Imagination Fully Dilated: Science Fiction Part 18

But then, on the eve of my five hundredth birthday, everything changed.

PHOENIX IN HOSPITAL FOLLOWING FAILED FIRE.

Seattle, Washington. After insisting that it would not abide by an Interdimensional Court order requiring it to regenerate, the Phoenix apparently had a last-minute change of heart, and after spending all night hastily constructing its ritual nest atop Seattle's s.p.a.ce Needle, it set itself alight, only to chicken out as flames engulfed its feathered form. The legendary "bird of fire" leapt squawking from its funeral pyre and fell twenty feet to the s.p.a.ce Needle's Observation Deck, where it screamed for help until a fast-acting firefighter sprayed it with an extinguisher. The Phoenix was then airlifted to Harborview Medical Center, where it is in critical condition with third-degree burns over eighty percent of its body. Witnesses said that all the avionid's feathers were incinerated except for the golden crest on its head.

Around midnight yesterday, the Phoenix, who had been in seclusion, flew from its Seattle aviary to the nearby s.p.a.ce Needle, carrying aromatic branches that had been imported for its regeneration. It deposited its burden atop the landmark, then returned to its penthouse for more of the plant material.

Security guards at the s.p.a.ce Needle alerted local authorities, and a decision was made not to interfere with the avionid's activities. Instead, the s.p.a.ce Needle was evacuated except for firefighters and members of the press.

According to eyewitness accounts and video footage taken from news helicopters, which captured the entire event, the Phoenix, who has over a dozen triple-Platinum recordings to its credit, sang a haunting requiem as the sun rose on an atypically clear morning. The avionid completed its melody, then faced east, extending its wings. Within seconds, a small flame appeared beneath its tail. The Phoenix fanned its wings, encouraging the fire, which spread to the branches of the nest. For close to a minute, all that was visible was smoke and flames. Then, the Phoenix emitted a terrible screech and leapt from its pyre, landing in the guard wires above the Observation Deck. It squawked for help, its body still burning. A member of the Seattle Fire Department extinguished the avionid, who received emergency medical attention before being rushed to the region's only Level One trauma center.

Seattle's fire chief defended his decision to permit the Phoenix to set itself and its nest ablaze atop the city's most recognized landmark by citing the widely held belief that the Phoenix's incineration has, for presumably mystical reasons, never harmed the trees in which it traditionally takes place, and therefore the risk to the s.p.a.ce Needle was minimal. In support of this, the Phoenix's nest was no longer on fire by the time SFD personnel reached it. The charred construction is currently considered evidence. The Seattle Police Department is contracting for its removal by crane, which may take up to three days.

A spokesbeing for the Interdimensional Court said that the Justices are meeting to determine whether the Phoenix's failed attempt puts it in contempt or whether it in effect satisfied the Court's order. Special Prosecutor Given Powers, who has been preparing a case against the Phoenix, said his office needed to wait until the avionid was well enough to be interviewed, but it appeared likely that charges of genocide would be brought.

MLU chief counsel the Hydra, who defended the Phoenix before the Interdimensional Court, expressed hope that his client would not suffer legal punishment."The Phoenix's situation continues to be unprecedented, but hopefully today's tragic event will inspire the Court to reconsider its previous finding. What we have here is a being being forced to burn itself alive.

No other ent.i.ty in existence has ever been ordered to undergo an equivalent ordeal, and to force the Phoenix to choose between immolation and life imprisonment is cruel and unusual."

Interdimensional legal expert Oedipus Smith, a professor at Harvard Law School, said that the Court's intent was clearly to insure the generation of a new Phoenix, and since the Phoenix is alive in a burn center, and not reduced to ashes in its nest (where its remains would, in three days time, give rise to a worm-like Phoenix larva), it is unlikely that the Court will not impose penalty.

The Phoenix has been embattled since its shocking announcement. In addition to the injunction granted by the Interdimensional Court upon a motion by the Supernatural Conservancy, other parties who had paid large sums for rights to the regeneration are also bringing actions against the Phoenix. These include original host city Orlando, broadcast network SBC, and Griffin Records. Although some experts estimate damages could approach one billion dollars, it is likely, given the Phoenix's vast financial resources, acc.u.mulated over half a millennium, that it would be able to pay any award.

From Chapter 13 ofOut of the Fire: My Story by Phoenix Dawn: It's hard to describe what came over me that night. It was as if the whole world, and everything that had happened in that world-my pyrophobia, the press conference, the pineapple-juice binging, the court battle, my catharsis just three days before-all of it faded into a shadowland, and the only thing that was real was an all-consuming urge tobuild that nest .

I vaguely remember Chauncey shouting after me as I left with the first load of branches, but even he was just a wraith, some vaguely familiar being that lacked substance in the sphere I now inhabited, a sphere where I existed for one purpose and one purpose only.

I'm not sure why I chose the s.p.a.ce Needle. Maybe because there aren't palm trees in Seattle, nor oaks of any stature. Maybe because it stands separate from downtown's skysc.r.a.pers, brightly lit, a beacon in the night. Regardless, I decided to build there, and so back and forth I went until every last stem had been transported to the nest site, and just in time.

The horizon was graying to the east. I felt the world emerging from its nighttime shadow, and as it did, I understood that I perched between the two realities, the everyday place and that other nameless one from which we come and to which we return. I felt utterly, profoundly alone, and my loneliness flowed into my voice and I sang, sang for everything that ends and everything that has yet to begin.

When the song finished, rays of light touched my feathers, the sun creeping up over the Cascade Mountains, burning away the shadows. The worlds were colliding. The moment was so beautiful and so terrible I could not bear it. Throwing my wings wide, I welcomed the star's fire, voicelessly begging it to consume me. And flames sprang forth from my being, the fiery illusion of my feathers made real.

Spikenard and myrrh are potent. Intoxicated, I felt nothing as the flames and smoke thickened, sealing me in a coffin of light and shadow, a coc.o.o.n spun at the border of day and night, rebirth and . . . death.

The great and final slumber engulfed my body- And then something in me awoke, an awareness as singular as my nestbuilding obsession the night before, and that awareness was:I am on fire!I leapt out of the nest before I'd even thought, and as I did, I fell back into the everyday world, fell hard, landing in wires above the s.p.a.ce Needle's Observation Deck and screaming because I was burning alive.

PHOENIX LARVA FOUND!.

Seattle, Washington. Police working with a crane crew to take the Phoenix's nest into evidence, following the avionid's aborted regeneration three days ago, were shocked to discover a large wormlike being inside the bower of burnt branches atop the s.p.a.ce Needle. Removal of the nest was immediately halted, and mytho-scientific experts were called in to identify the flame-red creature. Following several hours of examination, the Seattle police chief announced that the nest would not be removed and that the s.p.a.ce Needle would be closed until further notice. When asked if a Phoenix larva had been found, the chief replied, "That is our best guess at this point."

If the worm, nicknamed "Little Red," transforms into a Phoenix, it likely will resolve the legal problems facing the Phoenix, who is in serious-but-stable condition. However, such an occurrence is without precedent and believed by many in the mytho-scientific community to be impossible.

"The Phoenix is and has always been unique," said renowned authority Dr. Iva D'Gree of Paris's L'Inst.i.tute des Creatures Fantastiques. "It only arises from the burnt remains of its former incarnation."

However, O. Pin Mynd, author ofWrong Again: The Failings of Science & Mythos, pointed out that at one time maggots were thought to arise spontaneously from dead flesh, a notion which is now considered ridiculous.

Recent Developments: *Phoenix's recovery from third-degree burns termed "amazing" bydoctors. Mytho-scientists cite regenerative abilities as reason for rapidhealing. (5/8/-) *Unique no more! Larva transforms into Phoenix. Prior Phoenix saidto be ecstatic. (5/20/-) *Phoenix takes name. "Dawn" hopes to meet "Little Red" soon.

(5/22/-).

*Interdimensional Court rules that Phoenix "effectively" complied withinjunction. Special Prosecutor won't bring charges. (5/24/-) *Phoenix Dawn settles lawsuits over cancelled Orlando regeneration.SBC receives rights to story that changed the mythos. Griffin Records parent company Fantastic Communications' Magic Books will publish Phoenix's memoir. (5/28/-) *Beak-to-beak for the first time ever: emotional meeting as Little Redvisits Dawn. (6/1/-) Epilogue fromOut of the Fire: My Story by Phoenix Dawn: Many have speculated about what happened to me on May first and why Little Red is here when I am not burnt to ash.Perhaps the whole mythos about us Phoenixes has been wrong, and we were never intended to be a species of one, unique in all the world. Maybe the first Phoenix, having no being to help it understand what was happening, let the power of its birth experience consume it. And so a myth arose. And every subsequent Phoenix bought into its own legend, duly giving its life to perpetuate it.

Maybe ourtrue power of regeneration is the ability to survive creating more of our own kind. For as the Court found, and as Little Red proves, all Phoenixes may be the same, but we are not the same Phoenix.

But perhaps that's not it at all. Maybe the G.o.ds just decided it was time for a change, and I happened to be the one chosen to bring it about. Perhaps everything I went through prior to May first was so that I would awaken to my own destruction, save myself, and begin a new mythos. Who is to say?

All I know with certainty is that for the first time in my five-hundred-year existence, I can look another being in the eye and see myself staring back. It's an experience so fresh, so new, I feel reborn.

Legacy

David Levine

The view from where I sat looked like the poster forCygnus X-1 with Luke Perry, which I used as my screen wallpaper for six solid months in seventh grade. Not quite as dramatic, but better because it was real.

The roiling red bulk of the red supergiant star we called Magnus, or VV Cephei A to give its proper name, filled the window. It looked like red clouds churning in a dull orange sky, but the tiniest visible blob was a million times as big as the Earth, and if it weren't for the Lilliandree-made transparent dome over the ship's lifesystem the infrared alone would be enough to kill us. Just left of center burned a tiny pinpoint of blue-white light: Charlie, or VV Cephei B, a blue giant star five times bigger than Sol. A dim elliptical halo of pale orange shading to yellow surrounded the blue star, matter sucked from the big star's bulk by the smaller one's gravity and spun into a disk by their mutual rotation.

I was the only one looking at it.

I had to attend the astrophysicists' daily staff meeting, in case they needed some technical information on the ship or its instruments, but as the meeting was conducted in incomprehensible scientific gibberish I always chose a seat with a view. Everyone else focused on the digital display on the opposite wall. Even though these folks had spent their entire lives studying the stars and had just traveled over three thousand light years to study this particular one, they spent almost no time looking at it.

Susan Yang, the diminutive nuclear chemist from Korea, had just finished her report, and Martin Lake- DoctorMartin Lake, a pop-eyed pale Brit whose remaining hair stuck out like dried crabgra.s.s-stood up. "I've finally discovered what has been interfering with my observations. We have to move the ship."

Groans all around the table, not least from me. It had taken us over seventy-two hours to "stabilize the observational platform"-in other words, put the ship in the right orbit and wait for it to stop wobbling.

Leonard Hart, the expedition's director, put his gla.s.ses on the table and rubbed his eyes. "And why is that, Dr. Lake?" He had a bushy gray moustache and a large nose whose tip moved when he talked.

"There's an anomalous mascon in the accretion disk." He put up an image on the screen: thin red vapor curled up from the surface of Magnus and swirled around its tiny blue companion like a loving tentacle.

"It's in this clear zone." He tapped the screen and the image magnified, showing a dark teardrop-shaped bubble in the red tentacle. It was a real-time image, and the red gas drifted lazily past-a storm of high-temperature charged particles moving at hundreds of kilometers per second. "We have to relocate to a position where it isn't anywhere near my line of sight to the core."

"Line of sight?" huffed Vasiliy Ivanov. "Are we doingoptical astronomy here?"

"No. This mascon is big enough to affect Simultaneity-based observations." Martin touched another control and annotations appeared, pointing out a black circle within the dark bubble and indicating its diameter, just a bit bigger than Jupiter.

Vasiliy remained skeptical. "Even Jupiter doesn't havethat deep a gravity well."

"Oh, it's much more ma.s.sive than Jupiter. That is a terrestrial body."The muttered side conversations and shuffling papers stopped dead.

Leonard stood up and moved close to the screen. "A rock bigger than Jupiter?"

"I call it Ballock," said Martin, "because it's a big heavy ball and because it's bollixed up my data. We have to move the ship so I can see around it."

Leonard magnified the image still further. "This dark region must be protected from the matter stream by its magnetosphere."

"What's that?" asked Krishna Srinivasa, pointing at a star within the dark bubble.

Martin blinked. "A minor terrestrial body. A moon of Ballock."

Leonard zoomed in on the bright speck.

The bright blue-white light of Charlie illuminated white clouds swirling serenely on a blue and green background. A perfect little jewel of a world. The annotations indicated a ma.s.s and surface temperature not too far from Earth's and the presence of water and oxygen. Even I knew how rare that was.

When the excited babble died down, Martin said, "I've named it Pointless."

Leonard's brown-spotted forehead wrinkled as his eyebrows drew together in befuddled amus.e.m.e.nt.

"You found an Earthlike world in the accretion disk of a red supergiant, and you called itPointless ?"

"Because it has no bearing on my researches, and it's going to be blown away soon anyway. So are we going to move the ship, or not?"

If it had been my choice, I would have started accelerating toward that pretty little world as soon as it came up on the screen. I wanted to stand on its alien soil, under the light of the two suns. But Leonard was the one in charge, and I was glad: the scientists yelled at each other for five solid hours, including two consultations with higher-ups back on Earth, and if it had been me in the middle of all that, my hair would have been as gray as Leonard's by the end of the meeting.

We were all there, three thousand light-years and five billion dollars from home, because the latest Simultaneity astronomy showed Magnus was right on the cusp of exploding into a supernova.

Supernovae are rare events, happening only once per century or so per galaxy, and studying an incipient one up close could tell us more about stellar evolution than fifty years of Earth-based observation.

Simultaneity has no speed-of-light limitation, but detail is reduced by distance and by intervening ma.s.s, so we wanted to get as close as possible.

So an international team of a dozen astrophysicists had been a.s.sembled and a long-range ship had been hired from Implex Corporation, along with its Simultaneity tech (that's me, Gray Tackett) and reals.p.a.ce pilot (Julie Jorgensen, but everyone calls her J.J.). I knew this was a really important project, because five major corporations and two minor governments had been kicked off the schedule to make room for it. Ships like theImplex Helvoran aren't exactly common.

At this point the "iron flash" -the point at which the star used up all the lighter elements in its core and began to burn iron, starting the biggest fireworks show in the galaxy-was a month away and n.o.body on the ship had had more than four hours' sleep a night since we'd arrived three weeks ago. Our schedule kept everyone occupied right up until the last possible moment, and now we had Ballock and Pointless to study as well. Martin demanded we not spend any resources on the planets at all; Susan, the only one in the group with a degree in planetology, argued for an immediate landing on Pointless.In the end Leonard imposed a compromise that made n.o.body happy. We would put the ship in orbit around Pointless, where both Pointless and Magnus could be observed without Ballock's interference, and those who wished could spend at most 30% of their time and bandwidth studying the planets.

It sounded reasonable to me, at first. Then I realized what we would have to do to get there.

"We can't fly the ship into thesun !"

"It's not as bad as it seems, Gray," said Leonard. "The photosphere thins and cools as it's drawn from Magnus's surface by Charlie's gravity, and it doesn't get thicker until well into the accretion disk. Where we're going it's no more than a hot, dirty vacuum."

"What if we have to run for it?" Simultaneity doesn't like gravity wells.

"We've got almost a month. It's only eight days from there back out to where s.p.a.ce is flat enough for a safe transition. Martin, can you guarantee us two weeks' warning before the iron flash?"

"Yes."

I crossed my arms and thought about it. I didn't like being so far from a safe jump point, but the planet called to me.

"Let's do it."

While J.J. laid out a transfer orbit and the astrophysicists prepared their more delicate equipment for acceleration, I worked with Leonard on a revised bandwidth budget. The Simultaneity unit was both our main scientific instrument and our link to Earth, and we had already been using its full capacity before we'd discovered Pointless. Now we had to reallocate some of that capacity to the study of the two planets.

We had been working for a couple of hours when Leonard stretched, and I winced at the audible crack of his joints. "Sorry," he said, "but that's what seventy-three sounds like."

"Seventy-three? I never would have guessed."

"Thank you." He stared at me for a moment. "How old are you, if I may ask?"

"Twenty-three."

His eyes didn't move, but he wasn't looking at me anymore. "I should have grandchildren your age."

Should have? I didn't say anything out loud, but the question must have showed on my face.

"My wife and two sons were killed in a car accident in 1991, when I was in grad school."

"I'm sorry."

He sighed, looked into his cupped hands as though they held memories. "I suppose that's why I'm here now, actually. After they died, I devoted myself to my career . . . hoping to make some significant advancement in human knowledge, something to carry on my name after I was gone. I did achieve a small amount of fame, in certain circles, but never the big breakthrough I'd been seeking. So when this expedition was being a.s.sembled I pulled in every favor I ever had to get on it. My last chance."

Finally he snorted, breaking the awkward silence, and met my gaze again. "And now I'm writingbandwidth budgets instead of doing real science. So let's get this thing finished."

Over the next eight days Magnus grew from a huge red ball into a h.e.l.lish boiling wall of red fire that took up half the sky, with loops and streamers flowing up and around like bridges on the horizon. Charlie became a searing circle of light bigger than a full moon, bisected by the accretion disk. Seen edge-on, the disk was a fat fuzzy toothpick, dark where it crossed Charlie's face and yellow-orange away from it.

The matter stream between the two stars changed appearance more than either of them. At first it was a dark red river, meandering through the black sky. As we got closer structures began to appear, whorls and braids and vortices in red and black, but it got dimmer and dimmer even as the detail increased. It was like driving into the mountains; once you reach the foothills, you can't see the mountains themselves at all. By the time Pointless showed a visible disk the sky was just as black as it had been before, even though we were now well inside the matter stream.

The scientists kept me busy with routing requests, configuration changes, and other administrative tasks.

The incoming data was swamping our storage and I had a constant battle to keep it all accessible without losing anything. Still, whenever I could spare a few moments I went up to the observation deck and stared at the planet below.

Pointless was tidally locked to its primary, Ballock, so its "day" equaled its...o...b..tal period: 120 days. This meant Ballock would never appear to move in Pointless's sky, while the two suns would rise and set every 120 days. But though Pointless's...o...b..t around Ballock was nearly circular, Ballock's...o...b..t around Charlie was unstable-badly warped by the constant gravitic duel between the two suns. So the suns'

position relative to each other in Pointless's sky would change constantly and unpredictably.

We had arrived at a point in Ballock's variable "year" when it was between the two suns, so currently there was no night on Pointless-any given point in the surface was in "red day" or "blue day." On the blue-day side, the one we'd seen first, the continents looked lush and green and Charlie's light sparkled from its oceans, making it look like a shiny little Christmas tree ornament.

At the moment, though, we were orbiting over the red-day side, where black continents floated in a dim and mottled sea of vague, fitful red highlights. Red day would be a grim and chilly time for any life forms on the surface. I imagined weird alien ferns looming black in Magnus's churning red light, and crawling tentacled creatures desperately awaiting the blue dawn that came every 120 days.

I got a little tightness in my chest as I realized that blue dawn would never come. Instead, sometime in the next month would come a red dawn like none other in the planet's history.

Bringing that history to a close.

My imaginings were interrupted by an excited chatter of voices from the hatch behind me. I clattered down the ladder to find a crowd gathered around Susan's work station. "Nonsense!" Vasiliy shouted, pointing at her screen. "Europa is covered with lines like those, and Schiaparelli thought he saw ca.n.a.ls on Mars."

"They areroads !" I had never before heard Susan raise her voice.