Torsti looked at him. It felt strange to talk to someone wearing a mask that completely hid everything except the eyes. In a way, it felt more distant than seeing Mom on a screen. What is your trick, Grandfather? he wondered. Which way does your grain go?
“Where did you learn that?” he asked carefully.
“Well, now. It would have been in the time of Big Corona, back when your mother was little,” he said. “Not the virus, of course, not Pandemic One. The Coronal Mass Ejection Event, the solar flare. Nothing but wood to keep the heating going, back then. Had to learn quickly how to chop it.”
“What was it like?” Torsti asked, starting to gather the split logs into a pile. He knew the facts, of course. A massive blast of charged particles from the Sun had slammed into the Earth’s magnetic field, frying every electric circuit. But it felt like this was something Grandfather wanted to talk about.
The old man’s eyes were distant.
“Oh, it was a mess. You had satellites falling from the sky. No Internet. No electricity for six months. It was worse than the Pandemics. At least then we had ways of talking to each other. The Big Corona really isolated everybody. It was in the middle of the winter, too. People hoarded firewood. Even now, I keep too much of it around. Not good for my carbon credits, but once you go through something like that, your habits change.”
“I was in my forties. But it was only then that I learned how to be a grown-up. There is something about protecting your family that changes things. Not that anyone understands that, these days. After it was over, I made sure I prepared. Learned first aid, bought this place here, made sure we had canned food for years. Maybe I overdid the protecting with your mother a little bit, that’s why she grew up so wild. But you do what you have to do.”
His mask twisted, just a hint of a smile beneath.
“You know, we had this old chest of drawers, mahogany, from your great-grandmother. One night I took it to the back yard and chopped it into pieces. It kept us warm for a night, but your grandmother never forgave me for that.”
He sighed. “She loved the northern lights, though. We saw the best ones ever, the night it happened. We were all in a panic, trying to find candles in the pitch black, and then she told me to look outside. The city was all dark, and the sky was ablaze, with every color you could think of. We took your mother and went outside, stared at it for hours. It was the most beautiful thing she had seen in her life, she said, and because of the way she looked at it, it was.
“That’s what I miss now, her way of seeing things. I see the aurora here, in the winter, sometimes, but it’s just lights in the sky.
“We can’t really know, but that was probably what killed her, us going out there. The cancer wave that came afterwards, all those particles, messing with everyone’s DNA. I got lucky, roll of the dice. Your mother was fine, the Foundation rolled out the cancer vaccines by the time she started school. But your grandmother… “Grandfather looked away, at the choppy sea beyond the trees. “She drowned on dry land, in the end,” he said quietly. “Her lungs filled with fluid.”
Torsti stared at Grandfather. He didn’t know much about his grandmother, but her paintings and drawings were all over the cottage, small landscapes and quirky manga-style cartoons. He felt the terror of the churn’s black water rise in him again. To get rid of his disquiet, he chopped at the last log, hard. It flew apart violently, and the axe got stuck in the block.
“So that’s why,” Grandfather said.
“That’s why what?” Torsti asked.
“That’s why I don’t want your vaccine. I don’t need to see the future. AIs and space colonies and Dyson trees and all the things your Mom spends her days thinking about for the Long Reflection Committee. Lights in the sky, nothing more. I don’t need to see it.”
He got up. “Let’s gather these and get the fire going for you, hmm? It’s going to be cold at night.”
THE SAUNA SMELLED OF DRY WOOD IN A WAY THAT SEEMED TO RETAIN ITS WARMTH. It had a small front room with a low bed where Torsti had slept during previous island visits. It had one of Grandmother’s drawings, a tiny watercolor and ink of the view out toward the sea from the sauna window, framed by the wavebreakers.
“You’ll have to stay outside while I get the fire going,” Grandfather said. The old man went into the sauna itself and kneeled painfully by the stove, assembling kindling and wood into careful layers.
Reluctantly, Torsti got out of his way. He walked to the pier and looked out to the sea. As Grandfather had predicted, the wind had picked up. The trees on the cliffs danced, and heavy waves crashed against the breakers. It looked just like Grandmother’s painting, a window into the past.
So much would be lost when Grandfather died, entire worlds Torsti had never known. I have to find a way to do it, he thought. I have to bring him to the future with me. If I leave, I might never see him again.
It is just lights in the sky, Grandfather had said.
That’s the problem, Torsti thought. He can’t see the future. But maybe I can show him.
He went to the boat and picked up a coil of sturdy rope from its storage locker. Then he gathered a few round pebbles from the beach and went back to the sauna. Grandfather came out, dusting his hands.
“All right,” he said. “If you add a few logs before you go to sleep, you should be warm and snug now, even if the north wind blows.” There was a regretful look in his eyes. “It’s too bad we can’t actually use the sauna together. Shame to waste a good löyly.” Then he frowned, seeing Torsti’s expression. “What is it, boy?”
“I want to show you something,” Torsti said. “Let’s go up to the churn.”
THE HIISI’S CHURN LOOKED EVEN DEEPER AND DARKER IN THE FADING LIGHT. Slowly, Torsti walked right to its edge. The fear moved in him now, as if the deep water was reaching out from the churn with a cold hand and squeezing his heart.
He laid the coil of rope down on the ground and tied one end carefully around a boulder. Then he drew his hand back and tossed the first stone into the churn. It bounced off a wall and vanished into the black water.
“What are you doing?” Grandfather asked.
Torsti threw another stone. This time, the angle was better, and the stone actually caught on the grooves, spun around the churn bore before falling into the water.
“I want you to travel with me,” he said quietly. “Remember? It can take us anywhere.”
Grandfather watched him, eyes unreadable, almost invisible in the dim light.
“So let’s go to the future. A thousand years from now.”
He threw another stone. He was getting better at it now, and now the stone slid along the grooves almost a whole circuit. His palms sweated. The images from the simulations flashed in his head. Squeezing them hard like the stones in his hand, he forced them into words.
“Look,” he said, motioning Grandfather to come closer. “Here we are. Not many people live on Earth. Maybe you are still here, on the island, but when we come visit you, it’s from the artificial worlds in the asteroid belt, every one of them unique and different. I—I might have wings, since I live in a low gravity world, and I have to wear an exoskeleton to walk around. Mom is no longer just thinking about the future, she is building it. Dad is a mindweaver, trying to get big group minds to get along, helping them to find the balance between the parts and the whole. We still celebrate vaccine season. But now it’s just a ritual for family, like Christmas used to be.”
He threw another stone. This one was better: the round stone bounced and followed the grooves, almost all the way down.