Sofia and the Utopia Machine

by Judith Huang

  “I was looking for something,” said Sofia truthfully. “I may have left it here when I was visiting my mum. What’s that?” She caught a glimpse of something golden, something glinting between Uncle Kirk’s fingers as they moved too quickly behind his back. Sofia’s heart pounded. The golden box in the hands of a friend! It was straight out of her dream. She knew at once she had to have it, Uncle Kirk’s reservations be damned.

  “What? It’s nothing,” Uncle Kirk, flustered, gesticulated wildly, not helping his cause. “You shouldn’t be here. This is a top secret, restricted area! Just find your stuff and go. What is it? I’ll help you look.”

  “Oh, it’s just some homework I need to finish for school,” lied Sofia. Then she said pointedly, “The golden box in the hands of a friend. That’s what that is, isn’t it?”

  Uncle Kirk began to panic. “What do you know? Did Clara tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  Footsteps came down the hall outside.

  “Not here,” Uncle Kirk hissed. The footsteps came closer. Intrigued by what Sofia might know, Uncle Kirk pulled her behind the door with his arm. He shuffled the holos that he had his netbox produce, and pushed a few buttons discreetly carved in the cube, which also had a large hole the shape of a prism on one side.

  Suddenly, a door that had not been there before swung open behind them. It was so silent that Sofia barely noticed it. Uncle Kirk picked up a sparkling holo prism that glittered in front of his face, and the doorway was flooded with dazzling white light. He guided the prism into the hole in the golden box. Holos swirled around them, a towering mass of icons, as they stepped through the doorway and vanished.

  “Where are we?” Sofia asked, her voice filled with awe. This was nothing like the netboxes’ holos, which you could always see the real world through. This was solid illusion. She and Uncle Kirk were standing in a vast cathedral-like space, arches towering above them at a dizzying height. She felt like they were the only two people in an echoing museum. The walls seemed to slope and meet each other at some point above them—but a point so high she could not see it.

  “It’s the Prism… The antechamber of the machine. It’s like the menu of the programme, or the antechamber,” said Uncle Kirk nervously. He had not meant to take Sofia here, but her spotting the box had flustered him. “I guess there’s no harm in you seeing this; it’s just the menu,” he mumbled again, as though justifying himself to himself. “They won’t be able to hear us here. Now, tell me what your mother said.”

  “She didn’t say anything,” said Sofia, puzzled.

  “Then why do you know about the box? How did you know that phrase?”

  Sofia said nothing.

  “You know, ‘The golden box in the hands of a friend’?”

  When Sofia remained silent, Uncle Kirk’s tone shifted slightly. “Why are you here, really?”

  “Milton,” muttered Sofia under her breath.

  Suddenly the silence in the Prism became denser as Uncle Kirk pursed his lips. Sofia felt uneasy. Was Uncle Kirk going to turn her in? Throw her out? She knew the project was supposed to be top secret.

  Uncle Kirk walked towards the double doors that lay at the end of the long corridor. They looked like they were made of thick glass, but they were not transparent. Their reflections glowed back at them, but looked somehow different from how they usually did. It was disconcerting. Sofia felt like she was looking straight into the bottom of a very deep pool and seeing some kind of murky creature looking back up. It was like her reflection was not of her at all but of someone else who looked like her.

  “We need to go through them,” she said.

  Uncle Kirk didn’t object. He was burning with curiosity as to how Sofia knew about the box and the phrase.

  They shimmered through the doors.

  The table that stood in front of them was huge and twisted and beautiful, like a very old tree that had been cut down to a stump, only it wasn’t made of dead wood, but living. It was an inky black, with woodgrain running through it. A black wax chandelier illuminated the room, hovering between the floor and ceiling, in the dead centre of the table. A tendril connected chandelier and table, and the table seemed to be feeding off the chandelier. Although the table looked like it was made of wood, it wasn’t. Sofia reached out and touched it. It felt spongy.

  “Organic silicon,” said Uncle Kirk. “It’s the brain of the Utopia Machine.” A touch of pride entered his voice despite himself. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Funny you should ask,” Uncle Kirk’s worshipful expression disappeared in an instant. “It’s called SOPHIA.”

  “What?!”

  “S.O.P.H.I.A.—Software of the Operative Phase of

  Inter-dimensional Arenas. Also known as the Utopia Machine,” he said apologetically. “It was named nearly fourteen years ago.”

  The Utopia Machine! This was it! But how could the waxy table and the chandelier produce a new universe, a paradise? But something even more pressing filled her mind. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “But… But who named it?” Before Sofia heard the answer, she somehow already knew what Uncle Kirk was about to say.

  “Why, your father did, of course. He was our litty guy. To be honest he probably picked the acronym first. It means, as I’m sure you know, the Wisdom of God. Sophia is the female name of God in ancient Wisdom literature. That’s why the famous mosque in Istanbul is called the Hagia Sophia.”

  Sofia hadn’t actually known, but she kept quiet about it. “Ma never really told me what my name meant,” said Sofia. Was this the thing she had been meant to find? Would this thing bring her to the mysterious Milton? The table seemed to beckon to her. It was pulsing, as though it had a heart. One of the tendrils curled up in front of her in a familiar character. It looked like 光, the Chinese character for light.

  Suddenly it became clear to her what to do. Sofia grabbed the tendrils, drawing the two floating strokes together so they formed an X, and then turned the whole character clockwise, like a knob.

  The glyph separated itself from the rest of the tendrils and floated before her in the air. Then it started to emit a radiant burst of light, expanding and enveloping her.

  “How did you know to do that?” Uncle Kirk was flummoxed. “I didn’t! Only Professor—” He stopped himself. He was now incredibly excited. “No one could get past the next bit!” he cried. “It’s very pretty and all, but it seems that programming stalled after that stage. The rest is inoperable as far as we know.”

  Sofia wasn’t listening. A rising scent tickled her nose, emanating from the glyph.

  Mangrove, she thought.

  Mud and mangrove. What did it mean?

  A mudskipper flapped on the inside of her mind. The amphibious fish. The thing that skips through things. The fragrance was unmistakeable. Rich and thick, pungent, rotting yet redolent. She remembered her feet sliding into the mud, watching the red-brownness cover the tops of her feet. Her feet felt cool and slippery. The mudskipper song—the memory shot through her like an arrow. Pa, holding her by the armpits, swinging her around in a circle. The coolness of the swamp. The lap-lap-lap of the gentle waves against the beach. It was a place, a real place and not just a memory. Without realising it, Sofia closed her eyes and started to sing.

  *

  Darkness and silence—darker and quieter, darker and quieter than anything on earth. Her feet stood on nothing—her hands held nothing, yet she did not fall, suspended somehow by herself. She couldn’t see her body, yet she knew it was there.

  Sofia found she was holding her breath. That everything felt like it was holding its breath. Even though the darkness and silence were absolute and ancient, it all shivered with anticipation. It was waiting for something to happen. It was waiting for her. Somehow, she knew what she must do. Slowly, experimentally, she breathed out.

  Something glowed. It was her breath. Or perhaps it came out of her breath. It was a thing where no thing had be
en before. It was a tiny thing at first, like the dim spook of a firefly glimpsed as a reflection on the water. But then it grew. It took her breath away. It escaped her as she tried to reach for it, and skittered above—something—it was reflected in something, though nothing had been there before.

  Then, suddenly, it burst. It displaced something huge—a plosive so large that sound was too slow to capture it. Sofia shut her eyes as the light washed over her. All at once, it rushed out in every direction, and—she was sure of it—she heard the mad rush of music, a chorus that elaborated on the tune she had sung.

  And the universe—for that was what it was—was filled with Things. She was not sure what to call them. Had she been a more sentimental type she might have called them angels. But one thing was for sure—they were composed of matter. They bumped into her, a caterwauling bunch of Things spinning and wheeling about in a state that could only be called Joy.

  She felt them to be facets of herself, reflecting and bouncing off her, and at the same time she felt them to be quite independent entities. Though they bumped into her, it was a pleasant sensation, and each bump seemed somehow to communicate a tune into her heart so that when they all added up in the musical staff of her mind, it made a weird and wonderful polyphony that she was somehow,

  unconsciously, composing.

  The universe had not stopped growing. It was spewing things now, like an exuberant baby, flinging sparks that flew out into the darkness and illuminated it. Never had Sofia been so afraid of stars. The crazy things were blooming and whirling all about her, and they were simultaneously huge and small to her, towering like giants and sparking like pinwheels as they whooshed outwards. The angels, it seemed, were drawing them this way and the other, seeming to squabble over where to place each one.

  Sofia found herself both impossibly small and implausibly large, depending on what she touched. She took one of the wheeling things gently and spun it on her finger. The angels gathered around to watch. It was a minuscule galaxy, and as Sofia flipped it around her fingers like a coin, it seemed to gain velocity and shine.

  “I shall name this one Mine,” said Sofia, her soul overwhelmed by its beauty. And when she said those words the galaxy seemed to be filled suddenly with orbs, like tiny jewels that sang with new songs, and when Sofia heard these, memories of the suns and planets and creatures and beings and molecules and atoms and quarks and shivers filled her to her fingertips.

  She remembered the way they were, and so they were. And every bond sang its own peculiar pitch, lacing in and upon itself, tunnelling infinitely through and before and beyond her nostrils and straight through to her heart, and she smelled the most exquisite of perfumes. And amidst the drinking in of all the cacophony of the angels, Sofia stopped short in shock and saw herself.

  She did not look like her nearly-15-year-old self, yet it was unmistakably her. She was seeing her above time, and so what she saw was a kind of creature whom she recognised as herself, on a planet that looked exquisite and not unlike her earth, only it was dark amethyst and deep emerald.

  The woman who was her had limbs and a face that extended eternally timewise, so she appeared both constantly moving and eternally still. Multiple versions of her seemed to merge into each other, stretching forward and backward in time like the many folds of an accordion, and she was beautiful and powerful and terrifying to behold. And when this Sofia saw her watching her, she looked straight back into her eyes.

  A brief smile lifted the corners of her mouth, and her eyes lit up excitedly. “Milton,” she mouthed, though Sofia couldn’t hear her, and it was as though she were talking to someone just over her shoulder, though Sofia could see no one there.

  In an instant Sofia witnessed the forming of the crusts, the roiling of the gas clouds that parted to reveal the new earth’s fresh new face. The planet turned, rolling lazily on its back like a giant whale. Sofia loved it.

  She willed herself down into it—she wanted to walk its mountains, to walk its paths. She wanted to splash down on its oceans, to play with its creatures, to soar on its winds. Everything she saw she illuminated with her gaze, and so for a space she closed her eyes, and imagined herself falling softly, softly into the deep emerald of an old rainforest.

  Chapter 9: Face to Face

  Sofia stared.

  She didn’t know how, or why, but she knew who was standing before her. It was the form he took that was so surprising. Before her, tall and majestic, in the middle of the dark rainforest, was a magnificent orange-and-black Malayan tiger.

  They stood and looked at each other for a moment, neither moving a hair.

  “Milton?” she ventured shyly.

  The tiger stared back at her with fiery eyes and seemed to nod imperceptibly.

  “Sofia. You have come.”

  He didn’t speak, exactly. She was not sure if he emitted any sound. Yet, Sofia heard the deep baritone in her mind and understood.

  “You brought me here?” The forest around her was thick with moisture but cool from the dark green canopy. Unseen creatures scuttled in the underbrush.

  Again the tiger lowered his head in acknowledgement. Its features seemed to soften.

  “My Sofia,” he said. The words were deep and tender. Sofia felt them in her bones, and somehow her fear gave way to wonder. She inched towards him and, before thinking it through, reached her hand out to touch his golden flank.

  He didn’t feel like an avatar at all. This was flesh she touched, underneath the rough fur. She inhaled the scent of the deep, lush rainforest, and suddenly something overwhelmed her, like a wave engulfing the shore.

  She knew him! It wasn’t a first meeting at all. It wasn’t a second, or a third, or a fifth, either. It was as though she had carried him within her, somehow, all her life. A strange bird called in the air.

  “There are things that you need to see,” said Milton, his eyes flashing.

  “Show me,” said Sofia.

  Milton crouched down a little, and she instantly knew what to do. Her arms locked around his powerful neck, and she swung herself up over his back. It was a weird feeling, skin and bone on fur and skin and bone. Milton’s fur was firm to the touch, sturdy and waterproof. It was like running your fingers down the back of an otter. His scent rose gently to her nostrils. It was the perfect tigery smell.

  The oddest thing of all about being in this world was there was no netbox hovering around her at all. She felt strangely detached from the whole online world, and felt as though for the first time all the sensations around her, having no holos to distract her from it.

  The earth was lush with vegetation, the sky extremely pink, and the feel of the tiger beneath her alive and something completely outside her power to swipe away or turn off. Her eyes felt somehow more like eyes; her skin felt somehow more like skin.

  The tiger leapt through the world like a swift shadow, racing with her clinging to his back. His every movement seemed to be a movement of laughter and power and joy, the ability to leap and pounce and dart and swerve in his rippling muscles. And because he was a magical tiger striding boldly at a pace that outstripped even the fastest of the big cats, she saw the world opening up before her, through mountain ranges and deserts and forests and rivers and swamps, rolling mountains and fields of flowers racing past them.

  Sofia felt the utter exaltation of being on the tiger’s back and surveyed her world. Her hair blew past her cheeks and streamed out behind her, and she wanted to lift her face up to the pale pink sky and howl.

  And so she did.

  Her voice was as deep and strange as the echoes that bounced off the mountains. It seemed like her voice was shaping the winds, which in turn shaped the riverbeds and the mountains. The power of the tiger was so swift and so fierce that he never seemed to tire, leaping over entire roaring rivers in a single bound.

  This is your world, it seemed to say, your entire world—a world not circumscribed by sea, horizons that blurred horizontally into straight lines instead of sliced vertically by skysc
rapers. It was a new world, a world that breathed the scent of possibility.

  Sofia laughed and cried with joy. It was the most liberating feeling she had ever felt, as if she had been made for it. Or perhaps, more accurately, that the world had been made for her, and this was true in a way that even she, who had made it, could not fully grasp. All the strangeness and newness of the place rushed at her headily, and she smiled at it all, so widely her cheeks hurt.

  This world was empty but for the back of the tiger. He flew by like stripes in the night, and beneath his majestic back the universe opened like ripples on a pond, and Sofia felt its magnitude beneath her.

  Galaxies spiralled about her, shining like foil pinwheels catching light, their innumerable stars leaping within them. Pulsars glowed with incandescent light, their magnetic dance echoing through the universe.

  All this she threw off with great grace, as though dancing on a pin of infinitely small size. It all unfolded from her like a sheet of music, spilling up reams upon reams of tiny lighted notes, called out of air like the notes of a flute raised up and sparkling…

  It was all so beautiful, and here she was dancing in the midst of it all. The sun climbed in its purple-pink sky, and the forests, filled with emerald and obsidian trees, grew lush and gorgeous and shook with shadows that shortened and lengthened in the rapidly-running sun.

  And she lifted her hands and formed the birds of the air, fleeing swiftly before the tiger’s stride, and they scattered, blue and green and red jewels that flashed in the sky and disappeared amongst the trees and the oceans. And they breathed deeply the air of that rare atmosphere, pristine and clear as a bell ringing out.

  And she dipped her hands in the oceans and all manner of sea creatures came forth from them—mermaids and oysters and great sea serpents that coiled and twirled and made a playground of the deep. And it was a magnificent thing to behold, this ever-changing water that made up the sea. And all the vegetation of the oceans sprouted forth, its seaweeds and corals forming strange underwater worlds.