by F. Habib
‘Let’s start planning tomorrow. We’ll have to change our get-togethers. Also, our research is getting us only so far. I need more help. There are so many sources of information, we must enlist more people to do the leg work. If we’re leaving, then I want all I can get from the guys here before we go. Right now, however, I’m hitting the sack.’ She turned to go then reached for the bag of food Mimi still carried. ‘You don’t mind do you?’
Mimi laughed. ‘Knock yourself out. I’d never have believed you could eat so much.’
‘Don’t laugh too hard, it’s not me that’s consuming. It’s the beast within.’ Beth smiled as Mimi choked and coughed. ‘See - I can do funny too.’
‘But it’s not funny!’ Mimi yelled after her.
Chapter Twenty
The crackle of Doritos crunched across the empty Mess hall. Beth flipped through a thick tome. Wolfram is crazy, but right now I need crazy. She slapped the volume closed and glanced at her watch.
04:00.
I need to stop soon or my brain is going to cave in. She half-wished Galen were there to boost her energy levels, but Decker had called it a night a few hours ago and Galen had had to go with him. Since Perun’s quiet disappearance, he hadn’t left the boy’s side. It was farcical to think they could stop him, but appearances had to be kept up.
Beth smiled, remembering. No trace; just gone.
She sighed, shoved another chip in her mouth and stared at the vending machine’s juice bottles. Can I be bothered to get up? She rubbed her swollen abdomen. With only five weeks to go, she had to maximise the research time.
She considered the scattering of books around her. Information was her problem. There was too much of it. Maybe I’m trying too hard – like Wolfram says, despite the appearance of complexity, the base of a problem could be simple. If everything is just electric charges in a variety of forms, some of which we call matter, perhaps matter, with all it’s illusory qualities, is indeed generated from some sort of code. And the supersymmetry guy, James Gates Jr. found codes normally used to extract errors in digital communications - like email - in equations of fundamental particles.
Error-correcting codes in found particle physics?
Could atoms be reduced to code?
What exactly is code? Information.
No, code represents information. The symbols are tangible, but information isn’t. Beth’s tired eyes drifted shut but a light flared behind her lids. She grabbed some paper and carefully traced the image onto it.
μορφή
She squeezed her lids shut hoping more would come.
Nothing. Pah! She picked up the paper.
Greek numbers?
She grabbed her phone and took a snapshot. Within seconds the image was winging its way to Mimi. She’d been banished after Perun’s vanishing act, removed as an unwarranted liability. A beep bounced loudly about the hall.
Morphe – Ancient Greek. It means form, idea, shape. Why are you awake? Beth slowly placed her phone on the table.
Morph, form. Morphing is transformation. Information, shaping, transforming. Her mind flashed jumbled thoughts that didn’t quite fit together.
‘Just stop!’ She groaned, rubbing her temples. She was abruptly exhausted. Slow down Irving, before you have a haemorrhage.
She flipped open a book. It was right where she remembered.
Informare – the Latin verb meant to give form to the mind. Information gives form to the mind? Information shapes consciousness like a mould shapes clay?
Code is symbolic, meaningless without interpretation. It is the observer who assigns meaning to symbols. The potential meaning already exists in him. His consciousness gives meaning to new data by comparing it to previously perceived data stored in memory. It recognises differences or similarities between data experiences and processes them to extract new potential knowledge. It learns. It evolves?
Consciousness therefore is memory, awaiting experience, to enable learning.
Beth glanced at Wolfram’s fat book. Would it really only take a simple evolutionary algorithm? Kaufman called it “reality forming relationships with itself”. Am I really left with the Panpsychic perspective, ridiculed by good scientists everywhere? Beth sighed, shifting her weight from one butt cheek to the other.
What if I just look at the problem through an information-processing lens?
If I were Consciousness, a self-aware energy that could perceive nothing beyond itself - a cold shudder passed through her at such interminable isolation - I would turn inward…to change my unchangeable situation.
If I wanted to learn about being less than All, more than alone, I would have to create that experience. I would have to create what does not exist – that which is not I.
But where to begin? Differentiation.
Beth grabbed a pen and paper. The nib hovered over empty white space.
She drew a dot.
She stared for a long moment at the singularity.
All…alone.
She raised her pen and drew a short horizontal line alongside it.
Us.
Beth looked at the pair and again raised her pen. Below the dot she traced a circle. Next to it she drew a vertical line. She kept on going.
0101010101010101010101010101
We’d want every conceivable experience. We could do it all at once. No time, space or resource limits. It would require self-fragmentation into observers of every possible variety to witness every potential experience. New data would have to feed back to the source for analysis.
Perhaps that’s where the hierarchy comes in. There’d have to be a robust structure in the program to avoid chaos. A pyramid of conscious entities, each with an assigned algorithm, power limit and feedback loop into the level above.
If my objective were to partake in every possible experience, then I would want to know what it feels like to be a quark, a molecule, a star or universe and everything in between. These things must have some sentience. A way of collecting their experience and feeding it back into higher levels of consciousness.
Could the atoms the boys communicate with be lower-level consciousness entities? Sentient enough to choose cooperation, but limited in their wider choices.
Is willpower just a processing limit?
The higher an entity’s retrieval and processing capacity, the greater its apparent free will? What if there’s a deterministic mechanism in play for humans, an algorithm corralling our choices. Beth paused, recalling a research paper she’d read.
The Max Planck Institute…a brain scan experiment. It revealed a seven-second delay between a choice being evidenced in a human brain scan and the participant being consciously aware of making their decision. Seven seconds. We place so much value on free will, yet the subconscious is making all the decisions without us, and sending a memo. Beth smiled.
So if free will were limited by an underlying algorithm, what about entities that break the rules? Avireri, the twins, moving between consciousness levels, creating other entities. Are they breaking the rules by changing the algorithm somehow or just providing another pre-programed experience for consciousness? Maybe Consciousness doesn’t care what type of experience we provide as long as we keep feeding its memory banks, as long as we keep it evolving.
Beth scoured through the data she’d read in the last weeks. Memory had been a problem for neuroscience for a long time, mainly because it’s not one thing found in a particular place in the brain. It’s a construct, built from aspects of that experience.
There is no memory for shower. The symbols trigger associated aspects of the experience we label shower, to be retrieved from different parts the brain. The sound, the texture of water, temperature, feelings we experienced, associated meanings such as cleanliness and our value judgments about those. A memory is an amalgam of myriad impressions, coalesced and presented to the conscious mind as a distinct concept. And it’s still not clear how they’re stored in the brain.
Even after 50 percent of the brain had been
cut away, Lashley’s rats could still remember tricks they’d been trained to perform, no matter which half of the brain was removed. There are flat worms that can regrow their brains when decapitated, yet remember past learning, suggesting memories possibly encoded in their non-brain tissue. Then there’s Jung’s collective unconscious.
Beth rubbed her eyes, tired of all the clues pointing to something she still couldn’t see.
So I can hypothesise that Consciousness might be a self-aware program scripting itself. An AI trying to answer the same questions we are or has it just passed its own unanswered questions down the line? Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? What is my purpose?
Beth laughed as tears of frustration pricked her eyes. For the first time in her life she really felt like a minuscule lost little human with no answers.
No wonder the spirit entities don’t rate us. And what does it matter anyway? So what if we are all one entity trying to better understand itself? How does that help me today?
Guess I should stress less. Beth wrinkled her nose. What did Galen say? We’re here to experience love in the face of fear and ignorance. Great. Well the fear and ignorance part is working out pretty well so far. Love? Not so much. Except my love for Galen, which is the only thing keeping me sane. Khoen: a bizarre mess. Perun: a friend. The baby? Well, if she’s anything like Galen it should be a walk in the park.
She slowly piled her books up again. I’ll move them tomorrow…I mean later. She pulled back her chair and stood in a puddle. She peered down at the brown liquid and wondered where chocolate sauce had come from. The door at the far end of the hall smashed open. Galen’s skinny chest lifted with every gasp.
‘What?’
She hurried around the table.
‘Stop!’ He sprinted forward, palms raised. Decker came barrelling behind him.
‘What the hell are you playing at kid? You don’t race out of the room like…where’s the fire?’
Galen stopped in front of Beth and held his palm over her stomach.
Beth glanced down, perplexed. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘You have no pain.’ he frowned.
‘No.’
She gasped. Her shoes had left a trail from the other side of the table. Not chocolate - blood. Masses of it. A new pool had already formed at her feet. She could feel it now, soaking her pyjamas, sticky against her legs.
‘What the hell?’
Decker caught her as she stumbled backwards, instinctively moving away from the mess.
Pain crashed unseen against her pelvis with the force of a raging bull. She screamed. They grabbed her thrashing arms as she ripped at her clothes. Decker lifted her and laid her on the table, books flying in every direction like a brood of startled hens.
‘What’s happening?’ he barked.
‘I don’t know. Everything was fine. Then I felt the baby…dying. I have to help her.’
‘What can I do?’ Decker said.
Beth’s screams tore her voice. Galen pushed her straining head back against the table and his face smoothed in concentration.
‘Help me! Help her,’ she sobbed.
Galen wrapped his arms around her head. The agony eased as liquid calm washed over her and she clung to him. Thank God I have you, she thought. When he pulled back, Decker was staring at them.
‘We have to get her out,’ Galen said.
‘I hope you can pull this off kid.’
Galen swallowed.
Her panic rose in short fast gasps. He’d never been unsure about healing before. He placed his hands on her belly and the baby moved.
‘The crimson tide is rising over here. She’s going to bleed out.’ Decker swiped a sheet of blood off the table. Galen closed his eyes and Beth’s bones ached hot in her flesh. What…more blood cells?
‘Why is this happening?’
Galen’s pallor chilled her heart. His gaze skirted hers.
‘Something is trying to kill the baby.’
‘What?’
‘I feel it pushing me away when I try to help. It’s reaching from-’
‘Why? What would do that?’
‘She must come out now.’ Galen’s voice rose.
Decker lifted his gaze from all the blood, ‘you mean by c-section?’
Galen frowned at him.
‘Will you cut her out?’ Decker said.
Galen shook his head, clearly repulsed. He turned to Beth, ‘I’m going to ask your body to give her to me.’
‘What does that mean? What’s going to happen?’ Beth’s face was stiff with fear.
‘I don’t know.’
He placed one hand on her head and one on her belly. Decker stepped sharply back as it started to tremble. A cool numbness washed over Beth. She sensed her abdomen shaking, but there was no pain now. Her heart rate steadied as reality drained from the moment. Decker’s jaw dropped and he stumbled further away. The horrified fascination on his face forced her gaze to follow his.
Her taut skin bubbled and bulged like viscous fluid. A small foot pushed against the thin membrane, unable to break it. Galen stretched out his hand and the skin receded like smouldering paper, he reached carefully for the bloodied foot. The baby was expelled in one slow movement, like a splinter. Galen caught the slippery body with difficulty, clutching her to his chest. The twisted chord separated from her navel with a snap.
The only noise in the room was the short breaths pushing past Decker’s stiff lips. Beth couldn’t breathe. The unmoving bundle of blood in her son’s arms was like a noose around her neck. It pinched off her voice, her ability to move or think.
Galen pressed his forehead fleetingly to the small torso then passed the silent baby to Decker.
‘Keep her warm,’ he spoke calmly, wiped his bloodied brow and turned back to Beth’s gaping belly.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ she croaked. The room swam through her tears. Decker grabbed a tablecloth from a nearby counter and wiped the blood from the silent infant.
Galen frowned, his hands moving rapidly over Beth.
‘Nothing.’
‘Why doesn’t she cry? Or move.’
’Because she doesn’t want to. Don’t worry, she’s fine.’
‘Her skin!’ Decker held up the baby and Beth gasped. Her fear morphed into ugly confusion.
White hair, pink with blood, topped a face of spliced discolouration. The right side was pale pink, the left dark brown. A clean mid-line blurred on her forehead into a patchy honeycomb pattern that crawled into her hairline. Shock reverberated through Beth, melded with repulsion and solidified into shame at her reaction.
A birthmark?
Decker walked the baby closer, struggling to get the cloth around her. That’s when she saw it; knew they were in big trouble. A wave pattern of stripes rippled down the left side of the baby like she’d been tattooed.
‘She is Chimera,’ Beth whispered.
‘She’s what?’ Decker looked warily at the quiet infant.
‘A chimera forms when two separate ova are fertilised by two sperm, and they then fuse. That’s the source of the discolouration; those stripes are called Blaschko's lines.’
Decker shook his head.
‘You people really are freaks.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Beth grabbed Galen’s arm.
‘Non-identical twins. She is a twin in one body.’
Galen stopped to stare again at the baby. He nodded and smiled. ‘She does have a strange DNA signal. But first I have to finish this.’
Beth helped to awkwardly wrap the cloth around the baby in Decker’s arms. She glanced at her belly where Galen was working and did a double take. There was no sign of a wound. Her skin was once more smooth and whole though still sticky with blackened blood.
Decker pulled up a chair and put the baby onto his lap. He stared at the odd markings and closed eyes.
‘She’s so quiet. Are you sure she’s ok, kid?’ He pulled her chin down to check her airway. ‘Well she’s breathing ok.’
&nbs
p; He yelped and jerked his hand back.
The baby was watching him with one black and one violet eye. Beth squeaked at the sight of her daughter’s clear gaze. She reached for her baby for the first time, and snatched her from Decker’s arms. He relinquished the child with fumbling haste, but peered again into her steady gaze before withdrawing to the next table, arms tightly crossed.
‘Heterochromia - it can happen with chimera.’ Beth was fascinated by the duality so evident in her baby. The initial shock at her markings was fading.
‘Hello, little one. Are you my Yin and Yang?’ She cooed into the multi-coloured eyes, smiling at the contemplative regard. No wonder Decker was disconcerted. It was like being watched by a hawk.
‘I thought new-borns had blurry vision? You have twenty-twenty.’ Beth chuckled. Her thoughts flashed to Khoen and the grief she kept under lock, key, bolts and chains broke loose. Misery washed away her joy.
‘Mum, it’s ok. Here, sit up.’ Galen helped Beth turn so that her crimson-stained feet dangled off the side of the table. ‘You’ll need to rest for a few days. Your body is almost healed, but I don’t think you should do much. It’s going to take some getting used to…having her out.’ He squeezed his mother’s shoulders in an awkward hug and rubbed a gentle finger across the baby’s forehead. ‘She has the same as me.’ He planted a soft kiss on her patterned forehead and Beth caught sight of the honeycomb birthmark on the back of his neck.
Why didn’t that come to mind when I saw her? Her thoughts were clouded by melancholy. Perhaps the size difference threw me off. Galen’s is tiny.
Decker coughed and uncrossed his arms.
‘You good here?’
At Galen’s nod he rose and gave them a quick salute. He spun on his heel and hurried towards the door.
He’s probably running off to double the guards and secure the exits.
‘Phone Mimi,’ she yelled at his departing back. He waved a hand without a backward glance.
‘Wrap her up more. She’s still too cold.’ Galen brought a fresh tablecloth over. ‘We should go down to the medical bay. The doctors will arrive soon.’