Read Online Axiomatic by Greg Egan - Free Book Online Page B

inevitably spectacular — achievements. Bill had a vague suspicion that the whole endeavour was somehow pulling the rug out from under an important part of what it had meant to be human — but he didn’t know quite how to put it into words, not even to Angela. How could he confess that, personally, he didn’t want to know the extent to which genes determined the fate of an individual? How could he declare that he’d rather stick with comfortable myths — no, forget the euphemisms, that he’d rather have downright lies — than have his nose rubbed in the dreary truth that a human being could be made to order, like a hamburger?

    Cook had assured them that they need have no worries about handling the young genius. He could arrange a queue-jumping enrolment in the best Californian baby university, where, amongst Noble X
    Noble TPGM prodigies, Eugene could do brain-stimulating baby gymnastics to the sound of Kant sung to Beethoven, and learn Grand Unified Field Theory subliminally during his afternoon naps. Eventually, of course, he would overtake both his genetically inferior peers and his merely brilliant instructors, but by then he ought to be able to direct his own education.

    Bill put an arm around Angela, and wondered if Eugene really would do more for humanity than their millions could have achieved directly in Bangladesh or Ethiopia or Alice Springs. But could they face spending the rest of their lives wondering what miracles Eugene might have performed for their crippled planet? That would be unbearable. They’d pay the tax on hope.

    Angela began loosening Bill’s clothing. He did the same for her. Tonight — as they both knew, without exchanging a word — was the most fertile point of Angela’s cycle; in spite of the antibodies, they hadn’t abandoned the habits they’d acquired in the years when they’d been hoping to conceive naturally.

    The rousing music from the television stopped, abruptly. The scenes of military hardware deteriorated into static. A sad-eyed boy, perhaps eight years old, appeared on the screen and said quietly, ‘Mother. Father. I owe you an explanation.’

    Behind the boy was nothing but an empty blue sky. Angela and Bill stared at the screen in silence, waiting in vain for a voice-over or title to put the image in context. Then the child’s eyes met Angela’s, and she knew that he could see her, and she knew who it must be. She gripped Bill’s arm and whispered, dizzy with shock, but euphoric too, ‘It’s Eugene.’

    The boy nodded.

    For a moment, Bill was overcome with panic and confusion, but then paternal pride swelled up and he managed to say, ‘You’ve invented t-t-t-time t-travel!’

    Eugene shook his head. ‘No. Suppose you fed the genetic profile of an embryo into a computer, which then constructed a simulation of the appearance of the mature organism; no time travel is involved, and yet aspects of a possible future are revealed. In that example, all the machinery to perform the extrapolation exists in the present, but the same thing can happen if the right equipment — equipment of a far more sophisticated kind — exists in the potential future. It may be useful, as a mathematical formalism, to pretend that the potential future has a tangible reality and is influencing its past — just as in geometric optics, it’s often convenient to pretend that reflections are real objects that exist behind the mirrors that create them — but a formalism is all it would be.’

    Angela said, ‘So because you might invent such a device, we can see you, and talk to you, as if you were speaking to us from the future?’

    ‘Yes.’

    The couple exchanged glances. Here was an end to their doubts! Now they could find out exactly what Eugene would do for the world!

    ‘If you were speaking to us from the future,’ Angela asked carefully, ‘what would you tell us? That you’ve reversed the Greenhouse Effect?’ Eugene shook his head sadly. ‘That you’ve made war