Eschaton 1 – The Other End of Time

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Patrice

Never had the stale air of Starlab smelled so much like home. Never had the queasiness of microgravity felt so dear. Patrice couldn't stop grinning-nor either of the other Pats, nor Jimmy Lin, nor even Rosaleen, arms crossed over her belly to hold in some unannounced pain. Only Dopey and Dannerman seemed immune. Dopey, held in the arms of one of the Docs, was babbling: "Please, you must keep a weapon drawn and pointed at the terminal, in case one of the Horch machines follows. Why are you not listening to me? But it is urgent!"

And, though Dannerman had his gun in his hand-his own gun, not one of the now useless energy weapons-he was indeed not listening. He was looking around the Starlab corridor as though trying to get his bearings. "Jimmy," he snapped. "Do you think you can find the astronaut return capsule? Go check it out. I want to know if it's still workable… and if you think you can fly it."

"Sure," Lin said, "if that's what you want. But wouldn't it be easier to radio for a rescue ship?"

"Do you want to hang around here? Just do it. Go." And as Lin went off Dopey was frantically demanding to know what was happening.

"But you can't just leave the terminal unguarded, Agent Dannerman! Have you not heard me? If one of those machines follows-"

"It won't," Dannerman said grimly. "Stand back." He took aim at the closed door of the terminal and fired the whole clip.

"Now, that was foolish of you, Dan," Rosaleen said gravely. "How did you know they wouldn't ricochet around and kill us all?"

"I didn't," Dannerman admitted. "I guess I didn't think. But it looks like it worked." The high-speed loads had gone right through the door, and from inside there was a crackling and a smell of something electrical burning. "But let's make sure," he said. "Where's that bar you conked Jimmy with?"

Dopey gazed in horror as Dannerman methodically began to smash at the portal. "No!" he screamed over the crash of metal. "You mustn't! We'll be cut off from the Beloved Leaders until they send another drone, perhaps for many, many years!"

"So I hope," Dannerman agreed. "In fact I'm counting on it. The longer the better. If it's long enough, just maybe-the next time you guys come around to visit us-we'll know how to handle you."

Later… much later, and a very long distance away…

Dan Dannerman saw the pale lavender flash; the door of thetachyon terminal opened and he leaped triumphantly out, eager to join the others in the safety of Starlab.

Startlingly, the others weren't there.

Still more Startlingly, he wasn't even in Starlab. He was in a place he'd never seen. A pair of the wheel-footed Horch machines were standing there, but they weren't shooting at him. Nor could he have fired back if they had; he had no gun in his hand. Behind him he heard the door cycle shut behind him, then open again. The disheveled figure of Dopey spilled out, catapulting into him. The little creature glared at him. Then, as he saw the quietly buzzing machines observing them, Dopey's plume turned woeful gray and he began to sob.

"What's happened?" Dannerman demanded. And, clutching at straws, "Did we die? Is this your damn eschaton?"

Dopey stared at him mournfully: "Eschaton? Oh, you are a great fool, Agent Dannerman! Of course we have not yet reached the eschaton. We simply have been copied once more… and now we are in the hands of the Horch."

One of the questions that confront a science-fiction reader is to decide how much of the "science" in a story is real-i.e., is at the time of writing consensually agreed by a significant number of actual scientists-and how much is made up by the author. I don't personally make up much in my writing. I do, however, quite often make use of scientific ideas that have been put forth by some actual scientist but fall a long way short of being consensual. For example, I did not make up the faster-than-light "tachyons" I have used in this story (and in others) in order to provide a mechanism for getting my characters around this very large universe in reasonable travel times. They were originally proposed by Dr. Gerry Feinberg and others thirty or more years ago. Tachyons may or may not exist. There is no direct evidence that they do, Feinberg was able to show that they are not excluded by relativity theory; but they have never been detected. So the question remains open for scientists-but, in my view, such concepts are perfectly legitimate for writers like myself to borrow.

Which, I think, is also true of the concept which provides the central thesis of this story, the "Omega Point" or eschaton at which every person who has ever lived will, it is said, live again, and then go on doing so forever.

Much of what I know about the stranger scientific ideas that are floating around comes from the kindness of friends, who know what sort of thing interests me and are often good enough to send me copies of obscure papers from unlikely sources. The stimulus which led to the present story came from a paper by Dr. Frank Tipler, sent to me some years ago by Dr. Hans Moravec of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University. Tipler's paper, originally published in a journal devoted to religious questions, was quite tentative in tone. However, it appears that, having started thinking on the subject, Tipler began to feel that he was onto something really important. So in 1994 he published a book, The Physics of Immortality, expanding on the original notion and buttressing it with what he says are formal, scientific proofs that it is true. There are some differences between the arguments in the original paper and those in the book, however, and I should mention that in this novel I have preferred to follow those of the original paper.

Tipler's claimed scientific proofs take the form of quite abstruse arguments that are dense with equations and occupy 223 pages in his book. I am not qualified to pass judgment on the accuracy of his science, and the reviews of the book that I have seen in various scientific publications have been, to put it as impartially as possible, pretty uniformly unconvinced. Still, Tipler is a heavyweight scientist in his own right, and we all know that the history of science is full of pioneers who were at first scorned-but were ultimately shown to be correct.

So the question remains: Are we indeed all going to be reborn at some remote time eons in the future?

I don't know. If I had to bet, I must confess that I would be inclined to bet quite heavily against it… but it is certainly pretty to think so.