Sofia and the Utopia Machine

by Judith Huang

  “Well, see, in my totally non-expert opinion, the weirdness of it all is that science, and art, and religion and everything else are all related. We are all actually talking about the same thing. It is the Great Chain of Being, which goes from multiverses to shivers, by way of universes, galaxies, planets, continents, species, individuals, cells, molecules, atoms, quarks…all made out of matter and anti-matter. And all of this is explainable by physics, which is kind of like a pair of goggles for looking at everything. And so is religion. And so are the humanities.”

  “We tend to forget when we say, for example, that mass can be converted into energy, which is what Einstein’s E=mc2 really means, that we are talking about us. That muffin you just ate? Mass to energy. Chinese acupuncture? Mass to energy. You see what I mean? And suddenly the thing isn’t just an equation any more. It is this eerie pair of goggles that adds a dimension to your whole life.”

  “I wonder why we never hear about this sort of thing in school,” Sofia interjected, watching as another satellite bleeped over them. She wondered if it were recording their location, but they were quite sheltered by the trees lining the beach.

  “So, in the 1970s a lot of this stuff was explored, then hurriedly stuffed into the back shelves of the subterranean levels of dusty university libraries, when the hippies died out and the mercenary ’80s came around. And in the States they are now just an embarrassing memory for many a

  hippie-turned-tenured-professor. But some of us read this stuff, instead of our assigned reading in university, and took it to foreign laboratories where funding was more forthcoming. So now, more than a hundred years later, we have finally found a way to fuse religion and science, or at least, the human religious impulse and science.”

  “Well, not all religion, surely,” interjected Father Lang. “The church has been squabbling within itself for two millennia now about science,” he sighed.

  “Well, interestingly, it also goes the other way. A lot of religious squabbles can now be made redundant by science, in my opinion, if only you priestly people took a break from squabbling with Science. I don’t mean that God is merely psychological over-attribution at work, or anything so crude. I mean, for example, the long feud between Catholics and Protestants about purgatory. What if ‘purgatory’ is simply not a place, but outside time? So, if you assume a higher-than-four-dimensions God, which I assume is reasonable, then it wouldn’t matter if you prayed for your relative while she was alive or dead, because the supplication takes place outside time, yes? Or to put it in another way, surely God’s ears are outside time? Because to God every day is a thousand years, and so forth.

  “And take the furore over transubstantiation, the classic excuse for wars and genocide. Now that we understand digestion, assimilation and furthermore, the shivonic theory of matter, is it any wonder that when you eat the same piece of bread as someone else, we have both a material and spiritual connection arising from the act? And, if continuous since the original Good Friday, doesn’t it make perfect sense that Christians are quite literally considered the body of Jesus of Nazareth (it having similar shivers to the ones Christ imbibed that night—or at least, a continuous chain of shivers)?”

  Uncle Kirk looked very pleased with himself. Sofia just looked at him with an amused look on her face, she was so used to these philosophical speculations. But there was no denying it, the stars seemed to shine brighter and even more mysteriously at these thoughts. Father Lang was looking at Uncle Kirk admiringly.

  “Very well—you want some coconut?” They had found some trees along the shore, and Sofia had surprised them all by shimmying up the tree to pluck them.

  They just stared at the sky for some time. It was getting chilly. The moon shone more intensely than Sofia had ever remembered.

  “Do you mind if I ask you something, Kirk?” said Father Lang after a bit.

  “No, not at all. What is it?”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “Well, kind of. Yeah. I mean, who doesn’t?”

  Father Lang sat up, surprised. “I wouldn’t have expected that from a scientist,” he said.

  “Well, I guess I am more of a soft agnostic. But even many scientists these days—aside from the most hardcore atheists—believe in God, or at least, some kind of god or other. And why not? The physics supports it. I mean, all the unaccountable dark matter and all that. Why couldn’t that just be spirits? Not that I’m advocating a God of the gaps or anything, but it’s possible, no?”

  Father Lang didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, everyone believes in God, or gods, like everyone believes in democracy, right? It’s just some people act like it exists, and some people don’t.”

  “You are very philosophical about the whole thing.”

  “Well, actually, funny you should mention it, but after my undergrad at Harvard with Sofia’s mother, I was at Oxford for two years, doing a masters in Experimental Theology. The department doesn’t exist any more. It was one of those rare occasions when Oxford changes anything.”

  “You are a very educated man.”

  “Doesn’t make me less confused about all this stuff.”

  “What do you think really happened inside that Utopia Machine of yours?”

  “I think…I think our perceptions led us to believe there was something supernatural happening to us. But hell, look at the stuff Sofia’s dealing with at the moment. She’s kind of some kind of goddess now, aren’t you?” Kirk addressed Sofia, but found that she had already fallen asleep.

  “You can’t change the past.”

  “On the contrary, you can change the present, and that in turn changes everything.”

  “You are an optimist.”

  “I merely consider myself a realist. What do you consider yourself?”

  “I consider myself a Christian. A Catholic, to be specific. But you knew that. I try to bring the kingdom of God to people. Usually one by one. Sometimes, I can do something, like the soup kitchen, that can help ten, maybe twenty people.”

  “You’re very pragmatic.”

  “On the contrary, I am an idealist.”

  “How do you think feeding people for an hour a week makes any difference?”

  “It makes a difference to them.”

  Kirk fell silent. Soon he, too, was asleep. Father Lang watched him and Sofia with an unexpected tenderness. On reflection, he thought he knew what Kirk had been up to in the Voids—it had, of course, escaped Sofia in her innocence. But Father Lang had lived among the hopeless for too long not to know one when he met one. There was something brittle behind their eyes, like something had been broken in them a long time ago, broken but not discarded. He should know—he nursed it himself. He lay down again, watching the stars, trying desperately to feel the earth move.

  Chapter 22: In the New World

  Under the stars, Sofia slept, but fitfully.

  In her dream, she was relaying a message through a star. She spoke in the voice of the star, hidden somewhere in the depths of a mountain, glowing, sending forth her warning.

  The universe was in terrible danger that swept outwards from the desert plains. Something was summoning all its strength, growing in the dark. What could it be? It was an ancient power, something she needed to defeat. It was something she brought with her from the old world, something invading the new one.

  Crops were blighted, people fell ill, disasters struck across the land. The terrified wails of her people swirled around her ears. Help us, they pleaded. Come back, come back…

  And then a familiar voice came to her—the voice of Milton the tiger.

  “Your world needs you, Sofia… You must come back to us my Sofia…” said the baritone, strong and clear above all the other voices.

  And then, a huge shadow emerged from the depths, a fierce yellow eye riding the crest of a wave, eyeing her, waiting to devour her…

  Sofia woke up with a jolt. Her eyes, wide open, could still see the image of that burning yellow iris. But when she blinked, the da
rk night sky, with its scattered stars, appeared before her. A faint light was creeping up from the horizon—it was nearly dawn.

  The thought of Isaac came to her unbidden. It seemed so long ago now that she had had her first kiss. She had no way of contacting him now, not on Pulau Ubin. She didn’t even know where the nearest netbox might be. She thought of her mother. She had no way to contact her, either. Uncle Kirk seemed to think she was in trouble, which was probably right since she hadn’t picked up her call.

  What had woken her? Like a wisp of smoke, the dream had vanished like it had come. And the impression it left in her was unmistakeable: she had to go back to the world inside the cube, and as soon as possible. Hunted and lost as she was in her own world, she was responsible for the new one she had created, and something terrible was happening there.

  She took off her dusty school shoes and emptied them of the sand that had accumulated between her sweaty toes. She had not had time to put on socks that last morning in her flat, and she had been regretting it the whole time, since blisters were rising on the soles of both her feet. Fortunately, the night had been cool, and the sweat on her clothes had dried out during the night.

  She could barely believe that it had been just a few days since her life had been overturned so spectacularly. Just a few days ago she had been an ordinary girl, going to school every day, the worst thing she faced being the passive-aggressive bullies in her class. Today she was a fugitive, and a goddess in another land, responsible for the fates of thousands, even millions by this time, for time seemed to pass more quickly in the new world than in the old.

  She took out the little cube. It was such a tiny, innocuous object, yet its heft demanded attention. Fingering it, she felt the lids of her eyes closing of their own accord. She was so tired. Being on the run, the rainstorm they had experienced on the crossing, and then that fantastic boar fight that Uncle Kirk (of all people!) had been involved in…and even her sleep had been disturbed by messages from the other world… The susurrus of forest seemed so soothing to her. Then a louder rustling in the trees made her eyes fly open.

  “Uncle Kirk? Father Lang?” she called out hesitantly. A shock of blonde hair appeared from behind a tree to her right.

  “Sofia? Is that you?”

  “Yeah… Uncle Kirk?”

  “What?”

  “I think I have to go back to the other world,” said Sofia.

  “You mean go into the Utopia Machine again?”

  “Yes. It’ll work, won’t it?”

  “Well, only one way to find out,” Uncle Kirk said.

  Sofia opened her hand. The golden cube glinted. It seemed to glow in the early morning light.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I have to,” said Sofia. “Something was warning me in the dream. You’ll watch the cube if I disappear?”

  “Certainly.”

  Sofia took a deep breath, and guided the little prism into the hole in the cube, willing it to go through.

  It was all still there—the corridor with the reflective mirrors, the strange tree-like chandelier behind it with the silicon table. It was eerie how this room had materialised in the middle of the forest. All the small forest noises that Sofia had gotten used to were also missing in the unnatural hush of the cathedral-like antechamber.

  Taking in a deep breath, Sofia knotted the glyph into the same shape and sang the tune that had opened the portal. The room faded out of view.

  Milton was waiting for her on the other side.

  “About time,” he said, his fur prickling under her touch as she greeted him with a hug.

  They were on a beach somewhere, under the pale pink sky.

  “Where’s Hyzid?”

  “Long dead, my lady,” said Milton gently. “It’s been several thousand years and, besides, we’re on the other side of the planet.”

  She walked along the beach with the tiger, examining certain shells as she walked.

  “Has it really been thousands of years? How am I supposed to do anything for anyone if they’re all dead by the time I come through the portal?”

  “Welcome to immortality,” grinned the tiger. “At least you’ve got me.”

  “What are you, anyway? A programme?”

  “Something like that. But I’m also a person. Technically, I’m an Artificial Intelligence. That’s how I can remember everything you do and what you’re like…”

  Sofia’s hand felt the rough fur with her hands and could not believe he was not real. But what did real mean, anyhow? He was there, wasn’t he? And he was her friend, after all. Did it matter if he was actually a computer programme?

  “I had a dream,” said Sofia, hesitating to ask Milton about it. “You were warning me to come back here. That danger was coming.”

  “A danger would be an understatement. Yes…perhaps it is time for you to meet it,” said Milton thoughtfully. “It has been menacing this world all the time you’ve been gone. All the lands to the west have succumbed to it already.”

  “Who?”

  “It goes by many names, but in this age it is known as the Lotan. You come and go, but the Lotan is always here.”

  “I can’t be here all the time,” reasoned Sofia. “I’m running away from the government in my real life.”

  “This is your real life too. Maybe even more real than your other life,” said the tiger. “And the danger here is even more powerful. If it takes over the whole world, it could destroy everything.”

  Sofia felt uncomfortable. She was terribly stressed out by being on the run. Now she was faced with even more danger in the new world? It seemed exhausting to her. But then, what had she expected? The dream had warned her.

  “So this…this…Lotan. How do I find it? Can I reason with it? Or do I have to fight it?”

  “You’ll have to see for yourself,” said the tiger. “I can only take you there.”

  “Where?”

  “In the lake,” he growled. “In the lake in the desert. That’s its stronghold, and you’ll be going in with no defences except your wits. But perhaps it can be talked to.”

  They had come to a series of cliffs overhanging the beach—large, white cliffs towering over the ocean. Sofia looked up at them and thought they looked as insurmountable as her task.

  “How do I get there?”

  “You ride on my back.”

  In this world, the day was drawing to a close and as the last light faded, the first stars appeared overhead, as the sky turned from pink to purple, to an inky midnight blue.

  “Let me rest here a moment.”

  Sofia was tired. She was also terrified with the prospect of facing the Lotan, whatever it was. It had been a growing shadow in her mind, even before she received the warning in her dream. She needed to gather her strength before beginning another journey to confront it.

  She lay down on the soft sand to better take in the stars of this new world.

  Having grown up in the Midlevels, where the night sky was obscured by the undersides of the hovering Canopies, with their blinking LED lights, she had never seen a night sky like this one before.

  The entire sky was strewn with stars.

  Staring into the midnight blue, the sheer depth and height and breadth of the sky amazed her. Some stars shone dimly, others brightly, reminding her of the vast distances that spanned each one from the others, and the wisps of cloud threaded throughout were lit with their unearthly, milky light.

  She was just amazed at how many there were, waiting for her to name and join them in her imagination into constellations. And every one of those stars might have planets, too, like this one she had chosen, in which there might also be a girl perching on the ground looking up into another night sky, twinkling with countless stars.

  She looked out over the ocean, with its waves cresting and falling, expiring in sighs upon the shore. It, too, was a midnight blue, reflecting the sky and its stars, although the white caps of the waves disturbed its surface so it was not a perfect mirror. I
t looked so wide, so wild, uncircumscribed, unformed…

  She felt how young her world still was, how pure, how fresh, how empty, despite the civilisations that had risen and fallen while she was away, despite the stories that the people of this land had already woven into the warp and weft of this world, the stories that came to her as dreams. She felt how precious it all was to her, how terrible it would be to lose this world, this universe, to the dark force encroaching upon it.

  Tears sprang into her eyes, blurring the stars and spilled down her cheeks into the sand, and she began to sob.

  Milton nudged her gently.

  “It’s hard, I know,” he growled gently. “But your world needs you. The people of the Glass Houses, they have been waiting for you for millennia. Countless civilisations, both now and in the future, are depending on you. The Lotan must be stopped. Now that you are here, it is our best chance. I can’t do this without your help.”

  Sofia nodded, wiping her tears away and stifling a sob.

  “I’ll do it,” she said. Milton nudged her again.

  Sofia climbed back onto his back. It felt comfortable and solid, muscular. And then the tiger was off, his powerful paws falling swiftly on the ground. They flew past the cliffs, inland, leaving the crashing waves of the sea behind them. Sofia felt it was almost worth it, being a god, riding on this magical back.

  Chapter 23: In the Belly of the Beast

  “What is this place?” Sofia whispered, crouching down among the rocks. The land was red and desolate, dust stirring and eddying with the least movement.

  “They call it the Belly,” Milton intoned, his eyes narrowing to yellow slits.

  Sofia shuddered as something small scampered over her toe. The dark seemed filled with a thousand unseen eyes. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  “No, you need to see it.”

  “See what?”

  “It doesn’t have a name. But I think it needs to see you.” With that, he was gone, swift as a shadow, sliding towards what Sofia now saw was a lake. An animal smell seemed to waft off the surface that was so still it reflected the dazzling millions of stars.