Lori forced herself to push through to this vision, and it dawned on her that much of the work over the last two weeks had really been about Danni preparing her to make the leap to this far higher plane.
She heard Danni’s voice again at her side as she looked into the pulsing construct. “Got it? Do you understand how Serendipity could do this? You must trust me when I say that she is now so powerful as a quantum processor that she can compress and generate this graphical estimation.”
Lori heard her own voice respond, “I guess I can imagine such power, but we all know that she can’t actually see everything there is out there. Even within the small space of data generated here on Earth she misses things. Extrapolate out to a collection of ‘everything,’ and this moment in time must be full of holes.”
“It is beautiful, Lori. Just accept those holes, and we can take the next step as we stalk our puzzle.” Danni was taking a long sip from her tea mug while she watched Lori’s face and when she saw sufficient understanding, she continued.
As she began to speak again, a number appeared above the vibrating node cluster—a huge number, ten to an enormous power. “Now imagine, Lori, that the number you see was generated by a special function within Serendipity, a function that you have never been shown. It is a master process that runs against all those nodes, giving each of them a specific ‘numerical weight’ and then adding all up those weights into that super-number.” Danni’s tone was rising above tranquility. “The super-number simply represents a machined calculation by a fixed algorithm. The method accepts the data holes. It knows they will always obtain as Serendipity performs her normal ongoing work. It’s an arbitrary number generated by a strict formula that we have been refining for years. Here’s the formula.” Danni looked from Lori back to the cloud. She broke into a sparkling grin as an alien-feeling formula wrote itself across the peach air above the huge number.
“The glowing part in the brackets is how she understands the moment in time for the calculation, currently this morning at 9:18 AM PST. Now watch what happens when I spin the time dial back 100 years.” Danni had her dash out and she edited the formula and hit the run button.
Lori watched the turmoil of nodes swirling within the cloud. She also watched the expression on Andrzej’s face. He looked like a builder watching a hurricane wind testing his roof, hoping it had been built strong enough to withstand the strain. The storm went on for minutes as they all watched, but then slowly subsided until the nodes hung once again in still space and the big number stopped its wild fluctuations.
“What do you see, Lori?” Danni was on her left side, speaking calmly again after the storm.
“I see a new cloud of nodes, looking very different from the one before, but I see that the number remained the same.”
“If I tell you that the number stays the same no matter what moment in time you choose, even if you go back to an era where Serendipity has only pre-digital historical text data to work with, what would that suggest to you?”
Lori knew she shouldn’t be able to get her head around this. She was just a polymath grunt from D.C. who was good with algorithms. But the answer to Danni’s question was somehow obvious to her. “It means that there has always been the same amount of ‘matter’ in the universe. And I guess there always will be. Even though I don’t really feel sure I know what ‘matter’ is, it’s not important since it is always whatever Serendipity thinks it is. Whatever she chooses to count. Is that right?”
“That is exactly right, Lori. As you go back in time and the data gets sparse, the holes get bigger and make up the difference. The key is how she weights the anticipated holes. It’s like factoring for anti-matter. Call it: anti-data.” Danni watched her for a few moments before prompting. “So now can you guess what the puzzle question is?”
Lori sat back and pondered while the others watched her. “I feel like it’s on the tip of my tongue, but I know it won’t come out. It’s so weird. I can feel the answer, I can taste it, but I can’t think or say it.”
“Don’t tell her yet.” Morley jumped in before Danni could speak. “Let’s play the last histogram first. Lori can watch Simon get you to state your question the first time, Danni. I don’t think it, or you, have changed much in 70-plus years.”
Things One and Two
Like most people she knew, Lori stayed away from beaches. She couldn’t afford to get to the pristine ones where sand was continually dumped into natural rock bays in a never-ending battle to recreate what nature had taken eons to establish and humankind had quickly sped beyond to ruin. The various eroded shorelines available to her were a mixture of riptide plagued drop-offs and toxic carnivals where population centers had fought and lost against the rising water.
But now she found herself walking down a narrow band of sand with a dead calm ocean on her right side, palm trees and scattered small buildings and huts on her left. The air was hot and humid, and it washed gently through her hair and across her face with a touch so luxurious that within an astonishing instant she understood beaches.
“That’s the Delani Beach Hotel coming up on the left.”
Lori had been completely in the moment of the histogram and Morley’s voice caught her off guard. She turned to find all three of them walking behind her on the sand. They all looked much younger, tanned and relaxed, but there was a distinct transparency to their bodies as if they were projections or ghosts stalking a past reality. She realized that was exactly what they were.
She held her hand up towards the sun, which was just rising over the horizon, and saw that her form presented with a similar translucence. This histogram was different from the others. Then she remembered Morley’s peyote brownies and she was gripped by a momentary terror, thinking of how far away from her normal senses she must be now. But the fear ebbed away from her mind as Morley continued to talk from behind and the more youthful Danni moved towards her side as they headed towards a cluster of buildings and tents that peeked out from the tree line just ahead.
Lori thought: This must be how they know so much and how they have stayed alive so long. This space they live in. This combination of Gumbo and time travel through Serendipity and huge projects and puzzles, they combine all this with the audacity to manipulate their personal biology. Peyote and the mysterious epigenetics side of Skramble and Hyde. CMS and their weird grip on history through the World History Institute. They play by different rules. How did I get here?
Lori decided to let her fears go, to just listen and watch. She felt like a different Lori Norton, and she saw that there was no going back. She didn’t want to go back.
“So, the year is 2075, somewhere around February, and this place is one of our old headquarters, picked up by Simon when he ran into me and a few other misfits who lived in East Africa. That’s where we are by the way, on the Indian Ocean. It’s a long story that took a rather short period of time to unfold. We were all squeezed together by chance circumstances mostly stemming from the famous ersatz rapture of President Lester Cleland.” Morley was talking, and his voice soothed like the ocean air. Time was halted for Lori. “Our little happenstance band got blended by those weird times into what you are coming to know as Skramble and Hyde, the crypto-state. If you ever want to get into the details, read the book our friend Dahlgren wrote, Pavlov’s Colon. But today we are taking an expensive stroll back in time so that you can grasp, in whatever way you choose, two simple things.”
Morley brought them to a halt by a small set of rickety stairs that ran from the sand up to a concrete deck that was attached to the largest building in a group of simple but practical structures. The deck was set with dining tables, and two very dark men were moving about preparing for diners to arrive. It was quiet except for the occasional bird call or kitchen sound, until one of the men turned on the ancient screen above a bar. The bar top curved towards the interior of the cabana, from a dappled end facing the ocean back into a darker open-sided
reception space under the palms.
With a face and posture that encouraged her to accept whatever lessons were about to unfold, holes and all, Morley continued with the theatrically hushed voice of a museum tour guide. “Thing One is that the puzzle is simply that—just a puzzle. One of the few things we all have in common at Skramble and Hyde is that we all like puzzles, each in their own way, of course.” He looked at Lori with a pause, squinting, preparing to choose his words carefully. “It was an existentially dangerous time for us. Simon said we needed a path that no AI could predict by using our known history as a guide. He guessed there were other Serendipitys coming down the pike. Plus, we needed a reason to bother pushing on—one that was compelling, complicated, and absurd.”
Morley smiled all to himself. “Those were the exact adjectives that Simon used. ‘Compelling, complicated, and absurd.’ For him the puzzle was simply a way to inject randomness into his business plans and to force us into escaping destruction by using our collective wits. He wanted a puzzle for Skramble and Hyde’s new mission statement.” Morley beamed like a schoolboy. “So, Thing Two is that survival should be an art not a fate.”
Danni put her hand on Lori’s arm, saying, “That is pure Simon, mixed with some Morley and bits of the others. I could never see beyond whatever puzzle was in front me. I wouldn’t have survived two minutes without him or them.”
Morley turned back towards Lori as he started up the steps, speaking again in his stage whisper. “Shall we join our singularly ominous histogram, which is already in progress? The shareholders of Skramble and Hyde are down to nine, their private island is being taken away by the rising sea, and an increasingly hostile world is closing in on them. They are hiding out preparing to decide on a next step.”
Donkeys Never Forget
Watching Morley watching Morley was the weirdest thing Lori had ever experienced. She had seen herself in plenty of interactive streams before, mostly family get-togethers and the like, but this was entirely different.
The translucent voyeur-Morley, the one who winked at her as he took a seat at a dining table towards the back, seemed fortyish with smooth skin and blond highlights in his light brown hair. She could feel the machined logic that had estimated and created this him. The more solid appearing hologram-Morley, sitting beside a front table with sandaled heels up on the deck rail, was dark brown and wrinkled with hair fully overtaken by gray.
Morley the voyeur beckoned them, and they all three took seats with him in the back by a bar. Lori wondered if the holo-Morley could sense the chairs moving.
An older man came towards them, walking slowly through the scattered chairs of the reception space and then out to the deck, taking a seat next to holo-Morley and facing the rising sun. He was in his late seventies and he slipped dark glasses over his eyes, as Morley took his feet off the rail and straightened up. Holo-Morley greeted the older man with a friendly pat on the shoulder, “Morning Simon. I was just sitting here enjoying one last sunrise over our lovely ocean. I am going to miss it. How about you? Ready to relocate?”
An even older man brought a thermos of coffee and three mugs to the table. Black skin and spotty grey stubble, he looked ancient but still moved with surprising fluidity. As he sat, Simon and Morley both nodded a simultaneous greeting and Morley said, “Thank you George. I’m going to miss you and your cooking even more than the sunrises.”
“Why don’t you reconsider and come with us George?” Simon knew the answer but wanted to maintain the ritual to the bitter end.
“No thanks, bwana. I’ll hold down the fort here. You never know when you may want to come back.” George stroked his grey stubble, trying to imagine the Delani Beach compound in two days’ time, after the airlift had cleared the whole gang of them out. It would be with sudden efficiency, Simon’s trademark. All was quiet for a minute as the three old men sipped their coffee.
Simon was the first to speak. “No, we need to go, and in the nick of time really.”
Morley thought the lyrics to an ancient tune in his head out loud. “Like desperados waiting for a train.”
The reflective morning quiet resumed until Simon continued. “Andrzej has finished our new home, work of art really. High, dry, and bulletproof. About as well obfuscated as any seminal node in the world. You’re going to love it, Morley—beautiful hills to wander and beaches to wade. I can already see your old mane flickering in the wind while you watch the sun rise over a new ocean.”
“Cheers, Simon. I’m sure I’ll like it, and it will be good to see what our young prodigy has produced.” Morley’s eyes soured a bit behind his sunglasses, but the others couldn’t tell as he looked to the south. “Everyone goes on about how change is good, but everyone is usually bloody wrong. Still, I have been doing some interesting research on the local succulents. Could be my new hobby. The cactaceae family sounds particularly intriguing.”
Simon and George both laughed while exchanging knowing looks.
Lori heard voices coming from the hallway and two women emerged, deep in conversation but homing in towards the breakfast table. As they approached, George got up and kissed each of them good morning before disappearing through a door that gave Lori a glimpse of a rustic kitchen. Both women were in their seventies, sharp edged and clear eyed. The taller one, with blond hair in a long ponytail, wore an elegant jumpsuit, while the smaller woman, with jet black hair closely cropped, wore jeans and a short sleeve shirt.
Morley the translucent leaned towards Lori. “The blond is Theresa Cunningham. She created Animonics way back in the 30’s. The shorter one is Julia Dresden, wife of Curtis Dresden, he who was assassinated. They were both founding members of our original gang. The two of them are preparing to leave, but they are headed for our old citadel in Telluride. Too cold for me up there.” He clasped his hands over his lower face as if warming them with his breath. Lori could see he was covering an expression of sadness. “I’d forgotten how few of us were left at this point. Theresa’s husband Joseph died a few years before this, and Norris killed himself not long after that. Long gone. And Dahl—well, Dahl died right here at the Delani in 2071.”
“Norris killed himself?” Lori had formed a special picture in her mind for this man Norris. Morley’s wistful narratives had left her with a romantic notion of a man from a different, wilder time. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized suicide was perfect for Norris.
Morley did something with his dash and the histogram froze in place. A momentary pause with all the characters arrested in their pre-breakfast motions. Looking past his own ghost and out to the smooth blue ocean, translucent Morley answered her. “He wasn’t well—terrible arthritis and a failing heart. His hands were so gnarled that he couldn’t tie his boots. Dan Talbot, the fellow who owned this place before we got here, was also failing. Dan’s mind was slipping away from him, and he knew it. We all did.”
Tears were forming in the corners of his eyes as he surveyed the landscape and the bygone assembly of his friends. “So, one night the two of them said goodbye to us in their own private ways. Just a particularly good dinner cooked by George, lots of drinks as the sun set, with both of them holding forth on how the world could go fuck itself. Early the next morning they took the skiff out about a mile and both rolled overboard, probably with weights tied to their feet. It was just like them. Dan even sent a last text and left his device on the seat, so it would be easy for us to find the skiff and drag it back.”
“Anyway, that was a good five years before the moment we are here to relive. Cheers, Norris.” Morley had been speaking to the ocean and now he turned back to Lori and the others while taking his dash out and poking the screen. “Murcheson is long dead and the Comms left us alone for a few years, but eventually they got together in an effort to track down Serendipity and put her out of business. They wanted their old marketing hegemonies back, and they were too stupid to realize that Danni and Simon had dispersed her directly
into the bloodstream of the web. Coming after us was strictly for revenge, and the posse was led by Murcheson’s grandson Donald.” Morley bared his teeth for Lori, with something that wasn’t a smile. “Truly an evil little fuck that one, a product of the times. He’s the reason our little band here is preparing to decamp to the very rock pile you now call home. This is 2075, just days before a tactical missile launched by a Chinese merc company slammed into this very compound. They killed George, his family, and a lot of other friends of ours. They claimed it was an accident.”
His canines still poked below his upper lip and his eyes narrowed. “I showed you those histograms so you would understand the real-world fight to survive that goes on outside of the protected bubble of Gumbo. We, or I should say ‘I,’ still have one big act of retribution to carry out.” Morley caught himself and smiled at Lori as if to depressurize the moment, “Won’t be your worry, Lori, or anyone else’s—it’s all mine. Like they say, ‘Donkeys never forget.’”
“It’s elephants, Morley, not donkeys.” Danni, in her temporarily younger self, walked over to his side and put a thin arm around him. Lori and Andrzej said nothing as they waited for the moment of remembrance to pass quietly.
After a few seconds Morley breathed a deep sigh and gently broke away, beckoning them back to their observation seats. “Right, then, let’s get back to the puzzle.” To Lori, he added, “Simon became a bit obsessed about wanting a perfect puzzle. He kept saying it would serve as our north star while we made our way through the world of sheep—sheep who are easily led by evil or stupid shepherds.”
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