Quarantine

by Greg Egan

  I say, "There's not much point pretending you don't know me; I think our employer might already be aware of the fact.'

  He ignores that. 'What happened last night?'

  'Success.'

  On the first try?'

  'Yes, on the first try.' I glance down at the pond, and try to decide if I want to kill him or embrace him.

  After a moment, I say, 'It was a good idea. The padlock. It was torture - for five minutes - but I have to admit that in the end it was worth it.' I laugh, or I try to - it doesn't sound at all convincing. Ί tell you, when that fucking thing sprang open, I'd never been so happy in my life. I almost died from sheer relief. And ... there's no logic to this, I know, but. . . nothing could have made me more confident that whatever happens now, I will come through.'

  He nods solemnly. 'Operating the mod isn't the challenge. The challenge is learning how to think about it. You have to find a frame of mind which lets you pass through these situations, untroubled. We can't have you

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  succumbing to metaphysical terror in the middle of your raid on BDI.'

  'No.' I laugh again, more successfully this time. 'Mind you, I don't think I'll find many locks in BDI with such easy combinations. Ten nines, in real life? Hardly.'

  Lui shakes his head. 'Easy combinations? What does that mean? For you, they're all easy, now.'

  It takes me another week to master locks that ought to need keys. Lui shows me his calculations: the odds against a few quantum-dot transistors in a lock's microchip spontaneously obliging me with all the right malfunctions are no worse than the odds against one hundred consecutive snake's eyes. The fact that neither event would normally be expected to occur in the entire history of the universe (if such a time scale can be so glibly invoked, when it's likely that nothing at all Occurred' - in the human sense - for most of that history) is beside the point. The point is, I've convinced myself that it can be done -and the smeared Nick Stavrianos seems to find that helpful.

  Security cameras still worry me, though.

  'If I'm observed, I'm collapsed. Collapsed at random, by whoever's watching the monitor.'

  Lui says, 'Not at random. You still have control of the eigenstate mod. And not collapsed - not if you make the probability small enough. You don't collapse yourself when you don't want to, do you? Even though that's certainly a possible event. Stop thinking of your smeared self as this fragile, defenceless, precarious system which can't survive a single glance.'

  'But one glance will destroy -'

  'No. Can, not will. One glance can collapse you, certainly. And dice can fall in all kinds of ways - but they don't, if you don't let them. Observation, in itself, doesn't collapse the wave. You don't become blind when you smear, do you? The collapse is a distinct process. If someone observes you, the two wave functions interact -they become a single entity. That gives the observer the

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  power to collapse you - but it also gives you the power to manipulate the observer and prevent the collapse.'

  'So we battle for the fate of the wave function? Just when I've stopped worrying about struggling against all my own hypothetical selves, I have to face a tug-of-war for reality with someone who's indisputably as real as I am.'

  'Think of it that way, if you like - but it won't be much of a competition. Your "opponents" won't even know what the wave function is, let alone have any capacity to manipulate it.'

  'That hasn't stopped several billion people from collapsing it, a few thousand times a day.'

  'Collapsing themselves, and inanimate objects, and other - equally ignorant, equally powerless - people. They've never faced anything like you.'

  'People have faced Laura Andrews.'

  Lui smiles. 'Exactly. And yet she still managed to break out of the Hilgemann twice, didn't she? What more proof do you need?'

  The first night that I abandon my post, I remain on the level of Po-kwai's apartment, and confine myself to rooms and corridors that are - plausibly - deserted. I wander through the fields of a dozen cameras and motion detectors; my colleagues in the central security room should, at the very least, demand an immediate explanation, but no coded infrared message blasts down from the ceiling transceivers. Proving what? That I've 'caused' the cameras and sensors to malfunction discreetly? That I've 'made' the guards inattentive? Or that I've merely kept any sign that I've been observed from reaching me - that I've fended off the consequences until after the collapse?

  I walk past the silent apartments of the other volunteers, wondering - jealously - if any of these people have begun to master Ensemble. Lui thinks not, but he can't be certain. I can live with my need for Po-kwai's unconscious intercession, but the thought of anyone else gaining access to the mysteries of the true Ensemble fills me with disgust. Nobody in the world shares the insight that the

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  loyalty mod has granted me; only / have the right to travel this path. I hold this belief side by side with the knowledge that my ultimate aim is to deliver Ensemble to the Canon, but the contradiction seems superficial, an irrelevant abstraction.

  I return to the anteroom, collapse - and wait to see if I've achieved invisibility, or mere ostrich-like self-deception. Could my smeared self tell the difference between states where I truly went unnoticed and states where I fooled nobody but myself? Which is the least probable: to walk past a camera unseen - or to distort my own memories and perceptions to convince myself that I've done so?

  I don't know - but nobody arrives to accuse me of dereliction of duty. The hours pass as uneventfully as ever. Then again, maybe I'm already huddled, catatonic, in a corner of some basement prison cell, and tonight's apparent success is the product of nothing but my smeared self s selection of a version of me with extraordinary hallucinatory skills. How can I rule that out? The fact that it's 'unlikely' no longer means anything at all. If I can succeed against spectacular odds, I can fail in the very same way.

  Lee Hing-cheung takes over. I sit in the train home, staring at the other passengers, daring this contrived vision to decay into surreal anarchy. But the carriage remains solid, the people stare back at me coolly, the stations appear through the windows in just the right order, at just the right times. It's hard to believe that there's room for so much clockwork in my head.

  By the time I'm home, every hint of doubt has evaporated. I'm not hallucinating anything - or at least, no more than usual. As I lie in bed listening to the familiar street sounds, the mundanity of the world enfolds me, more comforting - and more strange - than ever before. I stare up at the ceiling, and every crack in the plaster, every patch of sunlight, seems patient beyond comprehension, a miracle of endurance defying belief. I could keep watch for a billion years, waiting for some sign of the

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  underlying truth to reveal itself, and still be spared. How can I call this feat an illusion, a lie?

  The light dims, and there's a sudden burst of rain against the window. And for a moment I wonder: which did we really create? The unique, solid, macroscopic world of experience? Or the multi-valued, smeared, quantum world that seems to underpin it? Po-kwai believes that our ancestors collapsed the universe . . . but if the reverse were true - if the twentieth-century creators of quantum mechanics didn't so much discover the laws of the microscopic world, as bring them into being - would we even know the difference? Is it any harder to believe that the human brain might have manufactured the quantum world from the classical, than it is to believe the opposite? And with all our - inescapably -anthropocen-tric experiments, can we ever hope to discover the objective, inhuman truth?

  Maybe not. But I still know which trait seems most human to me.

  A crowd of children on their way to school, caught in the rain on the street below, start squealing.

  I choose sleep.

  I arm myself with a dozen excuses before setting out to challenge ASR's security by leaving the thirtieth floor. There's no need for explanations, though; the two guards at the security station avert their e
yes as I pass, a perfectly choreographed moment that leaves me wanting to laugh with delight - or sink gibbering to the floor at this final proof of my complete derangement. Instead, I close my eyes for a moment and tell myself, unconvincingly, that it's no stranger than one hundred consecutive snake's eyes.

  I decide to take the stairs rather than the elevator; both are monitored, but it strikes me that the elevator might 'link' me with anyone whose passage through the building is affected in some way by my use of it.

  / decide to take the stairs? Maybe I have no choice in the matter; maybe every last detail of my thoughts and

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  actions has been, or will be, selected by my smeared self. But the illusion of free will remains as compelling as ever, and I can't (literally can't?) help thinking that the choice was mine.

  I descend to the sixth floor, which is meant to be completely sealed off at this hour - but the door from the stairway behaves precisely as if it were unlocked. The security station is unmanned, and heavy steel shutters block the way; they begin to glide apart before I even glance at the control box - which ought to require two magnetic keys, and central authorization.

  I step through, giddy for a moment with a mixture of megalomania and paranoia; I really don't know whether to feel empowered, or manipulated. I'm not doing any of this. . .and yet, there's no doubt that it is exactly what I want. From the very first dice trick, my smeared self has done my bidding. Clearly, all my fears of mutiny were unfounded; those early mod failures, those visions of Karen, must have been nothing but an aberration. And that's hardly surprising: I had no - conscious - idea what I was doing, so no wonder I had no control.

  Every lab, every storeroom, is open to me. I wander from room to room at random, heedless of locks and cameras - at first, fighting a growing sense of unreality, but then willingly succumbing to it. I don't believe for a moment that I'm literally dreaming, but it's easier to let this dreamlike mood overtake me than to keep up the battle between ingrained common sense and the elaborate, intellectual reasons why all of these bizarre miracles are permitted in the waking world. Lui was right: the challenge - for me - isn't operating the mod, but finding ways to stay sane while it happens.

  And it is a lot like dreaming. Doors open because they should open; I remain undetected because the logic of the dream demands it. And like any dream protagonist, I can't expect free will, I don't presume to be in control. In Room 6191 hesitate, and idly wish for the chair beside the main console to levitate, or slide across the floor towards me - but I'm not at all surprised when it does neither. Not

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  because I doubt that it's possible; just because it wouldn't be right.

  I know, in the manner of dreams, when it's time to leave the sixth floor and trudge back up the twenty-four flights of stairs. The exertion this requires is scrupulously realistic, and my numbness gradually clears - enough to let me grow anxious again. All those doors, all those locks, all that surveillance hardware . . . multiplying out the probabilities makes the whole exercise seem dangerously fragile and precarious.

  I baulk at the exit to the thirtieth floor, afraid that these doubts might rebound on me-that I might be punished for my lack of faith. I wait for my breathing to grow quieter, knowing how absurd that is, but pandering to my obsolete instincts for the sake of peace of mind.

  Finally, I steel myself and open the door - one more casual miracle to prove that all is well, or one more improbability piled upon a tottering edifice - and step through.

  The guards contrive not to see me, as efficiently as before (and I think / have problems with free will). I walk through the checkpoint with my eyes straight ahead, and turn the corner without looking back. The moment I'm out of their (potential) sight, I very nearly collapse -desperate to set the night's events in concrete, to make my impossible luck indisputably, irreversibly real - but as the Hypernova menu pops into my mind's eye, I recall that I'm still in the field of view of at least two cameras.

  As a gesture to normality, I open the door to the anteroom in the ordinary way: with a coded RedNet pulse, a thumbprint and a magnetic key. Then I wonder - too late - if this authorized event is more likely to be logged in the building's security computer than all the illicit entries that I know went unnoticed. I slam the door behind me, muttering, 'I'm getting sloppy. I've got to take more care.'

  Po-kwai laughs. Ί wouldn't say that. But I was surprised when I found you weren't here.' She frowns. 'What's wrong?'

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  I shake my head. 'Nothing. I thought I heard an intruder. It was a false alarm, though; there's nothing to worry about.'

  'An intruder? Where?'

  'Out in the corridor.'

  'But aren't there cameras? How could anyone. . . ?'

  I shrug. 'Hardware can be undermined. In theory. But forget it, there was nobody there.'

  'You look like you raced this "nobody" to the roof and back.'

  I realize I'm visibly sweating, and it's not from climbing the stairs. I wipe my forehead apologetically. Ί did check the staircase, a few levels up and down. I must be getting out of condition.'

  'I'm surprised your mods actually allow you to perspire.'

  I laugh weakly. 'It'd be very dangerous not to. Appetite suppression is one thing, but screwing up thermoregulation would be . . . suicidal.'

  She nods, and says nothing. She seems more baffled than suspicious; if she doubts my story, I expect she thinks that I've played down the incident, not invented it. I try to think of a way to keep her from innocently asking Lee Hing-cheung about last night's excitement, but nothing comes to mind. Don't tell anyone about this, because . . . what? Because I don't want to seem like an idiot, chasing phantoms? She knows that the guards at the checkpoint 'must' have seen me.

  More importantly: how long has she been awake? Since before I walked through the checkpoint, surely; it can't have taken me more than twenty seconds to get from the stairway to this room. So how did I get past the guards? Has she collapsed herself, collapsed me, broken my link to Ensemble - or are we both still smeared? And if we are . . . what happens if I shut off the collapse-inhibiting mod now? Is the past I remember already irrevocable? Or if I collapse now, do I risk some other sequence of events -chosen at random, or chosen by Po-kwai's smeared self-taking its place?

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  I have to stay smeared until she's asleep again - or predominantly asleep. I have to be certain that the choice of eigenstate is mine.

  I move into the anteroom. All I have to do is stay calm, make small talk, wait for her to grow tired. 'What woke you?'

  She shrugs. Ί don't know.' Then she changes her mind and says sheepishly, 'Another stupid dream.'

  'What about? If you don't mind me -'

  'Nothing very exciting. Wandering around on the sixth floor. Sneaking from lab to lab, like some kind of burglar - but I didn't steal anything. I just wanted to prove that I could go wherever I pleased.' She laughs. 'No doubt acting out my resentment over the way I've been shut out of the scientific side of the work here. I'm afraid my dreams are usually like that - pretty transparent.'

  'So what happened to wake you?'

  She frowns. 'I'm not sure. I was coming up the stairs, and. . . I don't know, I was afraid of something. Afraid of being caught out. I was headed back here, and for some reason I was terrified that someone would see me.' She pauses, then adds, deadpan, 'Maybe that's what you heard in the corridor. Me on my way back.'

  I know she's joking, but my skin crawls. Who's choosing this conversation? My smeared self? Her smeared seip The joint wave function of the two of us?

  'Yeah? So you've been quantum-tunnelling through walls again? And floors. Why bother taking the stairs? Why not just move from A to B?'

  'Well, in dreams, who knows? I expect my subconscious lacks the imagination to face the whole truth about quantum physics. And the courage.'

  'Courage?'

  She shrugs. 'Maybe that's not the right word. Courage? Honesty? I don't know what's needed. But lately,
I've been thinking a lot about the . . . part of me . . . that's lost when I collapse. And it's stupid, I know - but when I try to accept the fact that there are . . . women almost exactly like me, who exist for a second or two, experience

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  something that I don't, and then vanish . . .' She shakes her head dismissively, almost angrily. 'Pretty precious, isn't it? Worrying about the death of my virtual alternatives. How many lives do I want?' 'You tell me.'

  'Just one, personally - but I expect those other selves wouldn't mind one each, as well.' She shakes her head again, decisively. 'But it's crazy thinking that way. It's like . . . shedding tears over dead skin. It's what we are, it's the way we function. Humans make choices; we "murder" the people we might have been. If the work I'm doing makes that uncomfortably explicit, it still doesn't change anything; we can't live any other way. And now that The Bubble protects the rest of the universe, we just have to come to terms with ourselves.'

  I recall my own previous scepticism, and say belatedly, 'Assuming that all of this is true. There may be nothing to come to terms with.'

  She rolls her eyes. 'Listen, don't worry: ASR aren't about to announce to the world at large that The Bubble's purpose is to defend the universe against human depletion of alternatives. People went crazy enough about The Bubble itself, sans explanations. The truth is so loaded that I'm not even sure which would be more dangerous: people misunderstanding it, or people getting it right. Human perceptions have decimated the universe. Life consists of constantly slaughtering versions of ourselves. Imagine what kind of sects would form around ideas like that:

  'And imagine what kind of reaction you'd get from the existing sects. The ones who think they've had all the answers for the last thirty-four years.' Yeah. The ones I'm supposed to be guarding you against.

  Po-kwai nods, then stretches and stifles a yawn. I resist the temptation to suggest that she must be tired. She says, Ί don't know how you put up with me. If I'm not boring you with my dreams, or bitching about the way ASR is treating me, I'm spouting all this angst about obliterating alien civilizations and murdering our own alternatives.'