by Ian McDonald
‘We’re getting two per cent over input,’ she shouts over the swelling burble of country women exchanging stories about their grandchildren, businessmen pressing palms and palmers and journos hanging on to their ‘hoeks for the newest shock wonder revelation to come out of the Bharat Sabha: the stunning resignation of N.K. Jivanjee from the Government of National Unity. ‘We’re storing that in high-energy capacitors for the laser-collider until it reaches a level where we can add it to the grid and open up an aperture to a higher level universe, and soon and so on. That way we can climb a ladder of energy states until we’re getting something like one hundred and fifty percent return on input energy . . .’
She clenches her fists, shakes her head, sighs in frustration as the volume in the lecture hall reaches a mild roar. Vishram takes the microphone.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention please? I know it’s been a long day for many of you and it’s been nothing if not eventful, but if you’d come with me through into the lab where the breakthrough was first made . . .’
The staff herds the guests into the zero point lab.
‘No plan ever survives contact with the enemy,’ he whispers to Sonia Yadav. A hovercam darts past his head, close and irritating as an insect, relaying the events to the remote shareholders. He imagines the virtual ghosts of the agent aeais hovering over the slow-moving line of guests. Centre Director Surjeet had objected robustly to Vishram opening the zero-point theory lab with its labyrinth of wall-writings and hieroglyphics. Surjeet feared it would make the project look amateurish - see, this is how they do things at Ray Power! With crayons and spray-cans, on walls, like badmashes making graffiti. Vishram wants it for just that reason: it is human, messy, creative. It has the desired effect, the people relax, look up in wonder at the hieroglyphics. Will it be a new Lascaux, a Sistine chapel? Vishram wonders. The symbols that birthed an age. He should start making inquiries about having the room preserved.
Vishram Ray, with intimations of immortality. He notes with small, sharp pleasure that his dinner date with Sonia Yadav still shines in red felt-marker on the corner of the desk. In the less formal environment, her passion easily keeps an audience. Vishram watches her arm movements delimit swathes of ceiling to a rapt group of greysuits. He overhears her telling them ‘. . . at a fundamental level where quantum theory, M-star theory and computing all interact. We’re discovering that the quantum computers we’re using to maintain the containment fields - and its the containment fields that affect the winding geometries of the ‘branes - can actually manipulate the Wolfram/Friedkin grain structure of the new universe. At a fundamental level, the universe is computational.’
Their little mouths are wide open.
Vishram shimmies in beside Marianna Fusco.
‘When this is done,’ he says, getting as close as professional propriety allows to a legal advisor, ‘How about. We go. Off somewhere. Where there is sun and sea and sand and really good bars and no people and we can run around in nothing but factor thirty for a month?’
And she slides her head as close to his as she dares and through a frozen public smile says, ‘I can’t. I have to go.’
‘Oh,’ says Vishram. And, ‘Fuck.’
‘It’s a family thing,’ Marianna Fusco says. ‘Big anniversary in my constellation family. People coming from all over. Relations I didn’t have last time we did this. No, I’ll be back, funny man. Just tell me where to turn up, sans luggage.’
Then the lights flicker and the room quivers. Glass rattles in the windows and door. There is a murmur of consternation. Director Surjeet’s hands are raised in placation.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, please, there is no need for alarm. What we have just felt is a quite normal side effect of us ramping up the collider. We have closed one aperture and used the energy to warp the ‘brane into another. Ladies and gentlemen, we have broken through into a new universe!’
There is polite, baffled applause. Vishram takes the opportunity to showboat.
‘And what that means, my friends, is a twelve per cent return on our energy investment. We put a hundred per cent into maintaining the aperture, we get all that, plus an extra twelve back again! It’s this way to the zero-point future!’
Inder starts off a tattoo of enthusiastic corporate applause.
‘You should have been a lawyer,’ Marianna Fusco says. ‘You have the gift of talking endless shit on subjects you know nothing about.’
‘Didn’t I tell you that’s what my Dad wanted for me?’ Vishram says, positioning himself so that he can see down Marianna Fusco’s top. He imagines slowly, luxuriously oiling those hand-filling nipples.
‘I remember you saying something the law and comedy both being professions that make their living in the arena,’ she says.
‘I did? I must have been after sex.’
He does remember that conversation. It seems like another geological era, another incarnation. The room shakes again, harder, more sustained. Pens fall from desk; concentric ripples clash inside the water-cooler.
‘Another universe, another point on the share-price,’ Vishram quips but Sonia Yadav looks concerned. Vishram catches her eye. She abandons her tour. They move through the groups of shareholders back to the empty lecture hall.
‘Problem?’ he whispers. Sonia points at the display boards. Output, one hundred and thirty five per cent.
‘We shouldn’t be anywhere close to that kind of figure.’
‘It’s doing better than expected.’
‘Mr Ray, this is physics. We know exactly the characteristics of the universes we create, no surprises, no guesswork, no “better than expected, good boy, top of class”.’
Vishram messages Director Surjeet. When he enters, Vishram closes the door to hovercams and eavesdroppers.
‘Sonia tells me we have a problem with the zero point.’
Surjeet does this tooth sucking thing that grates Vishram’s nipples, especially when it reveals the saag he had for lunch.
‘We’re getting anomalous readings.’
‘That tells me exactly as much as “Vishram, we have a problem”.’
‘Very well, Mr Ray. It’s a universe, but it’s not the one we ordered.’
Vishram feels his balls contract. Surjeet has his palmer open, mathematical renderings and wire-frame graphics spins across it. Sonia too is reading the digits.
‘Eight three zero.’
‘It should be . . .’
‘Two two four.’
‘Wait wait wait wait wait; enough of the lottery results.’
Sonia Yadav says carefully, ‘All the universes have what we call winding numbers, the higher the number, the more energy we need to access it and the more we can get out of it.’
‘We’re six hundred universes too high.’
‘Yes,’ says Sonia Yaday.
‘Recommendations?’
‘Mr Ray, we must close the zero point down immediately . . .’
Vishram cuts him off. ‘That is absolutely the last resort. How do you think that’s going to look in front of our entire board and the press? Another Bharati humiliation . . . If we can get the thing up to full power safely . . .’ To Sonia Yadav, he says, ‘Does this pose any danger?’
‘Mr Ray, the energies released if membranes cross . . .’
Sonia cuts in.
‘No.’
‘You’re sure.’
‘Dr Surjeet is correct about the energy levels if membranes cross, it would be like a nano-Big Bang, but that involves energies thousands of times more powerful than we can generate here.’
‘Yes, but the Atiyah’s Ladder effect . . .’
The guy who let off the second Big Bang, Vishram thinks. Creation Two. That’s the biggest laugh any comedian will ever get. He says, ‘Here’s what we do. We continue with the demonstration as planned. If it goes over one hundred and seventy, we close the whole thing down, show’s over, please exit via the gift shop. Whatever happens, nothing said in this roo
m goes any further. Keep me appraised.’
As he heads for the door to the zero point lab, thinking, I can see a beautiful clear career path opening in front of Ms Sonia Yadav Hindu physicist, a fresh tremor hits the Research Centre, hits it hard, hits it to its roots, sends Vishram Ray and Sonia Yadav and Director Surjeet reeling for handholds, for something safe and solid that is not moving, knocks dust and plaster and loose ceiling tiles from the roof and rattles the display screens, those same screens that show power output at one hundred and eighty four percent.
Universe 2597. The aperture is running away, laddering up through successive universes. And Vishram Ray’s palmer is calling, everyone in that room’s palmer is calling, they put their hands up to their heads and it is the same voice in each of their ears telling them that the aeais controlling the aperture are not responding to commands.
They’ve lost control of the zero point.
Like a Christian angel, like the sword of avenging Michael plunging from the sky, Mr Nandha comes sliding down a path of air towards the Ray Research Centre. He knows that in the belly of the tilt-jet his Excommunication Squad is muted, uncertain, scared, mutinous. The prisoners will be talking to them, sowing unbelief and dissent. That is their matter, they do not share his dedication and he cannot expect them to. Their respect is a sacrifice he is prepared to make. This warrior woman beside him in the cockpit will bring him to his ordained place.
He clicks up the astringencies of a Bach violin sonata as the pilot tips the tilt-jet into the long slow dive towards the green rhombuses of the University of Bharat.
A presence, a throat clear, a tap on his shoulder interrupt the infinite geometries of the solo violin. Mr Nandha slowly removes his ’hoek.
‘What is it, Vikram?’
‘Boss, the American woman’s going on about diplomatic incidents again.’
‘This will have to be resolved later, as I have said.’
‘And the sahb wants to talk to you, again.’
‘I am otherwise engaged.’
‘He’s mightily pissed off that he can’t get through to you.’
‘I sustained damage to my communicator when I was battling the Kalki aeai. I have no other explanation.’ He has turned it off. He does not want squawking questions, demands, orders breaking the perfection of his execution.
‘You should still talk to him.’
Mr Nandha sighs. The tilt-jet leans into a stack, climbing down the sky towards the airy, toy-bright buildings of the Rana’s university, gleaming in the sun that is tearing the monsoon apart. He takes the ’hoek.
‘Nandha.’
The voice says something about excessive zeal, use of weapons, endangering the public, questions and inquiries, too far Nandha too far, we know about your wife she turned up at Gaya Station but the word that rings, the word that chimes like the sword of that Christian, Renaissance angel against the dome of heaven, that cuts through the aircraft noise is Vik’s, repeating to the crew strapped into their seats in full combat armour: battling the Kalki aeai.
He despises me, Mr Nandha thinks. He thinks I am a monster . . . This is nothing to me. A sword requires no comprehension. He removes the ’hoek and with a swift, sharp jerk of his hands, snaps it in two.
The pilot turns her mirrored HUD visor to him. Her mouth is a perfect red rosebud.
The fourth quake shakes the Research Centre as Vishram hits the fire alarm. Bookcases topple, whiteboards drop from walls, light-fittings sway, cornices crack, wiring ducts splinter. The water-cooler teeter-totters this way, that way, then falls gracefully to the floor and bursts its distended plastic belly.
‘Okay, ladies and gentlemen, there is no need for alarm, we’ve had a small report of an overheat in the electrical relay gear,’ Vishram lies as wide-eyed people with their hands over their heads look for the exits. ‘Everything is under control. Our assembly point is outside on the quad, if we could make our way there in an orderly fashion. Walk slowly, walk carefully, don’t run, our staff are fully trained and will get you to safety.’
A swarm of hovercams beats everyone but Energy Minister Patel out the door. Sonia Yadav and Marianna Fusco want to wait for him but he orders them out. No sign of course of Surjeet. The Captain is always last to leave. As he turns the fifth and biggest tremor yet brings the roof screens crashing down in the lecture hall beyond. Vishram is afforded one burning, eternal glimpse on the message frozen on the falling screens.
Output seven hundred and eighty eight per cent. Universe 11276.
The light, spacious, elegant architectures of Ray Power warp and billow around Vishram Ray like his one and only mushroom trip as he runs - no decorum, no carefully, no good example, just hammering terror - for the door. The sixth tremor sends a crack racing up the centre of the Ramayana floor. Stressed parquet tiles spring apart, the glass door panels shatter into flying silicon snow as he comes running through. The shareholders, already far back from the building, retreat further. ‘This is no electrical overheat,’ Vishram overhears from a plump Grameen woman in widow’s white as he hunts down Sonia Yadav. Her face is ash.
‘What the fuck is happening?’
‘They’ve taken over the system,’ she says faintly. Many of the shareholders are lying flat on the still-wet grass, waiting for the next, even bigger shock.
‘Who, what?’ Vishram demands.
‘We’re shut out of our network, something else is running it. There’s stuff coming in, we can’t stop it, all channels at once, something huge.’
‘An aeai,’ Vishram says and Sonia Yadav hears that it is not a question. The bolt-hole, the escape clause, the way out when the Generation Threes were faced with final annihilation. ‘Tell me, could Artificial Intelligences use the zero point to build their own universe?’
‘It couldn’t be a universe like this, it would have to be a universe where the computations and digits that make up their reality can become part of the fabric of the physical reality.’
‘A universe that thinks?’
‘A mind-like space, we call it, but yes.’ She looks into his face, daring his disdain. ‘A universe of real gods.’
Sirens in the distance, racing in. Universe breaches, call the fire brigade. There is another sound over the fire engines; aircraft engines.
‘Played for a fucking fool,’ Vishram grimaces and then everything goes white in a pure, perfect, blinding flash of urlight and when his vision clears, there is a star, pure and perfect and dazzling, shining in the middle of the Research Centre Building.
White so bright, so searing it burns through the one-way mirror of the pilot’s visor and before he goes into white-out Mr Nandha receives a retina-burned image of big brown eyes, high cheekbones, a small nose. Beautiful. A goddess. So many men must want to wed you, my warrior, Mr Nandha thinks. The face recedes into after-image, then the world returns in spots and blots of purple and Mr Nandha feels tears of justification start in his eyes, for there is the sign and seal that he was right. A star burns in the heart of the city, from deep inside the earth. He signs to the pilot. Take us down.
‘Away from the people,’ he adds. ‘We do not recklessly endanger life.’
Vishram thinks he might have seen this scene in a movie once. Or if he hasn’t, he should write it: a crowd of people standing in a wide green field, all facing the same direction, hands raised to shield their eyes from a dazzling, actinic spark in the distance. That’s a shot to build a story from. His eyes are squeezed half-shut, even so everything is reduced to strangely stretched silhouettes.
‘If that’s what I think it is, there’s a lot more than bright light coming off it,’ says Ramesh’s voice beside him.
‘And what do you think it is?’ Vishram asks, remembering his sunburn from peering into the observation window. That was a low level universe. A glance at Sonia Yadav’s palmer, still receiving data from the monitoring systems around the aperture, tells him this is universe 212255. Two and something lakh universes.
‘A universe being born,’ Ramesh says,
dreamily. ‘The only reason we’re still here, there’s anything left, is the containment fields still have it. In terms of the subjective physics of that universe, it must seem like a super-gravity squeezing its spacetime so it can’t expand. But that kind of expansion energy has to go somewhere.’
‘How long can the cores hold it?’ Vishram asks Sonia Yadav. He imagines he should be shouting. In the movies, they are always shouting. Her shrug tells all he needs to know and fear. A fresh tremor. People fall to the earth, though it is a traitor. Vishram hardly sees them. The star, the blinding star. It is now a tiny sphere. Then he does hear a shout, Sonia Yadav’s voice.
‘Deba! Has anyone seen Deba?’