Rollback Read online

“Of course,” said McGavin.

  She covered the mike and looked at Don with raised eyebrows.

  “Back in high school,” he said, “we had to make a list of twenty things we wanted to do before we die. I came across mine a while ago. One of the ones I haven’t checked off yet is ‘Take a ride in a private jet.’”

  “All right,” she said, into the datacom. “Sure. Why not?”

  “Terrific, terrific,” said McGavin. “We’ll have a limo pick you up and take you to Trudeau in the morning, if that’s okay.”

  Trudeau was in Montreal; the Toronto airport was Pearson—but Sarah knew what he meant. “Fine, yes.”

  “Wonderful. I’ll have my assistant come on, and he’ll look after all the details. We’ll see you in time for lunch tomorrow.”

  And the Bach started up again.

  –-- Chapter 4 --–

  IT WAS IRONIC, now that Don thought back on it, how often he and Sarah had talked about SETI’s failure prior to its success. He’d come home one day, around—let’s see; they’d been in their mid-forties, so it must have been something like 2005—to find her sitting in their just-bought La-Z-Boy, listening to her iPod. Don could tell she wasn’t playing music; she couldn’t resist tapping her fingers or toes whenever she was doing that.

  “What are you listening to?” he asked.

  “It’s a lecture,” shouted Sarah.

  “Oh, really!” he shouted back, grinning.

  She took out the little white earbuds, looking sheepish. “Sorry,” she said, in a normal volume. “It’s a lecture Jill did for the Long Now Foundation.”

  SETI, Don often thought, was like Hollywood, with its stars. In Tinsel Town, having to use last names marked you as an outsider, and the same was true in Sarah’s circles, where Frank was always Frank Drake, Paul was Paul Shuch, Seth was Seth Shostak, Sarah was indeed Sarah Halifax, and Jill was Jill Tarter.

  “The long what?” Don said.

  “The Long Now,” repeated Sarah. “They’re a group that tries to encourage long-term thinking, thinking about now as an epoch rather than a point in time. They’re building a giant clock—the Clock of The Long Now—that ticks once a year, chimes once a century, and has a cuckoo that comes out every millennium.”

  “Good work if you can get it,” he said. “Say, where are the kids?” Carl had been twelve then; Emily, six.

  “Carl’s downstairs watching TV. And I sent Emily to her room for drawing on the wall again.”

  He nodded. “So what’s Jill talking about?” He’d never met Jill, although Sarah had.

  “Why SETI is, by necessity, a long-term proposition,” Sarah said. “Except she’s skirting the issue.”

  “You and she are practically the only SETI researchers who can do that.”

  “What? Oh.”

  “I’m here all week.”

  “Lucky me. Anyway, she doesn’t seem to be getting to the point, which is that SETI is something that must be a multigenerational activity, like building a great cathedral. It’s a trust, something we hand down to our children, and they hand down to their children.”

  “We don’t have a good track record with things like that,” he said, perching now on the La-Z-Boy’s broad, padded arm. “I mean, you know, the environment is something we hold in trust and pass on to Carl and Emily’s generation, too. And look at how little our generation has done to combat global warming.”

  She sighed. “I know. But Kyoto’s a step forward.”

  “It’ll hardly make a dent.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “But, you know,” said Don, “we’re not cut out for this—what did you call it?—this ‘Long Now’ sort of thinking. It’s anti-Darwinian. We’re hardwired against it.”

  She sounded surprised. “What?”

  “We did something about kin selection on Quirks and Quarks last month; I spent forever editing the interview.” Don was an audio engineer at CBC Radio. “We had Richard Dawkins on again, by satellite through the Beeb. He said that in a competitive situation, you automatically favor your own son over your brother’s son, right? Of course: your son has half your DNA, and your brother’s son only has a quarter of it. But if things got tough between your brother’s son and your cousin, well, you’d favor your brother’s son—that is, your nephew—because your cousin only has an eighth of your DNA.”

  “That’s right,” Sarah said. She was scratching his back. It felt very nice.

  He went on. “And a second cousin only has one-thirty-second of your DNA. And a second cousin once removed has just one-sixty-fourth of your DNA. Well, when was the last time you heard of somebody volunteering a kidney to save a second cousin once removed? Not only do most people have no clue who their second cousins once removed are, but they also, quite bluntly, couldn’t give a crap what happens to them. They just don’t share enough DNA with them to care.”

  “I love it when you talk math,” she teased. Fractions were about as good as Don’s math got.

  “And over time,” he said, “the DNA share gets cut down, like cheap coke.” He grinned, delighted by his simile, although she knew full well that the only coke he had experience with came in silver-and-red cans. “You only have to go six generations to get to your own descendants being as distantly related to you as a second cousin once removed—and six generations is less than two centuries.”

  “I can name my second cousins once removed. There’s Helena, and Dillon, and—”

  “But you’re special. That’s why you are interested in SETI. For the rest of the world, they just don’t have a vested Darwinian interest. Evolution has shaped us so that we don’t care about anything that’s not going to manifest soon, because no close relative of ours will be around then. Jill’s probably tap-dancing around that, because it’s a point she doesn’t want to make: that, for the general public, SETI doesn’t make sense. Hell, didn’t Frank”—whom he’d also never met—“send a signal somewhere thousands of light-years away?”

  He looked at Sarah, and saw her nod. “The Arecibo message, sent in 1974. It was aimed at M13, a globular cluster.”

  “And how far away is M13?”

  “Twenty-five thousand light-years,” she said.

  “So it’ll be fifty thousand years before we could get a reply. Who has the patience for something like that? Hell, I got an email today with a PDF attachment, and I thought, geez, I wonder if this thing is going to be worth reading, ’cause, you know, it’s going to take, like, ten whole seconds for the attachment to download and open. We want instant gratification; we find any delay intolerable. How can SETI fit into a world with that mindset? Send a message and wait decades or centuries for a reply?” He shook his head. “Who the hell would want to play that game? Who’s got the time for it?”

  –-- Chapter 5 --–

  AS THE LUXURY jet landed, Don Halifax mentally checked off that to-do-list item. The few remaining ones, including “sleep with a supermodel” and “meet the Dalai Lama,” seemed out of the question at this point, not to mention of no current interest.

  It was bitterly cold going down the little metal staircase onto the tarmac. The flight attendant helped Don every step of the way, while the pilot helped Sarah. Downside of a private plane: it didn’t use a Jetway. Like so many of the things on Don’s list, this one was turning out to be less wonderful than he’d hoped.

  A white limo was waiting for them. The robot driver wore one of those caps that limo drivers are supposed to wear, but nothing else. It did an expert job of getting them to McGavin Robotics, all the while providing a running commentary, in a voice loud enough for them to hear clearly, on the sights and history of the area.

  The McGavin Robotics corporate campus consisted of seven sprawling buildings separated by wide snow-covered expanses; the company had lots of ties to the artificial-intelligence lab at nearby MIT. The limo was able to go straight into an underground garage, so Don and Sarah didn’t have to brave the cold again. The robot driver escorted them as they walked slowly over to an immacul
ate elevator, which brought them up to the lobby. Human beings took over there, taking their coats, making them welcome, and bringing them up another elevator to the fourth floor of the main building.

  Cody McGavin’s office was long and narrow, covering one whole side of the building, with windows looking out over the rest of the campus. His desk was made of polished granite, and a matching conference table with a fleet of fancy chairs docked at it was off to the left, while a long, well-stocked bar, with a robot bartender, stretched off in the other direction.

  “Sarah Halifax!” said McGavin, rising from his high-backed leather chair.

  “Hello, sir,” said Sarah.

  McGavin quickly closed the distance between them. “This is an honor,” he said. “A real honor.” He was wearing what Don supposed was the current fashion for executives: a lapel-less dark-green sports jacket and a lighter green shirt with a vertical splash of color down the front taking the place of a tie. No one wore ties anymore.

  “And this must be your husband,” said McGavin.

  “Don Halifax,” said Don. He offered his hand—something he disliked doing these days. Too many younger people squeezed too hard, causing him real pain. But McGavin’s grip was gentle, and released after only a moment.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Don. Please, won’t you have a seat?” He gestured back toward his desk and, to Don’s astonishment, two luxurious leather-upholstered chairs were rising up through hatches in the carpeted floor. McGavin helped Sarah across the room, offering her his arm, and got her seated. Don shuffled across the carpet and lowered himself into the remaining chair, which seemed solidly anchored now.

  “Coffee?” said McGavin. “A drink?”

  “Just water,” said Sarah. “Please.”

  “The same,” said Don.

  The rich man nodded at the robot behind the bar, and the machine set about filling glasses. McGavin perched his bottom on the edge of the granite desk and faced Don and Sarah. He was not a particularly good-looking man, thought Don. He had doughy features and a small, receding chin that made his already large forehead seem even bigger. Still, he’d doubtless had some cosmetic work done. Don knew he was sixty-something, but he didn’t look a day over twenty-five.

  The robot was suddenly there, handing Don a beautiful crystal tumbler full of water, with two ice cubes bobbing in it. The machine handed a similar glass to Sarah, and one to McGavin, and then silently withdrew to behind the bar.

  “Now,” said McGavin, “let’s talk turkey. I said I’ve got a”—he paused, and gave the word a special weight, recalling the banter of the day before—“proposition for you.” He was looking at Sarah exclusively, Don noted. “And I do.”

  Sarah smiled. “As we used to say about the Very Large Array, I’m all ears.”

  McGavin nodded. “The first message we got from Sig Drac was a real poser, until you figured out its purpose. And this one is even more of a puzzle, it seems. Encrypted! Who’d have guessed?”

  “It’s baffling,” she agreed.

  “That it is,” said McGavin. “That it is. But I’m sure you can help us crack it.”

  “I’m no expert in decryption or codes, or things like that,” she said. “My expertise, if I have any, is in exactly the opposite: understanding things that were designed to be read by anyone.”

  “Granted, granted. But you had such insight into what the Dracons were getting at last time. And we know how to decrypt the current message. I’m told the aliens made the technique very clear. All we have to do is figure out what the decryption key is, and I suspect your skill is going to be valuable there.”

  “You’re very kind,” she said, “but—”

  “No, really,” said McGavin. “You were a crucial part of it then, I’m sure you’re going to be a crucial part of it now, and you’ll continue to be so well into the future.”

  She blinked. “The future?”

  “Yes, yes, the future. We’ve got a dialogue going here, and we need continuity. I’m sure we’ll unlock the current message, and, even if we don’t, we’ll still send a response. And I want you to be around when the reply to that response arrives.”

  Don felt his eyes narrowing, but Sarah just laughed. “Don’t be silly. I’ll be dead long before then.”

  “Not necessarily,” said McGavin.

  “It’ll be thirty-eight years, minimum, before we get a reply to anything we send today,” she said.

  “That’s right,” replied McGavin, his tone even.

  “And I’d be—well, um…”

  “A hundred and twenty-five,” McGavin supplied.

  Don had had enough. “Mr. McGavin, don’t be cruel. My wife and I have only a few years left, at best. We both know that.”

  Sarah had drained her water glass. The robot silently appeared with a replacement and swapped it for the empty one.

  McGavin looked at Don. “The press has had it all wrong, you know, from day one. Most of the SETI community hasn’t understood, either. This isn’t a case of Earth talking to the second planet of the star Sigma Draconis. Planets don’t talk to each other. People do. Some specific person on Sigma Draconis II sent the message, and one specific person on this planet—you, Dr. Sarah Halifax—figured out what he’d asked for, and organized our reply. The rest of us—all the humans here, and anyone else on Sigma Draconis who is curious about what’s being said—have been reading over your shoulders. You’ve got a pen pal, Dr. Halifax. It happens that I, not you, pay the postage, but he’s your pen pal.”

  Sarah looked at Don, then back at McGavin. She took another sip of her water, perhaps to buy herself a few seconds to think. “That’s an…unusual interpretation,” she said. “Because of the long times between sending messages and receiving replies, SETI is something whole civilizations do, not individuals.”

  “No, no, that’s not right at all,” said McGavin. “Look, what are the fundamental tenets of SETI? Certainly one of them is this: almost any race we contact will be more advanced than us. Why? Because, as of this year, we’ve only had radio for a hundred and fifty-three years, which is nothing compared to the fourteen billion years the universe is old. It’s a virtual certainty that anyone we make contact with has been around as a radio-using civilization longer than we have.”

  “Yes,” said Sarah, and “So?” added Don.

  “So,” said McGavin, “short lifespans are something only technologically unsophisticated races will be subject to. How long after a race develops radio do you think it is before they decode DNA, or whatever their genetic material is? How long before they develop blood transfusions and organ transplantation and tissue cloning? How long before they cure cancer and heart disease, or whatever comparable ailments sloppy evolution has left them prey to? A hundred years? Two hundred? Doubtless no more than three or four, right? Right?”

  He looked at Sarah, presumably expecting her to nod. She didn’t, and, after a moment, he went on anyway. “Just as every race we contact almost certainly must have had radio longer than we have, every race we contact will almost certainly have extended their lifespans way beyond whatever paltry handful of years nature originally dealt them.” He spread his arms. “No, it stands to reason: communication between two planets isn’t something one generation starts, another continues, and still another picks up after that. Even with the long time frames imposed by the speed of light, interstellar communication is still almost certainly communication between individuals. And you, Dr. Halifax, are our individual. You already proved, all those years ago, that you know how they think. Nobody else managed that.”

  Her voice was soft. “I—I’m happy to be the, um, the public face for our reply to the current message, if you think that’s necessary, but after that…” She lifted her narrow shoulders slightly as if to say the rest was obvious.

  “No,” said McGavin. “We need to keep you around for a good long time.”

  Sarah was nervous; Don could tell, even if McGavin couldn’t. She lifted her glass and swirled the contents so that the ice cu
bes clinked together. “What are you going to do? Have me stuffed and put on display?”

  “Goodness, no.”

  “Then what?” Don demanded.

  “Rejuvenation,” said McGavin.

  “Pardon me?” said Sarah.

  “Rejuvenation; a rollback. We’ll make you young again. Surely you’ve heard about the process.”

  Don had indeed heard about it, and doubtless Sarah had, too. But only a couple of hundred people had undergone the procedure so far, and they’d all been stinking rich.

  Sarah reached forward and set her glass down on the granite desktop, next to where McGavin was leaning. Her hand was shaking. “That…that costs a fortune,” she said.

  “I have a fortune,” said McGavin simply.

  “But…but…I don’t know,” said Sarah. “I’m—I mean, does it work?”

  “Look at me,” said McGavin, spreading his arms again. “I’m sixty-two years old, according to my birth certificate. But my cells, my telomeres, my free-radical levels, and every other indicator say I’m twenty-five. And, if anything, I feel younger even than that.”

  Don’s jaw must have been hanging open in surprise. “You thought I’d had a facelift, or something like that?” McGavin said, looking at him. “Plastic surgery is like a software patch. It’s a quick, kludgy fix, and it often creates more problems than it solves. But rejuvenation, well, that’s like a code rewrite—it’s a real fix. You don’t just look young again; you are young.” His thin eyebrows climbed his wide forehead. “And that’s what I’m offering you. The full-blown rejuvenation treatment.”

  Sarah looked shocked, and it was a moment before she spoke. “But…but this is ridiculous,” she said at last. “Nobody even knows if it really works. I mean, sure, you look younger, maybe you even feel younger, but the treatment has only been available for a short time. No one who’s had it yet has lived appreciably longer than a natural lifespan. There’s no proof that this process really extends your life.”

  McGavin made a dismissive gesture. “There have been lots of rollback tests with lab animals. They all became young again, and then aged forward perfectly normally. We’ve seen mice and even prosimians live out their entire lengthened lifespans without difficulty. As for humans, well, except for a few oddball indicators like growth rings in my teeth, my physicians tell me that I’m now physiologically twenty-five, and am aging forward naturally from that point.” He spread his arms. “Believe me, it works. And I’m offering it to you.”