The Annals of the Heechee

by Frederik Pohl

  He gave me a look that was part exasperation and part concern. I understood both very clearly. I know Albert is often exasperated with me, but I know even better that he cares a lot about me. He said, “Very well, we’ll play your game again. You see ‘me’ in the sense that you see a waterfall. If you look at Niagara Falls today, and come back a week later and look at it again, you will think you’re seeing the same waterfall. In fact, not one atom of the waterfall is the same. The waterfall exists only because it is constrained to do so by the laws of hydraulics, surface tension, and Newton’s laws, as they bear on the fact that one body of water is at a higher elevation than another. I appear to you only because I am constrained to do so by the rules of the ‘Albert Einstein’ program written for you by your wife, S. Ya. Lavorovna-Broadhead. The water molecules are not Niagara Falls. They are only what Niagara Falls is made of. The bytes and bits that allow me to function when my program is activated are not me. Have you understood that? Because, if so, you will then see that it is pointless to ask how I feel when I am not ‘me,’ because then there is no ‘me’ to feel anything. Now,” he said, leaning forward earnestly, “suppose you tell me what you yourself are feeling that brings this on, Robin.”

  I thought it over. Listening to him talk in that soft, sweet accent of his had been soothing, and so it took me a moment to remember what the answer was.

  Then I remembered, and I was lulled no more. I said:

  “Scared.”

  He pursed his lips as he regarded me. “Scared. I see. Robin, can you tell me what frightens you?”

  “Well, which of the four or five hundred—”

  “No, no, Robin. The top thing.”

  I said, “I’m just a program, too.”

  “Ah,” he said, “I see.” He dumped his pipe, regarding me. “I think I understand,” he qualified. “Because you too are machine-stored, you think whatever happens to me might happen to you.”

  “Or worse.”

  “Oh, Robin,” he said, shaking his head, “you worry about so many things. You are afraid, I think, that somehow you will forget and turn yourself off. Is that it? And then you can never get yourself together again? But, Robin, that can’t happen.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  That stopped him, at least for a moment.

  Methodically and slowly, Albert refilled his pipe, struck a match on the sole of his foot, lit it, and puffed thoughtfully, never taking his eyes off me. He didn’t answer.

  Then he shrugged.

  Albert almost never leaves me until I let him know I want him to, but it looked to me as though he had that in mind. “Don’t go away,” I said.

  “All right, Robin,” he said, looking surprised.

  “Talk to me some more. It’s been a long trip, and I’m getting kind of irritable, I guess.”

  “Oh, are you?” he asked, arching his brows; it was as close to judgmental as Albert usually gets. Then he said, “You know, Robin, you don’t have to remain awake for all of it. Would you like to power down until we get there?”

  “No!”

  “But Robin, it’s nothing to worry about. When you’re in standby mode it’s just as though no time at all were passing. Ask your wife.”

  “No!” I said again. I didn’t even want to discuss it; standby mode sounded very much like that other mode they call “dead.” “No, I just want to talk for a while. I think—I really think,” I said, full of the new idea that had just occurred to me, “that this would be a good time for me to let you tell me about nine-dimensional space.”

  For the second time in a few milliseconds Albert gave me that look—not astonished, exactly, but at least skeptical.

  “You want me to explain nine-dimensional space to you,” he repeated.

  “You bet, Albert.”

  He studied me carefully through the pipe smoke. “Well,” he said, “I can see that just the idea perks you up a little. Probably you figure you’ll have some pleasure out of making fun of me—”

  “Who, me, Albert?” I grinned.

  “Oh, I don’t mind if you do. I’m just trying to understand what the ground rules will be.”

  “The ground rules,” I said, “is that you tell me all about it. If I get tired of it, I’ll let you know. So start, please. ‘Nine-dimensional space is—’ and then you fill in the blanks.”

  He looked pleased, if still skeptical. “We should take these long trips more often,” he commented. “Anyway, that’s not the way to start. This is the way: First we consider normal three-dimensional space, the kind you grew up in, or thought you were growing up in, when you were still meat—what, already?”

  I had my hand up. I said, “I thought that was four-dimensional. What about the dimension of time?”

  “That’s four-dimensional space-time, Robin. I’m trying to make it simple for you, so let’s stick to three dimensions at first. I’ll give you an illustration. Suppose, for instance, that when you were a young man sitting with your girlfriend watching a PV show, you just happened to put your arm around her. The first thing you do is stretch your arm across the back of the couch—that’s the first dimension, call it breadth. Then you crook your elbow at a right angle, so your forearm is pointing forward and resting on her shoulder—that’s the second dimension, which we will call length. Then you drop your hand onto her breast. That’s depth. The third dimension.”

  “That’s depth, all right, because I’m getting in pretty deep by then.” I grinned.

  He sighed and ignored the remark. “You comprehend the image. You have so far demonstrated the three spatial dimensions. There is also, as you pointed out, the dimension of time: Five minutes ago your hand was not there, now it is, at some time in the future it will be elsewhere again. So if you want to specify the coordinates of any familiar system, you must add that dimension in, too. The three-dimensional ‘where’ and the fourth-dimensional ‘when’; that’s space-time.”

  I said patiently, “I’m waiting for you to get to the part where it turns out that all this stuff that I already know is wrong.”

  “I will, Robin, but to get to the hard part I have to make sure you have the easy part under control. Now we get to the hard part. It involves supersymmetry.”

  “Oh, good. Are my eyes beginning to glaze over?”

  He peered inquiringly into my face, just as solemnly as though I really had eyes and he had something to peer at them with. He’s a good sport, Albert is. “Not yet,” he said, pleased. “I’ll try not to glaze them. ‘Supersymmetry’ sounds terrible, I know, but it is just the name given to a mathematical model which fairly satisfactorily describes the main features of the universe. It includes or is related to things like ‘supergravity’ and ‘string theory’ and ‘archeocosmology.’” He peered at me again. “Still not glazed? All right. Now we start to understand the implications of those words. The implications are easier than the words are. These are pretty good fields of study. Taken together, they explain the behavior of both matter and energy in all their manifestations. More than that. They don’t just explain them. The laws of supersymmetry and the others actually drive the behavior of all things. By that I mean that, from these laws, the observed behavior of everything that makes up the universe follows logically. Even inevitably.”

  “But—”

  He was in full course; he waved me down. “Stay with it,” he commanded. “These are basic. If the early Greeks had understood supersymmetry and its related subjects, they could have deduced Newton’s laws of motion and universal gravitation, and Planck and Heisenberg’s quantum rules, and even—” he twinkled “—my own relativity theory, both special and general. They would not have had to experiment and observe. They could have known that all these other things must be true, because they followed, just as Euclid knew that his geometry must be true because everything followed from the general laws.”

  “But it didn’t!” I cried, surprised. “Did it? I mean, you’ve told me about non-Euclidean geometry—”

  He paused
, looking thoughtful. “That’s the catch,” he admitted. He looked at his pipe and discovered that it was out, so methodically he began tapping it empty again while he talked. “Euclidean geometry is not untrue, it is simply true only in the special case of a flat, two-dimensional surface. There aren’t any of those in the real world. There’s a catch in supersymmetry, too. The catch there is that it, too, is untrue in the real world—or at least the world of three-dimensional space we perceive. For supersymmetry to work, nine dimensions are required, and we can only observe three. What happened to the other six?”

  I said with pleasure, “I don’t have the faintest idea, but you’re doing this a lot better than usual. I’m not lost yet.”

  “I’ve had a lot a practice,” he said dryly. “I’ve got good news for you, too. I could demonstrate to you mathematically why nine dimensions are necessary—”

  “Oh, no.”

  “No, of course not,” he agreed. “The good news is that I don’t have to in order to let you understand the rest of it.”

  “I’m grateful.”

  “I’m sure.” He lit his pipe again. “Now, about the missing six dimensions…” He puffed for a while, thoughtfully. “If nine spatial dimensions had to exist in order for the universe to be formed as it is in the first place, why can we find only three now?”

  “Does it have something to do with entropy?” I hazarded.

  Albert looked aghast. “Entropy? Certainly not. How could it?”

  “Well, with Mach’s Hypothesis, then? Or some of the other things you were talking about in Deep Time?”

  He said reprovingly, “Don’t guess, Robin. You’re just making it harder than it is. What happened to the other dimensions? They just disappeared.”

  Albert gazed at me happily, puffing his pipe with as much satisfaction as though he had explained something significant.

  I waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, I began to feel nettled. “Albert, I know you like to tweak me every now and then just to keep my interest up, but what the hell is ‘they just disappeared’ supposed to mean?”

  He chuckled. He was having a good time, I could see that. He said, “They disappeared from our perception, at least. That doesn’t mean they were extinguished. It probably just means that they got very small. They shriveled up to where they just weren’t visible anymore.”

  I looked at him with outrage. “Can you explain how a dimension can just shrivel up?”

  He smiled at me. “Fortunately not,” he said. “I say ‘fortunately’ because, if I could, it would probably get very mathematical, and then you’d be cutting me off right here. However, I can shed a little bit of light on what probably happened, anyway. By ‘shrivel up,’ I mean they just don’t register anymore. Let me give you an illustration. Think of a point—say, the tip of your nose—”

  “Oh, come on, Albert! We already did three-dimensional space!”

  “The tip of your nose,” he repeated. “Relate that point to some other point, say your Adam’s apple. Your nose is so many millimeters up, and so many millimeters out, and so many millimeters across—that is to say, you specify its location on the x, y, and z axes. When we talk about nine-dimensional space instead of three, you can also say that it is at a specific point on the p, d, q, r, w, and k axes—or whatever letters you want to use to specify them—but.” He took a deep breath. “But you don’t have to specify those coordinates for any normal purpose, because the distances are so small they don’t signify. That’s it, Robin! Got it so far?”

  I said happily, “I almost think so.”

  “Fine,” he said, “because that’s almost right. It isn’t quite as simple as that. Those missing six dimensions—they’re not only small, they’re curved. They’re like little circles. Like little coiled-up spirals. They don’t go anywhere. They just go around.”

  He stopped there, sucking his pipe and gazing approvingly at me.

  He was twinkling again. There was something about the look in those guileless eyes that made me ask, “Albert, one question. Is all this stuff you’ve been telling me true?”

  He hesitated. Then he shrugged. “‘Truth,’” he said weightily, “is a really heavy word. I’m not ready to talk about reality yet, and that’s what you mean by ‘true.’ This is a model that explains things very, very well. It may as well be taken as ‘true,’ at least until a better model comes along. But, unfortunately, if you remember,” he said, perking up the way he always does when he gets a chance to quote from himself, “as my meat original said long ago, mathematics is most ‘true’ when it is least ‘real,’ and vice versa. There are many elements I have not characterized here. We have not yet considered the implications of string theory, or of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, or—”

  “Give it a rest, please,” I begged.

  “I gladly will, Robin,” he said, “because you’ve been very good about all this. I appreciate your listening. Now there is some hope of your understanding the Foe and, more important, the basic structure of the universe.”

  “More important!” I repeated.

  He smiled. “In an objective sense, oh, yes, Robin. It is much more important to know than to do, and it doesn’t much matter who does the knowing.”

  I got up and walked around. It seemed we’d been talking for a very long time, and then it occurred to me that that was good, because that was exactly what I wanted. I said, “Albert? How long did this little lecture of yours take?”

  “You mean in galactic time? Let me see, yes, a little under four minutes.” And he saw my face and hurriedly added, “But we’re nearly a third of the way, Robin! Only a couple more weeks and we’ll be at the Watch Wheel!”

  “A couple of weeks.”

  He looked at me with concern. “There is still the option of powering down…No, of course not,” he said, watching my face. He looked irresolute for a moment, then he made up his mind. In a different tone he said, “Robin? When we were talking about what it is like for ‘me’ when I am not in being as your program, you said you didn’t believe me. I’m afraid you were justified. I have not been entirely truthful with you.”

  Nothing he ever said shocked me more. “Albert!” I yelped. “You haven’t lied to me? You can’t!”

  He said apologetically, “That’s correct, Robin, I have never lied to you. But there are truths I haven’t said.”

  “You mean you do feel something when you’re turned off?”

  “No. I told you that. There’s no ‘me’ to feel.”

  “Then what, for God’s sake?”

  “There are things I do—experience—that you never have, Robin. When I am merged into another program, I am that program. Or him. Or her.” He twinkled. “Or they.”

  “But you’re not the same you anymore?”

  “No, that’s true. Not the same. But…perhaps…something better.”

  17

  At the Throne

  And time passed, and time passed, and the endless voyage went on.

  I did everything there was to do.

  Then I did it twice. Then I did it some more. Then I even began to think seriously about Albert’s notion of a few weeks in standby mode, and that scared me enough to make Essie take notice.

  She wrote a prescription for me. “Will have,” Essie announced, “a party,” and when Essie tells you you’re going to have a party, you might as well relax and enjoy it.

  That doesn’t mean that that is what I did. Not right away, anyhow. I was not in a party mood. I hadn’t got over the shock of my “death” in the house on Tahiti. I hadn’t quite nerved myself up to confront the prospect of meeting more of those Assassin creatures—millions more of them—and on their home ground, at that. Hell, I hadn’t even got all the way over everything else that had ever happened to me in my life, from my nasty little mental breakdown when I was a kid, through my mother’s death and Klara’s wreck in the black hole right up to the present moment. Everybody’s life is full of tragedies, disasters, and lousy breaks. You keep on living it bec
ause now and then there are good times that make up for it, or at least you hope they will, but, my God, the number of miseries we all go through! And when you live so much longer, not only longer but in my case faster, you just multiply the bad things. “Grizzly grouch,” laughed Essie, planting a big kiss on my mouth, “cheer up, wake up, have a good time, what the hell, because tomorrow we die, right? Or maybe not, you know.”

  She is a living doll, my Essie is. All of her. The meat one that was the model and the portable one who shares my life, and let’s not get into any tricky debates about what I mean by “living.”

  So I did my best to smile, and, to my astonishment, I made it. And then I looked around me.

  Whatever Essie had said to Albert about the luxurious surrounds he had been providing for us, she didn’t mean to let such strictures cramp her own style. Her ideas of a party have changed a lot since we’ve been machine-stored. In the old days we could do pretty much anything we liked, because we were filthy rich. Now it’s even better. There is just about nothing that would give us pleasure that we can’t do. Not after we’ve got on a plane or a spaceship to get there. Not after we’ve invited a bunch of people to join us and waited for them to arrive. What we want to do we do right now, and we don’t even have to worry about hangovers, harm to others, or getting fat.

  So, to start, Essie provided us with a party room.

  It wasn’t anything outrageous. Actually, if we’d wanted one like it when we were still meat people, we could easily have had it. Probably it wouldn’t have cost more than a million dollars or so. Neither Essie nor I had ever had a ski lodge, but we’d been in a couple, at one time or another, and liked the combination of the huge ceiling-high fireplace at one end, and the bear- and moosehead trophies on the wall, and the dozen many-paned windows along the walls with the snowy mountains crisp in the sunlight outside, and the comfortable chairs and couches and tables with fresh flowers and—And, I realized, a lot of things neither she nor I had ever seen in any ski lodge. There was a wine fountain on a table by the windows, and it was bubbling champagne. (The only way you could tell that it wasn’t “real” champagne was that it never lost its bubbles.) Next to the champagne fountain was a long buffet table with white-jacketed waiters standing by to fill our plates. I saw a carved turkey and a ham, and hollowed-out fresh pineapples filled with kiwi fruit and cherries. I looked at it, and I looked at Essie. “Smoked oysters?” I ventured.