The avatars had access to scientists in Second Life. If people had questions about what they were seeing, they could ask their questions and get them answered immediately. They had two choices for asking questions: they could shout them out publicly so that everyone could hear the question and answer, or they could send their question as a private instant message. The avatars who watched the eclipse in Second Life stayed for an average of one hour apiece. It was immediately apparent to Paul that the virtual world provided a social aspect that was present in the museum experience but missing from most Web sites and that it provided a venue to experiment with new forms of science education.
Building the ‘Splo
Inspired by the ability to explore a three-dimensional virtual world with social interactions, Paul decided to build a science museum similar to the Exploratorium in Second Life. This museum, named the ‘Splo, opened its doors on April 1, 2006, an appropriate day for a museum of science, art, and humor. If you have never visited the Exploratorium or a neighborhood hands-on museum, you can now sample the experience in a virtual world and hopefully be inspired to make a visit in the real world. You can even visit the virtual museum with friends who are half the world away.
The ‘Splo is housed in an old warehouse built by the great Second Life builder Aimee Weber, whose avatar sports blue butterfly wings. Once a nightclub, the building makes a fine science museum. Its location in Second Life is Midnight City (175,60,26), an island in Second Life where it is always night. Dogs bark, sirens blare, and if you walk in the street, you will be hit by cars. The city includes a movie theater where you can actually watch movies, many stores where you can buy clothing, weapons, and dance animations, and now, a science museum.
A museum in a virtual world presents interesting new possibilities. At the Exploratorium, when we wanted people to observe an illusion that changes when flipped upside down, we mounted the image on a wall so that it can be rotated. In one well-known illusion, for example, an image of lunar craters becomes, when flipped upside down, an image of domes.
A virtual museum offers more interesting possibilities. Instead of flipping the image, you can mount the image on the wall and then flip the visitor upside down! The craters still change into domes. The experience of being flipped upside down to view an illusion is so unique that people exclaim to their friends and start a discussion of what they are seeing that does not end until their friends have flipped upside down to view the illusion themselves.
Second Life also makes it possible to simulate—and warp—real world physics. Avatars at the ‘Splo can encounter molecules that are as big as they are. These molecules can move in three dimensions to show how scientists model their behavior. For example, the ‘Splo has a carbon dioxide molecule modeled as three spheres with the carbon positioned between the two oxygens. The model can be made to move by bending or by having the carbon molecule shuttle back and forth on the line between the two oxygen molecules to show two of the ways that carbon dioxide gas can absorb infrared radiation, which leads to the greenhouse effect.
At the opposite end of the size spectrum, Second Life contains an accurate model of the Earth Moon system. A model of Earth one meter in diameter is thirty meters away from a Moon that's one-quarter meter in diameter. Your avatar can walk from the Earth to the small, distant Moon. Do it and you will truly appreciate why eclipses are rare.
Paul is also planning to bring a model to Second Life that will allow him to teach special relativity by slowing down the speed of light to one meter per second.
Change Your Brain
And now it is time to show you that things you experience in Second Life can change your brain. Since optical illusions are easy to build, they are among the first exhibits in the ‘Splo. One of these illusions is a rotating spiral.
To build this exhibit, Paul first drew a black-and-white spiral, then saved it as a JPEG. He imported the image into Second Life (which was easy to do and cost only ten Linden Dollars or about 3 cents). He then used the simple building tools in Second Life to create a frame for his image. Finally he wrote a one-command computer program in Linden Scripting language to make the photo frame rotate. He did this during his first few days in Second Life.
Here's how the exhibit works. A visiting avatar moves close to the rotating spiral and the person who owns that avatar and is sitting at the computer screen stares at the spiral for twenty seconds. The person at the computer then looks at a friend's face and sees the friend's face appear to grow or shrink depending on the direction of rotation of the spiral. We could get into a discussion of why this happens—talking about the adaptation of your neurons to constant stimulation—but just now we are more interested in the relationship of reality and the Metaverse. That avatar has no neurons, but the person controlling an avatar in Second Life can look through the eyes of their avatar at an exhibit that changes the person's perception of the real world for a few seconds.
This change only lasted for a few seconds. It is a far cry from erasing a brain with a “snowcrash.” But there's another illusion that has a more lasting effect. To see this illusion, which is named the McCollough effect, a viewer stares at an array of horizontal blue lines alternating with an array of vertical yellow lines for five full minutes. After this the viewer looks at an array of horizontal and vertical gray lines. The horizontal gray lines appear to be yellow.
The perception that the horizontal gray lines are yellow can last for many days! To experience this illusion on the web go to lite.bu.edu/vision/applets/Color/McCollough/McCollough.html, where you can see for yourself that an experience in the virtual world can make long lasting changes in your perception.
Finally, a teacher through and through, Paul notes that the process of education itself changes us all. As an example of a permanent change resulting from an experience, Paul cites the following lesson. He warns you to proceed at your own risk. This lesson can forever change your perception of the world! You can never unlearn this!
If you follow these instructions, you will see a small annoying yellow bowtie in the white spaces of every liquid crystal display monitor in your life. (Based on this description, Pat [who is willing to try almost any experiment Paul suggests] respectfully declined this one.)
Here's what you do—if you decide you want to ignore our warnings. Take a piece of white paper out into the sunlight and look at it with one eye through a pair of polarized sunglasses. Rotate the sunglasses about a line between you and the paper. You will see a rotating yellow bowtie on the paper. It's subtle, but if you rotate the sunglasses clockwise and counterclockwise, and you keep looking, you will see it.
This yellow bowtie is called Haidinger's brush and it is how human eyes see polarized light. Although it has been in front of you your whole life, you have probably never seen it before.
After you see Haidinger's brush, go indoors and look at a liquid crystal monitor showing a bright white area. Rotate your head slowly to the right and left and notice the yellow bowtie. It has always been there, but you never saw it before. And now, because you ignored the warning, you can never not see it again. Learning in real life or in the Metaverse may change your brain forever.
The Black Sun
We could tell you much more about the Metaverse in Second Life, but you're probably better off exploring for yourself.
Paul has an avatar named Patio Plasma. You can often find him at the ‘Splo. Pat has an avatar named Zalpha Alphabeta. You can recognize him by his tie-dyed pants, though maybe one of these days she will buy the poor guy some decent clothes.
To bring the discussion back to science fiction (the written kind, rather than the variety you live), Paul notes that he has met an avatar named Hiro Protagonist in Second Life. That individual happens to make his living building and scripting in this virtual world.
Oh, yes—and that bar where Da5id has his brain erased? There's a bar named the Black Sun in Second Life, of course. Maybe we'll see you there.
The Exploratorium is San Francisco's mus
eum of science, art, and human perception—where science and science fiction meet. Paul Doherty works there. Pat Murphy used to work there, but now she works at Klutz Press (www.klutz.com), a publisher of how-to books for kids, and The Crucible (www.thecrucible.org), a school of industrial arts and fire arts where she has learned to melt steel and walk on stilts (though not at the same time—at least, not yet). To learn more about Pat Murphy's science fiction writing, visit her web site at www.brazenhussies.net/murphy. For more on Paul Doherty's work and his latest adventures, visit www.exo.net/~pauld.
[Back to Table of Contents]
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang
Most of our readers probably know the name Ted Chiang already, but since this story is his first work of fiction to appear here, we should note that Mr. Chiang is the author of such stories as “Division by Zero,” “Hell Is the Absence of God,” and “Tower of Babylon"; his short fiction has been collected in Stories of Your Life and Others. His new story—which is going to be published shortly by Subterranean Press in a hardcover chapbook—concerns a Baghdad merchant. Mr. Chiang says the story was inspired in part by the work of physicist Kip Thorne.
O mighty Caliph and Commander of the Faithful, I am humbled to be in the splendor of your presence; a man can hope for no greater blessing as long as he lives. The story I have to tell is truly a strange one, and were the entirety to be tattooed at the corner of one's eye, the marvel of its presentation would not exceed that of the events recounted, for it is a warning to those who would be warned and a lesson to those who would learn.
My name is Fuwaad ibn Abbas, and I was born here in Baghdad, City of Peace. My father was a grain merchant, but for much of my life I have worked as a purveyor of fine fabrics, trading in silk from Damascus and linen from Egypt and scarves from Morocco that are embroidered with gold. I was prosperous, but my heart was troubled, and neither the purchase of luxuries nor the giving of alms was able to soothe it. Now I stand before you without a single dirham in my purse, but I am at peace.
Allah is the beginning of all things, but with Your Majesty's permission, I begin my story with the day I took a walk through the district of metalsmiths. I needed to purchase a gift for a man I had to do business with, and had been told he might appreciate a tray made of silver. After browsing for half an hour, I noticed that one of the largest shops in the market had been taken over by a new merchant. It was a prized location that must have been expensive to acquire, so I entered to peruse its wares.
Never before had I seen such a marvelous assortment of goods. Near the entrance there was an astrolabe equipped with seven plates inlaid with silver, a water-clock that chimed on the hour, and a nightingale made of brass that sang when the wind blew. Farther inside there were even more ingenious mechanisms, and I stared at them the way a child watches a juggler, when an old man stepped out from a doorway in the back.
"Welcome to my humble shop, my lord,” he said. “My name is Bashaarat. How may I assist you?"
"These are remarkable items that you have for sale. I deal with traders from every corner of the world, and yet I have never seen their like. From where, may I ask, did you acquire your merchandise?"
"I am grateful to you for your kind words,” he said. “Everything you see here was made in my workshop, by myself or by my assistants under my direction."
I was impressed that this man could be so well versed in so many arts. I asked him about the various instruments in his shop, and listened to him discourse learnedly about astrology, mathematics, geomancy, and medicine. We spoke for over an hour, and my fascination and respect bloomed like a flower warmed by the dawn, until he mentioned his experiments in alchemy.
"Alchemy?” I said. This surprised me, for he did not seem the type to make such a sharper's claim. “You mean you can turn base metal into gold?"
"I can, my lord, but that is not in fact what most seek from alchemy."
"What do most seek, then?"
"They seek a source of gold that is cheaper than mining ore from the ground. Alchemy does describe a means to make gold, but the procedure is so arduous that, by comparison, digging beneath a mountain is as easy as plucking peaches from a tree."
I smiled. “A clever reply. No one could dispute that you are a learned man, but I know better than to credit alchemy."
Bashaarat looked at me and considered. “I have recently built something that may change your opinion. You would be the first person I have shown it to. Would you care to see it?"
"It would be a great pleasure."
"Please follow me.” He led me through the doorway in the rear of his shop. The next room was a workshop, arrayed with devices whose functions I could not guess—bars of metal wrapped with enough copper thread to reach the horizon, mirrors mounted on a circular slab of granite floating in quicksilver—but Bashaarat walked past these without a glance.
Instead he led me to a sturdy pedestal, chest high, on which a stout metal hoop was mounted upright. The hoop's opening was as wide as two outstretched hands, and its rim so thick that it would tax the strongest man to carry. The metal was black as night, but polished to such smoothness that, had it been a different color, it could have served as a mirror. Bashaarat bade me stand so that I looked upon the hoop edgewise, while he stood next to its opening.
"Please observe,” he said.
Bashaarat thrust his arm through the hoop from the right side, but it did not extend out from the left. Instead, it was as if his arm were severed at the elbow, and he waved the stump up and down, and then pulled his arm out intact.
I had not expected to see such a learned man perform a conjuror's trick, but it was well done, and I applauded politely.
"Now wait a moment,” he said as he took a step back.
I waited, and behold, an arm reached out of the hoop from its left side, without a body to hold it up. The sleeve it wore matched Bashaarat's robe. The arm waved up and down, and then retreated through the hoop until it was gone.
The first trick I had thought a clever mime, but this one seemed far superior, because the pedestal and hoop were clearly too slender to conceal a person. “Very clever!” I exclaimed.
"Thank you, but this is not mere sleight of hand. The right side of the hoop precedes the left by several seconds. To pass through the hoop is to cross that duration instantly."
"I do not understand,” I said.
"Let me repeat the demonstration.” Again he thrust his arm through the hoop, and his arm disappeared. He smiled, and pulled back and forth as if playing tug-a-rope. Then he pulled his arm out again, and presented his hand to me with the palm open. On it lay a ring I recognized.
"That is my ring!” I checked my hand, and saw that my ring still lay on my finger. “You have conjured up a duplicate."
"No, this is truly your ring. Wait."
Again, an arm reached out from the left side. Wishing to discover the mechanism of the trick, I rushed over to grab it by the hand. It was not a false hand, but one fully warm and alive as mine. I pulled on it, and it pulled back. Then, as deft as a pickpocket, the hand slipped the ring from my finger and the arm withdrew into the hoop, vanishing completely.
"My ring is gone!” I exclaimed.
"No, my lord,” he said. “Your ring is here.” And he gave me the ring he held. “Forgive me for my game."
I replaced it on my finger. “You had the ring before it was taken from me."
At that moment an arm reached out, this time from the right side of the hoop. “What is this?” I exclaimed. Again I recognized it as his by the sleeve before it withdrew, but I had not seen him reach in.
"Recall,” he said, “the right side of the hoop precedes the left.” And he walked over to the left side of the hoop, and thrust his arm through from that side, and again it disappeared.
Your Majesty has undoubtedly already grasped this, but it was only then that I understood: whatever happened on the right side of the hoop was complemented, a few seconds later, by an event on the left si
de. “Is this sorcery?” I asked.
"No, my lord, I have never met a djinni, and if I did, I would not trust it to do my bidding. This is a form of alchemy."
He offered an explanation, speaking of his search for tiny pores in the skin of reality, like the holes that worms bore into wood, and how upon finding one he was able to expand and stretch it the way a glassblower turns a dollop of molten glass into a long-necked pipe, and how he then allowed time to flow like water at one mouth while causing it to thicken like syrup at the other. I confess I did not really understand his words, and cannot testify to their truth. All I could say in response was, “You have created something truly astonishing."
"Thank you,” he said, “but this is merely a prelude to what I intended to show you.” He bade me follow him into another room, farther in the back. There stood a circular doorway whose massive frame was made of the same polished black metal, mounted in the middle of the room.
"What I showed you before was a Gate of Seconds,” he said. “This is a Gate of Years. The two sides of the doorway are separated by a span of twenty years."
I confess I did not understand his remark immediately. I imagined him reaching his arm in from the right side and waiting twenty years before it emerged from the left side, and it seemed a very obscure magic trick. I said as much, and he laughed. “That is one use for it,” he said, “but consider what would happen if you were to step through.” Standing on the right side, he gestured for me to come closer, and then pointed through the doorway. “Look."
I looked, and saw that there appeared to be different rugs and pillows on the other side of the room than I had seen when I had entered. I moved my head from side to side, and realized that when I peered through the doorway, I was looking at a different room from the one I stood in.
FSF, September 2007 Page 15
