human beings on the planet right now, although there may be more than one of you present. You have the exclusive use of the Library’s resources this decade, within reason.”
“Within reason?”
“Sometimes our supervisors—yours or mine—take an interest. They are not required to notify me of their presence.” There was a fork in the path, around a large outcropping of some sort of rock crystal, like quartz; Torque turned left. “Ah, here we are. This is your reading room, Student-Agent Pierce.”
A white-walled roofless cubicle sat in the middle of a clearing, through which ran a small brook, its banks overgrown with moss and ferns. The walls were only shoulder high, a formality and a signifier of privacy; they surrounded a plain wooden desk and a chair. “This is everything?” Pierce asked, startled.
“Not entirely. Look up.” Torque gestured at the dome above them. “In here we maintain a human-compatible biosphere to reprocess your air and waste. We provide light, and heat, although the latter is less important than it will be in a few million years hereabouts. We’ve turned down the sun to conserve mass, but it’s still radiating brightly in the infrared; the real problems will start when we work through the last bunker reserve in about eighteen million years. The dome should keep the Library accessible to readers for about thirty million years after that, well into Fimbulwinter.”
Fimbulwinter: the winter at the end of the world, after the last fuel for the necrosun’s accretion disk had been consumed, leaving Earth adrift in orbit around a cold black hole, billions of light-years from anything else. Pierce shivered slightly at the thought of it. “What’s the problem with the outside air?”
“We were losing hydrogen too fast, and without hydrogen, there’s no water, and without water, we can’t maintain a biosphere, and without a biosphere the planet rapidly becomes less habitable—no free oxygen, for one thing. So about thirty billion years ago we deuterated the biosphere as a conservation measure. Of course, that necessitated major adjustments to the enzyme systems of all the life-forms from bacteria on up, and you—and I—are not equipped to run on heavy water; the stuff ’s toxic to us.” Torque pointed at the stream. “You can drink from that, if you like, or order refreshments by phone. But don’t drink outside the dome. Don’t breathe too much, if you can help it.”
Pierce looked around. “So this is basically just a reading room, like a Branch Library. Where’s the real Library? Where are the archives?”
“You’re standing on them.” Torque’s expression was one of restrained impatience: Weren’t you paying attention in class the day they covered this? “The plateau this reading room is built on—in fact, the entire upper crust—is riddled with storage cells of memory diamond, beneath a thin crust of sedimentary rock laid down to protect it. We switched the continental-drift cycle off for good about five billion years ago, after the last core cooling cycle. That’s when we began accumulating the Library deposits.
“Oh.” Pierce looked around. “Well, I suppose I’d better get started. Do you mind?”
“Not at all.” Torque turned his back on Pierce and walked away. “I’ll be around if you call me,” he sent.
Pierce sat down in front of the empty desk and laid his hands palm down on the blotter. A continent of memory diamond? The mere idea of that much data beggared the imagination. “It’ll be in here somewhere,” he muttered, and smiled.
Unhistory
One of the first things that any agent of the Stasis learns is patience. It’s not as if they are short of time; their long lives extend beyond the easy reach of memory, and should they avoid death through violence or accident or suicide, they can pursue projects that would exceed the life expectancy of ordinary mortals. And that is how they live in the absence of the principal aspect of their
“Within reason?”
“Sometimes our supervisors—yours or mine—take an interest. They are not required to notify me of their presence.” There was a fork in the path, around a large outcropping of some sort of rock crystal, like quartz; Torque turned left. “Ah, here we are. This is your reading room, Student-Agent Pierce.”
A white-walled roofless cubicle sat in the middle of a clearing, through which ran a small brook, its banks overgrown with moss and ferns. The walls were only shoulder high, a formality and a signifier of privacy; they surrounded a plain wooden desk and a chair. “This is everything?” Pierce asked, startled.
“Not entirely. Look up.” Torque gestured at the dome above them. “In here we maintain a human-compatible biosphere to reprocess your air and waste. We provide light, and heat, although the latter is less important than it will be in a few million years hereabouts. We’ve turned down the sun to conserve mass, but it’s still radiating brightly in the infrared; the real problems will start when we work through the last bunker reserve in about eighteen million years. The dome should keep the Library accessible to readers for about thirty million years after that, well into Fimbulwinter.”
Fimbulwinter: the winter at the end of the world, after the last fuel for the necrosun’s accretion disk had been consumed, leaving Earth adrift in orbit around a cold black hole, billions of light-years from anything else. Pierce shivered slightly at the thought of it. “What’s the problem with the outside air?”
“We were losing hydrogen too fast, and without hydrogen, there’s no water, and without water, we can’t maintain a biosphere, and without a biosphere the planet rapidly becomes less habitable—no free oxygen, for one thing. So about thirty billion years ago we deuterated the biosphere as a conservation measure. Of course, that necessitated major adjustments to the enzyme systems of all the life-forms from bacteria on up, and you—and I—are not equipped to run on heavy water; the stuff ’s toxic to us.” Torque pointed at the stream. “You can drink from that, if you like, or order refreshments by phone. But don’t drink outside the dome. Don’t breathe too much, if you can help it.”
Pierce looked around. “So this is basically just a reading room, like a Branch Library. Where’s the real Library? Where are the archives?”
“You’re standing on them.” Torque’s expression was one of restrained impatience: Weren’t you paying attention in class the day they covered this? “The plateau this reading room is built on—in fact, the entire upper crust—is riddled with storage cells of memory diamond, beneath a thin crust of sedimentary rock laid down to protect it. We switched the continental-drift cycle off for good about five billion years ago, after the last core cooling cycle. That’s when we began accumulating the Library deposits.
“Oh.” Pierce looked around. “Well, I suppose I’d better get started. Do you mind?”
“Not at all.” Torque turned his back on Pierce and walked away. “I’ll be around if you call me,” he sent.
Pierce sat down in front of the empty desk and laid his hands palm down on the blotter. A continent of memory diamond? The mere idea of that much data beggared the imagination. “It’ll be in here somewhere,” he muttered, and smiled.
Unhistory
One of the first things that any agent of the Stasis learns is patience. It’s not as if they are short of time; their long lives extend beyond the easy reach of memory, and should they avoid death through violence or accident or suicide, they can pursue projects that would exceed the life expectancy of ordinary mortals. And that is how they live in the absence of the principal aspect of their
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