Starplex

Keith turned his attention back to the center of the bay. Boxcar’s bundle of ropes had slid to the floor, near the discarded sensor web. They were reaching up to the frame and disengaging the blue pump from the central green pod, and gently lifting the pump to the floor. Keith could see the pump’s large central breathing orifice cycling through its usual four-step sequence of open, stretch, compress, and close. After about forty seconds, though, the sequence started to get distorted as the pump seemed to lose track of what it was doing. The orifice movements became jumbled—opening, then immediately compressing; trying to stretch wide after closing. There was a small gasping sound—the only sound in the entire bay. Finally the pump stopped moving.

All that was left was the pod, sitting on the saddle-shaped frame.

Keith whispered to Rissa: “How long can the pod survive without the pump?”

Rissa turned to him, her eyes wet. She blinked several times, dislodging tears. “A minute,” she said at last. “Perhaps two.”

Keith reached over and squeezed her hand.

Everything was still for about three minutes. The pod expired quietly, without movement or sound—although somehow, apparently, the Ibs knew when it was gone, and, as one, they began to roll out of the bay. All their webs were dark; not a word was passing between them. Keith and Rissa were the last to leave. Butterfly would return shortly, Keith knew, to take care of jettisoning Boxcar’s remains into space.

As they walked out of the bay, Keith thought about his own future. He was going to live a long, long time, apparently. He wondered whether billions of years from now he’d be able to escape the mistakes of his own past.

* * *

They couldn’t sleep that night, of course. Boxcar’s death had upset Rissa, and Keith was wrestling with his own demons. They lay side by side in their bed, wide-awake, Rissa staring at the dark ceiling, Keith looking at the faint red spot on the wall made by the light seeping around the plastic card he used to cover his clock face.

Rissa spoke—just one word. “If…”

Keith rolled onto his back. “Pardon?”

She was quiet for a time. Keith was about to prod her again, when she said, very softly, “If you don’t remember how to make a u or an apostrophe, will you remember me—remember us?” She rolled over, looked at him. “You’re going to live another ten billion years. I can’t begin to comprehend that.”

“It’s… mind-numbing,” said Keith, shaking his head against the pillow. He, too, was quiet for a time. Then: “People always fantasize about living forever. Somehow, ‘forever’ seems less daunting than putting a specific date on it. I could deal with immortality, but contemplating the specific notion of being alive ten billion years from now… I just can’t make sense of it.”

“Ten billion years,” said Rissa again, shaking her head. “Earth’s sun will long be dead, Earth will be dead.” A beat. “I will be dead.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. If it is life prolongation, then surely it’s because of your studies here on Starplex. After all, why else would I have ended up as one of the recipients of the process? Maybe we’re both alive ten billion years from now.”

More silence.

“And together?” said Rissa, at last.

Keith exhaled noisily. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine any of it.” He sensed he was saying the wrong thing. “But… but if I’m to face that much of a future, I would want it to be with you.”

“Would you?” said Rissa, at once. “Would we have anything left to explore, to learn about each other, after all that time?”

“Maybe… maybe it’s not corporeal existence,” said Keith. “Maybe my consciousness is transferred into a machine. Wasn’t there a cult on New New York that wanted to do that—copy human brains into computers? Or maybe… maybe all of humanity becomes one giant mind, but the individual psyches can still be tapped. That would be…”

“Would be less frightening that the concept of personally living another ten billion years. In case you haven’t done the math yet, that would mean that so far, you’ve only lived one two-hundred-millionth of the age you’re going to become.” She paused and sighed.

“What?” asked Keith.

“Nothing.”

“No, you’re upset about something.”

Rissa was quiet for about ten seconds. “Well, it’s just that your current midlife crisis has been hard enough to live with. I’d hate to see what kind of stunts you’re going to pull when you turn five billion.”

Keith didn’t know what to say. Finally, he settled on a laugh. It sounded hollow to him, forced.

Quiet again—long enough that he thought perhaps she’d at last fallen asleep. But he couldn’t sleep himself. Not yet, not with these thoughts going through his head.

“Dulcinea?” he whispered softly—so softly that if she were already asleep he hopefully wouldn’t wake her.

“Hmm?”

Keith swallowed. Maybe he should leave the issue alone, but… “Our anniversary is coming up.”

“Next week,” said the voice in the darkness.

“Yes,” said Keith. “It’ll be twenty years, and—”