Accidental Gods

by Andrew Busey

  They had figured out the primary syntax patterns, again to Mike’s amazement, largely by using brute-force pattern-matching on the computer. Alphan had little inflection but didn’t depend strictly on word order, either. It was more a language of juxtaposed ideas, with few functional morphemes, like prepositions or articles, though even those did exist in certain situations. Mike guessed that perhaps two similar languages had merged with the birth of this city, one inflective and one not, and that they were still competing for prevalence long after the merger.

  Even with their current level of understanding, strange gaps remained in conversations.

  Nefirti suddenly jumped to her feet, and Mike perked up.

  Nefirti spoke, and the subtitles instantly displayed a string of Alphan graphemes and, beneath that, the English “Let’s go, Mom.”

  Mike knew the sentence was more literally “We go, Mother”—he had translated it word for word himself before seeing the subtitles—but he also knew that the computer, for English-speaking viewers’ benefit, changed that to “Let us go, Mother” and that to “Let’s go, Mom,” all instantaneously.

  This merged Alphan language had not developed contractions yet, and in some cases, an Alphan word would have to be broken into multiple English words. Even in those cases, the computer failed to normalize many of the sentences and left them more composite than contraction. In short, some of the sentences sounded weird sometimes.

  “Where?” Nefirti’s mother answered.

  Nefirti spoke quickly, repeating the last syllable.

  The English subtitles read, “Take the ____, ____ ___!”

  “Pausing,” Stephen said and froze the image. “She said that last word twice.”

  “It’s used pretty frequently.”

  Stephen nodded. He had noticed it too and pulled up previous examples on the screen. They watched history in picture-in-picture.

  Mike looked excited. “I bet it’s ‘please.’”

  It’s strange, Mike considered, that after so long, there are seemingly simple words we still don’t know. I guess we just have to be lucky and catch them in the right context.

  “Yeah. Seems like they use it when they want something.”

  “OK. Enter it.”

  “Code it ‘tentative’? A three out of five?”

  “Four. I’m pretty certain it means ‘please,’ or their closest equivalent.”

  Stephen typed away on the keyboard. “Done.”

  The mother stood up and spoke, and the English read, “OK. Let’s go,” which Mike knew was actually more like “Yes, we go.”

  Mike had decided to split the Alphan affirmative into both “yes” and “OK,” the choice of which was dependent upon the situation—mostly for the comfort of the viewers, even though “yes” and “OK” were the same Alphan word. He hoped to further differentiate it into “yeah” and other casual variations once he had a firmer grip on the language. He had been amazed, though, that like most cultures on Earth, nodding and bowing were linked to “yes.” He had told Stephen, “It adds credibility to the idea that ‘yes’ is linked to nursing: a vertical motion gets more milk; twisting the head side to side discards the teat.” At first, Stephen had squinted at Mike, but then Stephen had pursed his lips and nodded in both agreement and amazement. Mike had added, “It’s not at all universal, but the correlation with Alphans is incredible and could have important implications in linguistics here in our world.”

  The mother whistled, and one of the servants entered the room.

  He bowed.

  “Prepare the _____,” she said, a hint of command clear in her voice.

  He bowed again and left, walking toward the river.

  The girl turned and watched him go. Stephen froze. It was like she was looking right at Stephen. She smiled with delight.

  Stephen had already developed a strong connection to the little girl, watching her grow, her years passing in days. They had spent hundreds of hours with her. It was almost as if they lived with her.

  Stephen knew deep down that she didn’t know he existed. But he thought of himself as her guardian angel and regarded her like a daughter. He had never had kids and didn’t really expect to, especially after that mess with Catherine. In fact, as he thought about it, he wasn’t sure he even wanted to. They were a hassle he didn’t need. But this was like all the karmic benefits and the connection without that. Nefirti’s smile melted his heart. He didn’t understand it, but he knew it must be what a parent felt.

  The little girl bounded toward him, as if she would jump into his lap. It spooked and delighted him at the same time. The spookiness vanished almost instantly and left him with only delight, and he extended his arms as if to catch her. Mike noticed but said nothing.

  She disappeared from the images, and the mother jogged toward them after her.

  Stephen and Michael turned around. Nefirti, her mother, and their servant were now out on the dock, joined by the father. He must have circled around the house to meet them there.

  The servant was preparing the boat. Apparently, they were going sailing.

  “Just in time to go _____,” the father greeted them.

  “Oh! That must be ‘sailing,’” Mike said. “Or at least ‘boating.’ We can draw the distinction later.”

  “Got it,” Stephen stammered, as he was still recovering from the emotional earthquake.

  They watched as the family got on the felucca and the servant raised the sail and gently guided them out on the river.

  Across the river, the ever-present pyramids offered a silent vigil. Their early afternoon shadows extended almost completely across the river, like a hand with thick, pointed fingers reaching to grasp the city.

  The sixth pyramid now stood as high as the shortest of the completed pyramids, but an army still worked furiously on it.

  Chapter 31

  Week 8: Friday

  A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

  Most people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know better? What do we know about the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the universe come from, and where it is going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come to an end? Recent breakthroughs in physics, made possible in part by fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to some of these longstanding questions. Someday these answers may seem as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun—or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Only time (whatever that may be) will tell.

  —Stephen Hawking, the opening of A Brief History of Time

  It was another Friday afternoon, and this time, Thomas had grabbed a few folks and corralled them into Bohrs II, named in honor of their first conference room at UT, to chat. Unlike the original Bohrs, Bohrs II was a perfectly rectangular room with matching chairs and lights that didn’t hum.

  Everyone had been working too hard recently, and he missed the camaraderie and the philosophical debates from the earlier days. He hoped he could get something like that going again. Everyone was rummaging through the beers, trying to get their brand—which was still mostly Pacifico.

  Ajay was still opening his bottle when he turned to Lisa and asked, “Do you remember that conversation we had when we were just getting started on this?”

  I knew I could count on him, Thomas thought.

  “Which one?”

 
; “The one where we talked about what was outside the universe and what was there when the big bang occurred?”

  “Yes, where we concluded we could work around those issues. Besides, there was nothing to really go on to figure it out. Back to your edge problem,” she said with a smile.

  “Yes, well…” He paused. “It has given me the creeps recently.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have been far more successful on this project than I think any of us expected. We have a thriving, intelligent race that we created—not just by accident. We created them by nudging a reality to lay the groundwork for their development. Our model of the big bang appears to be dead-on. It all works.”

  “I don’t see what creeps you out about that,” Lisa said.

  Stephen asked, “Is it the intelligent beings?”

  Ajay said, “Not really.”

  “Do you think they are intelligent?” Stephen pushed, turning the conversation in a different direction.

  “They seem to be,” Ajay said.

  “Do you think they’re alive?”

  “Well, do you mean that in a technical sense?”

  “No, I’m asking what you believe.”

  “Oh, then,” Ajay said emphatically, “yes, I think they are alive. I think the SU is as real as our universe. It has to be, since it obeys the same laws.”

  “So, as a physicist, you say that since it adheres to a set of natural laws that are similar to, if not exactly the same as, our own, that it is equivalent to our universe?”

  “Yes.”

  “What the hell!” Lisa blurted out. “Are you kidding?”

  Ajay shook his head. “No.”

  “It’s a simulation, for crying out loud.”

  “Well,” Ajay retorted, “I haven’t spent much time in it, but if it has the same sets of rules as our universe and it follows them—both of which are true—then it is as real as our own universe. How can you not see that?”

  “It’s a simulation!” Lisa said again, almost in the “I know you are but what am I” tone.

  Stephen said to Lisa, “I know you haven’t spent as much time in the SU as some of us have, and actually, I would have agreed with you a few weeks ago. But…now I would say they’re alive. I see it every day, not through all the people, mind you. Rather, I came to see it through one: this girl, Nefirti. We’ve watched as she’s grown. She’s happy some days, most days, really, but sometimes she gets pouty or angry. It’s amazing. There is no way she can’t be alive.”

  Lisa looked at him like he was crazy.

  Mike suggested to Lisa, “Monday, come with us when we visit her. You’ll see what Stephen’s talking about.”

  “Fine,” Lisa finally agreed. Everyone was looking at her.

  Stephen asked, “Thomas, what about you?”

  Thomas cringed inside. He had hoped to avoid getting sucked into this conversation.

  “I’m undecided,” he said.

  Lisa added gleefully, “Looks like you’re coming Monday, too.”

  “Sounds fun. I haven’t been spending enough time in the SU recently, anyway. I’m looking forward to the updated tour!”

  Stephen said, “Now that we have that resolved, what was creeping you out, Ajay?”

  “Well, it is not so much what is happening in our simulated universe that creeps me out…”

  “What then?”

  “We did all this to learn about the beginnings of our universe—and it has delivered, in spades. We now have a much deeper understanding of the big bang, evolution, everything. We can examine it at any point in time in nearly infinite detail…”

  Lisa asked, “And?”

  “No one has talked about what this means about what is outside the universe.”

  She squinted at him.

  “Well,” Ajay said, “don’t you think that if we can create all this, that it is remotely possible…even highly likely…that our own universe is the same thing?”

  Lisa gave a halfhearted chuckle.

  Ajay continued, “…that some intelligent race created something similar to our simulated universe experiment and that we are part of it?”

  Her face flushed red. “That is a little disturbing.”

  Stephen nodded knowingly at Mike. “Like ghosts watching ghosts.”

  Ajay ignored Stephen and said to Lisa, “Yeah, so what was there before the big bang, and what is there now outside the expanding edge of our universe? Just empty computer memory?”

  She chewed on her lips and then said, “I suppose it’s possible.”

  “So let me propose a thought experiment for you.”

  She nodded slightly.

  “Suppose that our simulated universe’s beings…I still can’t bring myself to call them people—”

  “They are people!” Stephen said.

  “Look,” Ajay said to Stephen, “it doesn’t matter for this.” Then Ajay turned back to Lisa. “Lisa, just suspend your skepticism for a moment. Clearly, they can evolve on their own, regardless of how ‘real’ you…” He glanced at Stephen again. “…or anyone thinks they are or are not.” He turned back to Lisa. “Suppose these beings advance to the point we are at now. This doesn’t seem unlikely. They are moving forward at a reasonable pace technologically.”

  “Fine,” Lisa said. “I’ll accept your premise. So we’re imagining that they’re equal to us technologically.”

  “Yes. So they decide to do the same experiment that we are doing.”

  “OK.”

  “And they succeed. They now have a simulated universe, with self-aware, intelligent beings populating it…” He paused. “Like ours.”

  She chewed her lips again, still slightly nodding. Thomas wondered where Ajay was going with this.

  “Hang on, though,” Ajay said.

  He walked up to the white board and drew a big cube on it and then another slightly smaller one inside it, and another inside it.

  He turned back to her and dropped his conclusion like a hammer. “So imagine their world does the same thing, and so on, ad infinitum.”

  She was nodding, but seemed to be in intellectual shock. Her mouth hung open now; her eyes didn’t blink.

  The rest of the room was silent.

  Ajay said, “So now we have an infinitely deep sequence of nested universes. Each created by an intelligent civilization that is roughly its creators’ technological equal.” He tapped the board. “But the real trick is that it is infinitely deep.”

  “I almost dread what you’re about to say,” she said.

  “It is almost infinitesimally unlikely that we are at the top of that infinitely deep set of nested universes, which means we’re just another box in the chain—”

  Stephen added, “Not to mention arrogant.”

  “What? Arrogant?”

  “Yeah. It would be arrogant to think we’re at the top of the nested universes.”

  Lisa frowned. “This is all kind of depressing.”

  “Yes,” Ajay said, “I know. That is why it’s creeping me out.”

  “Well, there goes your Nobel Prize, since there isn’t one in philosophy.”

  “You know what has me creeped out the most?”

  “What?”

  “This solves all the open problems in physics. It explains why all the constants are what they are, why the big bang happened the way it did.”

  Stephen asked, “Because everyone keeps doing the experiment the same way because that’s what they know?”

  “Yep.”

  Lisa said, “Well, I’ll give you this, Ajay, it does seem to answer a lot of questions. But not in a way people are going to like.”

  ***

  Stephen had been spending almost all of his time in the office—barely even leaving to sleep, which he largely justified as necessary to continue the development of Coliseum and to work on the language processing. While he did get a lot done on those things during the quiet weekend hours, he mostly came to spend more time with Nefirti.

  SU-N11 Time: 495 PC
[+13,508,915,713 Years]

  He walked all over the house and couldn’t find her. He could use Coliseum to find her, but he wouldn’t. Somehow, that felt like an invasion of her privacy, one he was unwilling to make—it was strange, given the situation, but a rule he had imposed on himself nonetheless.

  Finally, he walked out back, where he stopped, his eyes drawn to the pyramids. He always took a moment to take them in and not just because they were spectacular; they were a hallmark of the fact that an intelligent civilization thrived here.

  As his eyes drifted toward the river, he saw her, sitting at the end of the small pier, her feet dangling over the edge, tapping the surface of the water.

  He walked down the pier and sat next to her. He started to put his arm around her shoulders and then felt silly for trying.

  He turned to face her and realized she was crying. He suddenly felt hurt, too, as if something had been torn in half inside his chest, and he felt tears well up within him. He couldn’t stand to see her hurt like that, and he wished more than ever that he could touch her, could wipe the tears from her cheeks.

  As they sat quietly on the end of the pier, watching the Alpha star drift across the sky, he remembered seeing her out here other times.

  “This must be her special place,” he said to himself quietly, “where she goes to sort things out, find herself—to be alone.”

  That last word gave him a twinge of guilt, as if he were somehow violating her most private moment by being here. But then he realized that the SU had become that same thing for him. He came here to escape, to think, to be alone—but he never truly felt alone here, with her.

  Chapter 32

  Week 9: Monday

  I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation—the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.