by Greg Egan
Working by touch, I plug a blank chip into the reader's second port, and say, 'Copy everything, deleting all security, removing all encryption. Verify one thousand times.'
A sentry icon appears in front of the window, and says, 'Password?'
I close my eyes - to little effect - blank my mind, and 'hear' my virtual larynx 'whisper' something in Cantonese. It's not a word I've picked up, and I don't bother asking Deja Vu for a translation. The sentry bows and vanishes, and a caricature of a medieval monk copying a manuscript in comical fast-motion takes his place.
I stand in the centre of the vault, swaying gently. I have no way of knowing if I'm experiencing success - or just some combination of hardware, mod and natural-brain malfunctions which looks exactly like it. For isolated
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tasks, the odds look good: if I am inside a vault in the BDI building, then with a mere twenty-three thousand, six hundred chips to choose from, the number of states in which I really did pick the right one must surely swamp those in which the chip reader and/or CypherClerk lied, and pretended that I had Ensemble when I really had something else. But as for the probability of hallucinating the whole night's work without even leaving ASR, compared to that of actually opening all those locked doors ... I don't know. All I can be sure of is that after the collapse, it won't take long to tell the difference; either I'll have a copy of Ensemble in my pocket, or not.
Verifying the copy one thousand times is pure overkill; if a mistake in the copying process is unlikely under normal conditions, and my smeared self does nothing to seek out such an event, then it should remain as improbable as ever. I'm still glad that I'm doing it, though; part of me refuses to believe that I can force locks and cameras into wildly implausible failures, and then take it for granted that other equipment, equally vulnerable to quantum tunnelling, will operate flawlessly.
After a few minutes, the monk stops work, bows and vanishes. I shut down CypherClerk, and then, with almost ridiculous deliberation, I unplug the ROM, pocket the reader, place the ROM back on the tray, lock the box, return it to the shelf. I play the flashlight beam across the wall, searching for anything I might have disturbed, but everything looks just the way I found it.
I turn round. There's a woman in a nightdress standing in the doorway; thin, mid-thirties, Anglo features, skin as black as my own.
Laura Andrews - but not as I saw her in the basement, disguised as Han Hsiu-lien. Laura Andrews, as in the Hilgemann's files, as in my client's transmission.
How did she get out of the basement? Stupid question. But how did she do it tonight, when she couldn't manage it before? Have I done something, inadvertently, to undermine the security systems monitoring her? But if
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she's finally succeeded in escaping . . . what's she doing up here?
I reach for a can of tranquillizer, thinking: and why should my smeared self let her interrupt me? Does this prove that I won't be chosen . . . that I'm now as good as dead-
She says, 'You have what you came for?'
I stare at her, then nod.
'And what exactly do you plan to do with it?'
'Who are you? Are you Laura? Are you real?'
She laughs. 'No. But your perceptions of me will be. I speak for Laura - or Laura-and-the-smeared-Nick-and-Po-kwai, and others. But mostly Laura.'
Ί don't understand. You "speak for Laura"? Are you Laura, or not?'
'Laura is smeared; she can't talk to you herself. She's talking with the smeared-Nick-and-Po-kwai, but she's created me to talk to you.'
Ί-'
'Her complexity is spread across eigenstates; the two of you could never interact directly. But she's concentrated enough information into a single-state mode to communicate the essentials. She's made contact with the smeared-Nick-and-Po-kwai -but they're childlike, unreliable. Which is why I'm talking to you.'
Ί -'
'You've stolen Ensemble. Laura has no wish to prevent that. But she wants you to understand exactly what it can do.'
Still confused, I say defensively, Ί know what it can do. I'm here, aren't I? I opened this vault.' I suppose I shouldn't be shocked to discover that the smeared Laura is not retarded - after all, she was smart enough to get out of the Hilgemann, and she's had thirty-four years of emergent probability to refine whatever brain pathways work best in that mode. But to find her able to manufacture apparitions to lecture me on the use of Ensemble is still something of a revelation.
She shakes her head and says, 'You don't understand
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- but you will. Laura will amplify a state in which you do.' 'She's manipulating me -'
'She's communicating with you, in the only way she can. Her effects, I promise, will be independent of those of the smeared-Nick-and-Po-kwai. And, given your brain physiology, the most likely route to understanding is a conversation, like this one.'
Like this one? Meaning, of course, that there are other conversations, and maybe this won't be the one that succeeds. But that's been true of everything I've done tonight; becoming squeamish, now, would be ludicrous.
'Go on.'
The spokesperson says, 'The first thing you must understand is that the extent of the collapse is finite. The human brain only has a certain degree of complexity, and a finite number of people with finite brains can't destroy an infinite number of states. What's more, there are states in which the brain pathways involved in the collapse have ceased to function; without those pathways, the state is untouchable. The collapse is a local phenomenon. It depletes part of superspace - the space of all eigenstates -but only part. An infinite amount remains intact.'
A single branch of reality, in the middle of a huge void-but beyond that void, an infinite thicket. Isn't that exactly what I suspected, the first time I smeared and collapsed? But-
'How can we be. . .surrounded by all of this, and not detect it?'
'To detect a state you have to collapse it to reality. How can you do that to a state which doesn't partake in the collapse?'
'Then how do you know that these states exist?'
'Laura knows.'
'How?'
'The uncollapsed parts of superspace aren't uninhabited. There's intelligent life spread across the eigenstates. When one civilization discovered the depleted region you inhabit, they studied the borders - cautiously -and then took steps to seal off the region.'
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'By creating The Bubble?'
'Yes. But before The Bubble was put into place, one individual decided to explore further - to enter the region itself.'
'And . . . Laura's seen this alien? It sought her out and made contact - because she doesn't collapse the wave?'
The spokesperson smiles. 'No. Laura is the explorer. Or at least, the explorer shaped her, to become the closest thing to itself that it could achieve. It crossed the depleted region and interacted with your reality. In doing so, it was collapsed - destroyed - but it arranged the collapse in a way that coded part of its complexity into Laura's genes. When she's collapsed, Laura can barely function -because most of her brain is taken up with pathways that only work when she's smeared. But when she is smeared, she is, in effect, the explorer reborn.'
'Laura is the avatar of a Bubble Maker?' A distracting voice whispers: Believe it, or you're dead for sure. 'Why did she stay in the Hilgemann? Why has she stayed here? Surely she could escape -'
'She has escaped. She's explored most of the planet.'
'Most of the planet? But they caught her, twice -'
'Yes, they caught her near the Hilgemann - but not because she was trying to escape permanently. She never intended to be collapsed anywhere, except in her room -but out of all the trips she made, those two went wrong. The Hilgemann was a safe, convenient base; she was left unobserved long enough to smear to a degree of complexity which enabled her to mount expeditions. From that point on, she could keep herself uncollapsed, in the same way that you have.'
'So why go back to the Hilgemann at all? Why not stay unobser
ved forever, smeared forever?'
'Smearing is an exponential process. Within a day or two, remaining unobserved would have required her to suppress the collapse of everyone on Earth. And after a day or two of that -'
She hesitates.
'What?'
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The depleted region would be filled. Humanity would :unnel through the Bubble and make contact with the rest :: superspace. What would happen then is hard to predict, rut one possibility is that the wave function in this region -ould never be collapsed again.'
I struggle to comprehend this. The whole world smeared, permanently? How - when all the co-existing possibilities must include states that cause a collapse? But :he only collapse that works is one that makes itself real. A Aorld in which no collapse becomes real is just as consistent on those terms as one with a unique reality.
'So. . .Laura didn't stay smeared, to avoid dragging us into this catastrophe?'
'Exactly. And this is what you have to understand about Ensemble: anyone who uses it can do the same.'
'You mean, / might -'
'Anyone who smears for too long; the time scale is a matter of days. Laura has no wish to deprive you of the option of leaving The Bubble - but nor does she wish to force this on you. Your own smeared selves may not show the same respect.'
'My smeared self has always done exactly what I've wanted.'
'Of course. You hold him hostage; this world is inimical to him. He relies on your cooperation. But each time you smear and collapse, as well as choosing outcomes that satisfy you, he's able to improve himself - selecting changes in your brain which make him more sophisticated, more complex. He's evolving, gaining strength.'
A chill passes through me. 'Then. . .will he even let me remember you saying that?'
'Laura guarantees it.'
I shake my head. 'Laura says this, Laura says that. Why should I believe anything you've told me? Why should I even believe that you are what you say you are?'
She shrugs. 'You will believe, one way or another; there must be eigenstates in which you do. As for what / am - I'm a set of perceptions which happens to convince you. Nothing more, nothing less.'
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I spray her with tranquillizer. She smiles as the mist settles on her skin, then she purses her lips and gently exhales. The cloud of tiny droplets reappears in front of her, then rushes towards me, shrinking, and- before I can put up a gloved hand to shield myself - flows back into the nozzle of the can.
I sag to my knees. She vanishes.
After a while, I climb to my feet and make my way out of the building.
Half-way across the city, the van comes to a halt. The horn sounds, then someone shouts urgently, 'Nick! Come out! Something's happened!' I recognize Lui's voice.
I hesitate, confused and angry. Has he gone mad? Is he trying to sabotage everything? If I stay in the van, maybe I can still return to ASR safely. But then it sinks in: he wouldn't be here without a good reason. I must already be collapsed.
I clamber out. He's standing in front of the van with outstretched arms, blocking its way. A group of cyclists pass us, staring; I feel like I'm standing naked on the street - observable again, vulnerable again to the same contingencies as everyone else. We're on the outskirts of the city centre; I blink at the jewelled buildings looming ahead. It's hard to accept that I've been delivered back into the ordinary world, without a jolt, without a premonition.
Lui says, 'They know you're missing.'
'How? Why couldn't I stop it?'
He shakes his head angrily. Ί don't know why. Too many people involved. That isn't important; it's happened.'
'What do you mean, too many people?'
'They found a bomb. About twenty minutes ago.'
'Oh, shit. The Children. Po-kwai. . . ?'
'She's fine. They defused it. Nobody's been hurt - but the building went on full alert, they swept every corner . . . you can imagine. They found three other devices. And they found you missing. Maybe you just couldn't
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juggle all the possibilities - keeping the bombs undetected and unexploded. I don't know. But you have to leave the city.'
'What about you? And the others?'
'I'm going to stay. The Canon will have to keep a low profile - but they still don't know we exist. I expect ASR will assume that the Children got to you somehow. A puppet mod . . .'
'If the Children had put a puppet mod in my skull, I would have stayed in the fucking building and made sure that the bombs went off.'
He scowls impatiently. Okay. I don't know what ASR will think. It doesn't matter. You have to leave. The rest of the Canon aren't implicated; we can look after ourselves.' He steps away from the van; it speeds off into the darkness. Then he takes a card from his shirt pocket and hands it to me. 'Five hundred thousand dollars. Pure, anonymous credit, drawn on an orbiting account. Go to the harbour, not the airport; ASR will find it harder to pull strings there. And with this, I expect you can out-bribe even them.'
I shake my head. Ί can't go.'
'Don't be stupid. If you stay, you're dead. But with the eigenstate mod, the Canon stands a chance of staying one step ahead. You did get it?'
I nod. 'Yes. But you can't use the mod; the risk is too great.'
'What do you mean?'
I recount my experience in the vault. He listens to the entire revelation with remarkable equanimity; I wonder if he believes a word of it. When I'm finished, he says, 'We'll be careful - we'll only use it for short periods. You've smeared for over four hours, without any kind of trouble.'
I stare at him. 'You're talking about gambling with. . .' I can't find the right words. The planet? Humanity? Neither would exactly be lost. . .just embedded in something larger. But that's not the point.
'You'veproved that it's safe, Nick. An hour or two can do no harm. What do you want to do - bury the data?
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Undiscover it? You can't. The sham Ensemble still have their copies - do you want them to keep their ascendancy, after all they've done to you? One way or another, every question the mod raises is going to be explored. I thought that was important to you.'
I say, automatically, 'Of course it is.'
And then realize that I don't mean it at all. I don't give a fuck about the mystery of the true Ensemble.
Stunned, I wait for the backlash, the denial.
There's nothing but silence. The loyalty mod is gone; I've tunnelled right out of its constraints. I close my eyes expecting my purposeless soul to evaporate and diffuse into the air.
'Nick?'
I shake my head, open my eyes. 'Sorry. I was . . . dizzy for a second; some side-effect of the collapse.' I take off my gloves and reach into the pocket where the chip reader is, the copy of Ensemble still plugged in. Without removing the device from my pocket, I invoke RedNet and Cypher Clerk, and start copying data into Cypher-Clerk's buffers.
Lui says, 'We can't waste time arguing. Give me the data, and get moving.'
Ί told you, the mod's too dangerous.' So why am I copying it before erasing it? Do I really trust myself to use it wisely - to make a modest fortune breaking codes, without imperilling Life As We Know It? The arrogance is breathtaking. But I don't stop the flow of data.
Lui says quietly, 'Phone a bank, verify the card. Half a million dollars. That's what we agreed on.'
I shake my head. Ί don't care about the money.' I almost hand the card back, but if I do it with my free left hand, he may wonder what I'm doing with my right hand.
Lui looks away, sad and tortured as ever. I think: Making money from the mod is important to him - and people get nasty if you mess with their religion. I prime, and reach for my gun; left-handed, too late. I feel a targeting beam on my forehead, and freeze; a moment later, two armed women emerge from the alleyway in
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front of us. Neither are aiming their weapons at my head; a third person, the source of the beam, must still be in the shadows covering them.
Lui says, 'P
ut your hands on your head.'
The copy is ninety per cent done. I stall. Ί didn't expect this kind of -'
He grabs my arms and jerks them into place. The zombie boy scout observes helpfully: I should have done an erase-with-copy, wiping everything as it was transmitted.
Lui takes my gun, searches me, and quickly finds the reader. As he takes it from my pocket, I broadcast an erase command, but the positioning is bad. CypherClerk gives me an error message from RedNet, then a 'tutor' icon appears in my head and starts delivering a lecture on troubleshooting infrared connections. I shut it down.
Lui says, 'The card is valid. Half a million dollars. I haven't cheated you. Head for the docks, and you'll be out of this mess by dawn.'
I say, 'You don't believe me, do you? About Laura, the Bubble Makers, any of it?'
He looks me in the eye and says softly, 'Of course I believe you. I worked out most of it myself, six months ago. Why do you think the sham Ensemble were searching for the pattern of events that led them to Laura? They'd guessed the reason for The Bubble - and they hoped the Bubble Makers might have given us a key: an example of what we had to become, if we wanted to leave the prison they'd built around us.'
He steps aside, and one of his goons approaches. I wait, with a strong sense of dija vu, for a tranquillizing spray, or a hypodermic in the neck.
Instead, the woman draws a nightstick and swings it towards the side of my head.
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12
As I come round, PI reports bruising and mild concussion, but nothing requiring treatment. I feel no discomfort; pain is converted into pure information. I stagger to the side of the road, and deprime - but still feel nothing; acting on standing orders, Boss takes over the role of anaesthetist.
I call the PanPacific Bank's verification service, and plug the card into my SatPhone. It seems to be precisely what Lui claimed it was: half a million dollars of transnational liquid funds; fully cleared, no strings attached. I order a sequence of transactions which sends the money hurtling around the globe a few hundred times - losing a little value with every orbit, but losing any chance of being traced or recalled even faster - and surviving the scrutiny of over a thousand separate financial institutions. It comes to a halt after ten minutes, depleted by five per cent, but indisputably real, and irreversibly mine, now.
