The Time Surgeons

It had to be done carefully. The cabal centered on Shemsak slowly grew, approaching the most rational of the Sages, the wisest of the Clan Heads and Governors.

A quiet revolution occurred. Those who would not accept it, or who appeared unstable or untrustworthy, were quietly silenced. The cabal was not yet ruthless; they could not justify to themselves killing for some greater good. Their victims were merely imprisoned, until and unless they realized that what had to be done, had to be.

The people were not informed. What was the point? Let them live their lives, as Pachmeny had wished in her own mind when she learned of it. They could do nothing to stop it and would probably make things worse: panicking, in fear or despair destroying the last hope of the human race, overthrowing governments as if governments could do anything at all, and as if removing them would hurl Pachmeny’s Stars from the sky.

As far as the public knew, a major breakthrough had been made in science based on physics learned from the Ancients, that might lead men to the stars and to unimaginable wealth. That accounted for the heightened activity in the great centers of study and learning. It accounted for the large scale drilling programs into the bases of two high mountains whose purpose, the people were told, was research that needed thorough shielding from cosmic rays.

They brought in psychologists. An enterprise of this nature could not be kept completely secret; and even if it were, people were prone to make up conspiracies where none existed: let alone when they were. So the psychologists, and the marketers, and other experts in persuasion, set about discrediting or redirecting undesirable rumors, while promoting desirable ones.

It was not a stable situation. Neither the mood of the people nor the economy could survive their respective departures from reality. Eventually it would unravel, and the world would explode. They did not know whether to fear or hope that the sky would explode first.

Then they turned their minds to the selection of people for the shelters.

An hour ago, Sage Kuchalki had been intrigued about why she had been invited to a mysterious meeting with the Head of her Clan and a famous physicist, a field far from her own. Now she just sat there, aghast, wishing she could turn back time and refuse the invitation.

“Is this some kind of joke?” she asked weakly.

“I’m afraid not, Sage Kuchalki.”

“We’re all going to die.”

“That was always going to happen, I’m afraid.”

“We’re all going to die at once. Everyone. Forever. Any time now.”

“Yes.”

“Yet you want me to tell you how to breed, what? A race of supermen? So they can discover some kind of superscience before they all die, so they can escape to God-knows-where light years away?”

“Yes.”

“It can’t be done.”

“What?”

“Any of it! You’re mad. Totally, irretrievably mad!”

“That would be preferable. But you’ve seen what we know. You might not be a physicist, but you are a Sage. I think you know that we know.”

Kuchalki rubbed her temples. “You do realize you’ve ruined my day. My life. Gods of Chaos. Why did you tell me?”

“Because we need your help.”

“So you don’t know when this is going to happen; it might happen tomorrow or next century; but you’re rolling the dice to breed a bunch of people smart enough to solve the problem before or after it happens?”

“Yes.”

“You’re mad.”

“We’ve covered that already.”

“Totally, irretrievably mad.”

“Desperate. We see no other hope.”

“Yes. Quite. Quite so. Yes, of course I will help you. If I can.”

She sat there for long minutes, thinking. “All right. We know all about selective breeding. Domestic animals have changed a lot over time as farmers have selected them for desirable traits. Usually they do the obvious, choosing their best specimens for breeding. So in principle, yes. Maybe. Unless humans have already hit their maximum possible intelligence – unlikely, perhaps, but possible – then in theory we could selectively breed from the highly intelligent. But what farmers have done they have done over centuries, millennia. You’re talking a generation, at best two, before we run out of time regardless of what we do. Unless this supernova is further in the future than you think. How likely is that?”

“Possible. But not likely. I wouldn’t want to stake the future of our species on it.”

“Well, there you have a problem. It is called ‘reversion to the mean’. If you breed two highly intelligent people, or two people who are elite in any field, you usually get children closer to the average of the population. You don’t get better geniuses. The reason is that traits like intelligence are complex, based on many genes, and worse, their interactions; and to muddy it more, also on the environment. It is the particular combination that gives you your genius. But mix two geniuses together and you get a random combination. Usually not as good. Maybe if you could do your breeding program for centuries you’d get somewhere. But one or two generations? Good luck.”

“But it is possible? With lots of different geniuses in the pool?”

“You could get lucky. But nobody has ever tried. More likely you’d get a bell-shaped curve much the same as the general population, but moved upwards to a higher average intelligence. But a higher maximum? Maybe. I’d say don’t count on it, but I guess you have to. Or maybe you’ll have enough time for even a bunch of natural geniuses to get the job done.”

“Could you advise us on the best details for such a program?”

“I could, as much as anyone could. It won’t be an exact science. But we could make educated guesses. But I’ll never know if I succeed, will I? None of us will ever know.”

“Probably not. But at least we will have tried.”

“How much… latitude will be allowed? Hell, I’m not going to sugar-coat this,” she added bitterly, bitingly, as if blaming them for ruining her day. “How much force will be allowed? Are we going to drag husbands screaming from their wives, and vice versa? Put them in pens and tell them who to mate with and on what days, like so many prize cattle? Cart away their defective children in the dark of the night?”

“Sage Kuchalki,” replied Arragath wearily. “You are right to ask that. If we are brought to the point where our only practical course is something so immoral that at any other time we would recoil from it in horror, then perhaps our race does not deserve to survive. But here we are, impaling ourselves on the horns of just that dilemma. If we act morally, do we doom the human race? Then how can it be moral? But how can the measures you mention be moral? I do not know. I hope we can do what we must. I fear that we will do what we must. But if I must sell my soul to save the world, then I am not sure I have the courage to do either: to sell my soul or doom the world to save it.”

“Perhaps instead of a geneticist you need an ethicist.”

Then she paused, and looked at him strangely. “Or perhaps you have answered your own question,” she added slowly.

“What do you mean?”

“You speak of being practical. You speak of breeding from geniuses. Perhaps it is not practical to stake the fate of the world on an army of geniuses who hate your guts for what you have done to them.”

He gave her a startled look. “Quite so… quite so. But what is the alternative? Our shelters will be nuclear powered so they have unlimited energy, but still they are restricted in size, and can only grow enough food and otherwise support a certain number of people. If we start letting in not only the people we need but their loved ones, we must start keeping out the people we need the most. We do not know when the disaster will happen so we have to populate our shelters then seal them, for good or ill.”

“Then I have a suggestion. A series of suggestions, if you will. If you have two equal candidates and one is single but the other is married to an unsuitable partner, take the first. Seek volunteers. The life you are offering them is uncertain, perhaps a sentence of a long, painful death instead of a short, clean one. Some will understand. Others will respond to the appeal of necessity. You fear you are willing to sell your soul for this; many others will be willing to do what they must too, no matter the cost or the pain. Both those might hate themselves: but they will not hate you; and the level of their hate will become the level of their loyalty to the ideal for which they sold that which was most precious to them. It is terribly cruel, but the cruelty is not yours: it is in the stars.

“Those who are left, choose: perhaps there is no compelling reason to take them over others more compliant. And if they are: do not forget what I said about reversion to the mean. It cuts both ways. Just because someone isn’t a genius doesn’t mean they don’t have the seeds of genius within them. And remember that we are speaking of the partners of geniuses: chosen for a reason, containing some spark of their own that would attract even a genius. So assuming the numbers are modest, as I believe they will be, I think you should keep your soul and let them in. They are insurance against our ignorance: an additional pool of genes we did not choose, our wildcard if you will. Besides, someone needs to maintain the facility, tend the crops and feed the babies. This takes at least some of that off the plate of your geniuses, who have more vital work to do.”

So above the ground Sages and their students worked tirelessly on the problems of advanced physics, while below the ground two mighty shelters took shape. To the world they were introduced as the Twin Advanced Science Facilities, fabulous temples of mysterious science that were the subject of breathlessly excited commentary and speculation.

Within a week, everybody just called them The Eggs. They were built with ovoid shells to gain maximum thickness from the amount of material that could be diverted to their construction. Deep underground, inside their thick shells, the delicate instruments within would be protected from interference by cosmic rays from above and lesser natural radiation from below. Through their thinner underside, their deep location also gave the best access for secondary research into the core of the Earth beneath. Built a world apart, they gained the longest possible baseline for experiments peering into the most distant reaches of the cosmos.

The Eggs promised a brave future for humanity. A team of the finest minds on the planet had been assembled to develop unheard of technologies from a remarkable scientific advance only recently discovered and still kept secret by the Sages. Inevitably, conspiracy theories also sprang up around them. These were tolerated, even encouraged, by the authorities. To the world, the conspiracy theories were an escape valve and entertainment, becoming a kind of mental flypaper for any suspicions buzzing around the cultural atmosphere. The few who took them seriously had no power to act on their beliefs, and like such people through all time were content to preach without acting, themselves generally living as if their theories did not touch the reality of their lives.

To the Sages, they were Eggs in more than shape, the precious embryos laid by a doomed race in hope of future rebirth.

They had been afraid to put all their figurative eggs in one basket in case some disaster wiped one out. If they could they would have built hundreds, but with their limited resources and time they could only build two. They were under mountains on nearly opposite sides of the planet relative to the plane of Pachmeny’s Stars, so that they would not both bear the full brunt of their fury when it came. Even the width of a planet was not full protection, but perhaps it would be enough that if the nearest fell, the furthest would survive.

The two shelters were connected by communications cables in case the cross-fertilization of minds helped advance their science. Nobody expected the cables or radio links to survive the storm, not across half the planet, but they had to try. The shelters received the most advanced nuclear reactors with the safest, most passive design, with enough fuel for hundreds of years. They installed the most carefully and simply designed life support systems, and the most advanced scientific equipment; with enough machine tools and raw materials to hopefully cover any contingency.

The plans changed somewhat. The leaders chose the most brilliant minds among the Sages and their Students. But they also had a lottery. The Eggs, the people were told, also provided an opportunity to study the best ways for a few people to survive in isolation for long periods. Hints of space travel, possibly of generational ships slowly inching their way toward the stars, drifted into the public mind via rumor and speculation. Applicants, the people were told, had to be highly intelligent, resourceful, and have no ties: to be willing to leave the world behind and spend who knew how many years inside the Eggs cut off from communications. There were many applicants, more than enough to round out the genetic pool being passed to the future.

Construction proceeded at a breakneck pace. After only five years they were largely completed, and after another two they were ready.

Pachmeny and Arragath went to see Shemsak. He rose and embraced them both. They were fortunate, or cursed, depending on your perspective: both young, both brilliant, and both intimately involved from the start, they had been chosen for one of the shelters.

“Goodbye, Esteemed Shemsak,” said Pachmeny, breaking protocol by hugging her former Sage. “I wish you would come with us. We could use your mind.”

He looked at her sadly. “Goodbye, Pachmeny. Don’t worry about me. This is a young person’s charge, not one for elder Sages like me. I will be here for you, whenever you need me. Until the end of the world.”

She took his hand, tears in her eyes, and held it to her breast. “Goodbye, Shemsak,” she whispered.

And then they were gone.

Knowing what the future held they had already had a child of their own. They knew that the genetic program had priority over personal interests: that perhaps no future children would be of them both. But they could live with that. They could live with each other giving or taking the seed of another, for the sake of the race, to buy a future. For they would always be with each other. And at least one child they carried into the future with them would be theirs, and it was enough.