Loop

by Kōji Suzuki

  With a hard look on his face, Kaoru began to press Eliot for answers. "First I want you to tell me where I am and what you're up to."

  Eliot pressed his palms together.

  "First I want to ask you something."

  Kaoru waited silently for him to continue.

  Eliot's voice was grave when next he spoke.

  "Do you believe in God?"

  3

  Eliot showed him into a room with no windows. Why was this whole place sealed up like this? Kaoru disliked windowless rooms. This room was bigger than the last, though. There was a leather living room set in the middle of it.

  Eliot invited Kaoru to have a seat on the couch. Kaoru did as he was directed. Then Eliot got out of his wheelchair. He stood up, rear end thrust backward, and without using a cane hobbled over to seat himself opposite Kaoru.

  Kaoru couldn't help but stare. Since Eliot used a wheelchair, Kaoru had naturally assumed he couldn't walk. But he could: somewhat awkwardly, but fairly steadily.

  Noticing Kaoru's surprise, Eliot flashed a triumphant grin. "You must learn to look at things without preconceptions. Trust nothing."

  But Kaoru was already quite accustomed to suspecting everything. One thing he'd learned crossing the desert was how to keep his balance as he walked the hazy line between reality and virtuality. It was the one thing he'd most wanted not to lose during that rainstorm on the ridge.

  "When are you going to answer my questions?" Kaoru said sulkily, ignoring Eliot's words. Eliot raised his hands in a gesture that seemed to say, Any time you want.

  There were so many things Kaoru wanted to ask. He decided to lay aside his basic questions for the moment, and instead to start by exploring something Eliot had said earlier and which had been nagging at Kaoru ever since.

  "I was fated to come here, from long ago. That's what you told me, correct?" Kaoru wanted to know why he'd said that. Doubtless he'd been speaking figuratively, but the way he'd said it troubled Kaoru deeply.

  "It's a little early yet to explain that. If we go out of order, you're liable to end up screaming."

  "In that case, you're going to explain things to me so that I understand, so that I don't end up screaming-right?" Kaoru was on edge again. Eliot's roundabout way of speaking rubbed him the wrong way. Kaoru got the feeling that this man held his life's rudder, and was laughing at the mother and father who'd brought him into the world.

  "This was the only way to do it. I decided I would never be able to force you here. You had to come of your own free will. And looking at you now I can see that I was right about that." Eliot spoke as if to himself, then smiled. He spoke as someone who'd intervened in Kaoru's life. At that moment, Kaoru wanted to wring the old man's neck.

  Eliot was unfazed by Kaoru's violent glare. For a time they were both silent.

  It was Eliot who resumed speaking. "How much do you know about the Loop?" His hands were clasped in front of him, and there was something boyish in his upwards glance at Kaoru.

  "It's an extremely well-designed computer simulation."

  Eliot frowned, not content with that answer.

  "Well-designed? That doesn't even begin to cover it. When I made the Loop, I made a world perfect in every respect."

  "You made it?"

  "I should say 'we,' I guess, but really, I was the one who had the initial idea for its structure." Now that he was discussing the Loop, there was a perceptible note of pride in Eliot's voice. The words came like water from a burst dam now; at times something like ecstasy was visible on his face.

  "I was still a student at MIT. That's right, I was about the age you are now-this was nearly seventy years ago. The world was in love with astronauts-we'd just landed on the moon-and everybody was convinced that before long science would bring us space stations and space tourism. But I wasn't interested in outer space. My gaze was turned on another world, one I was trying to build myself."

  Having said that much without pause, Eliot ducked his head and pursed his lips.

  "Incidentally, do you know what makes the world go round?"

  "The real world, or the Loop?"

  It was easy to see what made the Loop go round: electricity. But the real world, that was a different story.

  Eliot laughed at Kaoru's question.

  "In this case, they're a lot alike. They move according to the same principle. The thing that makes the world go round-both worlds-is funding."

  Eliot waited a few moments for the import of his words to sink in, then continued. "If the gargantuan project that was the Loop hadn't been funded, then that world would never have come into being. Neither this world nor that one will move without money."

  Kaoru was listening closely now, eager to see what Eliot would say next, and how it would all connect to himself.

  If only there had been funding, we might all be aboard space stations now. Eliot was right. Science, Kaoru knew, did not progress along a straight line in a vacuum sealed off from social conditions. Instead, it changed direction from time to time in response to the situation. Budgets were controlled by the opinions of societies and governments-priorities were determined according to what people wanted most at a given time. Seventy years ago, outer space was the canvas on which the future was expected to be drawn. Everybody imagined that humanity would make colonies of the moon and Mars, that shuttles would make regularly scheduled trips between the planets. It was the stuff of novels and movies.

  But by Kaoru's day, not only had man not been to Mars, he hadn't even returned to the moon. In the end, man's presence on Earth's satellite had been limited to that one brief, shining moment. Since then plans for space exploration had moved along at a snail's pace, if at all. And for one simple reason. No funding.

  In hindsight, it seemed odd that nobody had been able to predict that grinding halt.

  Eliot, however, was saying that he had, in fact, predicted it. He was boasting of his foresight in turning his prodigious talents in another direction entirely.

  He'd chosen as his academic fields computers, which at that time were unbelievably primitive compared to the ones Kaoru was familiar with, and molecular biology, which had just been revolutionized by the discovery of the double helix.

  Eliot had had the uncanny intuition to combine these two emerging fields. His first research project had asked the simple question of whether or not it was possible to create artificial life within a computer.

  He'd pursued this question through highly original means, and at length, his work began to bear fruit. Just as Eliot had foreseen, society's interest began to shift from space exploration to the creation of a user-friendly world of information. Computers were the stars of the age, and Eliot suddenly found that he had venues in which to present his work, and listeners to present it to.

  With new wind in his sails, Eliot proceeded to develop the first self-replicating program, and then the first software that could evolve on its own. All without losing sight of his initial question. Is it possible to create artificial life in a computer?

  He first realized his goal sooner than even he had expected, in the final years of the twentieth century. He'd never expected it to happen before the end of the century, he said; he'd shocked even himself. Of course, the beings he called life at that point were quite simple in structure, moving around onscreen in a way that resembled nothing so much as parasitic worms.

  Then he caused male and female to appear, and at the beginning of the new century, new life had appeared within the computer of its own accord. The new cells divided again and again, and eventually they crawled around in the display just like their parents. Eliot called it a sight worthy of the new century.

  Things accelerated after that. The basic process was much the same for all kinds of life forms. Producing fish or amphibians was all a matter of accumulating adaptations.

  Having accomplished that much, Eliot allowed for an evolution in his ultimate goal. The question now became: Is it possible to create in a virtual space a biosphere on the scale of the Eart
h's?

  This was the germ of the Loop project, an idea that at this stage was already pretty clearly defined.

  At Eliot's invitation, scientists the world over began working toward a single goal. Computer scientists, medical doctors, molecular biologists, evolutionary theorists, astrophysicists, geologists, meteorologists-people from every branch of the sciences were involved. But interest wasn't confined to the hard sciences-economists, historians, political scientists, and social scientists of all stripes were paying attention, too.

  Because it turned out to take more than just science to create a virtual Earth. It took an understanding of the humanities and social sciences as well. For this reason it was expected that the results of the Loop experiment would contribute to all fields. In addition to the basic evolutionary and biological mysteries, it was hoped that creating intelligent life forms in a virtual world would help provide clues to social problems such as wars and population increase, even fluctuations in the stock markets, areas in which it had been impossible to find definitive governing principles. Leading scientists in every field recognized the importance of the Loop project.

  So the Loop started to function formally, in reality, with a budget equivalent to that of a full-fledged country.

  Due to the reservations of certain government actors, the project couldn't be conducted in the open at first. Nobody could predict what might come of it-some new strategy for world domination, perhaps-and so it was felt that it should be carried out with the greatest circumspection. In the end, with no great ceremony, the project was launched as a joint effort by the U.S. and Japan.

  The next name Eliot mentioned was one dear to Kaoru.

  "Hideyuki Futami… Yes, he was a brilliant researcher. Young-fresh out of grad school-but he made the biggest contribution of anybody on the Japan side, I think." Eliot's phrasing tickled Kaoru-as was Eliot's intention, no doubt. Hearing one's father praised like this would make anyone feel good. Certainly that was the effect it had on Kaoru.

  "Have you met my father?" Kaoru asked enthusiastically.

  "Not face to face. But I heard about him, from my assistants."

  Hideyuki had never talked much about the Loop. Kaoru was curious as to just what role Hideyuki had played in the project. He resolved to ask next time he saw him.

  Eliot went on, interrupting Kaoru's thoughts of his father.

  "I think you know what happened to the Loop after that."

  "It turned cancerous."

  "In the end, yes. But up to that point it was simply incredible. We'd never expected it to go so far."

  He gave Kaoru a portentous look, as if urging him to ask the question.

  "There was something you hadn't predicted?"

  "Does it not surprise you? After all, you've seen a part of the Loop with your own eyes."

  "So many things surprised me that I'm not sure what I should be surprised at."

  Kaoru wasn't replicating Eliot's excitement, and this seemed to take the wind out of Eliot's sails: he sat there with his mouth half open, spittle dribbling from a corner of his lips. When a drop of drool began to descend on a clear string, Eliot finally noticed and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  "We'd expected that with physical conditions the same as on Earth, we'd get roughly the same sorts of life forms. We didn't dream that they'd be exactly identical. In those days everybody thought that the course of evolution was guided by chance. It couldn't happen the same way twice."

  That was indeed one of the things that had surprised Kaoru. The course of evolution in the Loop had been exactly the same as on Earth, down to the last detail, and it certainly mystified him.

  "So what did you conclude from that?" he asked.

  "We didn't see life naturally emerging in the Loop at the very beginning. So we introduced it. We introduced RNA, thought to be the earliest form of life. Sowing seeds-that was the metaphor we used, but it was no metaphor. That RNA was in all reality a seed, destined to grow into a certain, specific tree of life."

  Kaoru had taken part in a discussion like this before, he remembered. With Ryoji. Reiko was dozing nearby while Ryoji and Kaoru debated evolution. And the point Ryoji had been trying to make then was more or less the same one Eliot seemed to be making now.

  "What are you trying to say?" Kaoru tried to keep his tone cool and rational. If he broke in too unnaturally, the old man might start drooling again, and Kaoru had no desire to see that.

  "The Loop matched up perfectly with reality. Life didn't emerge naturally in the Loop-that's why we sowed the seeds. Don't you realize what that means?"

  It hit Kaoru. He remembered what Eliot had asked him at the beginning of their long conversation. Do you believe in God? That gave Kaoru the answer.

  "That reality is only a virtual world, too, right?"

  "Indeed. Life didn't emerge of its own accord on Earth, either. So why are we here? Because somebody sowed the seeds of life here. Who? The being we call God. God caused there to be life on Earth, and He made us in His image. The Bible was right."

  Kaoru wasn't particularly shocked by this. He'd had the same thought many times on his journey to this point, but he hadn't been able to prove or disprove it. This was mere reasoning by analogy. It had no bearing on reality. It could not be verified. In the end, it would be, as it always had been, a question of belief or unbelief.

  "But that doesn't change anything, does it?"

  Eliot sank into his couch as if pushed there by Kaoru's logic. "Even if reality was created by a god, I'm not saying it was made in the same way as what we created in the computer."

  Before Eliot could finish the sentence, Kaoru was saying, "I guess God's world must be controlled by funding issues, too."

  Eliot's eyes narrowed and flashed coldly. "You're making fun of me." His sternness didn't last long, however. He immediately resumed his former calm expression.

  Kaoru glanced at the clock on the wall. This conversation had gone on for three hours already. He was getting hungry, and with no end in sight he was getting tired as well.

  Eliot seemed to guess Kaoru's thoughts. "You must be fatigued. Why don't we take a break, watch an old movie or something. I'll see to lunch." His face was expressionless, betraying neither anger nor excitement. He produced a remote control, and a screen descended in front of one wall. He pressed PLAY.

  Then he stood up slowly, returned to his wheelchair, and went to leave the room. Kaoru followed him with his gaze. When the door shut behind Eliot Kaoru heard it lock. The sound told Kaoru everything he needed to know about his current situation. He was still incarcerated. He'd have to find out why.

  On the screen an old movie was playing, one he'd seen before. It was a sci-fi flick his parents had taken him to see when he was ten. He knew the theme song by heart-he'd liked the movie so much that he'd gotten his mother to buy the soundtrack, and he'd listened to it over and over.

  A large black man dressed in white appeared and placed a sandwich and some tea with milk in front of Kaoru.

  As he ate, Kaoru closed his eyes and listened to the music divorced from the images. It brought back more memories when he turned it into his own private movie projected onto the backs of his eyelids. Images of his family from the peaceful days before his father's cancer had been detected.

  Kaoru didn't notice he was weeping until the tears creeping down his cheeks reached his lips. He wondered again about coincidence. Had Eliot chosen this movie at random, or had he put it on in full knowledge of the many memories it held for Kaoru?

  If it was the latter, then things went a lot deeper than simple confinement. Maybe Eliot's been watching me all along.

  He'd often felt, as a child, like somebody was watching him from behind. He'd always dismissed it as his imagination, but now the feeling came back, and it felt real this time. Kaoru lost his appetite.

  4

  Eliot returned about the time Kaoru finally finished his lunch.

  "My, you certainly had an appetite," Eliot said, looking at the empty plate. "Good
, very good."

  "Can we cut the crap? I can't even tell you how this is making me feel." As a result of their talk this morning, Kaoru had accumulated even more questions than before. He couldn't wait to put an end to this farce. Why had he come here, anyway? To find out how to combat the MHC virus. He couldn't afford to kill time like this.

  "Well," said Eliot, as he lowered himself onto the sofa, "our theme for the afternoon is you and your mission." Once again he seemed to have seen right through Kaoru. Now he couldn't leave even if he wanted to.

  "My mission?"

  "Yes. Why have you come here? To find a way to combat the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus, no?"

  Kaoru and Eliot stared at each other for a while.

  Kaoru felt a deep nervous annoyance. Eliot seemed to know all kinds of information about him, while he'd been provided with no knowledge about Eliot. It wasn't fair. He had a reasonable understanding now of the man's place in the history of science. But what Kaoru wanted to know was more private things. Maybe if he had a clearer idea of Eliot as a person, he wouldn't feel so uncomfortable.

  "How about a pop quiz?" said Eliot, breaking in on Kaoru's thoughts. He extended his right index finger, pointing at the ceiling. He seemed to be thinking of himself as a teacher now.

  "In what year was it discovered that when a neutrino interacts with another object its oscillation goes out of phase?"

  Kaoru was familiar with neutrinos, a kind of subatomic particle. If he were asked their main characteristics, he'd be able to answer with three: they move at the speed of light, they have no electrical charge, and they're composed of energy. Looked at in that way, they're quite similar to light. The decisive difference is that even though they have energy they can pass through anything. Neutrinos given off by the sun pass right through the earth, coming out the other side and heading straight off into the darkness of space.

  But what did that have to with anything?

  Kaoru's answer came automatically. "2001."