Godlike Machines by Jonathan Strahan [Editor]

vacuum in my head-returning. The Matryoshka still had more to tell me. It was not done with Dimitri Ivanov.
    “Don’t,” Galenka said, with a firmness that stopped my hand. “Not now. Not until we’ve seen the rest of this place.”
    At her urging I resisted. I found that if kept to the middle of the corridor, it wasn’t as bad. But the walls were still whispering to me, inviting me to stroke my hand against them.
    “The Second Soviet,” I said.
    “What about it?”
    “It falls. Fifty years from now, maybe sixty. Somewhere near the end of the century. I saw it in the history.” I paused and swallowed hard. “This road we’re on—this path. It’s not the right one. We took a wrong turn, somewhere between the first and second apparitions. But by the time we realize it, by the time the Soviet falls, it’s too late. Not just for Russia, but for Earth. For humankind.”
    “It came from our future. Even I felt that, and I only touched it briefly.”
    “There’s a darkness between then and now. Like a black river we have to cross. A bad, dark time. A bottleneck. Humanity survives, but only just. It’s something to do with the Second Soviet, and turning away from space. That’s the mistake. When the darkness comes, it’s because we’ve turned away from space travel. Something comes and we aren’t ready for it.”
    We were still walking, following the arcing downslope of the corridor, towards the silver-blue radiance at its end. “The Second Soviet is the only political organization still doing space travel. If anything we’re the ones holding the candle.”
    “It’s not enough. Now that the other nations have abandoned their efforts, we have to do more than just subsist. And if we are holding the candle, it won’t be for much longer.”
    “The Second Soviet won’t like being told it’s a mistake of history.”
    There was a fierce dryness in my throat. “It can’t ignore the message in the Matryoshka. Not now.”
    “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. But you know something, Dimitri?”
    “What?”
    “If this thing is from the future—from our future-then maybe it’s Russian as well. Or sent back to meet Russians. Which might mean that Nesha Petrova was right after all.”
    “They should tell her,” I said.
    “I’m sure it’ll be the first thing on their minds, after they’ve spent all these years crushing and humiliating her.” Galenka fell silent for a few paces. “It’s like they always knew, isn’t it.”
    “They couldn’t have.”
    “But they knew enough to want her to be wrong. A message from the future, intended for us? What could we possibly need to hear from our descendants, except their undying gratitude?”
    “Everything we say is being logged on our suit recorders,” I said. “Logged and compressed and stored, so that it can be sent back to the Soyuz and then back to the Tereshkova, and then back to Baikonur.”
    “Right now, comrade, there are several things I give more than a damn about than arsehole of a party official listening to what I have to say.”
    I smiled, because that was exactly how I felt as well.
    In 60 years the Second Soviet was dust. The history I had absorbed told me that nothing could prevent that. Accelerate it, yes—and maybe the arrival of the Matryoshka would do just that—but not prevent it. They could crucify us and it wouldn’t change anything.
    It was a crumb of consolation.
    The corridor widened, the intricate walls flanking away on either side, until we reached a domed room of cathedral proportions. The chamber was round, easily a hundred meters across, with a domed ceiling. I saw no way in or out other than the way we had come. There was a jagged design in the floor, worked in white and black marble-rapier-thin shards radiating from the middle.
    The music intensified—rising in pitch, rising in speed. If there was a tune there it was almost on the point of being comprehensible. I had a mental image of a rushing winter landscape,