"James Patrick Kelly - The Propogation of Light in a Vaccuum (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

299,792.46
kilometers per second, here and there are only probabilities. Relative to you,
I
am no place. I do not exist.
I used to think that she was a hallucination, my sweet imaginary wife. Proof
that I'd gone mad. Not any more. If I ask her whether she exists, she just
laughs. I like this about her. We often laugh together. She keeps changing
though; I'm afraid she aspires to reality. I had a real wife once but it
wasn't
the same.
(You're an artist. She didn't understand you.)
I don't want to paint too rosy a picture. Like any couple, we have our ups
and
downs. Then again, down and up are relative terms which vary with the
inertial
frame of the observer. Einstein warned that c is the ultimate limit within
spacetime. Exceed it and you pass out of the universe of logic. Causality
loops
around you like a boa; the math is beyond me. Of course, logic and causality
are
hardwired into our brains. It makes for some awkward moments.
I was a hero when I began this grand voyage of discovery. Like Columbus. In
his
time, the world was flat. People believed that if you sailed too far in any
one
direction, you would fall off the planet. My imaginary wife informs me that
we
have sailed off the edge of reality. Perhaps that explains our predicament.
(Predicament? Opportunity. Nobody has ever had a chance to invent themselves
like this.)
The problem was that the theoretical framework supporting faster-than-light
travel stopped at c. No one really knew what was beyond the absolute. Oh,
there
was extensive testing before any humans were put at risk. The robots,
unburdened
by imagination, functioned exactly as expected. The design team accelerated
an
entire menagerie: spiders and rats and pigs and chimps. They all came back;
the
ones that weren't immediately dissected lived long and uneventful lives. So I
suppose there's hope.
(What he hasn't told you yet is that it wasn't just him. He's embarrassed,
but
it's not his fault. There were fifty-one people on this ship. Crew and
colonists. His real wife was one of them. Her name was Varina.)
I remember once Varina made a joke about it. She said that science ended at
c.
The other side was fiction. It's not so funny anymore.
I don't know what happened to the others. All I can say is that when the ship
warped, I blacked out. I have my theories. Perhaps there was a malfunction. I