Starplex

“Oh, indeed—and who knows how many cycles might go through before they work up the nerve and technology to undertake the project? The endless time-jumping method gives a pseudo-immortality—it’s clearly inferior to actually making the universe that last forever. Not only does it mean no building or other structure can have a lifespan longer than ten billion years, but it limits immortality to those beings who actually have time travel.”

“I suppose,” said Keith. “But what a project!”

“Indeed,” said Jag. “And it might be even greater in scope than it first seems. Tell me: How old is this universe right now?”

“Fifteen billion years,” Keith said. “Earth years, that is.”

Jag moved his lower shoulders. “Actually, although that is the most commonly cited figure, no astrophysicist believes it. Fifteen is a compromise, halfway between the ages of the universe suggested by two different lines of reasoning. The universe is either as young as ten billion years, or as old as twenty. Since the mid-1990s, the accepted value of the Hubble constant—which measures the rate of expansion of the universe—has been about eighty-five kilometers per second per megaparsec. That means the universe is still flinging apart at a great rate from the original big bang—that gravity has done little to slow the expansion so far—and therefore it can’t be much more than about ten billion years old.

“But spectral studies of extreme first-generation stars, especially those in globular clusters, suggest that such stars have been undergoing fusion for almost twice that length of time. We’ve long assumed that one calculation or the other must be wrong. But perhaps neither is. Perhaps what we’re seeing now is merely the most recent phase of a multistage project. Perhaps I was premature in rejecting Magnor’s suggestion earlier about pushing globular clusters through shortcuts. Perhaps such clusters, each containing tens of thousands of stars, have already been shoved back from the future. It’s possible that originally this universe contained far, far less than ninety-five percent of the critical density of matter, and that the current phase of the project is just some fine-tuning.”

“But—but surely the mass doubling is only temporary,” said Lianne, “To go back to your original example, if you traveled back from tomorrow to today, there’d be two of you today—but tomorrow, one of them would presumably disappear back into the past.”

“Perhaps so,” said Jag. “But for the entire span between the departure point in the future and the arrival point in the present, you have doubled the mass. And if those two points were separated by ten billion years, then you’ve doubled the mass for a very long time indeed—long enough for its effects to put the brakes on the universe’s expansion. If you calculate with great care, you don’t need to permanently increase the mass of the universe. You only need to do it long enough for gravitational attraction to halt the rate of expansion of the original explosion. If you do it just right, even without a permanent increase in mass, you could end up with a universe in the far future that is indeed precisely balanced—a universe that will live forever.”

Jag paused for breath. “It’s the most massive engineering project ever undertaken,” he said. “But it sure beats the alternative—which was to let the universe die.” He beamed at the members of the bridge staff.

“We did it. Regular-matter creatures—creatures with hands! In the end—correction, to prevent the end—the universe needed us!”

* * *

The ceremony, held in their favorite Waldahud restaurant, was short. The audience was much bigger than their original family-only wedding in Madrid; any sort of celebration was welcomed aboard Starplex.

Thorald Magnor had been promoted to acting director for the day so that he could perform the service. “Do you, Gilbert Keith,” he said, “again take Clarissa Maria, to love, honor, and cherish, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer?”

Keith turned to face his wife. He remembered the day twenty years ago, the day they had first gone through this ritual, a wonderful, happy day. It had been a good marriage—stimulating intellectually, emotionally, and physically. And she was, if anything, more beautiful, more challenging today than then. He looked into her large brown eyes, and said, “I do.” Thor turned to face her, but before he could speak, Keith squeezed his wife’s hand and added, loudly, for all to hear, “For as long as we both shall live.”

Rissa smiled at him radiantly.

Hell, thought Keith, twenty years was just scratching the surface…

EPILOGUE