Incarnate- Essence

by Thomas Harper

  She smiled again, “it does.”

  Chapter 70

  “Correlation does not imply causation, contra causation causing concomitant correlation,” Alia said, “or at least the two are correlated,” she chuckled, “inside-out dimensions curve from the outside in, backwards, getting closer as you move away. Can you imagine time? Or imaginary time?” She paused, raising one of her thin brows at me, waiting for a response.

  “Uh…you mean, something I just make up in my mind?”

  “No,” she laughed, “like imaginary numbers. A pesky way of talking about something so significant. So significant that nobody talks about it. Like death. We all die, but nobody talks about it. Death is like an imaginary number in our life, running adjacent to it. We imagine it, we deny it, and then it comes eventually.”

  “And that has to do with reincarnation?”

  Alia laughed again, “No…no, no. Just an old muse’s amusing musings. You mustn’t worry about death. I have it on good authority that you don’t die,” she chuckled, “I’m talking about imaginary numbers. An imaginary number is something multiplied by the square root of negative one. A preposterous notion! But so is reincarnation. Yet possible. You see, square roots of negative numbers yield multiples of the imaginary number i – or j if you’re one of those dastardly electrical engineers. But I like i because I am imagining an imaginary integer! These very real imaginary numbers multiplied by real numbers in my imagination yield numbers that don’t fit on a regular number line. The imaginary number line is orthogonal to a regular number line, creating a two-dimensional plane. Of course, imaginary numbers can have imaginary numbers on much more complex planes – the quaternions and octonions. Oh! The inversions! Such beautiful music in those octonionic inversions. They sing to me, but I no longer dance.”

  “Okay…”

  “Oh, right. Well, imaginary time is a dimension of time that is perpendicular to the dimension of time we’re all used to,” she said, “orthogonal to our four dimensions of spacetime…I have no space for all this time and no time for all this space! And, of course, the infinite fractal of little, itty bitty, teeny weeny, itsy bitsy, tightly curled dimensions of Calabi-Yau space, but…that’s not important for this. Not to say it’s not important, a delicious double negative, but I do so hate to get off track. I used to be so good about it. So good I never even noticed that he…” She paused without going further.

  “So, you’re saying there are two time dimensions running perpendicular to each other?” I asked.

  “More than two, if I imagine imaginary octonions,” Alia smiled, coming out of her reverie, “this is an abstraction of the standard model of quantum mechanics. Oh, how they wish there were mechanics for the quanta, to come and fix it right up. So messy. Many have tried, all have failed,” she chuckled, “such magic would be anathema to our world. Simulacra of simulations with selective susurrations of superstructural systems of syllogisms. Silly simpletons! Mere symbols have no ontological necessity over the ground of being…or do they? I’ve predicted the downwardly causal reverberations and seen the influence on the material world. An interaction so inexorably entangled that one cannot be extracted from the other without collapsing the whole arrangement. Both design one another like two hands drawing each other. Escher, you sly bastard!” she chuckled.

  “Imaginary time?”

  “Right!” she cackled, “Imaginary time is obtained from real time by transforming a time coordinate by multiples of i. With this we can show that Euclidean quantum field theory in N plus one dimensional spacetime is nothing but quantum statistical mechanics in N dimensional space.”

  “What does this have to do with reincarnation?” I asked.

  “Obvious questions are as obvious as tautologies are tautological,” she giggled, “for someone with all the time in the world, you sure are impatient! But I do hate to get distracted. I used to be so good about it. He tried to…” she paused, taking in a breath before continuing, “but yes. Imaginary time. I imagine time is important, and so it is!” she chuckled again, “It’s difficult to explain without going through a bunch of math that nobody else seems to understand,” Alia said with a sardonic grin, “but to grossly simplify things…if you think of a hierarchy of time-dependent dynamic Markov chains undergoing independent Bayesian-iterated Laplace transforms of projective spacetime manifolds made of conformally-compactified anti-De Sitter space within fractal Hausdorff dimensions as a nonlinear impulse response of a defined N dimensional recursion field that initiates a dynamic, downwardly causal perturbation given a set of boundary conditions dependent on a fluctuating set of Hermitian operaters that I call Rich operators in conformally-compactified Minkowski space which can perform both backwards and forwards Fourier transforms on multiple parallel frequencies within Lorentz groups in an octonionic coordinate plane with E8 Lie group conjugation Weyl symmetries interfering in P dimensional spacetime, then a set of inhomogeneous differential equations with chaotically indeterminate superpositions can be used to solve a set of recursive non-arbitrary functions over the domain of N minus one equals P dimensions of spacetime, which very roughly explains how your reincarnation situation works.”

  “I have no idea what you just said.”

  “Imaginary time is taken for granted,” Alia said, “but it’s the only thing that works. It was all theoretical, but he proved it was real…” She said nothing for a time, thinking, and then continued, “I can’t really think of anything analogous in everyday life. My equations for consciousness within confined empirical boundary conditions have an abstract and arbitrary designation for the Markov chain hierarchy level implicit in the recursive, downwardly causal epiphenomenon. The initial condition is usually finite, although expressible as a set of infinite convergent sums, but the boundary conditions allow for strange attractors defined by certain infinite, divergent hierarchy initial conditions which might show a conserved perturbation of the Markov chains in the recursion field propagating though time if we allow for N-dependent orthogonal perturbations in the octonionic spacetime field equations.”

  I shook my head, “what do you mean by equations for consciousness?”

  “They’re an approximation,” she said, “a daring feat! The same way Einstein’s equations for gravity were an approximation.” She paused a bit and then said, “we are our own best friend and worst enemy. My advice is not to use that as an excuse to talk to yourself. You are aware that every person actually has more than one consciousness combined into a unity.”

  “Yeah.”

  You have no idea…or do you?

  “But what does that mean that two consciousness can be combined into one?” she asked, “two can’t be one. Math, as it so often does, eliminates the possibility of two equaling one, and yet with consciousness, it’s possible. Impossible possibilities possibly become probable! And how many consciousness can you get if you keep dividing them beyond two hemispheres? What happens if you combine them? Is consciousness infinitely divisible? Infinitely additive? What’s the limit? Where does consciousness come from when a new person is made? Who are you and what are you doing here?” she laughed, “why is there something instead of nothing? Why are you you instead of someone else? How are we both aware of the same point in time at the same time and how would I even know if you are? If time is infinite, how did we ever get to now if it stretches for infinity into the past?”

  “Is this what your equations tell you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she cackled, “my equations show that there is…something. A ‘fabric’ of consciousness, if you will. Soft and silky when you run a hand over it one way, but rough and sharp in an orthogonal direction. And with the boundary conditions set from the values of this… ‘fabric,’ as well as a few other boundary conditions based on more empirical things about his…about the brain, a fairly accurate description of consciousness can be calculated.”

  “Calculated?”

  “It’s calculations on top of calculations. Turtles all the way down,” s
he chuckled, “A sufficiently powerful computer could replicate a person’s consciousness. Including free will. Such an expensive thing, that free will. Yet nobody ever bought it. How about that? Would you take it if I could give it to you? And yet, here we are, trapped in it. We don’t have a choice in whether we have a choice!” she laughed, “But consciousnesseseseses…consciousnessae? Consciousnessi? Whatever. They’re wily, those plural consciousness. They have a mind of their own,” she laughed again, “consciousness will diverge, sensitive to initial conditions in an incredibly complex dynamic system, in the same way the division of a person’s brain into two will have two plural consciousness’ diverge. Yet you have no choice! You literally can’t make up your mind!” she cackled for quite some time before looking back to me, “What this ‘fabric’ of consciousness is, I have no idea. Can consciousness really know itself? Can anyone know anything when looking at it from inside? We have consciousness agnosia! What is a house if you can’t see it from outside? Plato, you clever spelunker! Yet, from inside, I can get approximations to its boundary conditions, but no description of what it is or even how it interacts with the physical world. But it is inexorably entwined with complex dynamic systems in a downwardly causal way, in which the substrate is the physical interactions and the epiphenomenon is itself a sort of abstract interaction. The ‘fabric’ doesn’t exist without a dynamic substrate, although the actual physical properties of the substrate itself are unimportant as long as the information processing pattern itself is conserved. A one-way relationship, don’t you think? Imagine if you only existed when you were around me? How unfair! How they scream patriarchy! Materialarchy? Physicarchy? How dare I make a neologism with a portmanteau!” she laughed again, “but its continuity is in flux, such that repetitions of past outputs are astronomically improbable. But not impossible! The hierarchy of recursion can have infinite solutions, and when this happens, only infinite boundaries could contain the flux such that past conditions do not determine future conditions,” she paused, a grin spreading over her face, “sort of like quantum tunneling of consciousness. A mind in a box!”

  I stared at her dumbly for a moment before saying, “I still don’t understand.”

  “It’s not an exact analogy,” Alia chuckled, “but you are not contained to a single brain. A single substrate. But I suppose you already know that.”

  “Yeah, but why?” I asked, “What causes it? Can it be replicated?”

  “A glitch.”

  “Huh?”

  “Once again,” she said, “that’s only a rough analogy, but in a perfect universe, you shouldn’t be.”

  “Reincarnation is…some kind of accident?”

  “Ehhh…” she shrugged, “I don’t know if accident is the right word. I don’t know if there even is a right word for it. Is it an ‘accident’ that the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is an irrational number, making it so nobody can ever get the ratio absolutely perfect? In a perfect universe, we could get the ratio perfect, but we don’t, so we can’t. In a perfect universe, you wouldn’t exist, but we don’t, so you do. It’s all very complicated. And unfortunately, I don’t have a full theory for this. I did the math and he did the theory. It’s my fault the two never converged,” she paused a moment, then said, “but it does fall out of the equations under certain conditions. Whether it can be replicated in other people or not, I really couldn’t say. It didn’t seem that important to me before, so I never explored all the implications for this.”

  “But it’s something you could explore?”

  She sighed, “I suppose. But I don’t do that anymore. I haven’t done that dance in a long time. I may have forgotten the steps,” she paused, “no, I haven’t forgotten the steps. But I…I don’t want to remember them.”

  The same look of longing came into her eyes. The things she was saying between her rambling only somewhat made sense to me, but for all I knew, all of it might have been nonsense.

  For all I know, she really is just a typical crazy person…

  Yet the trick with the mirror neurons was…strange…

  …and also reminiscent of what Tory Goodwin said Kali was able to do with his Shift addiction…

  “You have the same look on your face they always do after a while,” Alia said, “and…I know it’s not just how complicated it all is. My mind wanders, even if my legs no longer do. Your mind can forget how to walk straight when you’ve danced as mine has. A straight line in non-Euclidean four-dimensional space might lead you on a wavering path through three-dimensional space. Eshe?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why do they want to replicate it?”

  “Because…they don’t understand. They think it will give them power.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because I don’t understand.”

  “Will understanding help?”

  I sighed. “No.”

  She smiled weakly. “It’s only human to want to know.”

  “That’s the conclusion I’m slowly coming to,” I said, “I’m guessing they were wrong about me being able to make sense of any of this, anyway.”

  But I’d hoped she could, just for my own edification.

  “No worries,” Alia said, giving me her warm smile again. A low rumbling trembled through the building, but she didn’t seem to notice. “I only ever knew one other person who really came close to understanding.”

  “The person who showed you the mirror neuron trick?” I asked, glancing at the door as another rumble reverberated the floor.

  “We all have that thing that’s important to us,” Alia said, “I used to think it was the dance I was doing with the math. I was obsessed with it. It drove me…well, crazy,” she gave a melancholy chuckle, “And it prevented me from doing the dance that was actually important.”

  “Someone you loved.”

  “Yes,” she said, a clarity to her tone I hadn’t seen for the entire conversation, “although I was too obsessed to realize it at the time,” she paused for a few moments, still not paying attention to the rumble, this time louder. Her eyes damp with tears, she continued, “I never got to tell him that I loved him. He did everything he could for me, and I barely acknowledged him for anything more than what he could do to find me the answers I wanted. That’s all I cared about…the answers. But all the goddamn answers in the world won’t bring you happiness,”

  “Richard,” I said, “that’s who that AR projection is supposed to be, isn’t it?”

  She sighed, lying back and looking up at the ceiling, “artificial intelligence is still so primitive. In a decade’s time, they’ll be better than any human.”

  “You’re hoping to recreate him,” I said, “in the future. As an advanced AI.”

  She looked back to me, giving me a sad smile, “I know you were hoping to get something out of this. I understand that need to know. And if it’s important to you, I can explore it further. I can go back to my notes and play around with the equations. I can help them find the answers and replicate it, so that you can understand how this works.”

  I wanted to tell her to do it. To look for the answer so that I could know. And I could even see something in her expression that told me she would actually enjoy going into it again. But there was an unspoken understanding that we both knew it was a bad idea, like offering drugs to an addict. Even if she could find the answers I wanted, it would do nothing to make me happy. It might even make me feel worse. And it could fall into the wrong hands – Benecorp or Enduracorp. Not to mention it would likely reopen her own wounds.

  This time, the rumbling was unmistakably an explosion somewhere nearby.

  “What would you have?” I asked.

  “No matter how advanced an AI gets,” she said, “I’ll never have what I truly wanted. He wasn’t like you. He couldn’t be reborn as an artificial brain. But I wouldn’t mind some peace and quiet,” she gave a wan smile.

  “I understand the feeling,” I said, struggling to wheel myself over to the instruments
.

  “I can only imagine,” she said, “and yet, we only assume that what we’ll find is peace. Perhaps you’re the lucky one. At least you know what to expect.”

  “It was much easier to predict before,” I said, reaching my good arm up to switch the instruments off as another nearby blast rattled the barred windows, “but nowadays things move so fast.”

  “Much too fast,” Alia agreed, glancing to the window. After a moment, she said, “I have nothing more to offer anyone.”

  “Then it’s done,” I said, slowly wheeling back to her bedside.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked in a dreamy voice.

  “Dying? It can.”

  She kept her eyes on me, a weak smile on her lips. She whispered something as the door opened into the room, Doctor Hunt and an orderly rushing in.

  “What have you done?” Hunt asked, running to the instruments, “we need to get the asset out of here!”

  Another explosion rattled the building, so close it must have hit the hospital. I kept my gaze on Alia as Doctor Hunt barked orders, trying to prepare Alia for an evacuation. But I knew her dying had as much to do with her giving up as my removing of the instruments. Hunt reattached some of the instruments, the beeping sporadic. An explosion caused the lights to go out, dim backups coming on a moment later. In that light, I saw nothing in Alia’s eyes.

  “It’s Benecorp!” Hunt shouted just after another blast went off, “they must know we’re here!”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The goddamn Shift gangs,” Hunt said, trying to pull Alia’s bed along with the equipment at the same time. Another explosion rattled the building, sending the orderly pushing the bed sprawling to the floor, scrambling back to her feet. The two of them stopped by the door.

  It took me a moment to realize what Hunt meant. Jiang Wei’s correspondence with the Shift gang…they were waging an attack on Benecorp’s behalf.

  To get Alia? Or to kill her?

  I turned my head to the door where Doctor Hunt stopped. Kali was there.