“Like now.”

“Yes. Listen further. The Greek comes from a, ‘not,’ and poros, ‘passage.’ But in the Platonic myth, Penia, the child of poverty, chooses to become impregnated by Poros, the personification of plenty. Their child is Eros, who combines the attributes of its parents. Pointed out as strange here is the vision of Penia as resourceful, and prosperity as drunk and passive—”

“That’s not strange.”

“So that although Penia is not Poros, she is also not a-poria. She has been called neither masculine nor feminine, rich or poor, resourceful or without resources. And so aporiabecomes even more an untranslatable term.”

“I am an aporia. And I am in an aporia. This blackliner.”

“Yes.”

All very well, to talk and think—“Thank you, Pauline”—but at the end of it, there was still a week more to live through, and Alex’s death never gone away. She was floating in the bardo, trying to think like someone unborn would think. Full of dubitation, child of a poverty. Would be reborn some other Swan.

But then later—it seemed much later, there in the suspended space of no-time, banging around in her thoughts as they looped over and over—later she came to understand that when the chime in her suit rang and signaled that this trip was over, they would decant the same Swan that went in. There was no escape.

“Pauline—tell me more. Talk to me. Please talk to me.”

Pauline said, “Max Brod once had a very interesting conversation with Franz Kafka, which he later recounted to Walter Benjamin….”

Extracts (3)

Homo sapiensevolved in Terran gravity and it is still an open question what effects time spent in less than one g will have on the individual

decrease in bone strength from 0.5 percent to 5 percent per month in 0–.1 g

repeated exposure to gravity incidents greater than 3 g has been shown to create micro-strokes and raise the incidence of major strokes

the biomedical research community has changed its mind about these questions more than once through the years

aerobic and resistance exercise partially compensates for physiological effects of long-term residence in moderate low g (defined as between Luna’s .17 g and Mars’s .38 g) but there are problems left unaddressed

maintaining a vigorous physical life substantially mitigates

below Luna g, physical etiolation occurs in some organs and tissues no matter how much exercise

statistically very significant results in actuarial tables suggest longevity beyond historical norms is impossible without frequent return not just to a one-g environment, but to Earth itself. Why this should be so is a matter of dispute, but the fact itself is very clear in the data. We propose to show

one year in every six spent on Earth, with no time away longer than ten years, greatly increases longevity. Neglect of this practice leads to a high risk of dying many decades before

oversterile environments cannot

the famous or notorious sabbatical has been proposed as an example of hormesis or Mithridatism, in which brief exposure to toxins strengthens the organism against greater

Earth’s continuing clutch on space-dwelling humans is physiological and will not go away unless it is fully characterized and all components of it effectively ameliorated

inoculations of helminths (ringworm), bacteria, viruses, etc., impossible to catalog and yet

possible psychological effects also, which means extreme difficulty in defining causation or treatment

not dissimilar to other five-hundred-year projects in intrinsic difficulty

effects are cumulative and lead to dysfunction

increase in longevity is a statistical fact but no guarantee for any particular individual. Life choices shift the probabilities of

regenerative therapies continue to improve

the biggest jump in the longevity graphs came at the start of the Accelerando, and many feel this was not a coincidence. There is a surge of energy that comes when you realize you may live much longer than you had thought possible. Problems that later complicate the picture don’t become evident until

the statistics are suggestive but the causes are not yet

life is a complex

STD, sudden traumatic death, insoluble

people should minimize their time in the lowest and highest gs if they want to maximize their chance at newly normative extended lifetimes, which keep getting longer

no real sense of what might be possible if improvements continue

could we live for thousands of

people compromise, they cut corners. They want to do things, they indulge their desires, their love of adventure

to have to return to Earth, so dirty and old, so oppressive, such a failure. So much the sad planet

they swore they would live by accident, but they were young at the time

most older spacers go home to Earth as advised, one year every seven, because these are the ones living the longest and the effect is self-reinforcing

the hunt continues for a fuller explanation

SWAN AND ZASHA

Earth’s thirty-seven space elevators all had their cars full all the time, both up and down. There were still many spacecraft landings and ascents, of course, and landings of gliders that then reascended on the elevators; but all in all, the elevators handled by far the bulk of the Earth-space traffic. Going down in the cars were food (a crucial percentage of the total needed), metals, manufactured goods, gases, and people. Going up were people, manufactured goods, the substances common on Earth but rare in space—these were many, including things animal, vegetable, and mineral, but chiefly (by bulk) rare earths, wood, oil, and soil. The totals came to quite a flow of physical mass up and down, all powered by the counterbalanced forces of gravity and the rotation of the Earth, with a bit of solar power to make up the difference.

The anchor rocks at the upper ends of the elevator cables were like giant spaceliners, as very little of their original asteroidal surfaces were left visible; their exteriors were covered with buildings, power units, elevator loading zones and the like. They were in effect giant harbors and hotels and, as such, extremely busy places. Swan passed through the one called Bolivar and settled into one of the hotel cars without even noticing it; to her it had just been a complicated set of doors and locks and corridors, getting her into yet another set of rooms. She was resigned to the long ride down to Quito. It was an irony of their time that the trip down the elevator cable was going to take longer than many interplanetary voyages, but that’s the way it was. Five days stuck in a hotel. She spent the days attending performances of Glass’s Satyagrahaand Akhnaten, also dancing hard in a grueling class designed to get people toughened up for one g, which sometimes hit her pretty hard. Looking down through the clear floor, she got familiar again with the great bulge of South America, gaining definition below them: blue oceans to each side; the Andes like a brown spine; the little brown cones of the big volcanoes, bereft of all their snow.