they should be allowed in the classroom. After all, with a machine that could do figuring for them, kids might never learn to really understand math, the critics said. A host of scenarios ranging from the unlikely to the downright silly had been suggested, including the notion that if civilization fell, we’d endure a protracted dark age once the supply of batteries had been exhausted, since the magic boxes that did math would no longer function. Sarah had often wondered if the early appearance of solar-powered calculators had been due to some anonymous Japanese engineer’s desire to put that canard to rest.

And she’d remembered the later debates about allowing datacoms into classrooms.

Although that had affected all levels of instruction, it had gone down while she’d been teaching at U of T. Was there any point in asking students to memorize, for instance, that Sigma Draconis II was, according to data from the first Dracon message, a rocky world about 1.5 times as big as Earth, with an orbital radius of ninety-odd million kilometers and a year equal to 199 Earth days, when there was no conceivable working environment in which they couldn’t access that information in an instant?

"What sort of homework?" Sarah asked, genuinely curious.

"I’ve got some for my bioethics class," Percy said. Sarah was impressed: bioethics in grade eight; you certainly could move a lot faster if you didn’t waste so much time on mere memorization.

"And what do you have to do?"

"Look up some stuff on the web, and do a report about what I think about it."

"On any particular topic?"

"We get to choose," Percy said. "But I haven’t picked mine yet."

Sarah looked over at Don. She thought about suggesting Percy do something on the ethics of rollbacks, but Don was already too sensitive about that.

"I was thinking of maybe something about abortion," Percy continued.

She was momentarily shocked. The boy was just thirteen, for God’s sake, but—

But abortion, birth control, and family planning were all things kids needed to know about. Percy’s birthday was in July, meaning he wouldn’t turn fourteen until after he’d finished this grade, but most of his classmates would have their birthdays during the academic year, and fourteen was plenty old enough to get pregnant, or make someone pregnant.

"What do you think about abortion, Grandma?" Percy asked.

Sarah shifted in her seat. She could feel the eyes of Angela, Percy’s mother, on her, as well as those of her own daughter, Emily. "I believe every child that’s born has the right to be wanted," she said.

Percy considered this. "But what about if a guy and a girl decide they want to have a kid, but then, before it’s born, the pregnant girl changes her mind. What then?"

There was definitely some of her in her grandson; she’d wrestled a lot with the very issue he’d raised. Indeed, now that she thought about it, that was one of the points the aliens at Sig Drac had been interested in. Question forty-six had asked whether the partner actually carrying the child had the right to terminate a pregnancy that was initially mutually desired. Sarah remembered struggling with her own answer to that question when filling out the survey herself, all those years ago.

She took a sip from the glass of water in front of her. "I go back and forth on that one, dear," she said. "But, today, I think my answer would be that the mother gets the final say."

Percy considered this for a time, then: "You’re pretty skytop, Grandma, to talk to me about all this."

"Why, thanks," Sarah said. "I think."

Chapter 32

Don sat on the couch early the next morning, browsing email on his datacom. There were two messages from acquaintances asking for the same thing Randy Trenholm had wanted, an email from his brother forwarding a cartoon he thought Don would like, and—

Beep!

A new message had just arrived. The sender’s address was—

My God…

The address was [email protected].

He opened the message, and his eyes flew all over it in mad saccades, trying to absorb it as a gestalt. And then, his pulse racing, he re-read it carefully, from top to bottom: