The White-Hole Situation

Jessup

"I think it's lying to me too," Pagan's voice came through the ether somewhat later than the middle of the night. September stirred on her mat, pretty sure she was only dreaming, but she answered nevertheless.

"Uh huh," she mumbled.

"I mean it," Pagan's voice came through louder and clearer by the moment. "I said computer, she loves me, she loves me not, and it said she loves me. What do you think of that?"

"I'd say she loves you," September muttered, rolling onto her back and rubbing her eyes.

"But does she?" Pagan went on. "You wouldn't know it by the way she never calls, never sends a feeling, never tells why."

"Maybe she's got stuff on her mind," September was unfortunately awake by now, and was quite sure who Pagan was obliquely referring to. Where was Pisco when she needed him?

"I'm thinking of going away," Pagan said and now September was sure she'd been drinking. They were occupying adjacent time zones last time she checked.

"Oh yeah? Where to?"

"One of those deep space stations," Pagan said, and now September could see her outline in the dark, right there beside her, squatting in her old world style. Pagan had let her hair fall down from its usual bun and it was practically covering not only her face but her entire upper body.

"Your hair got really long," September mentioned.

"So you noticed? But anyway, yeah. I'm thinking maybe Jessup, that one out there by the border in sector zed. I've got the auth to make it, and maybe there'll be some action."

"I hope not," September said. Last time there was that kind of action many, many people died. The station itself was abandoned and had only recently been rebuilt.

"In any case they've got those Telegenic Trilobites," Pagan said, "and they always put on a great show, and I kind of miss hanging out with the furry little things, what were they called?"

"Perambulae," September said. For a communications specialist, she wasn't all that good at conversation. Who says I'm a communications specialist anyway? she asked herself. That's just something I used to do, not who I am. Or am I only that? Is everything fixed for all time and space? Is there no choice? No meaningful action? Can I ever be anything else?

"What about Pisco?" she asked.

"Oh, he'll be fine. He likes it here. He could use a break from me, that's for sure."

"I don't know about that."

"Anyway it would only be for a signup, maybe six months, maybe nine. I want to see what they've done to the place."

"Sounds like you've made up your mind."

"I guess I have," Pagan said, and her visage stood up and stretched. "Well, kid, back to sleep. Sorry I woke you."

"No worries," September said. She was already half gone, back into that slumber where she'd only recently been absolutely convinced that there was no stopping anything, that the world was on a course that could never be altered, dragging her along with it no matter what. She knew it wasn't, and couldn't be true. There is no actual time, there is only change, only an infinity of less-than-microscopic changes occurring at sub-quantum levels at haphazard occasions constantly. Inside her own body, trillions of cells consisting of trillions times trillions of molecules were bouncing around, morphing, colliding, doing their dance, mutating and evolving, or not, and those mechanisms were not separate from the molecules in the space and things around her, interacting and causing and affecting one another interminably. How could there be any such thing as destiny or any fixed course when you could never know if your next meal was going to sit well in your stomach, or if you were going to pee for twelve or eighteen seconds, and everything makes all the difference to everything else and all the time.

She slept unevenly, throwing off the blanket, then pulling it back on minutes later, rolling to her left and then again to her right, dreaming about steps, one after another, leading somewhere in the night. She was on a hill, calculating angles, and then she was on a windy bluff overlooking the sea, remembering how the stories told of once-upon-a-time of living creatures swimming beneath the waves. The sun will supernova someday. We all know it. Millions or maybe billions of years from now, but it will certainly happen, as certainly as every one of us will die. Maybe it's only in the big picture that destiny exists, only in the broadest strokes, a perspective so wide it was utterly meaningless to contemplate. She fought to wake up. She didn't want to be dreaming, to be in any of those places or thinking any of those thoughts. I want to go back, she said to herself, back to the way it was, when I was on the Kathandra and we were crawling up alongside the Peptide Nebula and the triple suns of Meriah were rising over the planet Plah.

But she wasn't back there and you can never go back. Instead she was jolted awake by the sound of the I.B.U. ("have you checked in your changes lately?)"

"The White-Hole Situation was initially promoted for public consumption on the seventh day of the seventh block."

"Uh, what?" September sat up and looked around.

"You were asking about the want ad."

"Didn't you already tell me about that? No wait, and then you lied, and said it never happened."

"You're right", the voice said. "I lied, and I'm sorry about that."