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Authors: Robert Charles Wilson
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to lose signal strength, and the newly designed O/BEC devices, quantum computers running adaptive neural nets in an open-ended organic architecture, were enlisted to strain the final dregs of signal from noise. They had done more than that, of course. Out of their increasingly deep and recursive Fourier analysis they had somehow derived an optical image
even after the interferometers themselves ceased to function
. The analytic device had replaced the telescope it was meant to augment.
Chris was spending his last year at home when the first images of HR8832/B were released to the media. His family hadn’t paid much attention. Portia by that time was a bright teenager who had discovered politics and was frustrated that she hadn’t been allowed to go to Chicago to protest the inauguration of the Continental Commonwealth. His parents had withdrawn from one another into their own pocket universes—his father into woodworking and the Presbyterian church, his mother into a late-blooming bohemianism marked by Mensa meetings and Madras blouses, psychic fairs and Afghan scarves.
And although they had marveled at the images of HR8832/B they hadn’t truly understood them. Like most people, they couldn’t say how far away the planet was, what it meant that it orbited “another star,” why its seascapes were more than abstractly pretty, or why there was so much fuss over a place no one could actually visit.
Chris had wanted desperately to explain. Another nascent journalistic impulse. The beauty and significance of these images were transcendent. Ten thousand years of humanity’s struggle with ignorance had culminated in this achievement. It redeemed Galileo from his inquisitors and Giordano Bruno from the flames. It was a pearl salvaged from the rubble of slavery and war.
It was also a nine-day-wonder, a media bubble, a briefly lucrative source of income for the novelty industry. Ten years had passed, the O/BEC effect had proven difficult to understand or reproduce, Portia was gone, and Chris’s first attempt at book-length journalism had been a disaster. Truth was a hard commodity to market. Even at Crossbank, even at Blind Lake, internecine squabbling over target images and interpretation had almost engulfed the scientific discourse.
And yet, here he was. Disillusioned, disoriented, fucked-over and fucked-up, but with a last chance to dig out that pearl and share it. A chance to relocate the beauty and significance that had once moved him nearly to tears.
He looked at Sebastian Vogel over the breakfast-stained plastic tabletop. “What does this place mean to you?”
Sebastian shrugged amiably. “I came here the same way you did. I got the call from
Visions East
, I talked to my agent, I signed the contract.”
“Yeah, but is that all it is—a publishing opportunity?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I may not be as sentimental about it as Elaine, but I recognize the significance of the work that goes on here. Every astronomical advance since Copernicus has changed mankind’s view of itself and its place in the universe.”
“It’s not just the results, though. It’s the process. Galileo could have explained the principle behind the telescope to almost anyone, given a little patience. But even the people who run the O/BECs can’t tell you how they do what they do.”
“You’re asking which is the bigger story,” Sebastian said, “what we see or how we see it. It’s an interesting angle. Maybe you should talk to the engineers at the Alley. They’re probably more approachable than the theorists.”
Because they don’t care what I told the world about Galliano, Chris thought. Because they don’t consider me a Judas.
Still, it was a good idea. After breakfast he called Ari Weingart and asked him for a contact at the Alley.
“Chief engineer out there is Charlie Grogan. If you like, I’ll get ahold of him and try to set up a meet.”
“I’d appreciate it,” Chris said. “Any new word on the
even after the interferometers themselves ceased to function
. The analytic device had replaced the telescope it was meant to augment.
Chris was spending his last year at home when the first images of HR8832/B were released to the media. His family hadn’t paid much attention. Portia by that time was a bright teenager who had discovered politics and was frustrated that she hadn’t been allowed to go to Chicago to protest the inauguration of the Continental Commonwealth. His parents had withdrawn from one another into their own pocket universes—his father into woodworking and the Presbyterian church, his mother into a late-blooming bohemianism marked by Mensa meetings and Madras blouses, psychic fairs and Afghan scarves.
And although they had marveled at the images of HR8832/B they hadn’t truly understood them. Like most people, they couldn’t say how far away the planet was, what it meant that it orbited “another star,” why its seascapes were more than abstractly pretty, or why there was so much fuss over a place no one could actually visit.
Chris had wanted desperately to explain. Another nascent journalistic impulse. The beauty and significance of these images were transcendent. Ten thousand years of humanity’s struggle with ignorance had culminated in this achievement. It redeemed Galileo from his inquisitors and Giordano Bruno from the flames. It was a pearl salvaged from the rubble of slavery and war.
It was also a nine-day-wonder, a media bubble, a briefly lucrative source of income for the novelty industry. Ten years had passed, the O/BEC effect had proven difficult to understand or reproduce, Portia was gone, and Chris’s first attempt at book-length journalism had been a disaster. Truth was a hard commodity to market. Even at Crossbank, even at Blind Lake, internecine squabbling over target images and interpretation had almost engulfed the scientific discourse.
And yet, here he was. Disillusioned, disoriented, fucked-over and fucked-up, but with a last chance to dig out that pearl and share it. A chance to relocate the beauty and significance that had once moved him nearly to tears.
He looked at Sebastian Vogel over the breakfast-stained plastic tabletop. “What does this place mean to you?”
Sebastian shrugged amiably. “I came here the same way you did. I got the call from
Visions East
, I talked to my agent, I signed the contract.”
“Yeah, but is that all it is—a publishing opportunity?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I may not be as sentimental about it as Elaine, but I recognize the significance of the work that goes on here. Every astronomical advance since Copernicus has changed mankind’s view of itself and its place in the universe.”
“It’s not just the results, though. It’s the process. Galileo could have explained the principle behind the telescope to almost anyone, given a little patience. But even the people who run the O/BECs can’t tell you how they do what they do.”
“You’re asking which is the bigger story,” Sebastian said, “what we see or how we see it. It’s an interesting angle. Maybe you should talk to the engineers at the Alley. They’re probably more approachable than the theorists.”
Because they don’t care what I told the world about Galliano, Chris thought. Because they don’t consider me a Judas.
Still, it was a good idea. After breakfast he called Ari Weingart and asked him for a contact at the Alley.
“Chief engineer out there is Charlie Grogan. If you like, I’ll get ahold of him and try to set up a meet.”
“I’d appreciate it,” Chris said. “Any new word on the
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