Anthology 2. Luminous [1998, 2010]

by Greg Egan

  I turn on the radio, find a talk show, and try to concentrate on the words without letting the patch image slip away. I manage to discern the patterns fired by a few words – or, at least, patterns which are common to every cascade which appears when those words are used – but after the fifth or sixth word I’ve lost track of the first.

  I switch on the light, grab some paper, start trying to sketch a dictionary. But it’s hopeless. The cascades happen too fast and everything I do to try to capture one pattern, to freeze the moment, is an intrusion which sweeps the moment away.

  It’s almost dawn. I give up, and try to sleep. I’ll need money for rent soon, I’ll have to do something, unless I take up Tran’s offer for the patch. I reach under the mattress and check that the gun’s still there.

  I think back over the last few years. One worthless degree. Three years unemployed. The safe daytime house jobs. Then the nights. Stripping away layer after layer of illusion. Love, hope, morality … it all has to be overcome. I can’t stop now.

  And I know how it has to end.

  As light begins to penetrate the room, I feel a sudden shift … in what? Mood? Perception? I stare up at the narrow strip of sunlight on the crumbling plaster of the ceiling – and nothing looks different, nothing has changed. I scan my body mentally, as if I might be suffering from some kind of pain too unfamiliar to apprehend instantly, but all I get back is the tension of my own uncertainty and confusion.

  The strangeness intensifies and I cry out involuntarily. I feel as if my skin is bursting and ten thousand maggots are crawling from the liquid flesh beneath, except that there’s nothing to explain this feeling: no vision of wounds, or insects – and absolutely no pain. No itch, no fever, no chilled sweat … nothing. It’s like some cold-turkey horror story, some nightmare attack of DTs, but stripped of every symptom save the horror itself.

  I swing my legs off the bed and sit up, clutching my stomach, but it’s an empty gesture: I don’t even want to puke. It’s not my guts that are heaving.

  I sit and wait for the turmoil to pass.

  It doesn’t.

  I almost tear the patch off – what else can it be? – but I change my mind. I want to try something first. I switch on the radio.

  ‘… cyclone warning for the north-west coast—’

  The ten thousand maggots flow and churn; the words hit them like the blast from a firehose. I slam the radio off, stilling the upheaval, and then the words echo in my brain:

  … cyclone …

  The cascade runs a loop around the concept, firing off the patterns for the sound itself; a faint vision of the written word; an image abstracted from a hundred satellite weather maps; news footage of wind-blown palms – and more, much more, too much to grasp.

  … cyclone warning …

  Most ‘warning’ patterns were already firing, prepared by the context, anticipating the obvious. The patterns for the height-of-the-storm news footage strengthen, and trigger others for morning-after images of people outside damaged homes.

  … north-west coast …

  The pattern for the satellite weather map tightens, focusing its energy on one remembered – or constructed – image where the swirl of clouds is correctly placed. Patterns fire for the names of half a dozen north-west towns, and images of tourist spots … until the cascade trails away into vague associations with spartan rural simplicity.

  And I understand what’s happening. (Patterns fire for understand, patterns fire for patterns, patterns fire for confused, overwhelmed, insane …)

  The process damps down, slightly (patterns fire for all these concepts). I can grasp this calmly, I can see it through (patterns fire). I sit with my head against my knees (patterns fire), trying to focus my thoughts enough to cope with all the resonances, and associations which the patch (patterns fire) keeps showing me through my not-quite-seeing left eye.

  There was never any need to do the impossible: to sit down and draw a dictionary on paper. In the last ten days, the patterns have etched their own dictionary into my brain. No need to observe and remember, consciously, which pattern corresponds to which thought; I’ve spent every waking moment exposed to exactly those associations and they’ve burned themselves into my synapses from sheer repetition.

  And now it’s paying off. I don’t need the patch to tell me merely what I’d tell myself I’m thinking, but now it’s showing me all the rest: all the details too faint and fleeting to capture with mere introspection. Not the single, self-evident stream of consciousness – the sequence defined by the strongest pattern at any moment – but all the currents and eddies churning beneath.

  The whole chaotic process of thought.

  The pandemonium.

  * * *

  Speaking is a nightmare. I practise alone, talking back to the radio, too unsteady to risk even a phone call until I can learn not to seize up, or veer off track.

  I can barely open my mouth without sensing a dozen patterns for words and phrases rising to the opportunity, competing for the chance to be spoken – and the cascades which should have zeroed in on one choice in a fraction of a second (they must have, before, or the whole process would never have worked) are kept buzzing inconclusively by the very fact that I’ve become so aware of all the alternatives. After a while, I learn to suppress this feedback – at least enough to avoid paralysis. But it still feels very strange.

  I switch on the radio. A talk-back caller says: ‘Wasting taxpayers’ money on rehabilitation is just admitting that we didn’t keep them in long enough.’

  Cascades of patterns flesh out the bare sense of the words with a multitude of associations and connections … but they’re already entwined with cascades building possible replies, invoking their own associations.

  I respond as rapidly as I can: ‘Rehabilitation is cheaper. And what are you suggesting – locking people up until they’re too senile to re-offend?’ As I speak, the patterns for the chosen words flash triumphantly, while those for twenty or thirty other words and phrases are only now fading … as if hearing what I’ve actually said is the only way they can be sure that they’ve lost their chance to be spoken.

  I repeat the experiment, dozens of times, until I can ‘see’ all the alternative reply-patterns clearly. I watch them spinning their elaborate webs of meaning across my mind, in the hope of being chosen.

  But … chosen where, chosen how?

  It’s still impossible to tell. If I try to slow the process down, my thoughts seize up completely, but if I manage to get a reply out, there’s no real hope of following the dynamics. A second or two later, I can still ‘see’ most of the words and associations which were triggered along the way … but trying to trace the decision for what was finally spoken back to its source – back to my self – is like trying to allocate blame in a thousand-car pile-up from a single blurred time-exposure of the whole event.

  I decide to rest for an hour or two. (Somehow, I decide.) The feeling of decomposing into a squirming heap of larvae has lost its edge, but I can’t shut down my awareness of the pandemonium completely. I could try taking off the patch, but it doesn’t seem worth the risk of a long slow process of re-acclimatisation when I put it back on.

  Standing in the bathroom, shaving, I stop to look myself in the eye. Do I want to go through with this? Watch my mind in a mirror while I kill a stranger? What would it change? What would it prove?

  It would prove that there’s a spark of freedom inside me which no one else can touch, no one else can claim. It would prove that I’m finally responsible for everything I do.

  I feel something rising up in the pandemonium. Something emerging from the depths. I close both eyes and steady myself against the sink; then I open them and gaze into both mirrors again.

  And I finally see it, superimposed across the image of my face: an intricate, stellated pattern, like some kind of luminous benthic creature, sending delicate threads out to touch ten thousand words and symbols, with all the machinery of thought at its command. It hits me wit
h a jolt of déjà vu: I’ve been ‘seeing’ this pattern for days. Whenever I thought of myself as a subject, an actor. Whenever I reflected on the power of the will. Whenever I thought back to the moment when I almost pulled the trigger …

  I have no doubt, this is it. The self that chooses. The self that’s free.

  I catch my eye again, and the pattern streams with light – not at the mere sight of my face, but at the sight of myself watching, and knowing that I’m watching – and knowing that I could turn away, at any time.

  I stand and stare at the wondrous thing. What do I call this? ‘I’? ‘Alex’? Neither really fits; their meaning is exhausted. I hunt for the word, the image, which gives the strongest response. My own face in the mirror, from the outside, evokes barely a flicker, but when I feel myself sitting nameless in the dark cave of the skull, looking out through the eyes, controlling the body … making the decisions, pulling the strings … the pattern blazes with recognition.

  I whisper, ‘Mister Volition. That’s who I am.’

  My head beings to throb. I let the patch image fade from vision.

  As I finish shaving, I examine the patch from the outside, for the first time in days. The dragon breaking out of its own insubstantial portrait to attain solidity – or at least, portrayed that way. I think of the man I stole it from, and I wonder if he ever saw into the pandemonium as deeply as I have.

  But he can’t have, or he never would have let me take the patch. Because now that I’ve glimpsed the truth, I know I’d defend to the death the power to see it this way.

  * * *

  I leave home around midnight, scout the area, take its pulse. Every night there are subtly different flows of activity between the clubs, the bars, the brothels, the gambling houses, the private parties. It’s not the crowds I’m after, though. I’m looking for a place where no one has reason to go.

  I finally choose a construction site, flanked by deserted offices. There’s a patch of ground protected from the two nearest street lights by a large skip near the road, casting a black triangular umbra. I sit on the dew-wet sand and cement dust, gun and Balaclava in my jacket, within easy reach.

  I wait calmly. I’ve learnt to be patient – and there are nights when I’ve faced the dawn empty-handed. Most nights, though, someone takes a short cut. Most nights, someone gets lost.

  I listen for footsteps, but I let my mind wander. I try to follow the pandemonium more closely, seeing if I can absorb the sequence of images passively while I’m thinking of something else – and then replay the memory, the movie of my thoughts.

  I make a fist, then open it. I make a fist, then … don’t. I try to catch Mister Volition in the act, exercising my powers of whim. Reconstructing what I think I ‘saw’, the thousand-tendrilled pattern certainly flashes brightly, but memory plays strange tricks: I can’t get the sequence right. Every time I run the movie in my head, I see most of the other patterns involved in the action flashing first, sending cascades converging on Mister Volition, making it fire – the very opposite of what I know is true. Mister Volition lights up the instant I feel myself choose … so how can anything but mental static precede that pivotal moment?

  I practise for more than an hour, but the illusion persists. Some distortion of temporal perception? Some side-effect of the patch?

  Footsteps approaching. One person.

  I slip on the Balaclava, wait a few seconds. Then I rise slowly to a crouch and sneak a look around the edge of the skip. He’s passed it, and he’s not looking back.

  I follow. He’s walking briskly, hands in jacket pocket. When I’m three metres behind him – close enough to discourage most people from making a run – I call out softly: ‘Halt.’

  He glances back over his shoulder first, then wheels around. He’s young, eighteen or nineteen, taller than I am and probably stronger. I’ll have to watch out for any dumb bravado. He doesn’t quite rub his eyes, but the Balaclava always seems to produce an expression of disbelief. That, and the air of calm: when I fail to wave my arms and scream Hollywood obscenities, some people can’t quite bring themselves to accept that it’s real.

  I move closer. He’s wearing a diamond stud in one ear. Tiny, but better than nothing. I point to it, and he hands it over. He looks grim, but I don’t think he’s going to try anything stupid.

  ‘Take out your wallet, and show me what’s in it.’

  He does this, fanning the contents for inspection like a hand of cards. I choose the e-cash, ‘e’ for easily hacked; I can’t read the balance, but I slip it into my pocket and let him keep the rest.

  ‘Now take off your shoes.’

  He hesitates, and lets a flash of pure resentment show in his eyes. Too afraid to answer back, though. He complies clumsily, standing on one foot at a time. I don’t blame him: I’d feel more vulnerable, sitting. Even if it makes no difference at all.

  While I tie the shoes by their laces to the back of my belt, one-handed, he looks at me as if he’s trying to judge whether I understand that he has nothing else to offer – trying to decide if I’m going to be disappointed, and angry. I gaze back at him, not angry at all, just trying to fix his face in my memory.

  For a second, I try to visualise the pandemonium, but there’s no need. I’m reading the patterns entirely on their own terms now – taking them in, and understanding them fully, through the new sensory channel which the patch has carved out for itself from the neurobiology of vision.

  And I know that Mister Volition is firing.

  I raise the gun to the stranger’s heart, and click off the safety. His composure melts, his face screws up. He starts shaking, and tears appear, but he doesn’t close his eyes. I feel a surge of compassion – and ‘see’ it, too – but it’s outside Mister Volition, and only Mister Volition can choose.

  The stranger asks simply, pitifully, ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I can.’

  He closes his eyes, teeth chattering, a thread of mucus dangling from one nostril. I wait for the moment of lucidity, the moment of perfect understanding, the moment I step outside the flow of the world and take responsibility for myself.

  Instead, a different veil parts – and the pandemonium shows itself to itself, in every detail:

  The patterns for the concepts of freedom, self-knowledge, courage, honesty and responsibility are all firing brightly. They’re spinning cascades – vast tangled streamers, hundreds of patterns long – but now all the connections, all the causal relationships, are finally crystal clear.

  And nothing is flowing out of any fount of action, any irreducible, autonomous self. Mister Volition is firing, but it’s just one more pattern among thousands, one more elaborate cog. It taps into the cascades around it with a dozen tentacles and jabbers wildly, ‘I I I’ – claiming responsibility for everything – but in truth, it’s no different from any of the rest.

  My throat emits a retching sound, and my knees almost buckle. This is too much to know, too much to accept. Still holding the gun firmly in place, I reach up under the Balaclava and tear off the patch.

  It makes no difference. The show plays on. The brain has internalised all the associations, all the connections, and the meaning keeps unfolding, relentlessly.

  There is no first cause in here, no place where decisions can begin. Just a vast machine of vanes and turbines, driven by the causal flow which passes through it – a machine built out of words made flesh, images made flesh, ideas made flesh.

  There is nothing else: only these patterns, and the connections between them. ‘Choices’ happen everywhere – in every association, every linkage of ideas. The whole structure, the whole machine, ‘decides’.

  And Mister Volition? Mister Volition is nothing but the idea of itself. The pandemonium can imagine anything: Santa Claus, God … the human soul. It can build a symbol for any idea, and wire it up to a thousand others, but that doesn’t mean that the thing the symbol represents could ever be real.

  I stare in horror and pity and shame at the man trembling in front
of me. Who am I sacrificing him to? I could have told Mira: One little soul doll is one too many. So why couldn’t I tell myself? There is no second self inside the self, no inner puppeteer to pull the strings and make the choices. There is only the whole machine.

  And under scrutiny, the jumped-up cog is shrivelling. Now that the pandemonium can see itself completely, Mister Volition makes no sense at all.

  There is nothing, no one to kill for: no emperor in the mind to defend to the death. And there are no barriers to freedom to be overcome. Love, hope, morality … tear all that beautiful machinery down, and there’d be nothing left but a few nerve cells twitching at random, not some radiant purified unencumberedÜbermensch. The only freedom lies in being this machine, and not another.

  So this machine lowers the gun, raises a hand in a clumsy gesture of contrition, turns, and flees into the night. Not stopping for breath, and wary as ever of the danger of pursuit, but crying tears of liberation all the way.

  Author’s note: This story was inspired by the ‘pandemonium’ cognitive models of Marvin Minsky, Daniel C. Dennett, and others. However, the rough sketch I’ve presented here is only intended to convey a general sense of how these models work; it doesn’t begin to do justice to the fine points. Detailed models are described in Consciousness Explained by Dennett, and The Society of Mind by Minsky.

  COCOON

  The explosion shattered windows hundreds of metres away, but started no fire. Later, I discovered that it had shown up on a seismograph at Macquarie University, fixing the time precisely:3.52 a.m. Residents woken by the blast phoned emergency services within minutes, and our night-shift operator called me just after four, but there was no point rushing to the scene when I’d only be in the way. I sat at the terminal in my study for almost an hour, assembling background data and monitoring the radio traffic on headphones, drinking coffee and trying not to type too loudly.