The Labyrinth Key

by Howard V. Hendrix

  “Correct. Others claim that, if you can simulate the entire process at a faster speed, you can get around the clockspeed of the celestial computer—the speed of light—and know all the answers in advance.”

  “But then you might get program ‘closure’ and ‘completion,’” Brescoll said, recalling terms from recent reports. Given his history as a reader, he couldn’t help thinking of that prospect in connection with an old story by Arthur C. Clarke. “The stars winking out, like display lights on a really big computer shutting down.”

  “Yes, or the ‘real’ as we know it might be displaced into the ‘virtual.’ I have no idea what that might actually mean.”

  “And there’s Kwok’s holo-cast,” Brescoll said, glancing down at his hands in his lap, thinking about that last, riddling testament. “The characters in it talk about reality as a simulation, and how ‘busting the sim’ will ‘awaken the god asleep in matter.’”

  Rollwagen glanced toward him, but didn’t really seem to see him.

  “The Mind remembering what it’s trying to remember by means of the universal memory palace,” she said. “The creation of the divine AI.”

  “And the ‘Instrumentality’ is involved in all that?”

  Rollwagen sighed and turned fully toward him.

  “The Instrumentality has grown rapidly in wealth and power over the past five decades, but it has also begun to break into factions. At some level, the conflict that Kwok and Cho have been caught up in is, I think, a conflict between those factions.”

  “But what’re they fighting over?” Brescoll said, confused.

  “The meaning of the words ‘survival of the human species,’” Rollwagen said, sounding tired. “Some place the emphasis on survival. They believe the survival of our species is dependent on our cyborgifying and becoming posthuman. Becoming ‘better angels,’ as the Tetragrammaton people say.”

  “Better angels?” Brescoll asked, trying not to press his tired boss too hard, but still wanting to figure out what was going on.

  “In that, I suppose they follow the tradition of the Lesser Tetragrammaton, the Archangel Metatron,” Rollwagen said. “Not the name of God per se, but the youngest and greatest of the angels, who is able to look upon the Divine Face. Metatron once lived as the human patriarch Enoch, but was transformed into an angel rather than created as one. He was supposed to be a better angel because he had once been human.”

  “The source of the conflict is religious interpretation, then?” Jim asked, still confused.

  “Not exactly,” Rollwagen said, “although I suppose you could think of it in terms of doctrinal differences. In contrast to the Tetra people, there are those, like the Kitchener faction, who feel that such an ‘angelic’ solution wouldn’t be a human survival. Something like us—ensouled robots, virtualized persons living as nodes in computer networks, whatever—would go on, but the Kitchener types feel that those survivors would no longer be human in the same way we are.”

  “So that’s it?” Jim asked. “Those are the two sides of the conflict?”

  “Nothing’s ever that simple. A third group thinks it’s all part of the big plan outlined in Felix Forrest’s mythology of the far future. If one of the goals of the Instrumentality, in Forrest’s stories, is to restore mankind to its humanity, then our species must have necessarily lost its humanity somewhere along the way. Otherwise there would be no need to restore it.”

  Deputy Director Brescoll stared narrowly at his director.

  “I’m impressed. You seem to know an awful lot about this Instrumentality’s internal workings.”

  “I should,” Admiral Rollwagen said, coming back to her desk and sitting down across from him. “In the Instrumentality I am known as Lady Jasae.”

  The surprise on Brescoll’s face must have shown, for the director laughed out loud.

  “Don’t look so stunned!” she said. “It’s not as if you haven’t benefitted from our factional disputes yourself. Your fly-fishing friends? Hmm? Personally, I’m an agnostic when it comes to these debates, but even I tried to drop you a hint or two, along the way.”

  Jim Brescoll pushed himself back in his chair.

  “The background briefings,” he said. “About Borges and library labyrinths. About quantum DNA entanglements, and reality as a simulation. I had a feeling something was going on, sub rosa.”

  “More than you know,” Rollwagen said. “More than I know, for that matter. I don’t know whether the ultimate reality is constellations of particles and waves, or whether matter and energy are simply properties abstracted from more fundamental patterns of information, or whether it’s all just thoughts in the mind of God. Within the Instrumentality there are adherents to each of those viewpoints. What worries me is the deeper question about the survival of the human species.”

  “That phrase sure seems to cause you people a lot of trouble,” Brescoll said, shaking his head. “What now?”

  “We usually worry about the ‘human’ part in terms of mixing the human with something we perceive to be more crude or base. Machines or animals, generally speaking. So we worry about future humans becoming cyborgs and were-creatures. But what if we were to become something more pure, something higher? What if we were to become, not just like angels, but like God?”

  “Snakes and apples,” Brescoll said quietly.

  “Yes—Kwok’s holo-cast mentions them, doesn’t it? In that context, what does it mean for the Instrumentality to ‘restore mankind to humanity’? Or to ‘keep man as man’? That’s why I’ve brought you in on this, Jim. That—and because, within the Instrumentality, Baldwin Beech is known as Lord Marflow.”

  Brescoll stared blankly at her.

  “I suppose I should be surprised by that.”

  “Do as you choose,” Rollwagen said with a tired lift of her shoulders. “Or not. I received this attached file through a back channel today. From Baldwin Beech. I thought it might interest you.”

  Wary, Jim nodded. A screen lifted out of the desktop in front of him, and a video feed began to play.

  Footsteps echoed away into silence. Point of view moved into a vast labyrinthine library. A sense of deep isolation, as if the library filled its own world, in a tower, or underground, floating in the sea, or in outer space. Innumerable books on dusty shelves, arranged like neglected tombstones of lost graves.

  “Hello, Lady Jasae,” Baldwin Beech said, walking into view, e-bodied sumptuously in purposely anachronistic red and black robes. “Marflow here. Did you ever consider the ways in which a library is like a memory palace? These unread books, alas, are the empty thrones of endless realms. Clusters of fruit dry-rotting on the vine, never to intoxicate the mind through the wine of reading. Until now.”

  Beech reached up and took a dusty, padlocked book from a nearby shelf. He blew dust off the book and unlocked it with a small key.

  “Here, the Traicté des Chiffres, published in 1586. Its author, Blaise de Vigenere, created the first successful autokey, in which the message provides its own key. He believed a message could be concealed in a picture of a field of stars. Or even in the stars themselves. He writes here, ‘All the things in the world constitute a cipher. All nature is merely a cipher and a secret writing. The great name and essence of God and his wonders, the very deeds, projects, words, actions, and demeanor of mankind—what are they for the most part but a cipher?’”

  Beech stroked his white-flecked beard absently, then closed and locked the book before returning it to its place on the shelf. He gestured into the air, causing glowing symbols and geometries to flash about him.

  “Remember, my dear Lady Jasae, that ‘cipher’ can mean ‘zero’—a nothing. Or everything. It can mean both to hide a message, and to solve a problem. It can be both the door that hides, and the key that unlocks. Your boy Jaron Kwok took those words of de Vigenere to heart. Recognize this shining sign? The ancient meander pattern, or ‘Greek key.’ A geometric form that, when bent into a circle like so, makes a classical labyrinth. The key is i
n the labyrinth, and the labyrinth is in the key. If you want to find your lost boys, Lady Jasae, you’ll have to follow me!”

  Beech’s slyly smiling visage vanished into equation-punctuated text, and then the text, too, vanished.

  Rollwagen switched off the program. The wan light of the sun declining toward the wintry landscape seemed not so much to flow into the room as to ebb out of it.

  “The image of the vast library is a graphical commonplace in computer communications among Instrumentality members,” she said, “but Beech has warped it to suit his needs. Marflow’s—Beech’s—damned arrogance may be our biggest advantage here. He’s taunting me, taunting us. Why else would he have sent this thing?”

  “Any idea what the last part means—the printed text?” Brescoll asked.

  “I’ve had a preliminary analysis run on it. The text details the requirements for the type of universal quantum Turing machine on which one might run the fundamental self-evolving algorithm. The one that supposedly underlies the computational process of our entire universe. Quantum gravity theory suggests the entire initial state of our universe could be burned onto a single CD-ROM, or into a good data needle, so the fundamental rule set might actually encompass a fairly small amount of information.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The text suggests, at least to me, that what they’re working toward is an algorithmic clavis universalis, a universal key,” Rollwagen said, her voice flat. “They intend to hack the code of the universe itself, if they can.”

  “Who are ‘they’?” he asked, fearing he already knew the answer.

  “Baldwin Beech and like-minded members of the Instrumentality.”

  Jim’s brow furrowed in thought and disgruntlement.

  “What about Patsy Hon’s handlers in China? Were they Instrumentality types, too?”

  “They may have been. Or overseen by members. The Instrumentality is most powerful in the USA, but Forrest lived for many years in pre-Maoist China. I wouldn’t be surprised if the SCIs have more than a few Instrumentality members among their ranks. Forrest was very familiar with China and Russia, and his published works have gained some notoriety there. He traveled extensively throughout the world, as a matter of fact.”

  Director Rollwagen sat back in her chair, folding her hands, as the screens dropped into the desktop once more. Brescoll got the message. Their meeting was coming to an end.

  “Is there anything else I should know?” he asked as he stood up to go.

  “Only that Robert Beckwith of State has vanished. Cherise LeMoyne, Kwok’s widow, or ex, whichever—has also gone missing.”

  “Is she with the Instrumentality, too?”

  “Not so far as I can determine.”

  “That’s a relief, if true.”

  “One more thing, Jim, before you leave.”

  Brescoll glanced down at his shoes on the tight weave of the carpet.

  “Director, you don’t need to tell me not to reveal any of this. I wouldn’t have believed any of it myself, an hour ago.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say. I want you to send Wang and/or Lingenfelter to China, to hunt up Dr. Beech. His coworkers know a lot about what’s going on—but not too much, I hope. I think we have the resources to pass this test, whatever it turns out to be.”

  “I pray we do,” Brescoll said.

  “Yes,” Rollwagen agreed, giving him a small smile. “How’s your mother-in-law, by the way?”

  The sudden turn in the conversation caught him by surprise. Thinking of his wife, he glanced down at his wedding ring, then distractedly ran his left hand over his scalp. The ring had not worn down, but as he’d put on weight over the years the ring had had to be re-sized to fit his thickening fingers. His hair too, like his wedding ring, had been thicker when his ring finger—and the rest of him—had been thinner.

  “She’s fine. Some minor postsurgery complications—enough to worry my wife—but I think her mother will be fine.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Rollwagen said, before returning to the paperwork on her desk. “Happy holidays.”

  “Same to you,” the deputy director said, then left the room.

  He headed back toward his own office, thinking about the Instrumentality with its “lords” and its “ladies.” That whole notion irked him, the way the Greek system of fraternities and sororities had annoyed him when he was in college. He had tried to excuse that collegiate system as a holdover of adolescent immaturity, but there was something about its cliques, its petty tribalism, that he could never really stomach. Poisonous as the bottle behind the skull and bones, to him.

  True, he had done what he had to, to get on in government service, but not a bit more. No bowing down to the Sacred Owl of Bohemia in a redwood grove in California, thank you. But these Instrumentality types seemed to have taken social connections to the next level. Maybe the logical extreme of the “team player” approach was the secret society, with robes and passwords, handsigns and midnight initiations.

  That, however, always reminded Jim too much of the Ku Klux Klan.

  He opened his door and entered his office, sitting down heavily enough in his chair to remind him of the gun at his waistband. Despite his distaste for their nostalgic feudal titles and Beech’s silly “Marflow” costume, Deputy Director Brescoll was trying to keep an open mind about the Instrumentality, and Rollwagen’s role in it.

  And about his anonymous fly-fishing friends, too.

  Jim had always appreciated the deeper ambiguity of Groucho Marx’s line, “I’d never join a club that would accept me as a member”—but he couldn’t help wondering how far “kindly strangers” had already taken him into the land of the secret handshake.

  UNZIPPING THE MIRROR

  LAKE NOT-TO-BE-NAMED

  In his studio hermitage under the mountain, Don Markham had grown used to the cool, dusty-damp smell and the perpetual generator hum. Such immediate sensory detail gave way again, however, each time he powered up the virtual wonderland that was his to play with. Such was the case now, as he once again began cracking his brains against the imagery embedded in the Kwok holo-cast.

  He’d had very little luck deciphering the ’cast’s deeper meanings, thus far. About the only thing new and surprising he’d learned had come from going back over his own system logs. Analysis of those log entries showed that when the holo-cast first appeared among the joined islands of the Cybernesia festival—while he had been so busy trying to block or jam the thing—the ’cast program had simultaneously been hacking in and extracting algorithms and code elements from the flying island expansion Don had done on the Besterbox programs. He couldn’t yet figure out how that fit in with the rest of what he knew about the holo-cast, but he’d thought the information important enough to send it on to Nils Barakian for comment.

  Meanwhile, he kept working. His cavern hideaway was lit to simulate the outside world’s cycle of day and night. If he’d bothered to pay it much attention, the changeover of the dynamo from generator to pump motor would even have given him a sense of when the rest of California had gone to bed each day. What little sleep Don got now, however, came at odd hours. He rested only when he remembered to be tired, ate only when he remembered to be hungry.

  His investigations went uninterrupted by the occasional rumblings, clangings, and bangings surrounding the installation of the blast doors—by work crews he never saw. He soon became accustomed enough to the sounds to ignore them altogether. By the time he got around to remembering what he’d been ignoring, the work was finished and the sounds had ceased.

  Nils Barakian had brought Don up to speed on who Ben Cho was, what work he had been about, the documents he’d apparently gotten from Kwok’s ex or widow, Cherise LeMoyne—even Cho’s strange status as an unknowing Tetragrammaton twin. Unfortunately, Barakian hadn’t decided to inform Don of all that until after Cho himself had been lost—or, more accurately, abducted.

  Learning of Cho’s situation only increased the pressure Don put on himsel
f to learn all he could about Jaron Kwok, and to break the code of Kwok’s holo-cast. That pressure had now ratcheted up to the point of full-blown obsession.

  Yet, despite his occupation and preoccupation with it, Don had hit a wall. In searching around the infosphere for leads in an investigation that seemed to be going nowhere, Don was reminded again and again that it was Christmastime. Glum loneliness began to creep into his thoughts. He missed Karuna especially, since one of his oddest yet most pleasant memories of the holidays came from when he was with her.

  He and Kari were sharing a rented house together. Struck by a wave of holiday spirit, Kari insisted they get a tree and decorate it with lights and ornaments. He grinched about how her cats would have a field day with the ornaments, about how fake plastic trees looked, about how fire prone the real ones were, about how they’d have to get permission from their landlord if they wanted to plant a live tree in the yard, et cetera, et cetera.

  Kari would brook no obstacles, however. They found a balsam fir—a little thin, and dry (and dead), but nice. They decked it with lights and ornaments and, when they were done, even Don had to admit it was a pretty thing, standing there all lit up in the tiled bay window alcove off the living room.

  All went well until Christmas Eve. Late that evening, they had put out all the lights but the twinkling stars in the Christmas tree and some squat candles they’d lit on the coffee table in the living room. He and Kari sat on the high-backed couch in the candlelight, drinking mulled wine and eating flatbreads with cheeses and patés. Gazing at the twinkling tree and glowing candles, they felt a homey, fire-in-the-fireplace contentment, though fireplaces were, in fact, illegal under the local air pollution statutes.

  He and Kari cuddled and shared a few lingering kisses. Things were definitely headed in a romantic direction until one of their cats—a skittish, long-haired, gunmetal gray Russian Blue with a big plumey tail and back legs like furry jodhpurs—jumped up on the coffee table.