Hard Reset

Kanas and Yloa stand in the center of the computational center. Around them machines whirr in near silence, their perfect, linear work accomplished with a lack of imagination that verges on sterility.

But there's nothing sterile about the calculations Kanas and Yloa have completed and submitted, and there's nothing lacking about how their imaginations are working on them. Kanas and Yloa have committed blasphemy. They know this. They debated their actions for long incrementals before submitting their research and conclusions to the administration of the Despmoc, the Deep Space Monitoring Commission. They hoped that the fear of personal punishment and institutional funding cuts would be outweighed by the existential terror the data inspires. Surely -- such was their thinking -- surely the Theox Council will react with the same shock and urgency as the two scientists...

Every member of the Nation Under the Gods lives in fear of social and religious isolation; tailors each word and gesture to minimize the chances for loss of status; navigates treacherous social and professional terrain in a manner engineered to avoid death by torture. Those are dreads of a deeply ingrained, visceral sort. But numbers - clean, unrelenting numbers, free of the vagaries of whim and malice and slanted interpretation - the numbers told a story that prompted even deeper alarm and triggered purely animal terror.

The Theox Council, however, has little respect for the purity of mathematics. Their concerns lie with moral purity - with purity of dogmatic embrace - with a unity of will and an agreement on fundamental tenets of faith. So it came to pass that Kana and Yloa saw their work denounced and their conclusions. Now the two astronomers await arrest and trial - and, swiftly to follow, sentencing.

Their blasphemy is a warning that the Earth is going to be struck by a meteor so large it will melt the entire planetary surface and sterilize the planet.

Grimly, Soldiers of the Faith enter the computational center. Grimly, the soldiers march the pair of scientists through the urban streets and to the Justice Annex. Grimly, Kanas and Yloa stand before a polyscreen that displays their data and runs a CG demonstration of how they have interpreted the readings and measurements they've so carefully collated over the past three years. Across the room, at the dais of the Prophetrix, a holofield runs the same presentation as a three-dimensional simulation of events to come. Calmly, methodically, the scientists break down their work for the Prophetrix. They review the data and their conclusions. The world is literally coming to fiery end. Nothing and no one will survive. It will be almost three thousand years before the Earth will cool enough for liquid water to exist on the surface. If life on this planet emerges once more, it will probably be the result of microorganisms carried over on meteors sent hurtling into space by similar, less devastating collisions that strike neighboring Mars, or maybe even Venus.

The Prophetrix hears them out. She studies their equations and diagrams. She views the computer simulation, which is crude but powerful: The Earth approached by the meteor, which is sixty-four kilometria long and forty kilometria wide, literally as big as a short chain of mountains. The meteor tumbling into the atmosphere, then striking the planetary surface with an unimaginable detonation, its mass and speed driving into the planet with unrelenting force. Shockwaves blasting the burning atmosphere, which peels away and incinerates; shockwaves roiling the globe, which seems to catch fire and then glows with the hot orange of a burning coal.

Expressionless the Prophetrix turns to the scientists and addresses them. "Fantasy," she intones. "Fiction. The reckless ravings of the faithless."

"Exalted Prophetrix, faith stands above science, but science determines the actions and reactions of the world in which we live," Kanas begins.

"Silence!" the Prophetrix commands. "Be penitent and reflect on the justice of this office." She gazes at them another long moment as first Kanas, then Yloa, bow their heads. Their shoulders tremble with fear and grief - not for their own lives, which they have long since surrendered to the story told by the data, but for the world. The entire world, which they always knew, as scientists, was living in a lie, suspended in groundless, elaborate story and searing superstition like a fleck of mineral in a droplet of sapjewel.

The Prophetrix raises a sixdigit high, glares into the lens of the uniholo camera, and then drops her sixdigit with an air of authority and finality.

The soldiers of the Theiarch burst in to execute the scientists. Their heavy ceremonial longblades are as sharp as anything ever wielded on a field of battle in times of old. Kanas, his head tumbling and rolling away from his body, is struck down first; his blood, dark rust-red, geysers twelve twainspans across the flawless white stone of the chamber floor.

The Prophetrix holds up a sixdigit to delay the next blow, the killstrike that will bring down Yloa. The Soldiers of the Faith snap to attention, encircling the surviving scientist with their tall, lean forms, their black uniforms glittering with the gilt and sigils of their commissions.

Coldly, with an eye to the uniholo camera and with regal flair, the Prophetrix dismisses the arguments and proofs submitted by the scientists. "Chradth loves us and protects us, and the proper propitiations have been made to Arajulsa," she enunciates, her tone warm with reassurance. Now she's playing bringer of good news to the masses watching from their homes or eyeing the massive public polyscreens in the streets and squares, the markets and arenas. "The weak and deformed among the children have been eradicated before their third year as demanded by Thirusk, and the Southern Temet peoples slain for their heresies and improprieties, as Rheduhl instructs in the Sacred Codex," the Prophetrix sings out, the words familiar and welcome. "We need fear nothing from the skies..." She points toward Yloa. "Unless we insult the gods!" Her sixdigit snaps downward again, and the Soldiers of the Faith turn, their weapons raised for the kill.

For the first time in these proceedings, Yloa gives voice. He's not even heard above the roar of approval that fills the chamber as his death unfolds. Still crying out warnings that Venus or Mars must be colonized to preserve their race, the scientist is executed, his head leaving his shoulders a moment after the command is given.

Two months later, the Earth is struck by the meteor as predicted -- the surface rendered molten and the great cities vaporized -- the temples of the gods liquefied and the technology of a proud people incinerated beyond any remaining trace...

THREE HUNDRED THIRTY MILLION YEARS LATER

Dr. Jerome Thompson and Dr. Leos Poincare stood before a bank of plasma screens. They awaited the verdict of the Neoinquisition. Their data had been confiscated and their paper censored. The Grand Cardinias himself had taken great offense to their claims that the Earth lay in the path of a huge meteor - a stony mass that would unleash world-ending might equal to half a million thermonuclear detonations, enough to melt the Earth's crust, vaporize the oceans, and turn the atmosphere into a brief global conflagration.

The astronomers had known they would be accused of blasphemy. Jerome had lost the last scrap of university funding for his sky-sweep monitoring project years before, when he insisted that natural law was based in mathematics and was the same everywhere in the cosmos. His declaration was construed as a claim that there was nothing special about Earth's place in creation, or Man's place on Earth. Jerome had agreed: Yes, that was exactly what he was saying.

"We are a minute part of the universe," he had said. "We are neither the cause, nor the reason, for existence."

Anonymous like-minded donors had supported his efforts ever since, and his meager equipment, functioning on hardly any wattage at all, had continued to probe the skies. Then, eight months earlier, Jerome had noticed some troubling readings. Triple-checking his math, he realized the Earth stood a ninety-four percent chance of being nailed by an asteroid twice the mass of Mount Everest.

Leos, his lover and a still-employed astronomer on the faculty of the University of Montmartre, reviewed Jerome's data. Pale and trembling, he had handed the dataslate back to Jerome, the words already on his lips: No matter what the world's insane, deluded masters did to them, they were still men of truth. The storybook God might have hated both of them for their faith in numbers and the forces those numbers described - gravity, acceleration, mass, energy exchange... and the cabals of the powerful might hate them for being two men in love. But they were still men of truth, dedicated to facts on the ground instead of fantasies in the air. This was the future, and the world could take action - or perish.

That was what they had told the press, the media feeds, and eventually the Sacred Court. They had little illusion that the Sacred Court would hold them in less contempt than the electronic commentariat, who had lambasted them as fear-mongering deviants and unworthy infidels. The common people were demanding their blood, and the pair of scientists were sure the Sacred Court would give it to them.

"I'm sure the Neoinquisition have already begun searching for ways to survive," Jerome said in an undertone to Leos. "But even if they hadn't scrapped the space initiatives, there would be nowhere for them to run."

"You'd think that the fact the Earth has been struck by huge meteors and turned into molted slag several times before now would have done something to pull their heads out of their Bibles," Leos murmured back.

"Ah, but the last time was a third of a billion years ago," Jerome rejoined bitterly. "And as you know, that's impossible because the Earth is only six thousand years old!"

"Three hundred million years," Leos sighed. "Mars still had liquid water. Venus was very much like Earth, with liquid water oceans. You know, if only we'd evolved in time to take advantage of those nearby worlds, we could have escaped the end of this one."

Jerome dared to reach out and take his lover's hand. A roar of disapproval from the crowded stands washed over them. Cries of "Fucking faggots!" and "Perverts!" resounded. No doubt viewers at home were screaming out similar gentle Christian reprimands.

A squad of black-armored Neoinquisition Securitors were charging across the floor toward the two of them, batons raised, faces wrathful behind their Hardglas visors. Jerome doubted he and Leos would live to hear the Sacred Court's official verdict. It seemed as through their sentence of death was about to be carried out.

Jerome slid his eyes sidewise to take in Leos one last time. "It's not the end of the world," he said. "It just a reset. A very hard reset."