Axiomatic

by Greg Egan

  I have heard people scoff at the notion that any of this could be difficult. I’m not quite enough of a sadist to hope that they learn the truth, first-hand.

  Actually, outwards motion isn’t quite literally impossible. If it were, everyone caught in The Intake would die at once. The heart has to circulate blood, the lungs have to inhale and exhale, nerve impulses have to travel in all directions. Every single living cell relies on shuffling chemicals back and forth, and I can’t even guess what the effect would be on the molecular level, if electron clouds could fluctuate in one direction but not the reverse.

  There is some leeway. Because the wormhole’s entire eight hundred metres spans such a minute time interval, the distance scale of the human body corresponds to an even shorter period—short enough for quantum effects to come into play. Quantum uncertainty in the space-time metric permits small, localised violations of the classical law’s absolute restriction.

  So, instead of everyone dying on the spot, blood pressure goes up, the heart is stressed, breathing becomes laborious, and the brain may function erratically. Enzymes, hormones, and other biological molecules are all slightly deformed, causing them to bind less efficiently to their targets, interfering to some degree with every biochemical process; haemoglobin, for example, loses its grip on oxygen more easily. Water diffuses out of the body—because random thermal motion is suddenly not so random—leading to gradual dehydration.

  People already in very poor health can die from these effects. Others are just made nauseous, weak and confused—on top of the inevitable shock and panic. They make bad decisions. They get trapped.

  One way or another, a few hundred lives are lost, every time The Intake materialises. Intake Runners may save ten or twenty people, which I’ll admit is not much of a success rate, but until some genius works out how to rid us of the wormhole for good, it’s better than nothing.

  The screen is in place high above us, when we reach the ‘South Operations Centre’—a couple of vans, stuffed with electronics, parked on someone’s front lawn. The now familiar section of street map appears, the image rock steady and in perfect focus, in spite of the fact that it’s being projected from a fourth helicopter, and all four are jittering in the powerful inwards wind. People inside can see out, of course; this map—and the others, at the other compass points—will save dozens of lives. In theory, once outdoors, it should be simple enough to head straight for The Core; after all, there’s no easier direction to find, no easier path to follow. The trouble is, a straight line inwards is likely to lead you into obstacles, and when you can’t retrace your steps, the most mundane of these can kill you.

  So, the map is covered with arrows, marking the optimal routes to The Core, given the constraint of staying safely on the roads. Two more helicopters, hovering above The Intake, are doing one better: with high-velocity paint guns under computer control, and laser-ring inertial guidance systems constantly telling the shuddering computers their precise location and orientation, they’re drawing the same arrows in fluorescent/reflective paint on the invisible streets below. You can’t see the arrows ahead of you, but you can look back at the ones you’ve passed. It helps.

  There’s a small crowd of coordinators, and one or two Runners, around the vans. This scene always looks forlorn to me, like some small-time rained-out amateur athletics event, air traffic notwithstanding. Angelo calls out, ‘Break a leg!’ as I run from the car. I raise a hand and wave without turning. Loudspeakers are blasting the standard advice inwards, cycling through a dozen languages. In the corner of my eye I can see a TV crew arriving. I glance at my watch. Nine minutes. I can’t help thinking, seventy-one per cent, although The Intake is, clearly, one hundred per cent still there. Someone taps me on the shoulder. Elaine. She smiles and says, ‘John, see you in The Core,’ then sprints into the wall of darkness before I can reply.

  Dolores is handing out assignments on RAM. She wrote most of the software used by Intake Runners around the world, but then, she makes her living writing computer games. She’s even written a game which models The Intake itself, but sales have been less than spectacular; the reviewers decided it was in bad taste. ‘What’s next? Let’s play Airline Disaster?’ Maybe they think flight simulators should be programmed for endless calm weather. Meanwhile, televangelists sell prayers to keep the wormhole away; you just slip that credit card into the home-shopping slot for instant protection.

  ‘What have you got for me?’

  ‘Three infants.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘You come late, you get the crumbs.’

  I plug the cartridge into my backpack. A sector of the street map appears on the display panel, marked with three bright red dots. I strap on the pack, and then adjust the display on its movable arm so I can catch it with a sideways glance, if I have to. Electronics can be made to function reliably inside the wormhole, but everything has to be specially designed.

  It’s not ten minutes, not quite. I grab a cup of water from a table beside one of the vans. A solution of mixed carbohydrates, supposedly optimised for our metabolic needs, is also on offer, but the one time I tried it I was sorry; my gut isn’t interested in absorbing anything at this stage, optimised or not. There’s coffee too, but the very last thing I need right now is a stimulant. Gulping down the water, I hear my name, and I can’t help tuning in to the TV reporter’s spiel.

  ‘… John Nately, high-school science teacher and unlikely hero, embarking on this, his eleventh call as a volunteer Intake Runner. If he survives tonight, he’ll have set a new national record—but of course, the odds of making it through grow slimmer with every call, and by now…’

  The moron is spouting crap—the odds do not grow slimmer, a veteran faces no extra risk—but this isn’t the time to set him straight. I swing my arms for a few seconds in a half-hearted warm-up, but there’s not much point; every muscle in my body is tense, and will be for the next eight hundred metres, whatever I do. I try to blank my mind and just concentrate on the run-up—the faster you hit The Intake, the less of a shock it is—and before I can ask myself, for the first time tonight, what the fuck I’m really doing here, I’ve left the isotropic universe behind, and the question is academic.

  The darkness doesn’t swallow you. Perhaps that’s the strangest part of all. You’ve seen it swallow other Runners; why doesn’t it swallow you? Instead, it recedes from your every step. The borderline isn’t absolute; quantum fuzziness produces a gradual fade-out, stretching visibility about as far as each extended foot. By day, this is completely surreal, and people have been known to suffer fits and psychotic episodes at the sight of the void’s apparent retreat. By night, it seems merely implausible, like chasing an intelligent fog.

  At the start, it’s almost too easy; memories of pain and fatigue seem ludicrous. Thanks to frequent rehearsals in a compression harness, the pattern of resistance as I breathe is almost familiar. Runners once took drugs to lower their blood pressure, but with sufficient training, the body’s own vasoregulatory system can be made flexible enough to cope with the stress, unaided. The odd tugging sensation on each leg as I bring it forward would probably drive me mad, if I didn’t (crudely) understand the reason for it: inwards motion is resisted, when pulling, rather than pushing, is involved, because information travels outwards. If I trailed a ten-metre rope behind me, I wouldn’t be able to take a single step; pulling on the rope would pass information about my motion from where I am to a point further out. That’s forbidden, and it’s only the quantum leeway that lets me drag each foot forwards at all.

  The street curves gently to the right, gradually losing its radial orientation, but there’s no convenient turn-off yet. I stay in the middle of the road, straddling the double white line, as the border between past and future swings to the left. The road surface seems always to slope towards the darkness, but that’s just another wormhole effect; the bias in thermal molecular motion—cause of the inwards wind, and slow dehydration—produces a force, or pseudo-force, on
solid objects, too, tilting the apparent vertical.

  ‘—me! Please!’

  A man’s voice, desperate and bewildered—and almost indignant, as if he can’t help believing that I must have heard him all along, that I must have been feigning deafness out of malice or indifference. I turn, without slowing; I’ve learnt to do it in a way that makes me only slightly dizzy. Everything appears almost normal, looking outwards—apart from the fact that the streetlights are out, and so most illumination is from helicopter floodlights and the giant street map in the sky. The cry came from a bus shelter, all vandal-proof plastic and reinforced glass, at least five metres behind me, now; it might as well be on Mars. Wire mesh covers the glass; I can just make out the figure behind it, a faint silhouette.

  ‘Help me!’

  Mercifully—for me—I’ve vanished into this man’s darkness; I don’t have to think of a gesture to make, an expression to put on my face, appropriate to the situation. I turn away, and pick up speed. I’m not inured to the death of strangers, but I am inured to my helplessness.

  After ten years of The Intake, there are international standards for painted markings on the ground around every potential hazard in public open space. Like all the other measures, it helps, slightly. There are standards, too, for eventually eliminating the hazards—designing out the corners where people can be trapped—but that’s going to cost billions, and take decades, and won’t even touch the real problem: interiors. I’ve seen demonstration trap-free houses and office blocks, with doors, or curtained doorways, in every corner of every room, but the style hasn’t exactly caught on. My own house is far from ideal; after getting quotes for alterations, I decided that the cheapest solution was to keep a sledgehammer beside every wall.

  I turn left, just in time to see a trail of glowing arrows hiss into place on the road behind me.

  I’m almost at my first assignment. I tap a button on my backpack and peer sideways at the display, as it switches to a plan of the target house. As soon as The Intake’s position is known, Dolores’s software starts hunting through databases, assembling a list of locations where there’s a reasonable chance that we can do some good. Our information is never complete, and sometimes just plain wrong; census data is often out of date, building plans can be inaccurate, mis-filed, or simply missing—but it beats walking blind into houses chosen at random.

  I slow almost to a walk, two houses before the target, to give myself time to grow used to the effects. Running inwards lessens the outwards components—relative to the wormhole—of the body’s cyclic motions; slowing down always feels like precisely the wrong thing to do. I often dream of running through a narrow canyon, no wider than my shoulders, whose walls will stay apart only so long as I move fast enough; that’s what my body thinks of slowing down.

  The street here lies about thirty degrees off radial. I cross the front lawn of the neighbouring house, then step over a knee-high brick wall. At this angle, there are few surprises; most of what’s hidden is so easy to extrapolate that it almost seems visible in the mind’s eye. A corner of the target house emerges from the darkness on my left; I get my bearings from it and head straight for a side window. Entry by the front door would cost me access to almost half of the house, including the bedroom which Dolores’s highly erratic Room Use Predictor nominates as the one most likely to be the child’s. People can file room-use information with us directly, but few bother.

  I smash the glass with a crowbar, open the window, and clamber through. I leave a small electric lamp on the windowsill—carrying it with me would render it useless—and move slowly into the room. I’m already starting to feel dizzy and nauseous, but I force myself to concentrate. One step too many, and the rescue becomes ten times more difficult. Two steps, and it’s impossible.

  It’s clear that I have the right room when a dresser is revealed, piled with plastic toys, talcum powder, baby shampoo, and other paraphernalia spilling on to the floor. Then a corner of the crib appears on my left, pointed at an unexpected angle; the thing was probably neatly parallel to the wall to start with, but slid unevenly under the inwards force. I sidle up to it, then inch forwards, until a lump beneath the blanket comes into view. I hate this moment, but the longer I wait, the harder it gets. I reach sideways and lift the child, bringing the blanket with it. I kick the crib aside, then walk forwards, slowly bending my arms, until I can slip the child into the harness on my chest. An adult is strong enough to drag a small baby a short distance outwards. It’s usually fatal.

  The kid hasn’t stirred; he or she is unconscious, but breathing. I shudder briefly, a kind of shorthand emotional catharsis, then I start moving. I glance at the display to recheck the way out, and finally let myself notice the time. Thirteen minutes. Sixty-one per cent. More to the point, The Core is just two or three minutes away, downhill, nonstop. One successful assignment means ditching the rest. There’s no alternative; you can’t lug a child with you, in and out of buildings; you can’t even put it down somewhere and come back for it later.

  As I step through the front door, the sense of relief leaves me giddy. Either that, or renewed cerebral blood flow. I pick up speed as I cross the lawn—and catch a glimpse of a woman, shouting, ‘Wait!

  Stop!’

  I slow down; she catches up with me. I put a hand on her shoulder and propel her slightly ahead of me, then say, ‘Keep moving, as fast as you can. When you want to speak, fall behind me. I’ll do the same. OK?’

  I move ahead of her. She says, ‘That’s my daughter you’ve got. Is she all right? Oh, please ... Is she alive?’

  ‘She’s fine. Stay calm. We just have to get her to The Core now. OK?’

  ‘I want to hold her. I want to take her.’

  ‘Wait until we’re safe.’

  ‘I want to take her there myself.’

  Shit. I glance at her sideways. Her face is glistening with sweat and tears. One of her arms is bruised and blotchy, the usual symptom of trying to reach out to something unreachable.

  ‘I really think it would be better to wait.’

  ‘What right have you got? She’s my daughter! Give her to me!’ The woman is indignant, but remarkably lucid, considering what she’s been through. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like, to stand by that house, hoping insanely for some kind of miracle, while everyone in the neighbourhood fled past her, and the side effects made her sicker and sicker. However pointless, however idiotic her courage, I can’t help admiring it.

  I’m lucky. My ex-wife, and our son and daughter, live halfway across town from me. I have no friends who live nearby. My emotional geography is very carefully arranged; I don’t give a shit about anyone who I could end up unable to save.

  So what do I do—sprint away from her, leave her running after me, screaming? Maybe I should. If I gave her the child, though, I could check out one more house.

  ‘Do you know how to handle her? Never try to move her backwards, away from the darkness. Never.’

  ‘I know that. I’ve read all the articles. I know what you’re meant to do.’

  ‘ OK.’ I must be crazy. We slow down to a walk, and I pass the child to her, lowering it into her arms from beside her. I realise, almost too late, that we’re at the turn-off for the second house. As the woman vanishes into the darkness, I yell after her, ‘Run! Follow the arrows, and run!’

  I check the time. Fifteen minutes already, with all that stuffing around. I’m still alive, though—so the odds now are, as always, fifty-fifty that the wormhole will last another eighteen minutes. Of course I could die at any second—but that was equally true when I first stepped inside. I’m no greater fool now than I was then. For what that’s worth.

  The second house is empty, and it’s easy to see why. The computer’s guess for the nursery is in fact a study, and the parents’ bedroom is outward’s of the child’s. Windows are open, clearly showing the path they must have taken.

  A strange mood overtakes me, as I leave the house behind. The inwards wind seems stronger t
han ever, the road turns straight into the darkness, and I feel an inexplicable tranquillity wash over me. I’m moving as fast as I can, but the edge of latent panic, of sudden death, is gone. My lungs, my muscles, are battling all the same restraints, but I feel curiously detached from them; aware of the pain and effort, yet somehow uninvolved.

  The truth is, I know exactly why I’m here. I can never quite admit it, outside—it seems too whimsical, too bizarre. Of course I’m glad to save lives, and maybe that’s grown to be part of it. No doubt I also crave to be thought of as a hero. The real reason, though, is too strange to be judged either selfless or vain:

  The wormhole makes tangible the most basic truths of existence. You cannot see the future. You cannot change the past. All of life consists of running into darkness. This is why I’m here.

  My body grows, not numb, but separate, a puppet dancing and twitching on a treadmill. I snap out of this and check the map, not a moment too soon. I have to turn right, sharply, which puts an end to any risk of somnambulism. Looking up at the bisected world makes my head pound, so I stare at my feet, and try to recall if the pooling of blood in my left hemisphere ought to make me more rational, or less.

  The third house is in a borderline situation. The parents’ bedroom is slightly outwards from the child’s, but the doorway gives access to only half the room. I enter through a window that the parents could not have used.

  The child is dead. I see the blood before anything else. I feel, suddenly, very tired. A slit of the doorway is visible, and I know what must have happened. The mother or father edged their way in, and found they could just reach the child—could take hold of one hand, but no more. Pulling inwards is resisted, but people find that confusing; they don’t expect it, and when it happens, they fight it. When you want to snatch someone you love out of the jaws of danger, you pull with all your strength.