Quarantine

by Greg Egan

  I feel like grabbing hold of him and shaking the metaphysical stuffing out; instead I say evenly, 'I'm asking you to help me. I don't care how experience is

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  constructed. I don't care if time is an illusion. I don't care if nothing's real until it's five minutes old. It all adds up to normality - or it ought to. It used to. And don't tell me everyone smears a hundred times a day; everyone does not suffer hallucinations, mod failures -'

  'Maybe they do. Maybe they "suffer" precisely the kind of experiences you've been through - amongst countless others - but they simply don't remember them. They can't; their brains, their bodies, the world around them, contain no evidence that any of it ever took place. The events never become real for them; each time they're collapsed, their unique past contains something far more probable.'

  'Then why do / remember?'

  'You know why. Because Po-kwai is involved - and she has the eigenstate mod. She can change the probabilities.'

  'But why would she deprime me? Why would she make Karen appear? Why would she want to do any of that? She doesn't even know that Karen exists!'

  Lui shrugs. Ί say "Po-kwai" is involved, and "Po-kwai" manipulates the probabilities. . . but what I should say is: "The eigenstate mod is involved." '

  I laugh derisively. 'So now the mod is autonomous? It has goals of its own? It's to blame for depriming me?'

  'No, of course not.' He waits patiently for a young couple, laughing and kissing, to pass us - an absurd precaution; if the Ensemble wanted to know what we were saying, they'd hardly go about it by sending a pair of fake lovers strolling by. I feel a surge of dismay; I'd assumed from the start that the details of the Canon's security measures were being concealed from me - but I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything to conceal.

  Lui continues, 'If anyone is making a conscious choice, it's you. Or rather, the combined system of you-and-Po-kwai, to be pedantic - but since she's predominantly asleep at the time, I'd say you're the best place to look for motives.'

  'Predominantly asleep?'

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  'Yes.'

  I stop walking, and say numbly, 'She has the mod - but I'm using it?'

  'Crudely speaking, yes. When you and Po-kwai smear, you smear into every possible state that either of you could be in - however unlikely. There's no reason why that shouldn't include states where you influence the use of the eigenstate mod.'

  I can't seem to summon up the energy to argue against this preposterous assertion; common sense has been rendered indefensible, naive, irrelevant. I finally say, pleadingly, 'But I don't want any of the things that happen!'

  Lui frowns with mild puzzlement, and then breaks into a rare smile. 'No, of course you don't. But apparently, you very easily might. Versions of you who want these things may be unlikely, per se - but once they have access to the eigenstate mod, they can change the whole meaning of what's likely and unlikely.'

  I'm about to reply that yes, that's exactly it, that's exactly what I need to put a stop to, when he adds:

  'And if you think what you've done so far is astounding, you very easily might do a great deal more - in the service of the true Ensemble.'

  The Canon doesn't seek to compel me; merely to advise. The decision will be mine alone - and I cannot make the wrong choice - but surely the views of others who share the loyalty mod can't be entirely irrelevant?

  The truth is, the very idea of trying to determine the Ensemble's interests by consensus is absurd. And the truth is, nothing could be more terrifying than the prospect of having to make such a judgement, alone. I swallow the contradiction easily enough. I think I'm beginning to understand what Lui meant by our distinctive kind of freedom. The mental knot the loyalty mod has created can't ever be untangled - but it can be endlessly deformed.

  Over a week, meetings are held between members of

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  the Canon whose free time overlaps, and at each stage, delegates are chosen whose shifts are successively closer to my own. Po-kwai is resting again, after her latest success, and, as before, this brings a respite in the eigenstate mod's effects on me.

  It's hard to feel conspiratorial at nine in the morning. When I enter the apartment - borrowed for the day, Lui assures me, from someone with no links whatsoever to the Canon or the Ensemble -the scene is so mundane, so innocuous, that I might have wandered in on a residents' action committee, or some kind of parochial, lower-middle-class political group. The six of us sit in the tiny living room, surrounded by the absent owner's Buddhist-flavoured domestic kitsch, sipping tea and debating the best way of gaining control of the international alliance which believes we're its perfect slaves.

  Li Siu-wai is a medical imaging technician at BDI. She often worked the night shift when I was there, and we must have exchanged pleasantries dozens of times - but it's hardly surprising that neither of us ever guessed what we had in common.

  Chan Kwok-hung is a physicist with ASR, working on a team similar to Lui's, but with an experimental set-up involving single-atom spectroscopy in place of the silver ion spin measurements. They've yet to achieve success, so they don't yet know which of their volunteers has the genuine mod. I recall Po-kwai's joke: she turned out not to have been the control, 'because' it would have made her so angry. What worries me is, the way things are going, that's almost beginning to sound plausible.

  Yuen Ting-fu and Yuen Lo-ching are brother and sister, both mathematicians (topologists, to be more precise - although I gather even that is a crude generality), university lecturers who unwisely declined a lucrative offer to work for the sham Ensemble voluntarily.

  Lui begins. Ί already have enough data to construct a mod which suppresses the wave collapse indefinitely. By itself, of course, that's useless; we need to get our hands

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  on the second half, the eigenstate selector. BDI have the specifications for that - on a ROM locked away in a vault. There's no prospect whatsoever of a hacker reaching it; it's not being accessed at all any more, let alone used on any system connected to a network. However, Nick -'

  I say, 'Hold on. Before we start talking about ways of obtaining this data . . . just suppose that it can be done. Suppose you get a copy of the specifications, and construct the whole mod. What then?'

  'In the short term, we concentrate on learning how to make the most effective use of it, as rapidly as possible. The ASR teams are being very cautious, confining themselves initially to microscopic systems, trying to establish a rigorous framework of quantum ontology before they proceed with anything more complex. Which is very laudable from an intellectual standpoint, but it's obviously not a prerequisite for practical results. If Chung Po-kwai can walk through locked doors, in her sleep . . . imagine what an experienced user, fully aware of the mod's potential, could achieve.'

  Chan Kwok-hung says, 'And in the long term?'

  Lui shrugs. 'Until we have our own copies of the whole mod, until we've carried out our own experiments to determine precisely what its advantages and shortcomings are, it's premature to discuss a detailed strategy for taking control of the sham Ensemble.'

  Li Siu-wai says, softly but firmly, 'Which may not even be necessary. With our own, independent organization established, why bother trying to reform the sham? Why not simply ignore it?'

  Yuen Lo-ching says, scandalized, 'The false Ensemble is a travesty! Ignore it? It has to be torn down! It has to be obliterated!'

  Her brother says, 'You think they'll leave us in peace, to pursue our own work? You think they'll let us walk away with their secrets -'

  Li Siu-wai says, 'No, but we'll be able to defend ourselves. If we maintain an edge in using the mod -'

  'Better to have no need to defend ourselves.'

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  Chan Kwok-hung shakes his head. 'The sham Ensemble may be imperfect, but it's still the template for the true version we perceive. We have to keep it intact -and we have to keep struggling to improve it, bringing it closer to the ideal, year by year. The task is ultimately
futile - but we have to undertake it, for our own peace of mind.'

  Lui says smoothly, 'All of these alternatives can be considered, eventually - but if we don't get our own eigenstate mod, there's no hope of achieving anything at all. Which is where Nick comes in.'

  He turns to me. So does everyone else.

  I say, awkwardly, Ί take it that you all understand what Lui Kiu-chung is suggesting - and that you've all discussed his plan with other members of the Canon. I want to hear what you think. We all seem to agree that we have to get hold of the specifications - but is this the best way of doing it? Are there any problems, any dangers, we might not have anticipated? Is it even clear that it can work at all?'

  Lui cuts in. 'There's no doubt about that. Consider what Laura Andrews achieved ^ a massively retarded woman. Consider what Chung Po-kwai has done, in her sleep. With Po-kwai's "help" - by "borrowing" her eigenstate mod while she sleeps - there's nothing to stop Nick finding a safe route, however improbable, that takes him from the ASR building, across the city, through BDI's security, into the vault, and back.'

  Just hearing it all spelt out again brings protests of disbelief clamouring in my head. After thirty years of refining her talent, Laura Andrews did little more than escape the Hilgemann's mediocre security, travelling at most a couple of kilometres before being recollapsed. I'm expected to traverse a crowded city and steal the Ensemble's most precious asset - and I won't even have the eigenstate mod in my own skull.

  Chan Kwok-hung says, 'He will remain smeared, reliably? You're sure of that?'

  Lui says, 'The collapse-inhibiting mod should be ready within days.'

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  Yuen Lo-ching says, 'But these earlier episodes - how do you account for them?'

  Lui shrugs. 'They may reflect a natural failure of the collapse. Or they may be related to P3, the behavioural-control mod he was using at the time; it's designed to greatly increase the probability of optimal mental states - which sounds like the very opposite of smearing -but ironically, it may have inadvertently inhibited the collapse, judging the process to be a "distraction" to be ruled out. Which, of course, would have had no observable consequences, until the eigenstate mod became involved.'

  It's the first I've heard of that theory - and I don't see how P3 could have played a crucial role in its own failure. Although . . . didn't I feel, when it was over, as if I'd remained in stake-out mode all along? Maybe I was primed and deprimed - maybe the collapse somehow left traces of both pasts intact. Memories may only endure from a single state, under normal conditions - but with Po-kwai's eigenstate mod shifting and recombining the 'mutually exclusive' possibilities, maybe that need not be the case. I remember Karen filling the anteroom, don't I? What was that? A single deranged hallucination, from a wildly dysfunctioning mod? Or memories surviving from a thousand simultaneous alternative incarnations - each of which, alone, would have seemed perfectly normal?

  The prospect of spending several hours smeared is already unsettling enough - even if Lui is right and it happens to everyone, all of the time, and even if I could be sure of emerging from the collapse with all but one chosen eigenstate reduced to inconsequential fiction. But if there's a risk of multiple states leaving indelible memories, then not only will I be forced to treat smearing as more than an abstraction . . . but who knows what other tangible, physical consequences might end up being inconsistent? If I try to steal the ROM, and find myself remembering both success and failure, then what bizarre hybrid of the two might the rest of the world reflect?

  Lui says, 'We need to move on this as quickly as

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  possible. We don't know how long we have before Po-kwai begins to realize what's happening. The sooner Nick starts refining his control of the eigenstate mod, the better our chances of keeping her in the dark long enough to make use of the situation.' He adds - for my benefit -"This is to her advantage, as well; finding out that she's been deceived can only put her on dangerous ground. And if Nick takes full control, she need not even experience any more disturbing "somnambulism"; he can choose their joint eigenstate so that she turns out to have been safely asleep in bed, all along, while he's travelled across the city.'

  Yeah, sure. Add one more miracle to the list. Who's counting?

  Li Siu-wai says, 'If he fails, half-way. . . ?'

  'If he's collapsed in the street, then he's stranded -severed from Po-kwai and the eigenstate mod. He'll just have to bluff his way back into ASR - inventing some excuse for having left his post. He risks being disciplined-but then, he may be able to smooth things over with the other security staff; after all, if there's any investigation, how do they explain the fact that they never saw him leave the building in the first place?'

  This scenario doesn't impress me; nobody running Sentinel is going to be blackmailed into a cover-up.

  'If he's collapsed in BDI, then obviously that's much worse. I can only assume that we'll all come under suspicion. Everyone with a loyalty mod will be subject to the closest scrutiny; at the very least, the Canon will have to shut down, perhaps for several years. Perhaps indefinitely. At worst' - he shrugs - 'we risk everything. But the same can be said of whatever means we use to try to obtain the data. Now is the time to decide: do we continue living so cautiously that we might just as well be serving the sham Ensemble? Or do we take the first step towards our own true vision?'

  This rhetoric is surreal: our own true vision means something utterly different to everyone assembled here -but nobody seems greatly troubled by the fact. The sham

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  Ensemble may have its factions (ironically, that was the core of Lui's argument in persuading me to turn against it) but the Canon is - clearly, unashamedly - a thousand times worse. So, what are these people actually hoping for? Does each believe that their own point of view will somehow, miraculously, prevail in the end?

  I don't know. How can I hope to understand what's going on here, when I don't even know what my own 'true vision' of the Ensemble is. I try to picture myself free of BDI and ASR - while still being loyal to . . . what?

  Chan Kwok-hung is speaking, but I find it hard to concentrate on his words. I'm suddenly tired of shirking the question. What is the Ensemble, to me? I have to discover - or decide - the answer. How far can I stretch the definition? How radically can I deform the knot?

  It strikes me that there's one thing which I'm certain that I can't define away: the true Ensemble must be concerned with the exploration of Laura's strange talent, by whatever means. A double-walled room in a basement. Po-kwai's ion experiments. And now . . . my own bizarre entanglement with the eigenstate mod. And the only way for me to serve the true Ensemble is to participate in that exploration, as fully as I can.

  It's a shock, put so bluntly - but having uttered the truth, I find it impossible to retract. The logic is ineluctable. The fact that the whole idea of smearing still terrifies me only makes the conclusion all the more compelling: if I had nothing to fear, nothing to lose, what kind of loyalty would that be?

  I glance around the room, from face to face. I realize, now, that there's no need at all to force myself to care about these people's quixotic plans - any more than they care about each other's. I'll steal the eigenstate mod's specifications for them - but I'll do it for my own reasons.

  Chan Kwok-hung concludes,'- and so I believe that, on balance, it's worth the risk. My advice is to go ahead.'

  Lui nods at Yuen Lo-ching. Her eyes unglaze, and she embarks upon her own justification for the conclusion that she knows she has to reach. Yuen Ting-fu and Li Siu-

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  wai do the same in turn; I listen carefully, trying to pick up the rules, trying to learn the balancing act. There must be a fiercely personal view of the Ensemble, blatantly contradicting every other view expressed - and it must lead to agreement on the action to be taken.

  Only Lui seems at all conciliatory. He simply says, 'Well, you know my position; there's no need for me to elaborate. It's up to you, Nick. It's your decision.'<
br />
  I state my reasons carefully. The members of the Canon listen, stony-faced, to the proof that their own visions are unique and uncompromising. I insult no one with the slightest concession - I don't take issue directly with anyone's arguments, but I do make it clear that I find all of them irrelevant. The true Ensemble, I proclaim, is the mystery of Laura's gift; everything else is peripheral.

  'So we can't pass up this opportunity, whatever the risks. We need the eigenstate mod - not for any tactical advantage in some meaningless power struggle, but because it embodies everything the Ensemble is about. And what better way can there be to obtain it, than by using the very process that lies at the Ensemble's heart? I'm willing to do whatever I have to, to make this work. With or without your support.'

  Lui and I remain after the others have departed. I sit in silence for a while, feeling drained and confused. I still don't know if I'm convinced that the Canon can actually function, or whether all we've achieved is some kind of delusion of consensus. Consensus without compromise -a nice Orwellian oxymoron.

  At least I've finally decided what the Ensemble in the skull means to me - although I have an uneasy feeling that in a week, or a month, or a year, it might mean something else entirely.

  I say, 'Tell me, honestly: suppose I do pull it off. Suppose I get the data, and you construct the eigenstate mod.' I wave a hand at the empty chairs. 'How long do you really think all thh can hold together?'

  Lui shrugs. 'Long enough.'

  'Long enough for what?'

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  'Long enough for everyone to get what they want.'

  I laugh. 'You may be right. Maybe it can go on this way indefinitely: everyone backing the same moves, for entirely different reasons. All we really need to disagree on is the theory, and the long-term future.' I shake my head, bemused. 'And what's your reason? You're the one who's making everything happen, but you never really said why.''

  He gives me that mildly puzzled frown. Ί just told you, didn't I?' 'When?'

  'Five seconds ago.' Ί must have missed it.'