by David Nell
He brings his hands together. At his signal the window showing the numbers is split in two identical windows of equal size.
"What I can do, though, is copy this state of simulation, and run it in another instance."
A snap of his fingers and that's exactly what happens. Before me float four translucent screens, each pair showing the exact same thing: a woman appearing into a landscape, rubbing her partner's shoulders, admiring his painting, then lying into the grass as the sun sets. The other two windows – the second part of each pair – shows the numbers representing the simulated worlds.
The avatars spring back to life.
"What happened?" I ask. "Did you just make a copy of them?"
He nods fervently. "I did. Don't you find this strange?"
I scour the scenes for a moment, looking for an imperfection, a glitch. "There's nothing strange. Both are identical."
He's beaming. "Exactly."
"Why is that strange?"
He looks taken aback as if my inability to comprehend is meant as an insult. He regains composure quickly. "Because what I've done is taken their whole world – let's call it Paradise City 1 – at time t and made a copy – Paradise City 2 – of it, and ran it on a completely different set of processors. What happened? PC2 behaves exactly like PC1, goes through the exact same states, and ends up at the exact same spot."
I frown. "So?"
He bangs a fist on his desk. "This means their world is deterministic. Despite all its complexity, if you take the world at time t and observe it until t+n, regardless of how many times you rewind and restart the simulation, every virtual atom will go through the same motions from t to t+n. Every person will perform the same action regardless of how many times you attempt to start over. Their future will always be unchangeable."
Peter strokes his oily hair as I digest his words.
"Can you predict their future?"
"No. If I wanted to figure out where a resident of Paradise City will end up in a year's time, I'll have to calculate and take into account so many things that I'll end up simulating an entire year. That is no different than just letting the simulation run its course."
He smiles, his eyes following a newly spawned swarm of fireflies from the projector.
I'm lost, unable to see the big picture, if there is one at all, but I remember something.
"Who are the Voyeurs?" I ask him.
He chuckles.
"When a person's fate is sealed, and if you put them in the same position they always make the same choice, how can they be different from characters in a cartoon? What gives them the right to be called alive?"
He gets up, refills his cup with coffee. I'm not sure if he's waiting for me to answer his question.
"It's us," he says, thumping his chest. "Make ten copies of the same five minute interval and put ten different people in front of ten different screens and I'll guarantee you'll get ten interpretations of the events shown."
The Voyeurs. "Imparting identity through observation," I say. Their nickname is well-deserved and the irony of the situation's making me laugh. Hoping to escape death and overcome physical limits to be free, the residents of Paradise City signed up to be sock puppets in a panoptical charade that's not really living up to its name.
I swallow, try to calm my nerves down a bit. "You're saying those rich uploads somehow don't have an identity of their own? That they need us for that? How...uh, how did this drive someone to suicide?"
He leans over his desk, grabs my wrists. He's out of his fucking mind, I realize.
"Didn't you listen?" His eyes gleam with delight. He licks the corner of his mouth and leaves a bit of white spittle there. "PC was designed to model the real world down to the deepest physical level. If their world is deterministic then so is ours."
Sweat's glistening on his forehead. His eyes bulge out. He takes a deep breath, lets go of my hands and relaxes back into his chair.
"I don't see the connection," I admit. "Why would that depress her?"
"It would depress a lot of people."
"But it changes nothing about our daily lives," I protest. "And why would she worry about your Voyeurs? There's no one looking down on us."
"We have no way of knowing that." He nods solemnly, eyes closed. "The mathematical probability of us being in a simulation is very, very high."
The hair on the back of my neck stands up and my stomach seems to want to squeeze its contents up and out. I've heard this idea discussed before on VR forums I used to frequent. Once a civilization reaches a certain technological threshold it will no doubt create a simulation of evolution, which will then yield one or many civilizations, who when the time comes would themselves fashion simulations and the chain would continue into infinity. The probability of us being the first to simulate life is close to zero. Or so the theory goes.
But I never bought it, and I can't believe Miranda Holly, a reasonable software engineer in a respectable firm, accepted all this bullshit. This guy is bat-shit insane and she should've seen that. She should've told her friends. They would've seen it and explained or helped her. I hate this lunatic and want to take a swing at him.
A sudden coldness writhes in the pit of my gut. I'm getting emotional about a case subject, I realize. Without a word I stand up. His eyes are closed and he's drawing deep, slow breaths.
"I'd like to leave now." My tone's a pitch higher than usual.
He nods, puts his fist inside his hand.
The door swings open and my two captors stride in. It's weird but I'm sort of glad to see them again.
There's one more thing I need to know.
"Why did you tell me this? Why did you tell her?"
"Soon, the whole world will learn of this, my life's work, and I wish to reveal my discoveries myself." He spreads his arms wide. "In the meanwhile, I can't afford to have the public receive distorted versions of my work by a suicidal bitch and her death investigator."
"Take me home," I say to the two henchmen, and prance out the room without looking at the lunatic or saying anything.
Blindfolded and in a jeep's backseat. The first few minutes I try to visualize and etch into memory the route we take but I quickly lose focus and let my head drop and lull from side to side.
My stomach's contents slime their way up my oesophagus and I swallow, desperately trying to prevent myself from vomiting. That fucking car freshener.
I force my mind to go through the conversation just so I don't puke last night's veggie soup.
So one crazy asshole says our fate is sealed – our lives written out – and we have to accept it or end up as someone's suicide case. People might take offence and clutch at vague notions of free will or liberty to their very last breath, and yet others might take solace that a heavy weight's been lifted off their shoulders – no more worrying where you end up, just keep moving and follow the footprints. It's all bullshit but I have this nagging feeling that I need to take a side.
But then there's the third, most probable, option – Peter Casey's wrong.
Regardless of his little theories, one person's already dead, and if he goes public with them many might follow suit. But hasn't that always existed? If I go after everyone depressed by these findings to convince them suicide isn't a solution, shouldn't I do the same for every other gullible cultist on Earth?
Resigned, I let my head drop, and let it lull with the car's motion.
I explained to Flora everything, and my bank balance is slightly above zero again. She appeared disappointed when we met. Her hunch was true but I doubt the mind parasites she had suspected were armchair philosophy arguments. In the end they might've played a part, but I name Miranda Holly's emotional wobbles as the decisive factor.
I'm sitting before my desk. Descartes, restored and backed-up, stays silent, waiting for my commands.
I wonder if I should get another case. There really isn't much to do and three days of rest is long enough – if sleeplessness and obsessing over a dead person can qualify as
rest. Or maybe I need a bigger break. Something more substantial. It's not just Holly, but Peter Casey's crazed ramblings, too.
I get up, stroll over to the kitchen and have my Fabber churn out my dose of serotonin reuptake inhibitors. It hums for a moment then two purple pills pop out. I clench my fist, squeezing them.
Is my choice written out on tape somewhere? Could my next move be observed – precipitated even – by a Voyeur?
I smile, tossing the pills in the trash. A burst of adrenaline makes my legs wobble and I break into fits of laughter. Walking over to my bedroom I throw myself over the bed.
A thought is stretching over me until it has me overpowered. That crazy bastard.
I roll in my bed, unable to stop laughing.
Nothing's changed. I'm not saying that now I believe Peter Casey, or that I believe that you exist.
To be honest, I'm not sure I want you to be real. Because if you are, I can't say I'm pleased with your work. But then there's the flip side. A simple test to be made. A request, if you will.
One Voyeur sees the numbers, the data, reads the tape, and interprets my world into existence. But we can't be alone out here, just you and I. It would be ironic if that's the case, me being all special, when my whole life I've felt anything but. No, there have to be many observers. Many Voyeurs.
And then there's the tape. The string of numbers. The data. The words.
I wonder how I appear through it, with my identity shaped by the lens of your own thoughts and emotions. Do you see me as I see myself?
Well I don't care because now I'd like you to let me be seen by someone else. I have a sack full of regrets and shit I should've done differently. I'm not asking for the impossible here, I know my actions are immutable and there's no changing the story. But someone else might see them differently. Make sense of them in a way you couldn't. Maybe a different Voyeur will see blonde chick where you see grumpy old man. A decent person surrounded by loved ones instead of a lonely misanthrope.
Give me a second chance. Rewind me and pass me around so I start all over.
Look away.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Damien Krsteski is a science-fiction author from Skopje, Macedonia. His work has appeared in various publications, links to which can be found at http://monochromewish.blogspot.com.
THE UNMAKER
N.S. Mariner
"Acceptance. That's the final stage of grief, but it's the moment everyone needs to reach finally to begin the healing process."
I toy lazily at a pile of empty granola wrappers with my loosely laced boot, remembering the conversation I had with the young girl. Probably a year ago. It felt like a decade. Someone other person's life, really. What was her name? Melissa? Megan? Her parents died in a fire, and the State tasked me with convincing the child that life would move on. Life did move on, more or less. It moved right on into a nightmare more terrible and more debilitating than losing two loved ones, even two reasonably caring and compassionate parents. But I did my job. I kept her sane and alive long enough for front row seats to The End. That'll be two grand, kid.
What the hell was her name? Cassie? Courtney? I give one of the wrappers a sharp kick upward. It lifts higher and higher then outward and beyond, at once directionless and intentional, and I wonder if the now nameless memory was still alive somewhere. I wonder if she had accepted it yet.
I lean back against an abandoned car and curse myself for thinking of the world so simply. Acceptance, as if it was something easily reached. Movies and television always made it look so simple. Within a scene, people accepted that they were stranded in a gas station surrounded by evil, autonomous eighteen-wheelers, accepted that aliens had stationed their mega-ships above the Empire State Building and meant to misbehave, accepted that a once-dead psychopath had come back to skewer all their friends with pikes and machetes and speed-boat engines.
I remember feeling all of the other stages profoundly. I felt sadness and anger that my friends and neighbors disappeared into the night without explanation. I politicked endlessly with local police forces and neighborhood watch groups to do something, anything to prove their resources weren't stagnant and useless against the Unknown. Like everyone else in town, I denied all of it. The mutilated corpse of Mrs. Walker's kitten was a coyote or maybe some twisted teens looking for a drug-addled knock-around. The lost children would be found and they'd catch the son of bitch who did it. Religion would provide answers. The sickness would end, medicine would work, and this would all pass with sadness. But ultimately, it would come to pass.
But as I throw a mostly empty knapsack over my shoulder and lump sluggishly into the woods, I grasp at apparitions and lazy recollections. Everyone I know is dead. I could be, from what I have seen, the last living thing on Earth, unless Megan or Molly or Cassandra was wandering around somewhere, cursing her government-issue shrink's hapless advice. And I am on my way to an invited conversation with whatever force brought this madness to be. No. No, no, no. Whatever comes next, acceptance is never going to fucking happen.
I casually flip the knapsack around on my shoulder, reach in, and pull out the loose piece of paper, unfolding it as I drop the pack in the trail and leave it for all eternity. Whatever is left in it, I couldn't imagine needing it next. I look down from the path and read the note in my hand:
Martin,
Please meet me this evening at your convenience. You pick the time and place. I'll be there.
Warm regards,
The Unmaker
I received the note this morning. I could not understand how entirely. Baking in the mid-day sun, an awful, rotten goddamn sun, relentless and inconsiderate, I reached into my pocket for a rosary I pulled off the body of a decaying nun in a Catholic school I burrowed into for a week's shelter. The beaded links had become a sort of lucky totem for me, The Pilgrim of the Strange Days. Not a totem of Faith. Maybe of Possibility. Happenstance. Materiality. But reaching into my pocket to rub the connected orbs with my forefinger, as had become habit, I found the rosary gone, replaced with a small scrap of paper with the note written in near type-writer perfection. Dammit, I thought. One more religion not worth the wooden-bead necklace it's printed on. I had no idea how to communicate back to the sender what time and place I picked for our meeting, so I headed to whatever spot made sense (something close and good for a nap should things take a while) and figured he or she or it would be there. It didn't strike me as the most efficient or accurate way of coordinating plans, but who was I to second-guess a supernatural presence that killed an entire planet in the matter of three weeks?
He make my way through a darkening wood, knowing that my host is waiting. I forget worrying about how I know. I gave up concern for the how of the world when my neighbors, the Blackwoods, a lovely, septuagenarian couple, melted before my very eyes. Ernest Blackwood never stopped watering his lawn. He just stood there, skin pouring from his bones as fluidly as the water pouring from the spout of his hose to his carefully manicured azaleas. He gave me one final smile and wave, pausing in his decomposition long enough to say "so long, neighbor." God, they were polite. Why don't I miss them?
Just as I knew it would, at the exact moment I knew it would, the wood opens to a clearing. There, by a lack-luster campfire light – note to self, explain to whatever this monster is the meaning of the word cliché – I find The Unmaker, the writer of the note, the destroyer of my world.
Surprise comes in different shapes and sizes, as it turns out. It comes in small doses when you discover your holiday bonus was for a few hundred more than what you expected or when you realize their actually was one beer left behind the spaghetti sauce and uneaten broccoli. It comes a bit sharper and slightly more uninvited when your shin bone miraculously finds the corner of the ottoman in your bedroom you moved six feet to the left in a failed attempt at feng shui when you get up to go to the bathroom at three o' clock in the morning. And it comes again in nearly irreconcilable doses when you wake up to discover that all life as you knew it was dead, dying or very r
udely unaccounted for. Nothing really stings worse, though, than a surprise that comes exactly in the moment when you decide nothing left in the world could surprise you. Sitting at the fire, poking it thoughtlessly with a long branch, sits an eight-year-old girl, the flicker of the flame dancing silhouettes of the unthinkable across her bottomless expression. I sit safely apart from what should not, could not possibly be there.
"Welcome, Martin," the girl says plainly. Too damn plainly. I stare at it, wordless, allowing impossible grief and more impossible anger to battle for the next twitch of my brow. It speaks again. "I thought you might be more comfortable speaking to me in this form."
"I'm not," I bite, choosing to stare toward the fire until my pupils sting rather than reconnect with the beast.
"Well, it's all the same, I guess," the Unmaker says. "Your daughter was very beautiful. Why let such a thing go to waste?" I glance up at my Meggie. No, not my Meggie. The stringy blond hair is there. The relaxed, crooked smile is there. But the eyes, once full of wonder and grace, her inquisitive and quixotic eyes, are absent. Now eldritch. Foreign. Unnatural.
"I will allow you three questions to start," the daughter-creature demands. It is not a request.
"Are you God?" I ask. I know the answer, but I figure I should check. Just in case.
The Unmaker curls its lips hypnotically into a seductive sneer. "Hardly."
"Are you the Devil?"
"Jesus, Martin," it exhales. "I can answer any question you ask. Ask me about the rotation of the planets. The purpose of human life. Where your socks go in the laundry. Three questions. Three forsaken questions, and you waste your first two on thoughts of the human divine?" Fake-Meggie lets out a condescending chuckle that chilled the marrow in my bones. "Well, one more. Get it over with, however perfunctory it might be, so we can move on with our night. I have all eternity, actually, but that doesn't mean I give you permission to take up all of it."