Day Six: Sunday, April 26, 2009

Lloyd and Theo were eating lunch together in the large cafeteria at the LHC control center. Around them, other physicists were arguing theories and interpretations to account for the Flashforward — a promising lead related to a supposed failure of one of the quadrapole magnets had been torpedoed in the last hour. The magnet, it turned out, was operating just fine; it was the testing equipment that was faulty.

Lloyd was having a salad; Theo a kebab he'd made the night before and had reheate d in the microwave. "People seem to be dealing with things better than I would have thought," said Lloyd. The windows looked out on the nucleus courtyard, where the spring flowers were in bloom. "All that death, all the destruction. But people are dusting themselves off, getting back to work, and getting on with their lives."

Theo nodded. "I heard a guy on the radio this morning. He was saying that there had turned out to be far less call for counseling services than people had predicted. In fact, a lot of people have been apparently canceling their previously scheduled therapy sessions since the Flashforward."

Lloyd lifted his eyebrows. "Why?"

"He said it's because of the catharsis." Theo smiled. "I tell you, good old Aristotle knew exactly what he was talking about: you give people a chance to purge their emotions, and they actually end up more healthy after it. So many people lost someone they cared about during the Flashforward; the outpouring of grief has been very good psychologically. The guy on the radio said something similar happened a dozen years ago when Princess Diana died; there was a huge reduction worldwide in the use of therapists for months following that. Naturally, the biggest catharsis was in England, but just after Di was killed, even twenty-seven percent of Americans felt as though they had lost someone they knew personally." A pause.

"Of course, you don't get over the loss of a spouse or a child easily, but an uncle? A distant cousin? An actor you liked? One of your coworkers? It's a big release."

"But if everyone's going through it… "

"That was his whole point," said Theo. "See, normally, if you lose someone in an accident, you go to pieces, and it goes on for months or years… with everyone around you reinforcing your right to be sad. 'Take some time,' they say. Everyone provides emotional support for you. But if everyone else is dealing with a loss, too, there isn't that crutch effect; there's no one to say soothing words. You've got no choice but to get a grip and go back to work. It's like those who live through a war — any war is much more devastating in gross terms than any isolated personal tragedy, but after a war is over, most people just go on with their lives. Everybody suffered the same; you have to just wall it off, forget about it, and go on. That's what's happening here, apparently."

"I don't think Michiko will ever get over the loss of Tamiko." Michiko would come home from Japan that evening.

"No, no, of course not. Not in the sense that it'll ever stop hurting. But she is going on with her life; what else can she do? There really is no other choice."

At that moment, Franco della Robbia, a middle-aged, bearded physicist, appeared at their table, holding a tray. "Mind if I join you?"

Lloyd looked up. "Hi, Franco. Not at all."

Theo shuffled his chair to the right, and della Robbia sat down.

"You're wrong about Minkowski, you know," said della Robbia, looking at Lloyd. "The visions can't be of an actual future."

Lloyd took a forkful of salad. "Why not?"

"Well, look: let's take your premise. Twenty-one years from now, I will have a connection between my future self and my past self. That is, my past self will see exactly what my future self is doing. Now, my future self may not have any overt indication that the connection has begun, but that doesn't matter; I'll know to the second when the connection will start and end. I don't know what your vision showed, Lloyd, but mine had me in what I think was Sorrento, sitting on a balcony, overlooking the Bay of Naples. Very nice, very pleasant — but not at all what I'd be doing on October 23, 2030, if I knew I was in contact with myself in the past. Rather, I'd be somewhere utterly free of anything that might divert my past self's attention — an empty room, say, or simply staring at a blank wall. And at precisely 19h21 Greenwich Mean Time that day, I would start reciting out loud facts that I wanted my past self to know: 'On March eleven, 2012, be careful crossing Via Colombo, lest you trip and break your leg;' 'In your time, stock in Bertelsmann is selling for forty-two euros a share, but by 2030, it'll be six hundred and ninety euros a share, so buy lots now to pay for your retirement;' 'Here are the winners of the World Cup for every year between your time and mine.' Like that; I would have it all written out on a piece of paper, and would just recite it, cramming as much useful information as possible into that one-minute-and-forty-three-second window." The Italian physicist paused. "The fact that no one has reported a vision of doing anything like that means that what we saw couldn't be the actual future of the timeline we're currently in."

Lloyd frowned. "Maybe some people did do that. Really, the public only knows the content of a tiny percentage of the billions of visions that must have occurred. If I was going to give myself a stock tip, and I didn't know that the future was immutable, the first thing I'd say to my past self was, 'Don't share this with anyone.' Maybe those who did what you're suggesting are simply keeping quiet about it."If a few dozen people had visions," said della Robbia, "that might be possible. But with billions? Someone would have said that that was what they were doing. In fact, I firmly believe almost everyone would be trying to communicate with their past selves."

Lloyd looked at Theo, then back at della Robbia. "Not if they knew it was futile; not if they knew that nothing they said could change things that were already carved in stone."

"Or maybe everyone forgot," said Theo. "Maybe, between now and 2030, the memory of the visions will fade. The memories of dreams fade, after all. You can recall one when you first wake up, but hours later, it's gone completely. Maybe the visions will erase themselves over the next twenty-one years."

Della Robbia shook his head emphatically. "Even if that were the case — and there's no reason at all to think it might be — all the media reporting about the visions would still survive until the year 2030. All the news reports, all the TV coverage, all the things people wrote about themselves in their own diaries and in letters to friends. Psychology isn't my field; I won't debate the fallible nature of memory. But people would know what's happening on October 23, 2030, and many would be attempting to communicate with the past."

"Wait a minute," said Theo. His eyebrows were high. "Wait a minute!" Lloyd and della Robbia turned to look at him. "Don't you see? It's Niven's Law."

"What is?" said Lloyd.

"Who's Niven?" said della Robbia.

"An American science-fiction writer. He said that in any universe in which time travel is a possibility, no time machine will ever be invented. He even wrote a little story to dramatize it: a scientist is building a time machine and just as he gets it finished, he looks up and sees the sun going nova — the universe is going to snuff him out, rather than allow the paradoxes inherent in time travel."

"So?" said Lloyd.

"So communicating with yourself in the past is a form of time travel — it's sending information back in time. And for those people who tried to do it, the universe might block the attempt — not by anything as grandiose as blowing up the sun, but simply by preventing the communication from working." He shifted his gaze from Lloyd to della Robbia and back again. "Don't you see? That must have been what I was trying to do in 2030 — I'd been attempting to communicate with myself in the past, and so, instead, I simply ended up having no vision at all."