The crèche was an alternative to staying in this universe and finding out what he would do. And among the infinite possibilities there must be at least a single world in which Kim loved him. It had to have been possible for her to love him.
Mona was gone. She had walked out of the apartment into the physical world and disappeared. The office was his now. The house was empty. All the caskets were empty. The dead had risen.
HE SOMETIMES WOKE IN EARLY morning hours without his anger and lay like a stain in the bed that possessed the memory of Kim’s body. In that other world, the one that the present had deprived him of, her arms and legs had stretched out beside him and he would brush against them and gently lean into the smooth warmth of her skin, igniting and intensifying their delicate radius of safety. Now he turned from side to side in the densest darkness or lay on his back keeping his eyes closed and the house sometimes creaked or popped as houses do and he was seared with the useless hope that the sound might be Kim or even Trina—a footstep, an inadvertent bump—one or the other of them out there, near him, one or both returning.
NERDEANISREAL—THE FILES ON THE SYSTEMS in Nerdean’s office were completely different when you logged in with that password. The Nerdeanisreal account was the administrative account for everything in the Neardeanisafake account, so you could see and edit all of the Nerdeanisafake material, and a great deal more.
It occurred to Vin that there might be other accounts, so he logged out and tried to log back in with several other passwords:
Nerdeanisanasshole
WhatthefuckNerdean?
ShitfuckshitfuckshitfuckNerdean
FuckyouNerdean
Nerdeanistheabsolutelycruelestfuckeronthisicymotherfuckingplanetofhell
Nerdean?Hello!Nerdean?, and a few more. None worked.
When he tired of pounding out frustrations on the keyboard, he read further into the new documents, the truer explanations. The files under this account assured him that time and chance were both—as Mona had said—illusory. Everything that had or could exist always did. The human experience of life was the result of a kind of channel created by and filled with awareness. The mind moved; the world didn’t. The mind’s path formed as the alchemy of observation slipped through the unimaginably vast and otherwise static structure of everything, the mind trickling, ever in motion, pulled toward states of greater entropy.
Sure, I’ll buy that for a dollar, Vin thought. Why the fuck not? He logged off. He sat in the eggshell chair looking at the dark screen and imagining Kim there. He imagined Kim reading that same drivel before giving in to her weak, frustrated, middle-class despair and then throwing all of their fucking goddamn lives onto the bonfire of pure chance.
Although—and here he dynamited the roaring train of his own furious musings—she did that only after he had done the same thing. And after he had done it a few times. And then told her about it. And admitted to her that he was sometimes tempted to do it again.
But she had always been so frustrating in that way, always drawn toward the things that frightened her.
And so, if he knew she was always that way, shouldn’t he have been able to recognize the risk? How much of her had he missed? Did he know her at all, or had he just been filling in an outline with his own ideas? (And if ideas were things a person could contain, could the crèche measure them?)
AS FOR LUCID DREAMING, THE new files only referenced it in a passage that said the crèche was so revolutionary that its capabilities should be disclosed slowly, or new subjects might be too frightened to test its full potential. Vin had difficulty wrapping his mind around the savage arrogance that passage betrayed. Its author was willing to camouflage the nature of the device, hide its ability to wreak havoc on a life. And for what? To experiment?
Also surprisingly, this “truer” documentation contained only a small number of well-constructed, coherent passages. Most of it was a jumble of mannered terminology, excess, and slapdash notes sprawling under hoary titles like, “The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Attributes of the Structural Relationship Between Event Contexts that the Human Mind Interprets as Probability.” It also included many obscene drawings of massive genitalia variously configured with faces, brains, and deformed bodies. They looked as though they were drawn on paper, scanned, and then pasted into the files. Beneath many were neat, numbered captions—like “Mind Fuck Series”—as if they were items in a formal display. They seemed to be interspersed without a pattern throughout the files, their creator ensuring a record of comprehensive disdain.
A file titled “Exercising Causality Through a Surrogate Awareness” had a tutorial on how the “subject,” a person in a crèche, could influence the actions of a “surrogate,” a person whose mind the crèche was “compositing”:
The subject may only directly affect the surrogate’s internal dialog . . . Broadly speaking, the subject has two options for taking action:
1) develop trust over time by aligning with a surrogate’s perceived self-interest. The subject becomes a trusted advisor to the surrogate . . .
2) Bombard the surrogate with hyperbolic emotional messages, either strongly positive or strongly negative. Sudden, unexpected shifts from one extreme to another can enhance this approach, which may generate emotional disruption intense enough to interrupt the surrogate’s motor response system, thereby creating opportunities to exercise direct control.
It went on. There was nothing about whether the techniques should or should not be used, only how to use them.
A large document named “Unforeseen Risks” began: “Original assumptions were that the crèche technology was essentially risk free. Subsequent extrapolation from empirical results suggest the following list of possible risks.” And then a long list of nightmarish scenarios, such as:
4) Double-Loading: New probability models predict an unmeasurable possibility that two affiliated awarenesses may be simultaneously recalled to the same body, creating a highly volatile and possibly lethal encrustation of pre-explanatory awareness.
There was no explanation of what “pre-explanatory awareness” might mean, and:
9) Shot-Stuck: a process by which a subject becomes immune to the potential for a return shot. This risk has been confirmed, but is probably highly improbable.
At the end of the list, he added:
Maybe Nerdean is an unhinged sadist and anything is possible.
Vin learned that aiming of the outbound shot was very crude. Because all constraints bracket infinite possibilities, the initial “throw” of a mind from the device was less “aimed,” and more “guided”—almost random, no matter what parameters were set. The “return throw,” on the other hand, had a clear target: a crèche. “There are infinite possibilities for the return, but all include a crèche prepared to receive a specific mind.
“The crèche terminates a shot by collapsing the field that sustains dislocation of the subject’s basis (his or her awareness). Acute local perturbation in the field of consciousness resolves and consciousness reinvests the subject. However, any motion of a basis requires a transition through a probability state, including the inescapable influence of all entropy (necessary uncertainty) attached to relevant contexts. Entropy ensures an incongruity between the basis and the subject. Put plainly, there is infinite likelihood that a ‘person’ will not return to their originating body.”
PART V
WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS
CHAPTER 13
Within Worlds
Vin is in the crèche again and a buzzing in his head is getting louder and more painful. Then it ceases. He feels a release of tension and a wave of peaceful absence, no sensation of any kind, no light, no smell, no sense of touching anything and he’s not sure whether or not his eyes are open.
A voice, which he experiences without hearing, says, “Welcome to this event context, designed for the temporary storage of unanchored awareness. The meta-causality you have attempted to establish is unauthorized and is associated with a protected awareness. To p
revent permanent damage to your consciousness resulting from immersion in simulated oblivion, to avoid ethically compromised outcomes, and to promote greater self-awareness, you will experience this context with an appropriate number of affiliated awarenesses.”
Vin hears a brief sequence of high-pitched tones that seem to originate inside his head, and then the voice continues: “Please understand that your influence on other, nearby awarenesses is limited in scope to methods that simulate verbal communication. You will have a simulated experience of speaking and hearing, as will other awarenesses in your context. You may move freely, but your perceived location will not change. If your experience becomes trying, we suggest that you protect your own coherence by adopting the conviction that you are experiencing a dream.
“You will be returned to a context closely related to your origin point within a period determined by the construct that has attempted to establish meta-causality. To preserve mental health, your storage facility is equipped with a utility that displays a best estimate of perceived time remaining in this event context. You may view your remaining time by making a verbal request. Simply say, ‘View Time.’ You will now hear a series of tones, after which you may have limited congress with affiliated awarenesses.”
Another short, high-pitched tone sounds. It has a color as well: red. Then a slightly lower, yellow tone sounds, followed by a lower, blue tone, and finally a green tone, a very comfortable sound.
At first, Vin sees only darkness, but that slowly fades until the world in all directions, including above and below, is no longer black but dark gray. At the same time, a set of evenly spaced points within the darkness begins to grow lighter. The points thicken and slowly take on the shape of human bodies until all about him, positioned as if at the eight corners of a cube and the midpoints of each edge and the middle of each side, are twenty-four lines of bodies, with Vin at the center. Each line extends to a vanishing point, with a new body floating in darkness at roughly every ten feet. Each body is naked and looks exactly like Vin. Several nearby are watching him.
“Hey,” one of them says, from above him and to his right. He sees the man bending toward him, hears the man’s voice directed at him. “Don’t freak out. This place is completely safe. You’re safe here.”
“What is here?” Vin asks.
“I know what you’re thinking,” one of the other men says, then he and a third man laugh at the joke.
“This,” says the one who spoke first, “is like a holding cell.” The man isn’t being loud but Vin can hear his voice clearly. He can hear the breath that’s creating it. “Your crèche tried to throw you forward in time, to a future when the technology Nerdean invented is pretty common. They made this place as a defense against people jumping into other people’s minds.”
“So, this is the future?” Vin asks.
“Well, that depends on where you’re coming from,” says a version of him with a stubbly chin.
“He’s from the same place we are, nitwit. Look at him, he’s our age. Use some common sense. Jesus.” That version of him punches the air. He has longer hair than the others.
“Oh, really? Half the time I come out of the crèche I’ve landed in some crazy place I don’t know where the hell I am. So how does common sense apply?”
As Vin turns about, he sees each naked body—each version of his own body—with a level of detail that increases when he focuses. The darkness between them seems flexible, expanding or contracting in response to his attention, and the light is uniformly clear, the shadows always what he expects them to be. He realizes that a few of the men are crying—apparently inconsolably, because others are trying unsuccessfully to console them. There are versions of him shouting, barking angry orders, cursing. Almost all those around him—all the versions of him—seem to be having an intense emotional experience of some kind.
“Hey, hey. Concentrate on me. On me,” says the man above him and to his right, who looks exactly like Vin, even the cut and length of his hair. “It’ll make this all easier.”
Vin tries to, and the voices rumbling about him—the grumbling, the mad wailing, the waves of conversation—recede into a background murmur. It’s weird and distracting to see a naked version of himself standing about fourteen feet away. The man’s feet rest on nothing but are angled as if they’re supported by an invisible floor. He’s crouching, so when Vin looks up, the two of them are facing each other.
“Thank you,” Vin says.
“Don’t mention it.”
“Are you bending your legs?” Vin asks.
“What?”
“Are you actually bending down, or am I only seeing that?”
“I mean—I don’t know what you’re seeing,” says the other man. “Are you frightened?”
“Yes.”
“Me too. I always am. But this place is safe. The strangest thing about it is the lack of smell. And how my sense of touch feels muted. But don’t worry, I’ve been in your position before.”
“You mean that literally, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Was this a mistake?” Vin asks. “Going back into the crèche again?”
“Probably,” says the other Vin. “Or maybe. I don’t really know. I’m on the same journey or, whatever, that you are.”
“This is it, isn’t it? I mean, I’m finally, really going crazy.”
“You mean you think this is all just a figment of our imagination? That you’re just unable to tell the difference between this and a dream? No. The crèche threw us into the future, that’s all. And this particular future is defending itself. I’ve been in this place before, or maybe other places with similar defenses. I’ve been in other futures, too, that don’t have defenses. Things can get hairy. On a cosmic scale, you know, there’s basically zero difference between one generation of humans and the next.”
The intensity on the face of the man looking at him—which must mirror his own intensity—surprises Vin. It feels as if he’s being prodded by it, as if it’s demanding something of him. He takes a breath and imagines that this other Vin probably doesn’t know how his look affects people.
“So, if you’ve done this before, then you must be a future me, right?” He glances around at the endless versions of himself, then back at the one he’s talking with. “Because this is my first time here. So, if you told me what happened to you, I could try and do some things differently, make different choices and things could get better.”
“Not really. I could tell you a bunch of stuff, but there’s so much happening, so many different interactions and possibilities. Things are just different for each of us. I mean, I could—look, the truth is, I tried that. I came to grief.”
“So trying might bring me to grief too. Well, what else do you have?”
“No, I’m not going there. Really. And you don’t want me to. Trust me.”
“Can you at least tell me why all these variations”—Vin motions at the lines of himself—“why are so many crying?”
“Or why are some furious? Or why can you and I have a civil conversation? Chance, I guess. Just random, dumb luck.”
A very small number of the other Vins look relaxed or bored, even while standing naked on the non-floor in non-space. One or two are cackling mad. Some are shouting at each other. A few are whimpering.
“I actually find this place painfully, painfully boring,” says the other Vin, the one he’d been talking with. “So damn boring. I hate when the crèche drops me here.”
“Really?” Vin asks. “Really? Boring is about the last word I’d use to describe it.”
“You haven’t traveled much, have you?”
“This is my fourth, um, do we call it a shot?”
“Oh.” The other Vin becomes somber, sad. “Did you abandon Trina, then?”
And Vin can’t help himself. He leaps upward, though his position doesn’t change at all. “Do you know what happened to my daughter?” he demands. “Do you know where she is? How can I get to her?” He is wr
enched by anger. He can feel himself overheat and sees his spit flying at the other Vin, lit with glinting clarity as it arcs through the non-space.
“Hey, hey. Calm. Calm. Your daughter is back there, wherever you started from,” the other Vin says, his voice softening.
“Kim took her from me,” Vin snaps. “I can’t reach her. Kim took her.”
“Ah, shit,” says the other Vin. “Look, I’m so sorry.” And with a deeply pained expression he turns away.
“Kim completely fucked you over,” a Vin near him yells out, one who’s leaner, who looks almost starving.
“Fucked me over too!”
“Me too!” A Vin with a mustache.
“That bitch!” yells another Vin.
“That fucking bitch, Kim!” yells someone else.
“Ah, fucking bitch!” A loud chorus of voices swells around Vin.
“Kill that bitch!”
All around him, legions of different versions of himself are erupting with obscene vitriol, but he’s shouting as well, forgetting himself, joining them.
He yells for a long time. He froths. When he feels his energy wane he remembers Trina and the injustice, remembers she’s deprived of his love and protection and nurturing and he’s furious again and curses and howls.
Time passes. A moment arrives in which he realizes that he hasn’t shouted recently. Dizzy and nauseous from the strain of his galloping anger, he says, “View time,” and immediately sees a digital display counting down from two hours, fifty-eight minutes and seventeen seconds. He waits for what seems a long time, his anger boiling back up, and then says, “View time” again. Two hours, fifty-two minutes, one second.
YOU LOOK UP AT THE sky, the stars endless and isolate, distances so vast that your only defense—the only way to exist in your single body that feels less amid all that span of darkness and light than the fading warmth from one curling breath—is to imagine, imagine you are there, everywhere, as everything, and by imagining, by dreaming, allow yourself to continue. And then, as nebulas bloom and grow smaller with an outward rush of perspective—of time and scale—your specific experience becomes integral to the whole, a mystery whose integrity is set in motion by a living world and the passions it inspires.
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