Null-A Continuum

by John C. Wright

  Dr. Curoi’s voice over the suit radio sounded strangely near-at-hand, even though the man himself was not in sight, having stepped into the toppled structure. “Note the lack of children’s bodies. This suggests the race discovered personal immortality.”

  Gosseyn said, “The population of this world must have been in the tens of billions. And yet there is no sign of agriculture, aquaculture, or cattle-herding. How did they eat?”

  Curoi said, “We may know more after the seismic teams analyze the echo-reflection data from the machines at the world’s core. Autopsy might tell us if those odd, specialized organs in the digestive tract converted broadcast energy from the core machine directly into cell nutrients.”

  Leej was walking near Gosseyn. While her armor was as bulky as everyone else’s, her footsteps were more uncertain, because she was a novice at spacesuit work, her planet having never achieved space flight. She said, “The future is about to blur in two minutes, right after the archeologist makes his announcement.” Gosseyn saw from his helmet readout that this was sent on a private channel, narrow-beamed to him alone.

  “Is it something I do?” Gosseyn sent back.

  There was a rustling sound, and then an embarrassed sigh. The rustling sound must have been Leej shaking her head, her hair scraping the earphones, and then a sigh because she remembered no one could see her head move. “No way to tell. It may come as a result of my experiment.”

  Gosseyn drew his sidearm. This weapon’s aiming beam was linked through the ship’s electronic brain to a number of other power sources on the ship, so that an ever-increasing amount of power could be sent by distorter circuit through the hand weapon, including the whole force of the ship’s main reactors.

  Up ahead, Dr. Kair was studying one of the corpses through the viewing device on his helmet. On the general channel, Dr. Kair’s voice came: “It is fairly certain that these people were killed instantaneously by the negative distortion effect. The identity and position of the atoms in their bodies fell below the critical threshold level for molecular and atomic actions to continue. But I notice the effect is uneven. Leej, how much mass do you need to perform your prediction? We may be able to find some atoms intact.”

  Leej said, “It does not work by mass. Events are linked by cause and effect. I cannot predict the decay of a radioactive atom, because one atom would not affect anything in my environment, but I can predict the behavior of a sensitive Geiger counter.”

  Curoi the Nexialist said, “We have instruments much more sensitive than that.”

  At that moment, the chief archeologist said, “We’ve found a body you can use for your experiment. It is in good condition, but it is not unique. Out of all this graveyard, I think the archeology team can let you disturb one of these poor souls.”

  Leej moved over toward the body. It was slumped over in the bottom of what seemed the basin of a dry fountain. The body was blackened and burnt, but the clothing was strangely well preserved: a dark and simple garment with traces of rust at the collar, shoulders, and wrists, as if there had been clasps or ornaments long ago weathered away. The boots seemed to be a continuation of the pantleg fabric, merely thickened.

  Curoi pointed at something on the corpse. “Look. Photovoltaic cells woven into the thread. The clothes are self-repairing. That’s why the corpses fallen in the shadow are nude.”

  Dr. Kair pulled a flat boxlike instrument out of his legpouch and passed it to Leej. “This cable attaches to your life-support. Otherwise the nervous energy of the unit will not penetrate your armor. As I explained before, the unit will put your brain into a relaxed state, and, if all goes well, trigger the complex of posthypnotic suggestions I’ve helped you implant in your mind. If I am correct, your ability to overcome the illusion of time only in one direction, the future, is a psychological limit. Once you are subconsciously convinced that your powers can reach backward as well as forward, you should be able to summon up a vision of the past as easily as of the future.”

  She plugged the cable from the box into one of the sockets in her helmet. The faceless helmet turned toward the corpse.

  Leej said, “I am seeing … millions of years in the past … billions … men and women, happy. They look alert. Their eyes glitter with intelligence and purpose. The sky overhead is half-black. Half the stars have already been swallowed by the Shadow Effect. This man was walking down the street. He pauses. He turns. The man is aware of me. ‘Woman of the future, beware!’ he is speaking. ‘There is an enemy of both your galaxy and mine, a race of creatures beyond the edge of time … an infinite enemy … they are attempting to find you … they …’ No. It is gone.”

  The helmet of Leej turned toward Gosseyn. “Now. Everything is blurred. What happened?”

  At the same moment, one of the high-energy physics team, bent over an instrument, raised his gauntlet. “Captain! Strange reading here. Time-space just suffered a deflection from its normal metric.”

  Gosseyn said to Leej, “I’m dead. The memories of my twin version just similarized themselves into my nervous system.” He flipped open another short-range private channel, to include Dr. Kair. “The version of me back in the Milky Way galaxy remembers me dying—roughly twenty minutes ago, when I used the Sphere Array to teleport this solar system here. His memory was that I was killed by a shadow-version of X, the crippled Lavoisseur. My version then died, killed by Enro, and woke up as Gosseyn Four. After X forced the planet he was on into the shadow-condition, Gosseyn Four made contact with some sort of supercivilization of ultimate men, who forced him out of the universe, first into a false or partial universe and then, when he escaped that, into this universe. I am assuming this is a parallel time-continuum: some sort of alternate reality created the moment I was attuned to the Primordial Spheres.”

  Gosseyn, who now had the parallel memories of both his versions, assumed that if this were another false reality, it had been created from memories other than his own—but including a set of memories that included a record or copy of his own. Gosseyn’s conclusion: This was being done for his benefit, to demonstrate something to him.

  Dr. Kair asked him a number of questions, and Kair opened his radio to bring Curoi into the conversation. Curoi walked over to the high-energy physics team and studied the readings from their instruments.

  Curoi said, “Is there any reason not to attempt the second phase of the experiment? The results of Phase One were fruitful beyond all expectation.”

  Dr. Kair said, “I’d like to examine Gosseyn for side effects. If he made mental contact with another version of this universe, it is important to discover which is the primary and which was created by a distortion.”

  Curoi, whose special skill was the ability to integrate data from very different schools of science, said, “You are assuming an inertial principle? If one second of time is removed from the past-to-future manifestation of the cosmos, it will retain enough mass-energy to manifest its own, parallel, cosmos? Once set in motion, the time-energy must continue?”

  Dr. Kair said, “I am not a physicist, but I do know that volume of space described by Gosseyn’s memory of a starless universe, a little under a radius of one light-year and a third, was roughly equal to the total distance he can perform a similarity effect. If this universe, the one we exist in now, is also a secondary universe, we should attempt to determine its size. I am assuming that can be done by calculations of its mass-energy.”

  The scientific teams aboard the ship reported in a few minutes. Long-range telescopes still detected distant nebulae, Messier objects, quasars. But the gravity-wave astronomy array aboard told a different story: A zone of space roughly twenty-five hundred thousand light-years wide surrounded them.

  “The Milky Way galaxy is gone,” said Gosseyn bleakly, hearing the report over the radio.

  Curoi said, “The photons at the edge of our pocket universe are carrying false images of an outer universe to our instruments. Traveling at the speed of light, the other galaxies will continue to be visible for tw
enty-five hundred millennia. In any case, we have one fact: The time-space of this size was created from someone else’s memories, not yours. And it is someone with a great deal more energy at his disposal than Gosseyn Two. I’d like to try the same battery of tests Gosseyn Three just told me he remembers the imaginary character of Dr. Halt performing on Gosseyn Four, whose identity is now blended with the man we see before us.”

  Gosseyn thought darkly that if Dr. Halt had not been merely imaginary, if he was real in any sense, then he had wiped out an entire planetary population, including a copy of Patricia.

  Leej said, “There is no time. Gosseyn must help me form the connection again. That is what I see happening.”

  It was Captain Mandricard who decided: “I think we need to hear the rest of that message from the dead man. Proceed.”

  Gosseyn said to Leej, “Working through Dr. Kair’s neurohypnotic unit, I am going to try to strengthen the similarity between you and the location you are perceiving. I cannot force a similarity myself, since I cannot perceive the location you can see, but I can sense the biofeedback from the neurohypnotic unit—its functions are very similar to a lie detector’s, except it is invasive rather than merely passive—and move you nearer to what the unit registers as a condition of greater nerve-flow in the brain centers you activate during prediction. Ready?”

  Leej said, “I am blind as soon as you use your ability, Gilbert. But I am curious to see what is on the other side of the blind moment.”

  Some of the electron tubes on the boxlike unit plugged into Leej’s suit glowed with a cool blue light and grew brighter. At first, that was all that occurred.

  The high-energy physicist said, “It’s happening again. Massive distortion in time-space.”

  Leej said, “Step back from the corpse! Everyone step back!”

  Then, the body stood up. Its blackened skin and mummified remains grew even darker, and all light left the figure. By the time it was fully on its feet, the figure was a shadow-shape like the Follower: a smoky manlike form.

  “I cannot maintain this projection across this time-distance for long,” came a voice from the shadow-being.

  To Gosseyn, the voice sounded familiar. “Lavoisseur! Is that you?”

  “In one sense, yes,” said the shadow-shape. “Like you, I am a Gosseyn duplicate.”

  “Who? Gosseyn Six? Is there a Gosseyn Seven?”

  The shadow-being spoke in a voice of mild humor. “I lost track after ten thousand or so. I am the final and ultimate Gosseyn.”

  20

  The process of scientific thought consists of increasingly less inaccurate predictive models based on observation. When the model is not subject to change due to further observations, it is no longer scientific.

  It was Dr. Kair who spoke next: “He is from a slightly later time period than the three shadow-beings who flung Gosseyn Four out of the universe. If the Gosseyn memories are immortal, living from body to body, there is no reason why he will not continue even to Three Million A.D.: and eventually live long enough to see the era that comes after it, the time that has discovered time-travel.”

  The shadow-figure now began to solidify. The far-future version of Gosseyn was roughly a head and a half taller than his contemporary self. His skin was a strange golden hue; his head seemed even larger in proportion than Gosseyn’s. It was only the heroic build of his shoulders and chest, the bull-like thickness of his neck, that gave so large a skull a normal appearance.

  But the face was his.

  The future being said, “For the purposes of avoiding semantic confusion, call me Aleph.”

  Aleph, the far-future Gosseyn, was dressed in the simple garment of the Primordials. The clasps at his shoulders and wrists seemed to be miniature electronic units, evidently controlled by his brain directly, since there were no external controls. Either the suit protected him from the deadly radiation or Aleph had additional powers: He stood under the blazing black X-ray sun of the dead planet without harm, without any need to breathe the deadly inert gases of the atmosphere.

  Gosseyn thought he detected a slight vibration of distorter-energy in Aleph’s chest area. The future man was similarizing oxygen from some distant world directly into his lungs. A similar vibration surrounded the golden giant like an aura: No doubt he was similarizing the incoming X-ray particles to some remote spot before they reached his skin.

  Aleph spoke without moving his lips, or, rather, his voice issued from the radio earphones of the armored men staring up at him. Gosseyn guessed the being was controlling radio waves with the same ease with which he controlled X-rays.

  “The Shadow Effect that destroyed this galaxy was not an accident but an attack.” The voice of Aleph rang in their ears.

  GOSSEYN listened with a grim sense of suspicion.

  It was optimistic to believe that the future versions of himself were derived from Gosseyn’s sane memory rather than from the insane variant known as X.

  He realized the futility of raising his weapon against this superbeing: The atomic ray of his weapon would be deflected with the same casual ease as the X-rays from the dead sun overhead.

  Aleph sent a radio-message to Gosseyn’s private channel: “There is one respect where I am not acting as X would have done.”

  Gosseyn had noticed: The fact that Aleph was instantly aware of his suspicions showed them to be unfounded. Since Gosseyn was not receiving thoughts from his future-self, that superbeing must be holding his nervous energy in a “lesser” state, meaning that he was receiving Gosseyn’s thoughts: a situation X had been willing to commit murder to avoid.

  At the same time, on the public radio frequency, Gosseyn heard the conversation Aleph was carrying on with the others. “There is an entity, a race composed by forced impositions of thought into a single consciousness, called the Ydd. The Ydd foresee the rise of Null-A thought in the Shadow Galaxy, and, using prediction power, foresee also the destruction of itself and its race.”

  Dr. Kair said, “Null-A can accommodate any number of other rational systems. Why should there be a conflict? What threat does Null-A pose to this creature?”

  “The Ydd exists in a ‘non-similar’ condition of being, outside of the roughly fifteen-billion-light-year-wide and fifteen-billion-year-old slowly expanding zone of time-space where matter-energy has struck its current neutral balance, which we call the universe. There are areas outside the light-cone of the Big Bang, and also at the origin point, where other matter-energy formations obtain, areas occupied by the Ydd. Null-A psychology is the only predicted science able to integrate the complexities of the true Einsteinian universe into the human nervous system, and hence the only source of threat within the universe to the Ydd. No other discipline will achieve a scientific plateau to allow men to become aware of the Ydd.”

  Gosseyn said, “Why is it so secretive? Why would it conclude that even knowledge of its existence poses a threat to it?”

  “Unknown.”

  Gosseyn said, “Is there a being in this universe, the real universe, which stands to it in the relationship I stood in to the illusionary universe created from my false memories?”

  Aleph said, “That is the ultimate question of life toward whose answer even the cosmos-level intellects of my time grope dimly. One theory is that the Ydd entity itself occupies this relation.”

  Leej said, “Is Enro a puppet of this Ydd?”

  Aleph nodded, as if pleased with the question. “Through him the Ydd will release the Shadow Effect into the Milky Way, and begin the disintegration of all life. Our theory is that Ydd is seeking Gosseyn, and is willing to wipe out the universe to destroy him.”

  Captain Mandricard said, “What can we do against this Ydd threat?”

  Aleph said, “The first step is to repeat the experiment Gosseyn Three conducted with the Space-time Spheres of the Primordials, which attuned him to a twenty-five-hundred-thousand-light-year-wide segment of the galaxy, but this time with Leej the Predictor, rather than Gilbert Gosseyn, as the focal point
of the Sphere amplification. Gosseyn will need to have his consciousness imposed into the body of Leej, using the same technique the ‘Chessplayer’ once used to impose Gosseyn into Ashargin. There are machines on this world, which I have already found and restored to operation, able to accomplish this. Once Gosseyn attunes Leej to the galaxy-wide Sphere network, she will have the resources at her disposal to make a prediction reaching accurately to the period of a supercivilization we believe will occupy this area of the universe two hundred fifty million years from now. Gosseyn! Leej! Ready yourselves.”

  When his vision cleared, Gosseyn, from Leej’s point of view, saw the suit of armor the now-unconscious Gosseyn body occupied sag. The armor was too bulky, as well as too well designed, to allow him to fall over. But the arms were hanging limply; the leg-armor was locked into place.

  HIS first impression was that Leej must have poorer eyesight than his body, because the details of the scene around were blurred. But no: Her brain merely processed fewer pictures per second of visual information than his, and her memory and perception system did not notice details Gosseyn found significant.

  On the other hand, Gosseyn was aware of a flow, a flood, of mental pictures appearing and disappearing around every object in the environment. And not merely visible images: Sounds and other sensations were hovering in a ghostly fashion around Leej the Predictress, bits of conversation, variations on words spoken. Gosseyn realized he was hearing alternate future versions of how the conversation would turn out, depending on whether Leej spoke or not, or what questions she asked. He could “hear” that any conversation based primarily on Leej answering questions before they were asked would reduce the prediction to a mere blur of sound. One’s own actions seemed to blur the future-picture more severely the more one both relied upon and changed the picture. There was a delicacy to prediction Gosseyn’s few lessons in the art had not allowed him to appreciate.

  Also, he had underestimated the detail and depth involved. Looking at Curoi, for example, Leej could see not merely what he would be doing in the next few minutes, but also images of her meeting him aboard ship, or seeing him at mess-time or while studying, over the next few days and even weeks. It was like a series of small, clear, sharp pictures receding away from his body in some direction that was not one of the three dimensions of normal space.