Loops

"General relativity predicts the existence of flaws in space-time…wormholes, if you will, where one can slip from one point to another effortlessly. They pop in and out of existence randomly. The trick, you see, is making them stay. And expanding them. Mr. President, U-Path has succeeded in making a traversable wormhole sustained with minimal energy. We come to you today in the spirit of Truman’s interstates. We can open up the world for you, and we’ve prepared a demonstration. Just step right through this gate here."

Ezra groaned, and rolled over. He didn’t feel ready to face the day. But that was normal. He dragged himself to his feet, and wandered over to the bathroom. A shower should help, he figured. Ezra was a creature of habit. He acted much wearier than the early middle age his countenance suggested. A careful foot placed here, a hand here. Everything about his movement, one soon realized, was completely economical. He wasted not a single calorie of effort. He seemed to carry the weight of ages upon his back, as well he should. When Ezra stopped counting his birthdays, decades ago, he was 243 years old. Medicine could fix the ills of the body, but they did little to affect the patterns that were permanently etched into his brain.

After his shower, it was time for work. He walked back into his bedroom. He reached for his bedside table, his hand landing precisely where he had left his hat the night before. He flipped back a panel on the foot of his bed. His fingers flew over the keyboard, tapping out the 18-digit code he had been dialing out day by day for two centuries.

A seeming circle of glass appeared before him. Ezra’s apartment was on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, by 83rd. The neighborhood hadn’t changed much since the late 20th Century. The same buildings were there, held up by extensive maintenance and reinforcing. The streets were empty, but much of the rest was the same. But floating in the air of this drab cozy New York apartment was something different, something so far beyond comprehension that the only way to deal with it was a kind of mental shrug. It ballooned in an instant, and seemed to swallow Ezra whole. His last thought before vanishing from our universe was simply "I wish this wasn’t so damn dramatic."

An immeasurable instant later, he was spat out by the quantum mistake that had devoured him. Nothing had changed, Ezra had in fact not moved at all since he tapped out the number. But in spite of all that, he was in his office. He took a moment to appreciate the view from his window, something he hadn’t done in years, and sat down to get to work on LazaCorp’s expense reports. Behind him, the rings of Saturn glittered merrily.

LazaCorp, as well as being the sole purveyor of the medical immortality that all living humans were utterly dependent on, had a number of holdings in other areas, from space exploration to bulk wormhole transit.