Now We Are Ten: Celebrating the First Ten Years of NewCon Press

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Of course.” The nurse nodded. “No need to worry, you won’t be able to hurt Mr Thomas, he’s been warned.”

  “And forewarned is forearmed.” The Professor smiled then, his blue eyes warm, and I smiled back. All those warnings and the Professor was fine; lucid, worried about hurting me even. Everything was about liability nowadays. The floor was probably just empty because of cut backs and all those warnings were to make sure I couldn’t sue if I stubbed my toe or something during the visit. I didn’t watch the nurse walk out and lock the door behind him. I was already setting up my tape recorder.

  “You want to speak to me about my work, Mr Thomas?” The Professor had caught my unsubtle glances at his notes.

  “Call me Dean.” I sat down, carefully. “I’d like to do an interview, at least to start with. I’ve read your papers, but I want to know in your own words, what you were doing and what...”

  “What went wrong?”

  “Yes. I hope that I can replicate... I won’t say improve... but if I can look at things in a different way, from a different angle.” I cleared my throat.

  “You’re from a different discipline?”

  “More maths oriented.” I looked again at the pages beneath his arm.

  “You want to see these?” He pushed them towards me. “Take them.”

  “Take them?” I breathed raggedly, my fingers hovering over the paper, as if he might change his mind and snatch them back.

  “What good do they do me? If Two doesn’t scribble on the bloody things, Three’ll eat them, or Four’ll wipe his –” He stopped, spread his hands. “You understand my condition?”

  I was horrified. “You destroy your own work?”

  “Not me.” The Professor shook his head. “Two through Five.” He sighed. “I don’t know how long I’ve got, so you’d better ask your questions.”

  “You mean...”

  “I mean I’m driving right now, boy, but one of the passengers will likely take over in a while.”

  I swallowed. “So, I know your work involved multiple universe theory and you were trying to create a – a wormhole I suppose is the best way to describe it, into an alternative universe. You wanted to communicate across worlds, with the ultimate aim of swapping knowledge, scientific advances, perhaps even resources.”

  “In broad layman’s terms.” The Professor nodded. “Imagine if we could create a doorway into a world where they still have plentiful fossil fuels and strike a trade deal just as we would with the US or China. Imagine if we could open a doorway into a world that could give us the secret of cold fusion, a simple way to clean up our oceans, repair our atmosphere, or travel across the galaxy.”

  “Mathematically speaking, these couldn’t possibly be worlds close to our own.”

  “Then you do understand multiple universe theory.” The Professor leaned forward on his elbows, suddenly animated. “Go on, tell me what you know.”

  “Every single time a decision is made, an alternative universe is created, so that there are infinite universes; some very, very similar to our own, others that diverged thousands of millennia ago and took totally different paths.” I felt as if I was in a supervision and worried that I sounded as if I was hoping for a good grade from him.

  Instead of mocking me, the Professor shook his head quite seriously. “Not that long ago.”

  The tape recorder whirred quietly between us. “Why not?”

  “Decision implies consciousness. If, as I posit, alternative universes are created by decision, then the overwhelming majority of universes spurred from ours will have been created after mankind developed thought from instinct. The number prior to this, generated by random decisions when faced with a choice of little consequence – whether to go to the left or right in order to pass a boulder blocking the way, for example – would be negligible compared to the myriad generated since.”

  “Of course. Instinct means that for most situations there is only one possible course of action. It wouldn’t be a conscious decision whether or not to run from a sabre tooth tiger.” I grinned.

  “Right. I believe the development of symbolic culture, language and specialised lithic technology signified the start of universe mitosis. Around fifty millennia ago.”

  Excited, I scribbled a note. Then I looked up “Still, the universes most different from our own and therefore potentially most useful to us, would be the ones created millennia ago. But it would be easiest to open a door to the universe least divergent from ours.”

  It was the Professor’s turn to smile. “But then, how would we know we had done so?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “If the universe were the same as ours in every conceivable way, except one - that Mrs Brown from number ten had curry for dinner instead of casserole perhaps – how would you know that you had managed to open a door to another universe?”

  “Readings – air, background radiation...” I faltered.

  “All are unlikely to change in a universe so close to our own.”

  “And that was your first problem.” I nodded, sagely.

  The Professor leaned back in his chair and laughed. “That wasn’t my first problem! Think. How much energy would you need to open an actual door into another universe? What would you use to build the door? What materials should I be looking at to tear a hole through our own reality and into another? Should I be looking at magnetism, sucking atoms from space, dark matter? My first problem was that the whole thing is utterly impossible.”

  I gaped. “What?”

  “Go home, son.” The Professor knitted his long fingers behind his head and looked down his nose at me. His blue eyes twinkled. “This, whatever it is you’re doing, your PhD, it’s tilting at windmills. There is no way you can open a physical gateway into another universe, another dimension, or even into another spot in our own world. The best you can hope is to go to B&Q, buy yourself a new front door and tell yourself it opens each morning onto a new day... Fucktard!”

  “What?” My eyes widened.

  “You heard me, you whore-son, go home. Go home before your arse-wittage creates a cluster-fuck of a problem that even your mother can’t buy you out of.” The Professor’s eyes continued to twinkle merrily and I gaped.

  “You – you –” I fingered the panic button, my thoughts racing. “Eight?”

  The Professor shoved his chair back from his desk and crossed his legs. “Rude fucking kids. My name is Ray.”

  “R-Ray?”

  “Ray Macguire, dickhead.”

  There were subtle changes in the Professor’s demeanour, now that I knew to look for them. He sat now with his arms dangling by his sides, utterly relaxed, like an old boy on a barstool, missing only his pint. His twinkling eyes had a hard edge, not true good humour. He’d laugh at you, but only if you fell from your own stool and injured your coccyx.

  Was the Professor gone then? For how long? I exhaled shakily. I had a time limit – a single morning with Professor Macguire. Was a ten-minute interview and a statement that his work was all hokum, all I was going to get?

  “Ray?” I dragged a shaking hand through my dark blonde hair. “Do you know what the Professor and I were talking about? Were you... listening?”

  He snorted. “Opening a door into another universe so you can swap recipes or some bollocks. You don’t know the first thing about shit.”

  “I need the Professor.” I pleaded. “Can’t you... put him back on the line or something.”

  Ray threw back his head and laughed. Then he spoke into his closed fist. “Sandra? Yes, dear, would you kindly transfer Professor Macguire to line one? I have a right twat here who wants to speak to him.” His laugh petered out, as if it had run down a drain. He regarded me with his head cocked to one side. “You’re a bloody little nerd aren’t you? What the hell’re you going to contribute to the world?”

  I blinked. “I’m sorry?”

  “You heard. Never done a day’s work in your life, have you? Never even done a paper round, or washed glasses in
a bar. Wouldn’t know how to run a business if yer life depended on it. No good with people, no good with money.”

  “And you are?” I raised my eyebrows.

  Ray snorted. “Just look at any business index. My company was top one hundred four years in a row.”

  I swallowed, shakily. “And what does your company do?”

  “Do?” Ray sneered. “We don’t do, we make.”

  My head swam, I was totally out of my depth, struggling to find any kind of response that made sense and wouldn’t anger him. “What do you make?”

  “We make portants, carriers, dozer components, e.c.cs.” He sighed and turned away. “Not that you’d...”

  I frowned, the pencil turned in my fingers and I looked down. “Those things ... I don’t –”

  The professor sighed. “Portants – personal teleporters – no?” He shook his head. “Trapped here, in this body, in this crappy world without even an e.c.c. for entertainment...”

  His voice faded. I sat up.

  “Trapped here? In this crappy world, what do you mean?”

  “Trapped.” The professor hunched in his chair and looked up at me wide eyed. He combed his fringe over his face with his fingers. “Ray-Ray go home?”

  “Home?” I echoed. Despite the Professor’s age, I suddenly felt like the older one in the room.

  He frowned. “Go bye-bye - go home.” He stood, stamped his feet and then spotted my blue crayon. He grabbed it with an expression of pure joy, skipped to the wall and began marking lines on the white paint.

  It felt as if the floor was moving under me. I gripped the table edge. “Two?” I fumbled for my phone and took a picture of the growing piece of art on the wall. Trees, they had to be and, I tilted my head to one side, a cave perhaps.

  “Is that... home?”

  The Professor dropped the crayon and started to stroke the wall, patting the cave entrance with one hand, thumping his forehead with the other.

  “Professor?” I called gently, then louder. If he could swap personalities that fast, perhaps I could get him back. What would do it? My gaze fell on the papers he had been working on. I picked them up. His writing was neat, small curlicues on the ends of the fives and threes, almost calligraphic. “I see your equations here – you know you made a small mistake in the integral on the third line?” I picked up the fallen crayon, and made a change which looked like a child’s scrawl among the neat lines of algebra.

  The Professor fell silent.

  “It has an effect on the differentiation further down the page, and you know what maths is like – one tiny mistake early on and by the end it’s a vast amount of difference...” I was babbling, trying to catch the attention of a man who might or might not be listening, buried beneath at least two other personalities.

  I kept my head down, pretended to ignore the Professor, made notes on his pages as I scanned them. Apart from the small mistake early on his mind, as laid out to me here, was brilliant. What were these equations meant to prove? Was this an answer to the gateway problem?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him approach, felt him lean over me. I shivered. What if this was Seven? I had nowhere to run. I imagined his hands around my neck: large hands.

  My memory fed me the reports of his arrest and subsequent insanity plea. A laboratory burned to the foundations. One dead, two injured. Not all burn victims. I shuddered again, but kept scanning the papers, drawn into the numbers almost despite myself.

  A hand on my shoulder. I froze. Then a finger pointing. “You made a correction here – you’re sure that’s right?” His voice was once again that of the man I had met when I entered the room.

  I sagged slightly, relieved. Then I turned. “I’m sure. What do these do? You said the gateway wouldn’t work.”

  The Professor smiled. “It can’t, not in the way you think?”

  “Not, the way I think? Then it can work.” My eye fell on the notes I had been taking, almost unconsciously. Three words were written in capitals, encircled. PHYSICAL GATEWAY IMPOSSIBLE. “Physical gateway impossible.” I read. Then my own eyes widened. “A physical gateway, but what about a non-physical one?”

  The Professor sighed, walked around me and sat down again, crossing his legs at the ankle. “What do you think you know?”

  “I’m not sure. Do you mind if I think aloud?”

  The Professor gestured, a sign to go-ahead.

  “My friend, Beth, is a researcher in the particle physics lab, that’s one of your specialties, isn’t it? She’s been running experiments on atoms. We already know that measuring an atom seems to affect its course. She hopes to prove that our mere expectations of an atom’s direction can change its eventual position.”

  The Professor’s brows raised. “I’d like to know how she intends to prove that.”

  “You’d have to speak to Beth.” I folded my hands. “If she’s right, though, that means that our own observation of our universe, our own expectations of it, have a hand in creating it.”

  “Mind over matter,” the Professor commented mildly, but his eyes were glittering.

  “So if decisions create universe mitosis and our own expectations shape the universe we end up in...” I floundered. The Professor waited. “If we essentially create our own universes, it should be possible to access other universes... by creating a gateway...” I stopped and the blood ran from my cheeks.

  “In our own minds.” The Professor finished.

  My hands started to shake. I rose from my stool and backed away until I hit the wall. I stared at the Professor, then at the artwork behind him, the life-size cave crayoned onto the paintwork.

  “You – you’re telling me that you did manage to create a wormhole? A-a gateway inside your own head. You don’t have D.I.D, you have... a portal to another universe – in your head?”

  The Professor steepled his fingers. “Not an-other universe.”

  “Nine. Is that right? Nine other selves: nine universes. You have ten distinct personalities because you have nine versions of yourself from other universes trapped inside your mind.”

  The Professor clenched his fists. “I didn’t realise what I was doing would be a trap for them. I should have seen it, but I didn’t. They got into my mind, into our world, but they can’t get out.”

  “Why not?”

  “I made a mistake. I thought what I was doing would allow me to perceive other universes, to travel across realities, but instead I created an open space which instead draws others in. I shut the experiment down as soon as I realised. Now I’m trying to work out –”

  “How to get them home?” I looked at the sheets of maths. “How did you open this wormhole in the first place?”

  The Professor rose and walked to his door, he leaned on the jamb. “Everything we know about the world is based on what our brain tells us, do you understand that?”

  “Of course.” He was lecturing now, I his willing student.

  “Our brain perceives the world based on the stimulation it receives through neurons?”

  “Right.” I nodded.

  “You think your conscious self is interacting with the world directly, but this is an illusion created by the brain. Your brain receives an enormous amount of information and it filters that information before it reaches your consciousness.”

  I nodded.

  “So then, how can you know that anything you see is real?”

  I paused before answering. “I... I don’t know.”

  “You know people used to believe that we only utilise around ten percent of our brain?”

  “I’d heard that.”

  “Proved to be nonsense, of course, but I now wonder if there was more truth in the notion than we knew, if a good portion of our mind is active in ways we never suspected. My theory is that in reality our brains are exposed to, or perceive, a vast number of alternative universes at a level we cannot possibly comprehend, but are constantly filtering out the information that doesn’t apply to the one relevant to us. So, as you said, e
xpectation informs matter; not by changing it, but by filtering out the other versions of reality.”

  I sat up. “That’s brilliant.”

  He folded his arms. “So then, how did I create the gateway?”

  “Somehow you have to cancel out your expectations, fool the brain into showing you other realities?”

  “Something like that. I worked with Professor... Frith, in the neuropsychology department.”

  The small hesitation before he spoke the name caught my attention. “Professor Frith.” I rolled the name around my tongue, trying to remember why I knew of him. Had one of my friends had him as a supervisor? Then the answer came to me like striking lightning: Professor Charles Frith: Charlie Frith, strangled and then burned. By Seven.

  The Professor looked at me coldly, and I suppressed my instinctive shudder. This was important. I needed to know. I had a future to think of. “Sorry, go on.”

  “Professor Frith and I created a machine which forced both my conscious and unconscious mind to totally focus on one single task. It made sure that the part of my mind that set expectations of the universe had no way to communicate with the other part, in effect, we switched it off.” His face fell. “I thought this would enable me to perceive other universes; instead it left an empty space which was filled...”

  “By other versions of yourself,” I gasped. “But the information you can get from them...”

  “That’s why I... we... carried on.” The Professor turned his attention to the window. “One of my selves comes from a world where they have teleportation. If he would only write down the formula... Others are from dying worlds; if they could just tell us what they did wrong... One of them is from a world so far ahead of ours it’s almost alien, he must have so much to share with us...”

  “But they won’t share.”

  “Even if they would be willing to help the person who trapped them in a world not their own, no one would listen.” The Professor seemed to be talking to himself now. “I’m insane, remember? Why would anyone...?” He looked at me.

  “I’m listening.” I sat up. “If you could get Ray to tell me how the teleporters work...”

  “You can claim to have come up with the idea yourself.” His voice had hardened. “Become a billionaire.”