‘And if the Qax, or the Friends of the future, choose not to allow it?’
‘Believe me. We’ll find a way.’
Parz nodded, his green eyes narrowing. ‘Yes. But perhaps we should begin considering now how to do such a thing. We may need the option rapidly, should we decide to use it - or should it become necessary to do so.’
Harry opened a pixel-blurred mouth and laughed. ‘In case of emergency, break laws of physics.’
‘Start working on it, Harry,’ Michael said wearily. ‘Shira, it’s not impossible. Wormholes are inherently unstable. Active feedback has to be built into the design, to enable a hole to endure ...’
But Shira had turned away again and was bent over her data. In the semi-darkness of the lifedome, with her face lit from beneath by the pink-blue glow of Poole’s old data, her eyes were huge and liquid.
She was shutting them out once more.
‘If only the Friends would let us in on their secret,’ Michael said, half to himself. ‘Then perhaps we could assess the risks, analyse the potential benefits against the costs of allowing them to go ahead.’
‘But they won’t,’ Harry said. ‘All they’ll tell us is how the Project will make it all right in the end.’
‘Yes,’ Parz said. ‘One senses from their words that it is as if the Project will not merely justify any means, any sacrifice - but will somehow nullify the sacrifice itself, in its development.’ He looked at Michael. ‘Is that possible?’
Michael sighed, feeling very tired, very old; the weight of centuries pressed down on him, evidently unnoticed by the Virtual of his father, by this faded bureaucrat, by the baffling, enigmatic girl from fifteen centuries away. ‘If they won’t tell us what they’re up to, maybe we can try to work it out. We know that the core of the Project is the implosion, the induced gravitational collapse of Jupiter, by the implanting of seed singularities.’
‘Yes,’ Parz said. ‘But there is a subtle design. We know already that the precise form of that collapse - the parameters of the resulting singularity - is vital to the success of the Project. And that’s what they hoped to engineer with their singularity bullets.’
Harry frowned hugely. ‘What’s the point? One singularity is much like another. Isn’t it? I mean, a black hole is black.’
Michael shook his head. ‘Harry, a lot of information gets lost, destroyed, when a black hole forms from a collapsing object. A black hole forming is like an irruption of disorder into the universe. But there are still three distinguishing quantities associated with any hole: its mass, its electrical charge and its spin.’
A non-rotating, electrically neutral hole, Michael said, would have a spherical event horizon - the Schwarzschild solution to Einstein’s ancient, durable equations of general relativity. But a rotating, charged object left behind a Kerr-Newman hole: a more general solution to the equations, a non-spherical horizon.
Parz was performing gentle, weightless somersaults; he looked like a small, sleek animal. ‘Kerr-Newman predicts that if one may choose mass, charge and spin, one may sculpt event horizons.’
Harry smiled slowly. ‘So you can customize a hole. But my question still stands: so what?’
‘One could go further,’ Parz said, still languidly somersaulting. ‘One could construct a naked singularity.’
‘A naked singularity?’
Michael sighed. ‘All right, Harry. Think of the formation of a hole again: the implosion of a massive object, the formation of an event horizon.
‘But, within the event horizon, the story isn’t over yet. The matter of the dead star keeps imploding; nothing - not pressure from the heat of the core, not even the Pauli exclusion principle - can keep it from collapsing all the way.’
Harry frowned. ‘All the way to what?’
‘A singularity. A flaw in spacetime; a place where spacetime quantities - mass/energy density, space curvature - all go off the scale, to infinity. Inside a well-behaved black hole, the singularity is effectively cloaked from the rest of the universe by the event horizon. The horizon renders us safe from the damage the singularity can do. But there are ways for singularities to form without a cloaking event horizon - to be “naked”. If a star is spinning rapidly enough before its collapse, for instance ... Or if the mass distribution is not compact enough in the first place - if it is elongated, or spiky.
‘The singularity in such a solution wouldn’t be a point, as would form at the centre of a spherically symmetric, non-rotating star. Instead, the material of the star would collapse to a thin disc - like a pancake - and the singularity would form within the pancake, and along a spike through the axis of the pancake - a spindle of flawed spacetime.
‘The naked singularity would be unstable, probably - it would rapidly collapse within an event horizon - but it would last long enough to do a lot of damage—’
Harry frowned. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. What damage?’
Poole locked his hands behind his head. ‘How can I explain this? Harry, it’s all to do with boundary conditions ...’
Spacetime could only evolve in an orderly and predictable way if its boundaries, in space and time, were themselves orderly. The boundaries had to satisfy what were called ‘Cauchy conditions’; causality itself could only flow from stable Cauchy boundaries.
There were three types of boundary: in the beginning there was the initial singularity - the Big Bang, from which the universe expanded. That was one boundary: the start of time.
Then there were boundaries at infinity: spacelike infinity contained all the places infinitely remote from the observer ... and then, far ahead, at timelike infinity. At the end of all worldlines.
The initial singularity, and the boundaries at spacelike and timelike infinity, were all Cauchy boundaries ...
But there was another class of boundary.
Naked singularities.
‘It sounds fantastic,’ Harry said.
‘Maybe it is. But nobody can think of any reason why such objects shouldn’t form. There are some quite easy ways for this to happen, if you wait long enough. You know that black holes aren’t really “black”, that they have a temperature—’
‘Yes. Hawking evaporation. Just like the holes in the earth-craft.’
‘Small holes like those in the earth-craft’s singularity plane will simply implode when they have evaporated completely. But in the far future, when the singularities at the heart of galaxy-mass holes begin to emerge from within their evaporating horizons ...
‘Harry, naked singularities are non-Cauchy boundaries to spacetime. There is no order, no pattern to the spacetime which might evolve from a naked singularity; we can’t make any causal predictions about events. Some theorists hold that if a naked singularity were to form then spacetime - the universe - would simply be destroyed.’
‘Jesus. Then maybe they can’t form after all?’
‘You should have been a philosopher, Harry.’
‘I should?’
‘That’s the principle of Cosmic Censorship - that there’s something out there, something like the Pauli principle maybe, which will stop the formation of naked flaws. That’s one theory.’
‘Yeah. But who is this Cosmic Censor? And can we trust him?’
‘The trouble is that we can think of too many ways for naked singularities to be formed. And nobody can think of a particularly intelligent way for Cosmic Censorship to come about ...’
Parz, hovering, had listened to all this with eyes closed. ‘Indeed. And perhaps that is the goal of the Friends.’
Michael felt the pieces of the puzzle sliding around in his head. ‘My God,’ he said softly. ‘They’ve hinted at a power over history. Do you think they could be so stupid?’ He looked up at the Virtual. ‘Harry, maybe the Friends are trying to change history using a naked singularity ...’
‘But they could never control it,’ Parz said, eyes still closed. ‘It would be utterly random. At best, like lobbing a grenade into a political discussion. It will change the agen
da, yes, but in an utterly discontinuous fashion. And at worst—’
‘At worst they could wreck spacetime,’ Michael said. Harry looked down at him, serious and calm. ‘What do we do, Michael? Do we help them?’
‘Like hell,’ Michael said quietly. ‘We have to stop them.’
Shira looked up from her data screens, her long neck seeming to uncoil. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said calmly. ‘You’re wrong.’
‘Then you’ll have to explain it to me,’ Michael said tiredly. ‘Harry, do you have that option I asked for?’
Harry’s smile was strained. ‘We can close the Interface, the AIs say. But I don’t understand how. And I don’t think you’re going to like the solution.’
Michael felt an enormous weight, oppressive, seeming to strive to crush his chest. ‘I don’t like any of this. But we’re going to do it anyway. Harry, start when you can.’
He closed his eyes and lay back on the couch, hoping for sleep to claim him. After a few seconds the surge of the Spline’s insystem drive pressed him deeper into the cushions.
13
At the zenith, the Interface portal was a tiny, growing flower of electric blue. The Spline ship was already within the thousand-mile region of exotic space, the squeezed vacuum which surrounded the wormhole mouth.
Jasoft Parz settled, birdlike, onto the deck in the new artificial gravity of the Spline drive; he took a seat and watched Michael closely, his green eyes sharp, fascinated.
Shira got out of her chair and walked unsteadily across the deck. Her eyes were huge, bruised, the shape of her skull showing through her thin flesh. ‘You must not do this,’ she said.
Michael began, ‘My dear—’
Harry cut in, ‘Michael, we’re in the middle of a storm of messages. I’m surprised the hull of the dome hasn’t burned off under comm-laser fire ... I think you’ll have to deal with this. All the ships within a thousand miles are aware we’re moving, and a dozen different authorities want to know what the hell we’re doing.’
‘Can any of them stop us before we reach the Interface?’
Harry considered. ‘Probably not. The Spline, even disabled as it is, is so damn big it would have to be blown out of the sky to be stopped. And there’s no armour heavy enough to do that, in range.’
‘Okay. Ignore them.’
‘And we’re getting messages from the earth-craft,’ Harry reported. ‘Also inquiring politely as to what we think we’re doing.’
Shira’s hands twisted together. ‘You must listen to them, Michael.’
‘Answer me honestly, Shira. Can the Friends do anything to stop us?’
Her mouth worked and her eyes seemed heavy, as if she could barely restrain hysterical tears; and Michael felt an absurd, irrational urge to comfort her. ‘No,’ she said at last, quietly. ‘Not physically, no. But—’
‘Then ignore them too.’ Michael thought it over. ‘In fact, Harry, I want you to disable the whole damn comms panel ... Any equipment the Spline is carrying too. Permanently; I want you to trash it. Can you do that?’
Again a short hesitation. ‘Sure, Michael,’ Harry said uncertainly. ‘But - are you sure that’s such a good idea?’
‘Where we’re going we’re not going to need it,’ Michael said. ‘It’s just a damn distraction. In,’ he studied the zenith, ‘what, forty minutes?—’
‘Thirty-eight,’ Harry said gloomily.
‘—we’re going to enter the Interface. And we’re going to close it. And there’s nothing more anybody can say that will make a bit of difference to that.’
‘I’m not going to argue,’ Harry urged, ‘but - Michael - what about Miriam?’
‘Miriam’s a distraction,’ Michael said firmly. ‘Come on, Harry, do it. I need your support.’
There was a silence of a few seconds. Then: ‘Done,’ Harry said. ‘We’re all alone, Michael.’
‘You are a fool,’ Shira told Michael coldly.
Michael sighed and tried to regain a comfortable posture on his couch. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve been called that.’
‘Might be the last, though,’ Parz said dryly.
‘You think you are solving the problem, with one bold, audacious stroke,’ Shira said, her water-blue eyes fixed on Michael’s face. ‘You think you are fearless, in the face of unknown dangers - an encounter with the future, even with death. But you are not fearless. You are afraid. You fear even words. You fear the words of your contemporaries - how many lectures have I endured on how important it was that we should allow you into our confidence ... that we should share the immense problems with which we grappled? And now you - as arrogant as you are foolish - turn your back even on your own kind. You fear the words of the Friends themselves - even of me - you fear the logic, the truth in our convictions.’
Michael massaged the bridge of his nose, wishing he didn’t feel so damned tired. ‘Quite a speech,’ he said.
She drew herself upright. ‘And you fear yourself. For fear of your own weakness of resolve, you dare not even consider the possibility of consulting the one closest to you, Miriam, who is less than a light-second away. You would rather, as you put it, “trash” your comms equipment than—’
‘Enough,’ Michael snapped.
She drew back a little at the sharpness of his tone, but she held her ground; pale eyes glittered from her bony face.
Michael said, ‘To hell with any of that. It’s academic, Shira. The rules have changed; the outside universe might as well not exist as far as what happens to this ship from now on is concerned; we’ve established that. There’s only the four of us now - you, me, Parz and Harry—’
‘—and several hundred drones,’ Harry put in uncertainly, ‘who I’m having a certain amount of difficulty controlling—’
Michael ignored him. ‘Just the four of us, Shira, in this bubble of air and warmth. And the only way this ship is going to get turned aside is if you - you - convince me, and the others, that your Project is worth the incalculable risk it entails.’ He studied her, trying to gauge her reaction. ‘Well? You have thirty-eight minutes.’
‘Thirty-six,’ Harry said.
Shira closed her eyes and drew in a deep, shuddering breath. ‘All right,’ she said. She crossed the deck to her chair, her gait stiff and ungainly, and sat down.
Michael, watching her, felt himself come alive with anticipation, rejuvenated by the prospect of having his questions answered at last.
Shira talked to them of Eugene Wigner, and of the von Neumann catastrophe.
Like the alive-dead condition of Schrödinger’s cat, events remained in a state of unreality until observed by a conscious observer. But each act of observation merely added another layer of potentiality to the core events, themselves unrealized until observed in turn.
The chains of quantum functions, in Wigner’s view, extended to infinity in an unending chain, an infinite regress.
‘Thus, the paradox of Wigner’s friend,’ Shira said.
Michael shook his head impatiently. ‘But this is pure philosophical debate,’ he said. ‘Wigner himself believed that the regress was not infinite ... that the chain of wave-functions terminates as soon as a conscious mind makes an observation.’
‘That is one view,’ Shira said quietly. ‘But there are others ...’
Shira described the theory of the ‘participatory universe’.
Life - intelligent life - was, under this hypothesis, essential for the very existence of the universe. ‘Imagine a myriad of box-cat-friend chains of quantum functions, all extending through time, without end. Constantly,’ Shira said, ‘life - consciousness - is calling the universe into existence by the very act of observing it.’
Consciousness was like an immense, self-directed eye, a recursive design developed by the universe to invoke its own being.
And if this were true, the goal of consciousness, of life, said Shira, must be to gather and organize data - all data, everywhere - to observe and actualize all events. For without actualization there co
uld be no reality.
Arising from a million chance beginnings, like the stirring of the chemical soup of Earth’s ancient seas, life had spread - was continuing to spread - and to observe, to gather and record data using every resource available.
‘We live in an era somewhere near the start of the contact between species, on an interstellar scale,’ Shira said. ‘There is war, death, destruction, genocide. But one can, from a Godlike perspective, regard it all as interfacing - as a sharing, a pooling, of information.
‘Ultimately, surely, the squabbling species of our day will resolve their childish differences - differences of special prejudice, of narrow interests, of inadequate perception - and move together, perhaps under the leadership of the Xeelee, towards the ultimate goal of life: the gathering and recording of all data, the observation and invocation of the universe itself.’
More and more resources would be devoted to this goal - not just in extent, as life spread from its myriad points of origin, but in depth and scope. At last all the energy sources available for exploitation, from the gravitational potential of galactic superclusters down to the zero-point energy inherent in space itself, would be suborned to the great project of consciousness.
Shira described the future of the universe.
In a few billion years - a blink of cosmic time - Earth’s sun would leave the Main Sequence of stars, its outer layers ballooning, swallowing the remains of the planets. Humanity would move on, of course, abandoning the old in favour of the new. More stars would form, to replace those which had failed and died ... but the formation rate of new stars was already declining exponentially, with a half-life of a few billion years.
After about a thousand billion years, no more stars would form. The darkened galaxies would continue to turn, but chance collisions and close encounters would take their cumulative toll. Planets would ‘evaporate’ from their parent suns, and stars would evaporate from their galaxies. Those stars remaining in the time-ravaged star systems would lose energy, steadily, by gravitational radiation, and coalesce at last into immense, galactic-scale black holes.
Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring Page 43
