by Sarah Lahey
The schematics are mind boggling. What she doesn’t understand is, why? “Why program a super-unconscious mind into a machine?” Quinn asks, already knowing the answer is Salt.
Jin pauses. “Because I can. And I did. I’m going away, I don’t want you to be lonely. I want you to have someone to come home to.”
“It’s a robot; there’s a difference. I have a heart and I bleed. He’ll never do that. You want me to care for him, to build a relationship with him, but what you really want is to justify your feelings for Salt. Honestly, you don’t need me, or anyone else, to do that.”
Jin shuts her eyes and imitates a long yawn. “Don’t worry, there won’t be any more.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ll destroy the Tech, corrupt everything before I go. No more AI. I made Mori, eMpower has no jurisdiction over him. When I go, the information goes with me.” She turns her back to Quinn.
Quinn stares at the ceiling. She could have handled that better, she could have been kinder, she could have praised and thanked her lovely friend—her best friend, who’s about to enter CyberSleep. She could have told her that Mori is amazing, the greatest gift anyone has given her, and she’s overwhelmed. Their friendship means everything to her.
But she didn’t. She told Jin what she really thinks.
Humans are shit. Maybe that’s me; maybe I’m a shit human.
***
Later, Quinn rouses her Jin from sleep; she wants her to forgive her, and she wants to squeeze in every moment of life that remains, every piece of time they have left together. She’s a needy and selfish friend, but she can’t bear this. She feels wretched.
She sits on the bed beside Jin and asks her what she knows about the Salon revival. She’s having dinner there tonight, she says, and she needs Jin’s help.
It’s a pretense, to get her talking, to make her forget about the meerkat and negate their awkward argument. Rumors about the Salon are rife. People say it’s everything from a cult where people worship heretic symbols to a private thought palace where people discuss intellectual ideas and religious doctrines. Quinn think it’s probably fairly benign—just a place to speak freely about divine beings.
Jin pulls herself up and shakes her head. “The Salon de la Rose and Croix is a thinly disguised sect”—she pauses, coughing—“led by Dirac. They believe they have a divine calling and democracy is an affront to their heavenly mission. For them, there’s a hierarchy of beasts, and humans are at the top. They want a return to the fin-desiècle mysticism of the nineteenth century. The women have long, golden hair, wear wings, and have halos hovering over their heads. The men sport beards and curly moustaches and wear white button-down smocks. Don’t, whatever you do, mention science when you’re there—it’s taboo.”
“It’s 2050; you’re being overly dramatic.”
“I’m serious. That’s what they wear; there are pictures on the Fourth Estate. It’s a time warp, back to the 1800s. Oh shit, what the fuck are you going to wear?”
Quinn’s only dress is a pale pink shift that Planck printed. She fetches it and holds it up. Jin shakes her head.
“Don’t care what I wear,” quips Quinn.
“Trust me, we’re talking New Fed, Dirac Devine, crazy shit. You’ll be the only scientist and probably the only climate believer; you don’t want to stand out. Bring me my module, I’ll print you something.”
Quinn plumps Jin pillows and hands her the module.
***
Hours later, after several consultations, Jin prints the dress. Quinn collects it from the 3D machine and holds it up; it’s low-cut, full length, with a sheer skirt and a bodice covered in flowers.
“You’ll need significant underwear,” says Jin. “I’m on it.” The printer restarts.
When it’s ready, Quinn slips on the underwear and pulls the dress over her head, then scans her profile in the glass—and her eyes dip straight to the bump around her stomach. The human baby is getting bigger. If she intends to do something about the pregnancy, she needs to do it soon. Tomorrow. There’s no point delaying; she should do it tomorrow.
Then again, maybe not tomorrow, maybe next week. She needs more time. The decision can’t be rushed. She should mull it over, leave it a few more weeks.
She knows what Lise would say—“Darling, don’t be ridiculous. Doing nothing is still a choice”—and thinking about this, she realizes she’s going to keep the baby. Giving birth was not in her life plan, but a daughter, she wants that. She wants what she has with Lise. She wants to be a mother to this baby girl and for them to share their lives, mother and daughter.
Jin catches Quinn looking at herself in the glass, standing side on, running her hand over her stomach, and Quinn pretends to be smoothing down the net fabric of the dress.
The printer runs continuously all afternoon as Jin prints dozens of soft tulle flowers, which she winds into a halo for Quinn’s hair.
“Wings,” says Quinn. “I think I need wings.”
Jin nods. “Of course you do.”
Jin spends an hour studying birds on her module—doves, hawks, parrots. She want the perfect fowl for the situation. Finally, she decides on owl feathers. “Soft and spiky, to help you sneak up on your prey, and the thorns deaden the sound of attack. No one will hear you coming.”
The Pod fills with thousands of silver-grey owl feathers. Jin prints the wings in sections, connecting two arching structures, and then carefully adheres the feathers to each wing. Finally, her masterpiece—a pair of exquisite wings spanning a meter—is finished.
Jin fixes the wings to the back of Quinn’s costume and Quinn admires herself in the glass. There is something different about her; she looks mythically beautiful, like she belongs in a fairy tale.
“It’s your skin,” says Jin. “You’re glowing.”
“I look like an angel, and I don’t believe in angels.”
“No, you’re a bird, and these are your wings. Flying’s your thing.”
***
Quinn sets off for the prestigious Hypostyle Prayer Hall wearing the wings. Her friend has forgiven her, and she’s glad, but if other guests aren’t dressed like her, she might be the human sacrifice on tonight’s menu.
She enters the Hall through a black marble door and waits in the vestibule while her ID is checked. The walls of the vestibule are covered in paintings—dark, bleak pictures of half-animal, half-human beasts. Quinn knows nothing about art, but she sees a theme running through this weird collection of tormented souls. A red dragon with multiple heads hovers over a golden woman wearing wings. A naked man with long hair creeps across the floor, on claws. There’s a lot of bad weather in the images: Massive winds. Lightning. Storms. Floods. The wrath of god. End-of-the-world stuff.
Soon, she’s summoned into the main hall and pointed in the direction of a table at the far end of the chamber, maybe fifty meters away. The path is an obstacle course that winds through dozens of polished marble columns topped with intricately carved arches. Nestled in each arch is a lamp that sends flickering shadows across the stucco ceiling. If time travel were possible, this time, this moment could be a thousand years ago, in an ancient prayer hall, in a place where religion reigned as the supreme doctrine of life and death.
Except it is 2050 and religion is no longer permissible as a communal act.
Quinn spies Dirac lurking alone in the shadows, wearing a black suit, top hat, and blood-red cape. He pays her no attention as she passes; his gaze is fixed ahead and he’s muttering a few sentences under his breath—rehearsing his speech. She spies Niels taking his seat. Agent’s orange presence is also visible at far end of the table, and she’s relieved; he’s a possible ally.
The table decorations levitate; clusters of candles, vases filled with trailing flowers, and ornate wineglasses all spin above the tabletop.
“We seem to be defying gravity,” says a guest.
“Magnets,” says Agent, deflating the mystery.
Quinn approaches the gathering, and the guest
s cease chatting. They turn toward her, scanning her wings, her dress, the flowers in her hair, and finally their eyes come to rest on her face. Other women wear flowers in their hair, and wings are prolific, but hers are the most beautiful.
Niels makes a show of rising from his seat. Like the other men, he wears black tails and a velvet top hat. He takes her hand, escorts her to a seat next to his. “You’re perfect,” he whispers. “Don’t fuck it up.”
Dirac arrives, accompanied by an assistant, and in unison the guests stand, giving him a rowdy ovation of applauds and cheers. Awkwardly, he lowers his himself into a seat at the head of the table. He can’t rotate his torso or turn his head. His upper body has seized and is visibly riddled with small spasms. Quinn feels no sympathy; stress is the upshot of being a despotic tyrant. His assistant steps forward and taps a glass with a knife, and the guests resume their seats.
“Thank you, thank you,” Dirac says. He gestures toward Quinn. “It’s not often we have science at this table. Everyone, this is Quinn Buyers. Welcome,” he says calmly.
“Careful,” Niels whispers.
“Actually, it’s Doctor, Doctor Buyers.”
“Idiot,” Niels mutters under his breath.
“So sorry to hear about your mother,” Dirac says kindly. “The world has lost a . . . a good researcher. I suppose you also believe in climate change?”
Niels nudges her under the table.
“Well, let me see,” Quinn says, tapping her chin. “Carbon parts per million are close to 600. Sea levels have risen a meter and a half. We’re past the tipping point. The ocean circulation has flipped, the permafrost in Siberia is thawing and releasing methane, and clouds have disappeared over tropical zones. The Antarctic system is in perpetual decline and temperatures have risen in every corner of the planet. So yes, I think there’s some truth to the rumors.”
“Do you want to know what I think?” Dirac asks.
“Of course.”
“I think our lack of spirituality has caused the demise of the planet. Storms, floods, heat waves, cyclones—perhaps we bring these events upon ourselves. Perhaps they’ve been sent to punish, to humiliate, us.”
We need to devote a lot more time and energy to inventing a cure for fuckwits.
“That’s an interesting theory. I’d love to hear what you think we should do. How do we move forward from that and fix the planet?”
Dirac glares at her across the table.
People like you have no ideas. All you do is shift the blame and complain.
The arrival of food puts a temporary end to their staring contest.
Plates of poached fish and roast chicken are placed at alternating chairs, then passed back and forth between the guests. Niels, true to his biodynamic way of existence, doesn’t eat or drink anything. Quinn eats every morsel of roast chicken on her plate, then pushes it aside and slides Niels’s plate of poached fish her way and finishes every morsel on his plate. Then she slides his empty plate back so it doesn’t look like she’s had two meals. He stares at her like she’s from another planet. Dirac, she notices, hasn’t touched his food either. What is it with these people?
With the meal over, Quinn silently congratulates herself. She showed up and she spoke up, she’s had two delicious meals, and she’s still alive. Time for her to leave. She scans the far side of the Hall, her exit point, and sees a man walking toward the table. He has an animal with him, a small brown dog on a lead. She squints; as he gets closer, she realizes it’s not a small dog—it’s a large ginger cat.
“Oh no,” she whispers.
“What?” Niels follows her gaze. “Shit.”
The cat jumps onto the table, and the levitating vases and candles and glasses fall with impressive pragmatism. Unperturbed, the animal saunters towards Dirac. Like a rising and falling wave, the guests lean back in their seats, a reflex reaction, as the animal passes. At the far end of the table Dirac’s assistant picks up the feline and runs his hands through its fur.
“Let’s have an experiment,” says Dirac.
“Let’s not,” whispers Niels, and Quinn has found her second ally.
A heavy crate is placed on the table. The assistant opens it, places the animal inside, and then closes and locks the lid. Quinn rubs her brow. She knows where this is heading.
“The cat is in the crate, but it’s not alone; a piece of radioactive metal and prism of poison are also inside. If the metal releases a radioactive particle, the glass will break, releasing the poison. If that happens, the cat dies. But the metal might not release a particle; if not, the cat survives. Right now, we don’t know what state the cat is in; is it dead or is it alive? What state is the particle of radioactive metal in? Released or not released?” He taps the top of the box. “The point is, we don’t know. The box is sealed. There is no result, no answer until we open the box. Is the cat dead or alive? Or”—he pauses—“is it in two states simultaneously? A state of superposition? When we open the box, the superposition collapses and there is only one state. What can science tell us about this, Ms. Buyers?”
“If you’d used a glass box, we’d be able to see inside, no mystery.”
He’s not amused. Dirac is demonstrating the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat, which in 1935 was an attempt to demonstrate the irrelevance of quantum states. Logic, according to Schrödinger, suggests the cat cannot be both dead and alive. Dirac wants Quinn to say that observation determines the result of the experiment. Fine. She’ll play along. The sooner this is over, the sooner she can leave.
“Observation determines the existence of the cat,” she says.
“Ah, but observations require consciousness and therefore conscious thought. So it is I who determine the existence of the cat, because I have conscious thought. But who determines me?”
“I do,” she says.
“And who determines you?”
Niels determines her. They go around the table and everyone gets a turn to be determined, but with the limited number of guests they run out of determined people in three minutes. Quinn is tempted to point out the dozens of soldiers hiding behind columns and lurking in the shadows; technically, the game could continue for another ten minutes. But that’s not the point, the point is that someone must eventually verify all humanity, so a higher being, a god, must exist. Quinn is without religion, so she silently rejects this option.
“Ms. Buyers is still back with the cat being dead and alive at the same time. In two different states, where the act of opening the box splits the universe into two, creating a multiverse. Which is nonsense. A cat cannot be in two states at once.”
Quinn sees through the experiment and his attempt to ridicule science; a cat is not a quantum property, it’s too big. She knows subatomic particles can be in two states at one time, it’s a proven scientific theory. Gravity and mass will collapse a superposition, but only if the object is in a quantum state, not in a big ginger cat state. Dirac has twisted the concept to justify his belief in a personal god. She doesn’t care what he believes, and she knows science doesn’t care, either. It doesn’t have to justify itself; facts are facts, and the truth will always be the truth. If he wants to pit science against religion, he can go right ahead, but he can do it without her.
“I think Ms. Buyers might be Plato’s Prisoner in the Cave. She sees the flickering trickery of science as reflections on the wall.” Dirac wiggles his fingers in the air. “If you think science understands reality, then you fail to see what’s real and what’s not. What if I said the earth is flat because we see it that way?”
This hall just became an echo chamber. Did he just say the earth is flat?
“And yet we know it’s curved.” She smiles.
“But do we? Do we really? I suppose you also believe dinosaurs roamed the Earth. You know there’s no evidence.”
She stays silent; there’s not much else she can do. It’s a sobering situation. This man is the leader of a prominent political party, he has millions of followers, but he’s not a great leader. G
reat leaders believe in the truth, even if it doesn’t suit them—especially if it doesn’t suit them—and they don’t make stuff up; they don’t have to. This man is a great idiot.
“Let’s have another experiment.”
Let’s not. Her heart sinks.
Dirac’s assistant places a gun on the table, an old-fashioned pistol, and from his pocket he collects a handful of bullets, which he also places on the table. “In the ‘Many Worlds’ theory, the universe splits with every decision we make. Is that correct, Ms. Buyers?”
She nods.
“My assistant has a coin.”
The man holds up a tarnished doubloon with a crest on one side and ancient writing on the other. He flicks it high in the air, and it lands crest side up on the table.
“Crest side up, you win and he shoots you with a blank. But if it lands showing the Latin words Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit, ‘Nothing Comes From Nothing,’ he shoots you with a real bullet and you die. Not to worry, you’ll be alive somewhere in an alternate universe. In the multiverse.” Dirac smiles. “Twenty rounds should do it. If you’re still alive after twenty rounds, we’ve got ourselves a multiverse.”
Niels grabs hold of her wrist, but she shakes him off.
“It’s okay, I’ve got this,” she whispers. She slides her chair back, rises, and joins Dirac at the head of the table. After smoothing out her dress and adjusting her wings, she says, “Okay, I’m ready. Go ahead and shoot me.”
The assistant flips the coin. It lands crest up. He loads a blank into the gun, points it at her head and pulls the trigger. The short click unnerves her. He places the gun on the table, and she breathes. He collects the coin again and flicks it into the air. It lands with a thud, crest side down. This time he selects a real bullet, but his hands shake and he fumbles, dropping it, and the bullet rolls across the table and onto the floor.
“Nerves,” says Dirac, giggling. “Concede at any time; otherwise, he will shoot you.”