When It's a Jar

by Tom Holt

  He thought for a moment. “Thinking,” he said.

  “Thinking?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, lots of things.” He smiled. He rather liked her. She had a kind face and she hadn’t wiped his brain, or at least not yet. “For instance, would I be right in thinking that we’re all standing on a big ball of rock perpetually circling around a much bigger ball of incandescent gaseous plasma?”

  “What? I mean, yes.”

  “Oh good. I thought we must be, but it’s so nice to have it confirmed. What does it look like?”

  “What does what look like?”

  “The big ball of burning gas.”

  She thought for a moment. “Like a white sort of blob thing in the sky,” she said. “I suppose.”

  “Only it’s not good to look straight at it, because it can damage the optic nerve?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.” He gave her an enormous smile. “And what about atmospheric precipitation?”

  “What about it?”

  “Does water—’ He felt rather shy about asking. After all, what if he’d got it completely wrong? “Does water really fall out of the sky sometimes?”

  “Well, yes. It’s called rain. Almost always happens during major lawn tennis championships.”

  “Rain,” he repeated. “That’s a very beautiful word. Did you choose it?”

  “No.”

  “Ah well, never mind. If you happen to meet the person who did, tell them I like it a lot.” He hesitated. “You don’t mind me asking you things, do you?”

  “Um, no. No, that’s fine.”

  “Splendid.” He really did like her a lot. “In that case, could you please explain to me exactly how sexual reproduction in humanoid mammals actually works, because I’ve sort of figured out the basic principles, but the actual mechanics of it—”

  “Um.”

  He’d said the wrong thing, obviously. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “Are you going to wipe my brain now?”

  “Huh?”

  Maybe she wasn’t. “If it’s all right,” he said, “I’d quite like it if you didn’t, not just yet anyhow, because I’m onto a rather interesting thing about light. You see, if I’m right and light really is the fastest thing in the multiverse, then it sort of stands to reason that if you accelerate matter to light speed in the vacuum of space—”

  “Just a second.” She was giving him an odd look. “You make it sound like you’ve thought of all this stuff for yourself. You know, from first principles.”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s—”

  “I know,” he said sadly. “Completely pointless, because just when I think I’m actually getting somewhere, they come along and wipe my brain, and then I’ve got to do it all over again from scratch, which I can’t help thinking is a bit of a waste of time and effort. Still, I guess you’ve got a perfectly good reason for it, though I have to admit, I haven’t been able to figure out what it could be.” He looked at her hopefully. “I don’t suppose you’d be prepared to give me a hint, would you? It’s so frustrating not being able to figure it out for myself. Makes me feel such a fool.”

  Maybe it was contagious; “Um,” she said.

  “Fair enough,” he replied, “I understand. For some reason I’ve got to work it out for myself.” He frowned, then looked at her again. “If I do work it out, do I get to keep my memories?”

  (“What’s he saying?” Maurice hissed.

  “Quiet.”

  “Why’s he telling you to be quiet?”)

  “It’s not me,” she said.

  He took a moment to parse that one, because, self-evidently, she was definitely her, or who else could she be, unless he’d got something drastically wrong in his chain of reasoning. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What’s not you?”

  “It’s not me doing this to you.”

  “Oh.” He frowned. A whole new concept had just burst into flower inside his head: good and evil. “Just to clarify,” he said. “It’s not you.”

  “No.”

  “And, from the way you said it, you don’t, um, approve. Of me having my mind wiped and everything.”

  “No, of course not. It’s barbaric.”

  “Ah.” His brain was seething, as though it had just switched from monochrome to full colour. Right, he thought, and wrong: fascinating idea. “Dualism.”

  “You what?”

  “A dualistic moral system.”

  “What? Well, the goblins do that sort of thing, of course. Always fighting duels, goblins, but what else can you expect from people like that?”

  “A fully dualistic perspective,” he said excitedly, “resulting in value judgements and blind prejudice. Gosh.” He pursed his lips. “Isn’t that a bit dangerous, though? Ah well, not to worry; I’m sure you’ve got all that sort of thing completely under control. I mean, you must have, or how could society function?” He stopped and grinned. “Sorry,” he said. “Carried away there. So, you don’t approve of me being inside this jar?”

  “I just said so, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, of course you did. They haven’t just wiped your memory too, have they?”

  He could tell she was struggling to stay patient. “Who’s been doing this to you?”

  “Entities.”

  “Mm.” She nodded. “You couldn’t be a bit more precise, I suppose?”

  “Not really,” he said sadly. “Really, you see, it’s just logical extrapolation on my part. Because, well, obviously, I must have been in existence for more than one hundred arbitrary time units; I know that, because I figured out how biochemistry works, and that involves growth and ageing, and I’m fairly sure I’m quite grown up. Well, in a hundred arbitrary time units I’ve done quite a bit of figuring-things-out, though obviously I’m not all that good at it, because for the life of me I can’t seem to prove the existence of the Higgs-Sauron, and I hadn’t even tumbled to dualism until you came along – probably I’m just a bit thick or something. But anyhow, one hundred arbitrary time units and I’m this far along from an absolutely clean start; but I’ve been alive rather longer than one hundred arbitrary time units, so why haven’t I figured out loads and loads more stuff? And as far as I can see, the only possible explanation is, every so often someone comes along and wipes my brain clean. Naturally I assumed there was a perfectly good reason for it, so I didn’t mind, but now you come along and say it’s not right, so I don’t know what to think.”

  She was looking at him. “So you don’t have any idea who you are, or why they’re keeping you in that jar thing?”

  “Well, no,” he said apologetically. “I suppose I really should’ve worked it out by now, because it must be pretty fundamental, don’t you think? I mean: who am I, why am I here? I bet everybody else knows that except me.”

  “Um,” she said. “And you just stay in there, and think about things?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when you’ve thought for a bit, they come and remove your memories.”

  “That’s right, yes.”

  “Why would anyone want to do that? For crying out loud stop prodding me.”

  “Sorry,” Maurice said. “But look, what’s going on? Who is he, and why are they—?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Not you. Oh hell, I’ve forgotten what I was asking you now.”

  “‘Why would anyone want to do that? For crying out loud stop prodding me.’”

  “Yes, right. Well? Why would anyone do that? I mean, it’s not just nasty, it’s pointless. You sit there conceptualising the universe—”

  “Multiverse.”

  “What?”

  “I think there’s probably more than one universe. Actually, I have a shrewd suspicion there’s lots of them.”

  “You sit there conceptualising the universe,” she repeated, “from first principles, to an amazingly advanced level, which is, um, amazing; and then someone comes along and scrubs it a
ll out. It gives a whole new sinister penumbra of meaning to the term think-tank. And it’s stupid. It’s no use to anyone. They can’t possibly make any money out of it.”

  “Money?”

  “Circulating medium of exchange assigned a token value to facilitate economic activity.”

  “Cool.” He pulled a dubious face. “But hang on, though. Actually, it’s not such a good idea, surely. I mean, if you had something like that, isn’t there a risk someone might start speculating in overextended synthetic credit derivatives and trigger a global economic crisis?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Quite,” he said humbly. “Who’d do such a thing? Sorry, I interrupted you.”

  “Listen to me.” She leaned forward until her nose touched the barely perceptible wall of the jar. There was a sizzling noise and a smell like seawater, and she shrank back. “It’s all right,” she said, “just a minor electric shock, that’s all. Listen. They’re holding you in a—Oh hell, how am I supposed to explain when you can’t understand? All right, try this. The situation you’re in is not normal.”

  “Isn’t it?” He stared at her. “Oh.”

  “Absolutely not. There are millions and millions of people in the world – elves, goblins, dwarves, even humans – and very, very few of them are kept in jars and have their brains messed with. And of that very small number, the majority are being tortured to find out what they know. But nobody seems to want to find out what you know. Quite the reverse.” She pulled a puzzled face. “Do they feed you?”

  “Ah. You mean regular intake of nutritional biomatter.”

  “I suppose I do, yes.”

  “No.” His eyebrows furrowed. “I was wondering about that. I’d got this theory about how organic life operates, but obviously it’s completely wrong, because—”

  “We’ve got to get you out of there,” she said.

  “Gosh.”

  “Well, obviously we’ve got to; we can’t just leave you in there indefinitely.” She paused, took a step back, looked up and down. “Trouble is, I don’t see how. There doesn’t seem to be a door or anything.”

  “What’s a—?”

  “There’s got to be one,” she went on. “Otherwise, how did they get him in there in the first place? Unless this jar thing was somehow built round him, but I don’t see how—”

  “Excuse me.”

  “Not now. And there’s definitely some sort of low-yield, high-resonance EM field, which means we can’t use conventional cutting tools, so—”

  “Listen.”

  “What?”

  Maurice was trying really, really hard not to grin. “I think you’re missing the point,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Think about it. There’s no door, right?”

  “Well, duh.”

  “That’s because,” he said kindly – all his life he’d wanted to patronise an elf – “you’re not asking yourself the right question.”

  “Oh really. And what would that be?”

  “When is a door not a door?”

  “When it’s a—Oh.”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” she exploded. “It’s a joke, for crying out loud.”

  “Nominally, at least,” he agreed. “Let’s just call it wordplay, shall we?”

  “All right, wordplay. It’s still just… well, words. It’s not coherent matter, atoms and molecules. It’s not real.”

  Maurice frowned. “I think he wants to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “But I couldn’t help overhearing. When you were saying, ‘It’s still just… well, words. It’s not coherent matter, atoms and molecules.’ And that made me—”

  “Well?”

  His face was a study in bewilderment. “Remember something.”

  “Oh. But I thought—”

  He nodded. “Yes. It’s the first thing I’ve remembered. You know, it’s a very odd sensation, like having someone talking to you inside your head. I guess you get used to it after a while, but I’m not sure I like it. Sort of creepy.”

  “What,” she said firmly, “did you remember?”

  “In the beginning was the Word.”

  “What?”

  “In the—”

  “Yes, I heard you. But—”

  “And it sort of makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, you just said, ‘It’s still just… well, words. It’s not coherent matter, atoms and molecules.’ But if in the beginning there was just the Word, then it sort of follows that coherent matter—”

  “It’s just a metaphor,” she said. “Imagery. Poetry. Not actually true.”

  “If you say so. But I seem to remember that it is true. Well, sort of trueish, anyway. I think it was terribly important to me at some earlier stage in my existence, though quite possibly not this stage I’m in now. Which implies, doesn’t it, that—”

  “Oh be quiet.”

  “Think about it,” Maurice said. “We’re looking for a door, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But there isn’t a door, there’s just a jar.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Well, then.”

  “You can’t just say, Well, then and expect everything to be—Oh.”

  He reached out his hand. There was a sizzle and a flash, and he landed on his back, as a private firework display that would’ve cost thousands played out in front of his eyes.

  “Told you so.”

  “So you did,” he replied from between gritted teeth. “Bugger,” he added. “I was so sure it’d turn out to be something simple and obvious.”

  She had that faraway look that elves get sometimes, that ineffable blend of delicate spirituality and smugness. “It may well be,” she said. “Find something to occupy yourself with for a minute or two. I need to think about this.”

  Maurice was no lawyer, but he’d read about the landmark case of All Sentient Life On Earth vs Tarturiel, in which it was argued that killing an elf who spoke to you like that wasn’t murder or even homicide; it was justifiable pesticide and abating a public nuisance. The trial had foundered on a technicality, so the actual point of law remained a grey area, needing to be clarified in a further test case. For two pins, Maurice thought.

  “All right,” she said abruptly, “let’s do this step by step. When is a door not a door?”

  “When it’s a jar.”

  “Correct.” She nodded. “Therefore, when a door is a jar, it’s not a door, yes?”

  “Um.”

  “Yes. By syllogistic extrapolation, we accordingly find that a jar is not a jar when it’s a door. Agreed?”

  “Syllogistic what?”

  “This,” she went on, pointing, “is a jar. A jar being a jar. Therefore it’s not a door.”

  Maurice rubbed his elbow, which was still a bit numb. “I think I sort of proved that already.”

  “So you did. Clever old you. It’s a jar being a jar, not a door being a door, so when you tried to use the jar as a door, it zapped you and gave you a nasty jar.” She waited, then shrugged. “But,” she went on, “acting on the hypothesis that the jar/door equivalency is in some degree valid, it must therefore follow that at some stage, induced by some process, this jar was at some point not a jar but a door. With me so far?”

  “I think we should go home now.”

  “Now then,” she continued, giving him the bent eye, “the jar/door equivalency only makes sense in the context of multiverse theory, which posits that there are points of bifurcation at which a continuum divides into separate parallel continua, effectively duplicating any given object or person and thereafter subjecting it to two or more different sets of events, influences and environments, which might tend to alter that object or person—ouch, that hurt.”

  “It was meant to,” Maurice said grimly, massaging the finger he’d prodded her with. “But I had to make you stop, before it became unbearable.”

  She scowled at him, then made a visible effort. “Mauric
e,” she said, “this is important.”

  “You just called me—”

  “Let me put it,” she said, gently but firmly, “another way. Multiverse theory, yes?”

  “All right.”

  “Every time something happens, a new universe branches off from our one, OK?”

  “Go on.”

  “And the branched-off universe is a carbon copy of ours except for the one different thing.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Will you stop sulking? There, that’s better. All right. Carbon-copy-except-for-one-different-thing. But the different thing means the branch universe develops in a different way. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Splendid. So, you’ve got two versions of what was originally the same thing. Like evolution, really. One fish decides to grow legs and walk up the beach; one fish decides it’s perfectly happy being a fish and stays in the water. Time passes. The fish that grew legs is now a bird. Result; you’ve got a bird and a fish. But originally they were both fish.” She beamed at him. “Don’t you see?”

  “No.”

  She sighed. “If we apply multiverse theory, a door in the mainstream universe can be a door in one post-bifurcation branch universe and a jar in another, and still be the same door.” She paused, wrinkled her nose and added, “Or jar. Whatever. You do see that, don’t you? You don’t, do you?”

  “No.”

  “All right,” she said. “It’s magic. Better?”

  “Much. Thank you.”

  “The difference being,” she went on, “that evolution is a one-way process and irreversible. But what if there’s a way of reversing multiversal bifurcation, or at least arcing across from one branch to another? Using, I don’t know, some kind of interface or portal.” Her face suddenly lit up. “Some kind of door.”

  “Or jar.”

  “Shush. No, actually, not shush. Some kind of jar.”

  Maurice made a soft whimpering noise.

  “No, really,” she assured him, “it’s like embassies.”

  “I thought it was like evolution.”

  “No, you clown, that was like evolution, this is like embassies. Like, you know, an embassy is nominally the soil of the country it represents. What if the inside of that jar’s like an embassy for a different reality? It’s here in this one, but it’s a little bit of another one, hermetically sealed? A non-permeable interface.” She gave him a beautiful smile, so that he very nearly forgave her for frying his brain. “A locked door.”