by Unknown
You think you're overloading? Jackdaw gestured toward a screen, where news of the latest upheaval coursed through the system. You ought to see what's happening to the network access points. Every time there's a new development, the whole Net grinds into gridlock.
It's true, Spiegel said. The Ethernet pipes can't keep up with all the excitement. The links are gummed to a standstill. Like southbound 1-5 at late afternoon. Too much happening at once. We're generating more transcript than we can move.
Lim grew defensive. But we're doubling data capacity every—
Don't flatter yourself, Kaladjian cut in. Current events will always double faster.
Adie stood spellbound by the five-hundred-kilometer game of Red Rover. Hands grasped one another, adhering like nerve cells into an embryonic spinal cord. Someone? Please. What are we supposed to hope for here? How many times are we supposed to get burned?
Loque laid her arm around Adie's shoulders. You don't really want to know, do you, babe?
I mean, is this the real thing, this time? Or just another bloody detour?
Kaladjian threw a hand up in the air. It's all a detour. The Cold War is a detour. Yalta was a detour.
You know what I'm asking. Are we supposed to believe, again?
What do you say, Ari, man? Rajan agitated. History or mockery, doc? Signal-process this one for us. He pointed to the sinuous line, its changing slope, its amorphous rise over run. Differentiate that curve, mathematician.
Kaladjian refused the bait. Ask our friend from Belfast. He's the one who is building the electronic voodoo fortune-teller.
Yeah, Ronan, baba. How come your time machine didn't predict this one?
O'Reilly stuck his chin out. Quite simple. It happened too soon. Give me another year or two ...
If we have it, Vulgamott said, staring at the human chain.
The cameras hovered high in the air, scanning the Baltics in under two minutes. People were linking up. Whole countries of hand-holders shuttled about plugging the gaps, thrilled with the feel of a process larger than themselves. Their faces signaled one another, animated, weeping, hilarious. The vast act of logistics threatened to turn into a party.
It's beautiful, Spider Lim pronounced, in the flattest American diphthongs. Whatever it is.
What's that? Adie asked. What did you just say?
It's .. . beautiful?
Sorry. Syntax error. Command not recognized.
Lim smiled. But it is. Look at it. A fractal tendril. You know that some flower is going to grow out of it. But you can't tell the shape or color.
Spiegel came alongside him. Too much distal stimuli, Spidey. Too exocentric. Better slow up a click or two. You're turning into a poet. He made to take Lim's wrist, feel his pulse. Spider, mistaking the move, offered up his half of the smallest possible human chain. The weakest first link. He caught his error in mid-extension and retracted his embrace, embarrassed.
But it was. Was beautiful—a self-extending experiment, too massive for description. Event ran on an analog machine the size of the globe, a planetary computer that performed the necessary calculations and generated the required results. The world took its instructions from the shapes of its smallest parts, aggregate subroutines, reusable containers, object-oriented modules that forward-chained into ever-larger autonomous agents, extending the program even as it passed through its run-time interpreter. Trees from the branch, fruit from the tree, farms from the fruit, whole nation-states from the farms, until some sum of summer mass movements decided, on the basis of all this higher mathematics, the exact moment to send the drowsy empire to bed.
In September, Hungary opened its eroding border to Austria. East German vacationers trickled through the fissure into the West. Up in the RL studio, the Cavern illuminators fell into an unconscious footrace, to finish the plates in their book of hours before their calendar went obsolete.
One night in the Economics Room, Lim, Karpol, and O'Reilly took turns poking their heads into the floating globe. They watched from the fixed core, as the surface ran through its detailed rainbow. Economist turned to hardware engineer and asked, How many MIPS can you deliver to me, two years from now?
Lim thought for a while. He settled on a number that would have seemed outrageous, had human expectation still recognized the shape of outrage.
Why? Adie asked. How many do you need?
Ten times whatever you can give me at any moment. Desire, like file size, always overflowed the available capacity.
Adie nudged the Irishman. Greedy little rasterbator, aren't you?
O'Reilly nodded. Life is greedy. It always requires an order of magnitude more juice than it has. How many millions of instructions per second do you think Hungary is executing, all told? Adie just stared at him. Spider propagated the gesture. Oh, I don't mean their computing capacity. I mean, how much processing power does the machine of Hungary involve? How much total storage?
Hungary the country?
Yes, Hungary the country. As opposed to Hungary the condition of gastric distress.
Klarpol rolled her eyes. All yours, Spidey.
Lim closed his lids and read the paper tape of some invisible, emulated Turing machine floating in his wetware. You mean, how many discrete pieces of data are involved in Hungary throwing over its old leaders?
O'Reilly's nod narrowed to one bit. One single datum.
I couldn't begin to tell you, Lim said, even to within a couple of exponents. I don't even know how to think about the problem. I don't even know how to start guessing.
A big number, Adie suggested.
O'Reilly touched the tip of his nose and pointed at her. A big number! Give the lady a Kewpie doll. How many millions of instructions per individual Hungarian?
Adie giggled. MIPS per IH. MIPSPIH. Not a sufficiently explored constant.
Another big number, Lim conceded. Bigger than any hardware is likely to deliver to you in the next few years.
Exactly. Any problem of real interest explodes into polynomials. And there's no way around that explosion except icontics.
Stop. Lady wants to trade her Kewpie doll for a definition.
Ontic icons. Icons with real existence. Shorthand agents. Data structures that do for real-world behaviors what an icon does for visual appearance. If you want to convey the idea of Hungary, you don't need a multi-gigabyte geodetic map of the entire country. You can do it with a simple outline. By the same token, we should be able to implement a functional representation of—
Adie rocked her head from side to side, the icon of incredulity. He really has you bugged, doesn't he?
Who?
Kaladjian. He's got you by the axioms. That taunt about failing to predict the chain reaction in the Baltics?
A grin pulled at O'Reilly's top lip. Perhaps. It is a well-defined problem, after all.
I see. So you're totally insane, then? This is what you're saying?
Now, now. O'Reilly put his hand out into the air, on the spot where the three of them shared a vivid, mutual mirage the shape of Eastern Europe. If the present does determine the future, we ought to be able to make the calculations in advance.
Ronan, Ronan. No more time machines. I forbid it. They're evil. Just because civilization has had a nice long run toward the horizon, that doesn't mean we have to hit the vanishing point.
Where do you propose we stop, then?
Someplace realistic? Adie said. Preferably with a nice cafe.
Realistic? That's a sliding baseline. Every new machine—every line of code that we write—changes what we think of as realistic.
My God. You're really serious. You think that 350 million people in Eastern Europe are working out their destinies in some kind of Boolean pinball machine?
O'Reilly nodded. Where else do you propose that destiny work itself out?
I get it now. This is why you and the Armenian are always at each others throat You're really one another's evil twins.
Not at all. He wants to find the Taylor series that underwrites existence. I just
want to anticipate the trajectories.
Look. This thing ... She dismissed the Cavern with a wave. It's just puppet theater. Everything we're making—just cartoon sets ...
My point, exactly. Theater captures the reality of human personality better than CAT scans can ever hope to.
Klarpol performed the four most widely recognized gestures for exasperation. Spidey, I need your help here.
Sorry, Adie. I think Гт with him. We're a symbol-making animal.
I know that, you geek. But that doesn't make our symbols real. We might get a leaf. We're never going to get politics.
Politics isn't irreducible, just because it's big.
Big? Big? Do you even begin to realize... ? You've all gone completely—
O'Reilly held out his open palm. If we can date the universe, if we can come up with the theory of evolution, if we can shoot electrons through semiconductor channels, then surely we ought to be able to explain what makes groups of people do what they do.
Explain, maybe. After the fact. But that's hardly the same thing as predicting—
Look, O'Reilly said. Stand here. Right here. Head up. Keep your eye on twelve o'clock. When I say "now," press the left wand button.
He took off his own glasses and went to the console. He coaxed the keys with his two index fingers, using a thumb for the spacebar. OK, he said. Now.
Adie found herself at the Earth's axis, the nations swinging generously around her. The planet's surface began to glisten like an oil-coated puddle. Detailed, scrimshaw stipplings came alive, modulating through cycles of incandescence. The whole globe scintillated, like central Tokyo from the night window of an aircraft. Countries sparkled like emeralds, their capitals amethysts. The embers of human activity invited her to come down out of the remote loneliness of empty space and warm herself by the fire.
Now and then, livid signals of hope and longing shot out in bolts across the continents, messages cascading across a telephone switchboard. Adie sucked in her breath. The glistening meant something, as sure as constellations in the sky once did. The lit net flashed denser than the circuitry inside a thinking mind. It was its own goal, the home that a displaced immigrant can only dream of one day reaching.
What... what is it supposed to be?
The cities of the world. Talking to each other.
Yes, but what are they saying?
Two things. "Give me more energy" and "Here's what you asked for."
Last month's trading in petrochemicals, Lim translated.
O'Reilly's eyes glinted like two more point eels in the mosaic. Actually, they're next month's.
Lim rocked back. You're keeping a log? We'll be able to check how well you do?
Of course.
Adie stared at the sumptuous pageant unfolding in the air around her. She paused, reluctant to step out of the diving bell. Then she walked through the projection. As she passed through the membrane, it played for a moment upon her own body.
It's lights, Ronan. Just lights.
He took a theatrical step toward her. That's right. He showed her his empty palms, then the backs of his hands. He stood against the north wall of the Cavern, a living silhouette, glowing with a luminous halo. Just lights. But then, what isn't?
It's my turn, Lim said. Everyone out. Eleven until two. Says so on the sheet.
Yes. Your rightful hour upon the stage. O'Reilly turned to Klarpol and offered his hand. She grabbed and inspected it, looking for the sleight.
Would you like to get a bite of something real to eat? he asked.
Something real?
Something other than a burrito, I mean.
Who's paying?
You are.
All right, then.
They drove down the hill to a twenty-four-hour falafel shack that catered to the TeraSys late-night set. Ulterior motive, he told her, once they were served.
That's a redundancy. Even our revealed motives have hidden ones.
He thought for a moment, in mid-chew. Yes. He laughed. Yes, you re right. And they both returned to eating.
After some mouthfuls, she prompted him. You were saying?
Hmm?
Your real reason for luring me into this tryst?
Oh. Right Have a look at this, then, will you? If you don't mind? Had to sign for it at the P.O. this morning.
He handed an envelope across the table, blue onionskin, exotically stamped, and fringed with the airmail barber-pole striping around its edges. Adie opened it and removed a single, handwritten sheet.
Ronan, you shiftless bastard. You were supposed to come back here by now. Is this a contest of wills? Because if it is, I lose.
Adie lifted her eyes from the paper. I cant read the signature.
It says "Maura."
Wife?
Something like that. Housemate for the better part of a decade.
Adie returned to the page, the changed message. Why are you showing me this? I mean, it's OK. I dont mind. I'm even flattered. But...
I need a woman's read. Someone who can tell me what she's saying.
What she's saying? She's saying she wants you to come back.
Hmm. It's that easy?
Yes. It's that easy. You jerk.
O'Reilly bit off a mouthful and swallowed, in one continuous motion. What do you suppose she means by "I lose"?
Oh, for the love of... You cant mean this. Not even you. You need this spelled out?
I guess I do. First off, you ought to know that there was never any talk about my—
Look. She wants you. She loves you. She's surrendering. Work it out, or I'll cut your balls off for her.
Ms. Klarpol. You know I can't possibly go back.
Her head shot back. I know nothing of the sort.
You know what we're assembling here.
The Cavern? A glorified drive-in movie. Not worth screwing up a couple of lives over.
The Cavern is the race's next step. The consolidation. Nothing comparable has ever existed, except in our imaginations. And Maura wants me to walk away from it. How long has history been working at this device? Centuries. Millennia.
About a year, for me. And I'd trade the matter transporter in a second, and throw in the antiaging beam to boot, if someone wrote me a note like that.
They downed what remained of the fried chickpea meal in silence. They stood to go, each clinging to one side of the righteous impasse.
What I want to know, O'Reilly said, halfway out the door, is whether "I lose" might mean that she's considering the possibility of coming out here to join me.
Adie bit her lip in disgust. Damned if I know, Ronan. Why don't you build yourself a little prediction machine and find out?
26
They laid down the old floor over the newer one, wall to wall, an inch to the inch. The synthetic white composites reverted to knotty pine. Jackdaw, Adie, and Spiegel measured and cut each wood-grained symbol, planing the cured boards like the most careful of carpenters.
They tinkered and trued, pulling up the planks from the source room and shimming them into the target. It took some doing, for the original floor at Aries had traveled a good deal. The wood was old and warped, and often refused to behave at all. But plank by plank, the salvaged floorboards agreed to lie down in their new frame.
Adie insisted that they save the spotty varnish. She wanted the worn patches translated wholesale to their same coordinates in the rebuilt bedroom. That meant work, for origin and destination belonged to different ordinal realities.
Her goal was a floor that swam and sank just like the original, yet sat snugly on the joints of the Cavern floor it overlaid. She wanted an Aries you could walk on: a lumber bridge fitted across time and space, tongue in groove, the stains and nicks of its private history preserved intact.
Spiegel watched Adie walk across the translated boards. Where her feet trod on the illusion, Magritte-like, they occluded it. Jackdaw attended on her every hand-drawn desire. Spiegel put the postadoles-cent somewhere in his early twenties: two
or three years older than Steve had been when he met the woman. Back at the beginning of creation, everyone was twenty.
Whatever made Adie choose the University of Wisconsin, Spiegel had long ago forgotten. He barely remembered his own reason for going to college in what Life magazine called "America's best place to live." What he remembered most about Madison was the cold. The town's average daily temperature hovered around 19 degrees. He'd followed a high-school sweetheart there, a woman whom he hoped to marry. They lost one another to multiple discoveries halfway through their first semester. So life always liked to run the little shill: the immortal cause vanishes, but the short-term effects last forever.
Stevie attended school on the Spiegel Memorial Scholarship, the family nest egg scraped together over two decades of middle-class scrimping. His parents meant the investment to give him a leg up in the practical world: fraternity membership, good connections, and a degree in civil engineering. Thirty credits into the process, little Stevie managed to sabotage all that, and more.
Madison was still reeling from its fatal bombing of the year before. The Army Math Research Center in Sterling Hall, "think tank of American militarism," had been gutted by campus radicals in the single most destructive act of sabotage in American history. The air on Lathrop Drive was still electric. A brilliant young low-temperature physicist lay dead, and a major national university stood teetering between revolution and revulsion, between We can do anything and What have we done?
Steve went back home to La Crosse that second Christmas, a semester's worth of dirty laundry in tow, and dropped his own bombshell on stunned parents. He'd found his real vocation. He couldn't, in good conscience, earn one more credit in engineering. He would study to become a poet. He stopped short of the phrase "true artificer," but it was in there, knocking around the back of his cerebellum.
This was the point in such stories when the father traditionally took the newly enlightened student prince out behind the woodshed and beat the living shit out of him. Maybe the Aged P was too incredulous to deliver the beating, as he should have. Maybe, in the wake of the Army Math bombing, his father's own sickened convictions had simply dissolved. Maybe Stevie's raw exuberance carried him through. Whatever the cause, both parents simply went ashen and wished him well, writing him off to a career as a greeter at some terminal superstore up on the periphery of north suburban Kotzebue.