He looked at Grandfather. The old man sat on a rock now, leaning his chin on his hands, watching Torsti.
“It’s a million years from now. Everybody comes back to Earth during vaccine season, once a century. There is no disease anymore, so the vaccines are memetic: ideas, entire systems of thought, ways of being, different kinds of consciousness. Mind vaccines against despair and war and fear.”
He looked up at the pale October stars. “The wormholes open in the Lagrange Points, and they come. Some—some come in ships; tiny ones, living spores that carry minds in molecules that then grow in soil and turn into bodies and minds; large ones, ones made from dark matter or with a black hole in the heart that can cross between galaxies. Others are already here, in virtual realities inside diamond machines; but they make bodies to visit Earth and the people here, because it’s vaccine season. So they can remember where they come from.”
Now Grandfather stood close. I’m not doing it right, Torsti thought. He still can’t see.
He gritted his teeth, strained to see the deep future and hefted the final stone.
Grandfather took his hand.
“Torsti,” he said gently. “It’s all right.” There was a smile under his mask. “You are a good boy, you really are. I know you can see these things, I know you can. You will do things I never imagined. And… it’s enough for me just to know that.
“Now, let’s go back. It’s getting cold. I’m going to make some food, and tomorrow I’ll take you home.”
The churn’s hollow voice mocked Torsti in his mind. You can imagine all the futures you want, boy. But they are not real. Only endless dark is real. Your Grandfather knows that. Nothing will exist. Only I will remain.
“No,” Torsti said. “I am going to show you.”
He withdrew his hand from his Grandfather’s and threw the last stone. It hit the grooves of the churn perfectly, spinning around the bore, rattling like a ball in a roulette wheel.
Then he jumped in after it.
For an instant, he was suspended in mid-air, could almost touch the walls of the churn. Maybe it is really a wormhole, he thought. Then the water rose to meet him and pulled a cold hand over his head.
Torsti had never learned to swim, in spite of Mom and Dad’s attempts. So he just lifted his arms and floated, disappearing beneath the surface. Water filled his mouth and lungs. It was like breathing in cold space. The dark filled him, and suddenly it was like he was hollow, a container for the universe itself.
He saw the future. Artificial worlds strung around stars like strings of pearls. Wormholes connecting galaxies like synapses between neurons. Currents of dark matter redirecting the movements of superclusters, slowing down the expansion of the universe, preventing the Big Rip that threatened to leave each photon alone in its own bubble. And then, new universes, budding off from the first one, entire new realities with their own laws and constants and life, a forest growing from a single seed. A multiverse, made from minds and wonder and surprise, no longer dead and cold, lighting up, inside him.
We are the vaccine, he thought. We are the vaccine against the dark.
And then it all blinked out.
THE COUGHING BROUGHT TORSTI BACK. IT FELT LIKE BEING CHOPPED AT WITH AN axe, right in the chest. The universe came out of him in tiny big bangs of phlegm and cold brine.
Finally it stopped, leaving him freezing and shaking all over, but alive. Torsti opened his eyes. His Grandfather’s silhouette loomed over him, against the evening sky.
“Don’t try to move,” the old man said, crouching next to Torsti on the granite. He lifted up his phone, pointing the camera at Torsti, and the screen lit up his face.
He wasn’t wearing his mask. His thick silvery hair and salt-and-pepper beard were dripping, and he had a pained look on his face. The lines were deeper than Torsti remembered, his cheeks were hollower.
“Grandfather,” Torsti wheezed. “I saw it.”
Relief spread over Grandfather’s face, smoothing the wrinkles.
“Thank goodness,” he said. “You stupid, reckless boy. What if I hadn’t been strong enough to haul you up that goddamned rope?” He held up his phone. “The Hanko Medical Center AI said you were going to be fine, but I almost didn’t believe it. You should be glad I still remembered my rescue breath training. How are you feeling?”
Torsti’s ribs hurt, but he felt better with each breath. Slowly, he sat up. He was soaked through and shivered in the wind. Grandfather wrapped his coat around Torsti, and then hugged him tight, wiry arms around the boy’s shoulders and back.
“I saw it in the churn,” Torsti whispered. “The future. I really saw it.”
Grandfather pulled away and looked at Torsti.
“I believe you,” he said. “You have it too, don’t you? That way of seeing. And I never realized. What a strange thing.”
His voice was thick. Then he held up his phone, clearing his throat. “Well, I guess I’m going to see the future too, now. This damn thing confirmed transmission.”
“I’m sorry,” Torsti said. “I took away your choice.”
Grandfather sighed.
“You did no such thing, boy,” he said. “You can’t take what wasn’t there in the first place. My choice was made long time ago. I just wasn’t ready to admit it.”
He helped Torsti up. “Let’s go to the sauna,” he said. “All these vaccines or not, you don’t want to catch your death.”
They walked down the pine needle path together, toward the sauna and the warmth.
Contributors
Madeline Ashby is a futurist and science fiction writer based in Toronto. She is the author of the Machine Dynasty series from Angry Robot Books and also Company Town from Tor Books. She is a contributor to How to Future: Leading and Sensemaking in an Age of Hyper Change, available soon from Kogan Page Inspire. She has also developed multiple science fiction prototypes and scenarios for Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, Data & Society, Nesta, the WorldBank, WHO, and others. You can find her at madelineashby.com or on Twitter @MadelineAshby.
Indrapramit Das (aka Indra Das) is a writer and editor from Kolkata, India. He is a Lambda Literary Award winner for his debut novel The Devourers (Penguin India/Del Rey), and a Shirley Jackson Award winner for his short fiction, which has appeared in a variety of anthologies and publications including Tor.com, Slate, Clarkesworld, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. He has lived in India, the United States, and Canada, where he received his MFA from the University of British Columbia.
Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently Radicalized and Walkaway, science fiction for adults; In Real Life, a graphic novel; Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, a book about earning a living in the Internet age; and Homeland, a young adult sequel to Little Brother. His latest book is Poesy the Monster Slayer, a picture book for young readers. His next book is Attach Surface, an adult sequel to Little Brother.
Adrian Hon is CEO and founder of Six to Start, co-creator of the most successful smartphone fitness game in the world, Zombies, Run! He is the author of A New History of the Future in 100 Objects (MIT Press, 2020) and has worked with the British Museum, Disney Imagineering, and the Long Now. Before becoming a game designer, Adrian was a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist at Cambridge, UCSD, and Oxford.