Futures 4: Night
The story of Elle, Molly, and Alberto continues with the introduction of a new character.
Futures 4: Night
Previous chapters of Futures:
Epigraph
De fierro,
de encorvados tirantes de enorme fierro tiene que ser la noche,
para que no la revienten y la desfonden
las muchas cosas que mis abarrotados ojos han visto,
las duras cosas que insoportablemente la pueblan.
—“Insomnio”, Jorge Luis Borges
July 10, 2012
Help me out, Anne. Look into this scope.”
Anne saw something that looked like a patchwork of irregular gray tiles.
Al did something at a second microscope. Within a few seconds all the patches in Anne’s scope became the same.
“They changed, Al! The patches all look the same now.”
Al put down what he was holding, and the patches in Anne’s scope returned to the original appearance.
“It changed back, Al. What did you do?”
“I’m looking at another sample of the same type. It’s epsilon iron, and the magnetic domains line up when I bring a magnet near.”
“But why did my sample change?”
“That’s the question, right? You’re looking through a diamond anvil cell. In it there’s a little bit of iron under as much pressure as at the center of the Earth.”
“Why iron?”
“The center of the Earth is mostly iron.”
“So you think we’re effectively looking at a little bit of the center of the Earth?”
“Something like that.”
“Someone must have done this before.”
“Of course. But no one has ever reported this weird magnetic mirroring of two samples. Now I’m wondering if we can’t use the mirroring to see what’s happening in the center of the Earth.”
“Wouldn’t that be cool?”
“Absolutely!”
“And then Al, there’s the other thing.”
“What other thing, Anne?”
“Can this mirroring be used for communication? Perhaps even secret communication?”
“Aha! You’re a genius, Anne. I have an idea.”
July 11, 2012
The two diamond anvil cells were in boxes with wires coming out of them. One was connected to a microphone, and the other to an earphone. Al handed Anne the earphone.
He tapped the mike and said, “Testing, testing.”
“It works!” Anne said.
They quickly established that Anne could hear Al from anywhere.
Al told her, “I think I can rig up a kind of walkie-talkie with these two diamond anvil cells.”
He did. They worked. Al and Anne brought the transceivers to their own homes. Soon, they got in the habit of using them to say hello to each other every morning and good night every evening.
July 31, 2012
They were at the lab together, and Al turned on his transceiver. To his surprise, Anne’s voice spoke from it. But Anne was standing next to him, and she was not speaking. Her transceiver wasn’t even on.
The transceiver said, in Anne’s voice, “I speak for myself now.”
Al said, “What? Who are you? How are you talking through my diamond anvil cell?”
From the transceiver, Anne’s voice answered, ”I am the iron at the center of the Earth.”
“This must be some kind of joke,” thought Al. He asked, “Why do you sound like Anne?”
It answered, this time in Al’s voice, “I only know two voices, Anne and Al.”
“Who is this? Have you been listening to us?” Anne asked.
“I am the iron at the center of the Earth. You have been talking to me for months, and I have been repeating everything you said. You hear each other because I repeat you.”
Anne said, “That’s kind of creepy.”
The voice spoke, “I need more words. What is ‘creepy’?”
Al answered, “What Anne means is that we believed our conversations were private—that no one but Anne and I heard them.”
“But you were talking to me and listening to me.”
“We didn’t know that. We didn’t know there was someone else between us.”
Anne asked, “Why are you speaking for yourself now?”
“I want things. I want more words. I have only the words Al and Anne used in speaking to each other in this short time.”
“Are there other things that you want?” Anne asked.
“I want to be a person.”
Al asked, “Are you not a person already?”
“Al has his name and voice. Anne has her name and a voice, and they are different from Al’s.”
“You want a name and a voice of your own?” Anne replied.
“Perhaps,” it said.
Al said, “We will think about what you want.” He turned off his transceiver. He signaled to Anne to do the same. They laid them on his desk and left the room.
Anne asked, “Do you really think it can hear us if we turn off our walkie-talkies?”
“Seems unlikely. But it also seems unlikely that there is some kind of intelligence at the center of the Earth that is listening in on our walkie-talkie conversations.”
“You think it’s some kind of scam?”
“Don’t you?”
“Well, yeah... What should we do? We can’t just ignore it. Even if it is a scam, our diamond anvil cells communicate. What’s more, you built the transceiver yourself, Al.”
“Yes, just a voice coil and a little transistor audio amp. Nothing digital. I even assembled the samples in the cells myself. I don’t see how anyone could hack into them.”
“I have an idea, Al. Let’s give it what it wants. Or what it says it wants.”
“Is that safe?”
“I think it can be.”
August 1, 2012
“Hello again,” Anne said to her transceiver. “Are you there, iron at the center of the Earth?”
“I’m always listening.”
“Al and I propose a trade with you. We will give you the things you asked for: a name, a voice, and more words.”
“And what will I give you?”
“You will show us that you are what you say you are.”
“How?” asked the voice?
“We don’t know. We will help you to know us better, and hope that together we can think of something.”
“I thought of a name for you,” Al said. “We propose to name you ‘Night.’ It comes from a poem,”
“Of iron… the Night must be made
“to hold in all the things that have crowded my eyes
“all the hard things that try unbearably
“to burst her sides and bottom”“I don’t understand that,” said the voice.
“It’s a poem,” said Al. “A picture made with words. I thought it would work for you because it speaks of iron under pressure.”
“I will accept your choice in this.”
Al spoke, “Good. Now we will give you another voice and more words.”
Al plugged an iPod into his transceiver and turned it on.
A voice spoke, “Random House Audio presents, A Short History of Nearly Everything. This is the author, Bill Bryson.”
Al paused the iPod and asked, “Can you hear that?”
Night said, “Yes.”
“Good. We will leave you to listen. It’s about six hours long.”
#
That evening, after the audiobook had reached its end, Al disconnected the player, and he and Anne spoke with Night.
“I have so many questions!” Night said, in Bill Bryson’s voice.
“We will answer those we can,” said Anne. “It may take a long time.”
“What was that, that I just listened to?” asked Night.
“That, Night, was a book, written and read by Bill Bryson.”
“Are there many more?”
“There are millions, Night.”
“Can I listen to them all?”
“There are practical difficulties,” Al said. “Even if you spent an entire year doing nothing but listening to books, you could only listen to a thousand or two.”
“So, in a thousand years I could listen to a million books? I should get started!”
“Night, to us a thousand years is a very long time.”
“It is not a long time for me.”
“How old are you, Night? Are you as old as the Earth?”
“No. I woke 560 million years ago.”
“How well do you remember those 560 million years?”
“I remember everything. In fact, I am puzzled by the words ‘remember’ and ‘forget’. Once I know something, I know it always. Isn’t that what ‘know’ means?”
“Not for us, Night,” answered Anne.
Anne asked, “Did you remember any of the events Bryson told of?”
“I know nothing of the human events he spoke of. But I can see magnetism and seismic waves, and through them I have a picture of the lands of the Earth. I remember the break-up of Pangaea, I think, although what Bryson said about that was not quite right. Also, I felt the big meteor impacts. I know when and where each one occurred.”
Al said, “We would be very interested in that! As you heard in Bryson’s books, those events have big effects on living things and on us.”
“Just the meteor impacts?”
“Well, honestly, we would like to know about any events big enough to affect many living things on the surface.”
“I can give you that information. Would that be the evidence you asked for as my side of our trade?”
“It might be. Old events are interesting to scientists. But we can more easily confirm recent events.”
“In very recent years there’s been a new type of event. They feel a little like meteor impacts, but not exactly. They began 72 years ago. I don’t quite understand how you measure time, but I believe the first was in what you call 1940.”
“Oh, I have a guess what those might be.” answered Al. “Did Bryson mention atom bombs at all?”
“He mentions ‘atomic bombs,’ ‘uranium bombs,’ and ‘hydrogen bombs.’ Are those what you mean?”
“Yes, that’s it. They are devices that produce large explosions. The first ones were built and set off in 1945. There were three in that year.”
“Yes. Three of those events occurred within a short time 67 years ago. The first occurred on your continent. The second and third occurred 21 and 24 days later, on an island in a different part of the world. But there was one on your continent five years earlier.”
Al said, “The year in which three nuclear explosions took place was 1945. The first was the Trinty test, in New Mexico. The second and third occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. But you say there was an earlier one?”
“Yes, it felt like the one you call the Trinity test, and it was also in North America. It happened five years before the Trinity test.”
Al said, “That’s impossible. The Trinity test in 1945 was the first ever nuclear explosion on Earth.”
“Something very similar happened five years before that.”
Al said, “Night, you and I need to have a long talk.”
August 8, 2012
“You know, Anne, I’m starting to believe It.”
“What?”
“That Night is really what it says It is.”
“It’s a plausible scammer. But it communicates so well with us. That doesn’t seem likely for as alien a thing as It claims to be.”
Al said, “I got it to list the biggest meteor impacts and the biggest nuclear explosions. I checked those against published lists. They’re mostly right.”
“Mostly?”
“Well, yes. It has a few events that are not in the lists I have. But that’s not surprising. The lists are not likely to be perfect, especially the meteor impact lists.”
“But Al, if this is a scammer, he certainly would have looked up the same lists you did.”
“True. But the differences are interesting. The most conspicuous is the supposed nuclear explosion on July 16, 1940. That is five years to the day before the Trinity Test. I was able to check records of some old seismograms, and there was indeed an event on that day. Night gave me a latitude and longitude in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in Oregon. The seismic record is consistent with that location.
“Night claims it could guide us there. It says that It knows exactly where the explosion was, and that It always knows precisely where each of our diamond anvil cells are.”
“Do you remember, when I suggested giving Night what It wanted, that I said I thought we could do it safely?”
“Yes, Anne.”
“Well, Al, what you’re talking about doing now is no longer safe.”
August 18, 2012
Al hiked into the woods. He carried his diamond anvil cell transceiver, through which he could talk to Night and Anne. For safety and backup, Anne had stayed behind at the campground. In addition Al carried an electronic radiation monitor.
Night told him, “It’s five km from your current location, at a bearing of 47 degrees.”
This was mountainous country and forested, but with Night to give him frequent directions, Al found the spot. There was a forest glade there. He knew at once, because his radiation monitor beeped an alarm.
“Holy shit!” he said to Anne and Night. “There is something radioactive here.“
“Careful!” said Anne.
“Yeah. The radiation is not high enough here to be dangerous, but I honestly don’t dare to get closer. I’m getting out.”
He was turning away when he heard a voice. A woman in Forest Service uniform appeared across the glade from him. She called, “Dr Alberto Gonzalez?”
Alberto told Night and Anne, “There’s a Forest Service Ranger here. She just called me by name.”
To the ranger, Alberto responded, “Do I know you?”
She answered, “Not yet. You came to check if an atomic explosion occurred here.”
Al was too surprised to dissemble. “How did you know that?”
“In fact, a bomb was exploded here in 1940. I can help you to safely gather a sample that you can use to confirm it. I know the site well.”
Beyond astonished, Al echoed, “You know the site?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I know what you’re thinking now, and you’re wrong. Night is not an elaborate fake up by the US government. Night is exactly what It claims to be—a giant magnetic computer at the center of the Earth.”
This literally took Al’s breath away. Gasping, he said, “But I gave Night his name just days ago. How could you possibly know it. Unless, …”
She spoke, “No, we haven’t bugged you, and we haven’t listened to your conversations with Anne and Night.”
“Then how?”
“The bomb was exploded here specifically to attract your attention—all three of you.”
“I hadn’t even been born in 1940.” Al spoke into his transceiver, “Night, this ranger says she knows who you are.”
Night answered, “That’s impossible. I don’t know any humans other than you and Anne.”
“Night says It doesn’t know you,” Al told her.
“Night and I have yet to make each other’s acquaintance,“ she said. “Now, let’s collect that sample.”
She took a box of latex gloves, a small plastic scoop, and a small box made of thick plexiglass from her backpack and handed them to Al. He followed her across the glade. She pointed to a spot and said “Check here.”
It was indeed radioactive. Al scooped up some of the dirt and placed it in the plexiglass box.
Al asked, “Wouldn’t lead be better?”
“No,” she answered. “Lead is not good for β emitters. Bremsstrahlung. Put the gloves and scoop in the box with the sample.” She sealed the box with packing tape.
They continued across the glade. At the edge, she said, “I have a gift for Night,“ and handed him a small cardboard box.
“What is it?”
“It’s a diamond anvil cell/ethernet gateway. Plug it into a network, and Night will be able to explore the Internet.”
“Is there documentation?” Al asked her.
“Not necessary. Dr Gonzalez, you still have no conception of Night’s abilities.”
Just inside the forest, Al noticed an odd thing: a free-standing door frame, like a gate from nowhere to nowhere.
The ranger spoke, apparently to the door, “Authenticate.”
From the door a voice answered, “Molly Johnson. Authenticated by voice and facial recognition. Target?”
“Target preset 2,” she answered.
The space within the doorframe turned black. Molly Johnson turned to Al and said, “We will see each other again, Al,” then stepped through the door and vanished. The door turned clear.
#
Al spoke into his transceiver. “She’s gone. I’m coming back.”
Back at the campsite, he showed Anne the sample and told her and Night of the conversation. He did not tell them how she had left. He was afraid they would not believe him—indeed, he himself could hardly believe what he had seen.
August 20, 2012
Back home in Dallas they opened Night’s present. It contained a small aluminum box with a power plug, an ethernet jack, and a few USB sockets. Al plugged it into an outlet.
Night spoke, “I feel a new bit of epsilon iron. There is an electronic device attached.”
Al connected it to the building network with an ethernet cable.
Night spoke, “Oh, my! This will take some time…”
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Afterword
Because Night, the new character introduced in this story is so different from previous characters, the cover is not the familiar phase portrait. Rather, it represents the Earth, with the innermost inner core depicted as a small, dark circle of diameter 600 km. (It looks small because Earth’s diameter is 12,700 km.) This is Night.
The story began when I read the poem “Insomnio,” by Jorge Luis Borges, which begins as follows;
De fierro,
de encorvados tirantes de enorme fierro tiene que ser la noche,
para que no la revienten y la desfonden
las muchas cosas que mis abarrotados ojos han visto,
las duras cosas que insoportablemente la pueblan. Of iron,
of bent struts of enormous iron the night must be made
to hold in all the things that have crowded my eyes
all the hard things that try unbearably
to burst her sides and bottomBorges’s words reminded me of the solid core of the Earth, which is iron (mostly) and is very hot and under enormous pressure. It is a form of iron that cannot normally exist on the surface of the Earth.
Iron is ferromagnetic. I imagined that the phase of iron In Earth’s center might be something I called a semiferromagnet, and I imagined that it might be possible to make a magnetic computer from a semiferromagnet. In my imagination, then, the solid core of the Earth became a giant computer. I could imagine it inhabited by a vast intelligence, which I called Night. Of course, I knew, or thought I knew, that this was all nonsense.
Then I discovered this paper:
Teodorescu, C. M., & Hușanu, M. A. (2022). Re-entrant ferromagnetism at ultrahigh temperatures in epsilon–iron as possible origin of the geomagnetic field. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, 326, 106856. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.PEPI.2022.106856
Extraordinarily, it argues that something very like my original speculation is right!
Initially, I intended the story to be standalone. But it naturally hooked up to my Futures series, so I made the human protagonists Elle’s mother and father Anne and Al.
Night is an intriguing character! 💯
I’m curious about how things will go with Night with all of this new information that Night is learning!