Analog SFF, October 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “What will you do?”

  Jacob stared toward the river. “Keep living my life as I always have.” He looked at Carrie. “Does that surprise you?”

  “You said you had faith only in the Lord. That's more than something you feel, isn't it? For you, it's knowledge.”

  “Maybe you do understand after all. C'mon, I've got your clothes in the car. Let's get you dressed again, and these guys back to my office. Are you sure Vicari didn't harm you when he touched you?”

  “It doesn't feel like it,” Carrie said. “Remember—the length of time it takes him to gain access can vary quite a bit.”

  “So maybe I was just unlucky.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  Jacob told her, “You'd better hope it isn't something you only realize later.”

  “I'll be fine once we get Vicari on the way back to Unity custody.”

  * * * *

  A week later, Carrie entered Adriana's bedroom. Her sister didn't look up, but continued staring out her window. Since Adriana's “window” was a hundred meters below the lunar surface, it was really a holo of a village in the La Apujarra region of southern Spain. White-walled homes spread across a steep hillside, the occasional church steeple jutting out from among them. A series of mountain ranges stretched to the horizon, seemingly acting as protectors for the village and its inhabitants.

  Carrie sat on Adriana's wide bed. She's still so beautiful, she thought as she ran her hand through her sister's jet-black hair, the same as her own, and across the smooth skin of Adriana's face, then cupped her chin.

  Adriana looked at Carrie, but without recognition. Her face was set in a smile that hadn't wavered since Vicari's attack. I wish I could know whether that reflects a real happiness within her, Carrie thought. She took Adriana's hand and squeezed, without receiving a squeeze in return.

  Carrie's tears arrived, as they usually did at this point in her visits. I can only hope I'm giving her some comfort, she thought. I guess I'm kind of like Jacob in that respect. He can't feel the presence of his Lord, and I can't feel whether Adriana is really with me, or if I'm all alone.

  I suppose that's...

  Wouldn't that be ironic?

  Except it doesn't feel—wait a minute! That's the only thing he could manage in the instant he touched me? My sense of irony?

  And that's also ... except I can't feel that, either.

  “You son of a bitch!” she said, and lost herself to full-throated laughter even as she shed tears for her smiling sister.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Dave Creek

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  * * *

  Short Story: THE MEME THEORIST

  by Robert R. Chase

  Can a theory fit reality too well?

  Stumbling from his bedroom into the kitchen in the predawn dimness, Pelerin was surprised to find Werner Heisenberg at the breakfast table, reading the Santa Fe Times and sipping coffee. It was not the elder statesman of physics in suit and narrow tie who confronted him. Rather, it was a younger Heisenberg, circa World War II, his unruly hair already receding, dressed in an open-collared sports shirt and shorts. He looked up from the newspaper as Pelerin entered.

  “But you're...” Pelerin licked his lips, trying to force out the next word. “...dead.”

  Heisenberg smiled. “You are a scientist,” he said, in barely accented English. “You should not believe everything you hear.”

  * * * *

  Norwich greeted him with her usual quiet courtesy despite the way he had brushed her secretary aside and barged into her office. “Delighted to see you, Theo. Please have a seat.”

  Pelerin shook his head and remained standing. “This isn't a social visit. I have come to submit my resignation. I'm leaving the institute.”

  Norwich cocked her head to one side, an action that, together with her somewhat oversized nose, gave her the appearance of a puzzled bird. “I am very sorry to hear that. Has there been anything unsatisfactory in your contract, or the support given your work?”

  “Nothing like that. The institute has been very generous. I am leaving for personal reasons.”

  Her look of silent concern and perplexity created a mounting pressure for more. “I have had a ... a breakdown,” he said reluctantly. “I'm afraid I am not quite sane. You don't want the institute's work associated with a nut case.”

  It hurt to admit this most personal and embarrassing of weaknesses, especially to Norwich. He had objected vociferously to her appointment as director. By her own admission, she had only the most vague understanding of the sciences being studied by the fellows of the Da Vinci Institute.

  All she knew was people.

  “Theo, I am so sorry.” Norwich's sympathy was instant and genuine. “I know how hard you have been working for the past few months. If you just need rest...”

  “It is not that sort of breakdown. I see things that aren't there. Ghosts.” An unexpected wave of relief washed over him. For weeks he had been living a lie, pretending to be sane—worse, pretending to lead and guide the scientists working the noosphere project. There was no telling how deeply flawed his work had been, how far he might have led them astray. Now he would be cast out, as was only right, and the project would proceed untinged by madness.

  He had been looking at the floor, unwilling to meet Norwich's gaze. Raising his eyes, he was astonished to see neither repugnance nor patronizing pity in her eyes. Instead, there was only concern, the worry one would have for a friend in trouble.

  “These ghosts,” Norwich said, “are they frightening?”

  Pelerin forced a smile. “Most of them are scientists. All they do is talk.”

  “Do they ask you to ... do things? Bad things?”

  “Much of the time they talk among themselves as if unaware of my existence. When they do talk to me, it is about my work. This morning, it was Werner Heisenberg.”

  “How long have you been having these, uh, visions?”

  “More than a month. Almost six weeks.” He winced, feeling a new surge of guilt. Obviously, he should have confessed this at the beginning.

  The expected rebuke did not come. Norwich was silent for a moment, as if he had said something worthy of deep consideration.

  “It is very self-interested of me to say so, but three months ago you began making a series of breakthroughs which have your colleagues almost dumbfounded with astonishment. If this is insanity, I could wish the rest of my staff similarly afflicted.”

  “I don't know if it has affected my work,” Pelerin said. “The problem is, I can't prove that it hasn't. I can't trust myself and you shouldn't.”

  He dropped his eyes again and, wrapped in his own misery, waited for his dismissal.

  “Do you know the story about benzene?” Norwich asked.

  “Excuse me?” It was such an apparent jump in the discussion that Pelerin wondered if he had somehow tuned out a minute or more of conversation.

  “Back in the 1800s, there was a chemist trying to understand the structure of benzene. According to the story, he dreamt one night of a snake devouring its own tail. When he woke, he realized that the atoms formed themselves in a circle, a benzene ring.

  “Nobody supposes that there was anything supernatural about this. The general understanding is that the chemist's mind kept working the problem while he was asleep and provided the answer symbolically in a dream.

  “Couldn't this be what you are experiencing? You have been working this problem for half a year now. It shouldn't be that surprising that you would find yourself dreaming about it.”

  She was offering him a way out. Only honesty prevented him from taking it. “I wasn't dreaming. Heisenberg"—and the others, though he still could not bring himself to speak of any others—"appeared as real to me as you do now. Right up until the moment he vanished.” And he found himself in an empty room, with the feeling that it had always been empty.

  Norwich sighed and looked at him sadly. “Theo, it's a free country and you can certainly leave if you f
eel you must. Would you do one thing for me, however? Would you please see Dr. Joyce before you go? He has been very helpful to other members of the staff. And if you are right ... well, he has the sort of expertise you will need.”

  * * * *

  “And what does this one look like?”

  Pelerin squinted, desperately trying to find something in an apparently random set of inkblots.

  “They are two Siamese twins. They hate each other. You see, they are pushing away from each other, even though that is tearing them apart at the base.”

  Joyce flipped the paper over and frowned with mild incredulity. A fringe of hair surrounded a bald head so pink it appeared to glow. Chipmunk cheeks covered by mutton chop sideburns made him appear more like an extra in a revival of A Christmas Carol than a psychologist for a private research institute.

  “Really? I would have said something like two old maids with absurd hair styles playing patty cake. You geniuses have such imaginations. I guess you are supposed to see things invisible to us mere mortals.”

  “Doctor, we have been going through test after test for more than three hours,” Pelerin said. “Haven't you been able to reach a conclusion?

  “Eh? Oh yes, but it's not one you will like.”

  “Tell me. Please.” Pelerin found that he was holding his breath.

  “You are not insane. Under stress, yes, but this is a high stress environment at times, even if most of that stress is self-induced.”

  “I am seeing ghosts!”

  “An interesting datum,” Joyce said, “but hardly a pathology by itself. They are not even real hallucinations. Since you recognize them as unreal, they are at most pseudohallucinations.

  “Furthermore, the tests you complain of have established that your powers of abstract reasoning are as good as ever. You are better oriented to external reality, as measured by everything from knowledge of current events to institute politics, than half the people in this building.

  “Julie asked you the crucial question. She's quite insightful, you know. Quite the perfect pick for director. It's not the appearance of ghosts so much as what they do, or want you to do, that is crucial. From what you tell me, all they want to do is talk shop. This appearance of Heisenberg, for instance. You have been rather vague about what he had to say.”

  “He told me not to be too certain of myself.”

  The corners of Joyce's mouth began to twitch.

  “Yes, I know that sounds like a Heisenberg joke,” Pelerin said hotly. What else would you expect from the man who had made the Uncertainty Principle a cornerstone of physics? And as he thought back on it, Heisenberg—or his ghost or hallucination or whatever—had seemed amused at his own wit. “But it is exactly what he said.”

  “Advice which should stand every scientist in good stead,” Joyce said, “whether in evaluating a hypothesis or one's own mental state.

  “Look, for some reason you seem to think that if I certify you as insane, or at least suffering from some multi-syllabic mental disease, that it will act as a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card, that it will somehow make whatever is bothering you no longer your fault. And we know you have unresolved issues stemming from Terri's unfortunate accident—”

  “Totally irrelevant, even if it weren't five years ago,” Pelerin snapped.

  Joyce raised his eyebrows in polite skepticism. “But suppose I were to certify some mental condition and you were to leave the institute, what would you do then?”

  It took Pelerin a few seconds to realize that Joyce expected an answer. “Well, I don't know, exactly, I imagine...”

  “Exactly. You have no earthly idea what would come next. I do, though. You would sit in your room bemoaning your fate, feeling more and more miserable, in an ever tighter and deeper spiral of narcissistic self-pity.”

  “That's hardly fair,” Pelerin objected. “I thought you were supposed to show me some sympathy and help me feel better.”

  Joyce gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Sympathy is the worst thing I could give you. It would just encourage your moping about. My job is to keep you tethered to reality. That can be painful sometimes, as it appears to be for you now, but that's not my problem.

  “Here is what you can do, however. Go back to your office and get to work. Not because DARPA and Madison Avenue are salivating over your work and trying to press more money on us than we can possibly spend. Not even because your colleagues are comparing your last three papers to those produced by Einstein in his ‘miraculous year’ of 1905.

  “You should do it because while you are working, you will not be thinking about yourself. If you succeed in focusing on the work, rationality will percolate from the outside in. Your mind, if it is not already rational, will become rational as it conforms itself to a rational universe.”

  * * * *

  Pelerin slammed the door behind him as he entered his office. What a complete quack! Joyce should never have been granted a degree, much less been hired as staff psychologist. He pulled a briefcase from a small closet and began stuffing it with his few personal effects.

  So much for the work he was going to do on his sabbatical, the work that would bring him more fame and fortune than he could have dreamed of teaching philosophy at a backwoods college. So much for giving intellectual rigor to memetics and the noosphere.

  The term “meme” had been coined to refer to units of cultural information transferred from one mind to another. The hope was that it could do for ideas what the concept of genes had done for biology. Both Mather & Crowley, the advertising firm paying half their research expenses, and the Defense Department protested that their only interest was in basic research. It had become quickly obvious, however, that the true goal of both was memetic engineering: developing memes through splicing and synthesis, which could then be used to alter human behavior.

  This would have bothered Pelerin but for the fact that it seemed so unlikely to produce practical results. He had been chosen for the Meme Team because Andy Goldsmith, the primary researcher before his untimely death a year ago, had thought his PhD in epistemology (how do we know that we know what we know) might be useful. The money had come in the form of a grant and Andy, even then very sick though nobody knew it, had let each member of the team attack the subject in his own way. Trying to envision a space within which memes acted, Pelerin unintentionally reinvented the concept of the noosphere, the sphere of human thought previously postulated by Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin. It was, for Pelerin, mental recreation, a way to refine models that existed on their own without worrying about any actual relation to reality.

  He had been working in the institute cafeteria one afternoon when Jeffers came by and stopped, transfixed by what he saw scrawled on Pelerin's yellow pad.

  “I didn't know you were into quantum mechanics,” Jeffers said.

  Pelerin looked up in surprise. Jeffers was part of the institute's physics contingent, one of the young theorists who would either create a Theory of Everything or blow up the planet. Pelerin had met him once before and remembered his name only because he had a fancied resemblance to Beeker, one of Jim Henson's Muppet creations.

  “I know absolutely nothing about quantum mechanics,” Pelerin said.

  “Then why are you using Bronson's equations for waveform collapse? Not that they will get you that far. Bronson himself has admitted that.”

  Later, searching the internet, Pelerin discovered that Bronson was a mathematician at the University of Sydney, who had devised a new form of mathematics to describe certain quantum mechanical operations. Commentary was mixed, some researchers saying that it added nothing to the understanding of the field, others that it was simply wrong. Bronson agreed that the structure he was trying to create was incomplete.

  It should have nothing to do with Pelerin's work. Yet there were intriguing parallels, suggestions for lines of investigation that never would have occurred to Pelerin on his own. He followed up on them like a dog drawn by an enticing new scent. And found to his surprise that
people were reading what he wrote and muttering words like “genius.”

  * * * *

  His computer hummed to life, jarred out of sleep mode by the vibrations of the slammed door and the opening and closing of desk drawers. Light from the screen spilled onto the desktop, illuminating a series of equations he had begun to scrawl on a legal pad the day before. He frowned, irritated by the feeling that there was something not quite right about them. There was the merest wisp of a memory, of something Heisenberg—or his own disordered subconscious—had said that morning.

  Examining the paper more closely, he saw the error. Similar terms had been transposed, the result of trying to finish up this segment on insufficient sleep. Pelerin sat down to correct the mistake.

  When he looked up, it was almost two o'clock. His hand was numb from clenching the pen. He had been working for more than three hours. On the table before him lay page after yellow page of symbols that had flowed from his pen as effortlessly as musical notes had flowed from Mozart's.

  He had been too upset that morning by Heisenberg's appearance to have any breakfast. Now he was ravenously hungry and the cafeteria lunch line was about to close. He hurried down the hallway, grabbed a tray, and filled it with bowls of beef stew and salad.

  The cafeteria was mostly empty at this hour. Pelerin took a seat by the glass wall that looked out over the edge of the mesa. Once, when he had been working late, he had come into the cafeteria for coffee. The light had been dimmed so that he could see the stars bright overhead. On the horizon, a thunderstorm crawling over Santa Fe discharged eye-searing lightning, all the more impressive for being completely silent. His coffee had cooled as he sat entranced by the combination of beauty and raw power.

  Now, as he started in on his salad, he noted the presence of two men deep in discussion at a far table. Their clothing seemed curiously old-fashioned.

  “But even as an artist and a poet, you must admit that you are over-estimating the importance of imagination,” one of them said. “When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk somewhat like a gold guinea?”