by Rudy Rucker
Mick grunted and turned his full attention back to the universe itself. He seemed not to want to get sucked into the scientific frame of mind. He was right. Once again, Vernor let his attention drift out into the friendly being around them. He found himself praying.
"One size fits all," Mick said presently, and Vernor nodded agreement. On earth as it is in heaven. As above, so below.
But the zest for observation returned, and yet again Vernor sorted his Self out into subject and object, scientist and phenomenon.
They had been shrinking all this time, and the nodes at the intersections of the network had resolved themselves into clouds of bright particles darting around exceptionally bright central regions.
One of the nodes had come to dominate their visual field, and they could see now that matter was continually being ejected from the bright region at the center.
"That must be a white hole," Vernor remarked. "You know, the other end of a hyperspace tunnel which starts at a black hole. Matter falls in the black end and comes out the white end, all cleaned and simplified."
"Where are the black holes?" Mick asked, suddenly brought down. "I'm not too eager to get my matter cleaned."
"It's kind of hard to see them," Vernor answered. They were quiet for a few minutes. The shrinking was proceeding at a good rate and the node in front of them covered most of their visual field now.
"Where do you think the Milky Way is?" Mick asked.
"Well," Vernor replied, "we probably have to go down a few more levels to get to the galaxy level. I imagine it's going to end up being inside one of those bright spots . . . according to my theory we should contract right down into—"
There was something wrong. The light from the objects ahead of them was suddenly getting bluer, brighter. The brightened lights seemed to be rushing in on them faster than before. It was as if the whole universe was somehow hurrying around to get in front of them; leaving only a terrible, hungry darkness behind the scale-ship.
A deep humming from the ship's tensegrity sphere entered the range of audibility. An incredible force was pressing on them; the very air began to sputter, filled with an unheard of energy density.
Without saying anything, Mick and Vernor realized together that they were indeed being sucked into a black hole. There was no way that their Virtual Field could protect them from the real and unlimited forces which they would encounter deeper in this terrible whirlpool of space-time.
There was only one possible means of escape, and Mick thought of it. He went quickly to the control panel and turned off the VFG field. If they were not yet past the black hole's lip, they might still snap back around the curve of Circular Scale to their original size and location.
For an instant there was a charged equilibrium between the expansive force of the suddenly released space of the scale-ship and the contracting force of the black hole's gravitational field. Then, with the sound of all of Frank Zappa's songs played at top volume at the same time, the last minute of their trip was over.
Chapter 15: Exits
As it turned out, the police were still in Professor Kurtowski's lab. "How did you guys manage to disappear for a whole half hour like that?" they wanted to know.
"We did it with mirrors," Turner replied, carefully stepping over the turds near the ship.
Better in jail than inside a black hole, Vernor consoled himself as they were led off. He still wondered how they had escaped the lethal dose of synchrotron radiation which Kurtowski had predicted would arise if they suddenly cut off the VFG. Probably the fucking black hole had blotted it up. That had been no accidental collision, oh no, the bastard had probably come halfway around the Universe to get them. And up on this level a thing called a society wanted his ass. Same thing in the end. Same fucking thing.
"I want to see a lawyer," Vernor shouted as they were led to the back of the waiting police van. It was an automated van, and the joke sounded stupider than Vernor had intended. The loaches were not talkative. They seemed eager to dispose of Vernor and Mick. Probably they were eager to get back to the lab . . . that was dangerous, exciting . . . not routine like mailing two losers to the detention center.
The loaches sealed the time-lock on the door, the idling turbine geared up and engaged, and Vernor Maxwell and Mick Turner were on their programmed path to an automated jail. There was nothing to say.
They were about ten blocks from the Professor's laboratory when a sudden explosion rocked and overturned the police van. Steps ran closer, paused, then ran off. There was another, smaller, explosion which blew open the van's rear door. A horn started a steady blast of alarm.
Mick and Vernor hit the street at a run, following the sound of those footsteps. They caught a glimpse of a figure hurrying into an alley across the street. It was the spry Professor Kurtowski.
In the darkness of the alley, the three paused to catch their breath, and to pound one another with joy. It was impossible to talk over the noise of the smashed van's automatic alarm. Sirens were approaching from several directions. Kurtowski nodded and set off down the alley with a beckoning gesture.
The alley ended in a blind wall. Too high to climb, and solid except for a small flaw at the base of the wall.
"Through there," Kurtowski said loudly, with a note of humorous challenge. "We must pass through the needle's eye to enter paradise."
Man, if you say so, Vernor thought, leaning over to examine the crumbled place in the wall. Sure enough, there was a tiny passage. Maybe big enough to put your finger through. Been working late, Prof?
But even as he thought this the hole grew larger . . . no, Vernor was growing smaller . . . the portable VFG! Kurtowski was wearing it. Vernor glanced upwards and could see the Professor's hands molding the field around him as he walked through the tiny hole. On the other side, the field faded, and it took some quick action to keep from getting stuck. Turner, and then the old scientist, came glomming through the hole in short order.
They were in a large, dimly lit room. It was a warehouse filled with stacks of packing crates. The crates were of varying sizes, but they were fitted together to form identical cubical stacks. A big automatic forklift stood idle in the aisle.
Kurtowski led them quickly to the closest stack and fiddled with a crate in the stack's bottom layer until its side swung back to reveal a hidden passageway. The tunnel led to a room which Kurtowski had hollowed out for himself in the center of the stack of crates.
Once both doors were closed, Professor Kurtowski flicked on the lights and spoke. "I had a feeling you might encounter difficulties, so when I left the laboratory I prepared to bring you from the police van to my shelter." The room was small but comfortable, with stacks of books, bits of apparatus, cushions, a soft rug, and several crates of food and drink.
"How did you get in here before you found out it was O.K. to use the VFG on yourself?" Vernor asked.
"I picked the lock on the front door," Kurtowski replied. "The warehouse is fully automated. But let's hear about the trip."
They told him the story of their adventure, with interruptions for food and drink. When they'd finished talking, Kurtowski turned to Vernor. "And what conclusions do you draw?"
"Well, for one thing, I think it's clear now that scale is circular."
The Professor looked doubtful. "But how reliable are the impressions you have brought back from below the atomic level? You said that most of the things you saw seemed to appear directly in your mind . . . is it not possible that you saw only what you expected to see? I have long thought that the universe does not, in fact, have any unique structure. Different observers can reach mutually incompatible conclusions. Only the man of knowledge can see several things at once." He paused to let this sentence sink in, then continued. "It would have been very interesting if you had managed to continue shrinking long enough to see if you could imagine the Earth into your tiny mirror universe."
"One thing," Mick put in, "the space right before we got into the universe was infinite dimensional."
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"Hilbert space." Kurtowski said. "It's quite possible. That might explain how there could be more than one—" He broke off, seeming to savor a secret.
"What surprised me the most, though," Mick continued, "was that everything seemed to be alive once we were on the same level as it. Molecules, atoms, the nucleus, the universe itself . . . they all acted like they were alive, one we got into the right space and time scale."
"That's what's so great about Circular Scale," Vernor elaborated. "There can be life at each level, since no level is more important or complex than any other. Nothing is really bigger than anything else. And the same for time. The vast processes of the universe are a flickering inside an atom's shortest pulsation."
"Ja, it's a nice idea," Kurtowski agreed. "It's a shame to lose the scale-ship to the Us. I would like to go see these things for myself."
Something tickled Vernor's memory. Hadn't Kurtowski already seen everything . . . walking among the hyperspheres? But that had been a dream.
Mick and the Professor were arranging cushions to sleep on. "But what do we do now?" Vernor asked.
Mick grinned. "Revolution. Only way we're gonna stay out of jail is to tear it down."
"Right," the Professor said, snuggling into his cushions. "Tomorrow you will infiltrate Phizwhiz, Vernor."
Vernor lay in the dark thinking about this, and then about Alice. He felt dangerously unstable . . . his sense of reality was slipping. When he'd been with Alice, she'd formed a good and human center for his life, but now he was being hurled through unimaginable changes. It seemed like it had all started when he'd broken up with her . . .
What had Kurtowski meant, "The man of knowledge can see several things at once?" Several things . . . he relaxed into the babble of his body's cells, then sank down through further levels. Down here all linear time was gone, all cause and effect abandoned . . . the annihilation of every structure. But he didn't want to be annihilated. Change the slogan, make it . . . the realization of every structure. Same difference, really . . .
The Us had begun to turn into the vast prison it was, when security had become more important than freedom. Security was one structure, not all or none . . . one structure, one reality upheld at the cost of all the others.
Vernor let himself dissolve a little more. He felt fear. The Us was wrong, but it was frightening watching his realities dissolve. Go with the flow . . . and when nothing was left . . . keep going where? Alice, Alice.
During the night the loaches searched the warehouse, coming close to finding Kurtowski's shelter. The three slept badly. When their watches said it was morning, they stopped trying to sleep and had a brief discussion of their plans. It seemed best to start immediately.
The Professor equipped Mick and Vernor with disguises—piezoplastic face-putty and mustache worms. They slipped out of the warehouse and down to the walktube. They mingled with the crowd, looking no different from the others.
The people riding the walktube out of the Eastside early in the morning were mechanics and technicians who worked the nightshift. Their job was to keep the factories humming, handling the occasional glitch or breakdown which got out of the machines' control. These factory jobs could be challenging and even unsafe, and the workers took pride in this. The fact that they were indispensible gave them a superior feeling towards Phizwhiz which most of the Users could not honestly share.
A young mechanic struck up a conversation with Mick in the walktube. "Where do you work?" he asked.
"In the plastics factory," Turner replied. "The loach was all over the place last night. Some old guy had a lab hidden in the basement."
"Dja' get to see it?" the mechanic asked with interest.
"Naw, they wouldn't let anyone in. Must of been pretty good, though."
The mechanic shook his head. "You're lucky. I work over at the power plant. Nothing's happened there in three months. All night I sit there watching the dials. I might as well be a Drone for all the action I'm getting."
"You'd have plenty to do if someone got rid of Phizwhiz," Mick said in a low voice.
The mechanic glanced around nervously. This kind of talk was illegal. Reassured by Turner's unmistakably criminal appearance he finally relaxed and answered, "If only someone would. This no-risk life is dragging everyone."
Vernor spoke up, taking the role of fervent organizer, twitching his wobbly mustache. "We're going to do it. It's going to happen this week. Are you in?"
The mechanic grimaced. "Why not. I know some other guys that'll come in, too. When do we start?"
"Today," Mick said. He got off with the mechanic at the next exit, and Vernor rode on towards the EM building. The plan was that Mick would use his many contacts to mobilize a small army of guerillas, while Vernor went to turn himself in to Ken Burke of the Governor's Research Council. He was going to trade his freedom for a chance to get at Phizwhiz.
Chapter 16: Phizwhiz
Burke's office was in the top floor of the Experimental Metaphysics building. Vernor brushed past the receptionist, removing his face putty and false mustache as he entered Burke's office.
"Get me off the hook and I'll make Moto-O's idea work," Vernor said as soon as Burke had recognized him. The bureaucrat was sitting at a large desk. Had he already signaled the loach? Vernor would have to work fast.
But Burke was in no hurry. "Mr. Maxwell, sit down, it's a pleasure to see you." Sensing that Vernor might interrupt, Burke raised his voice and continued. "The Governor is puzzled by your behavior. He thinks that perhaps you're seriously ill," which was a euphemism for brain surgery. "Do you realize that two police officers were injured when their vehicle collided with the van which you left burning in a public thoroughfare last night?"
Vernor shrugged and Burke continued. "I must admit that Us has missed the Angels these last ten months. The pace of things has gone back down, and the public is not happy. I, for one, had begun to consider the option of pardoning a few low-risk individuals. You, Mr. Maxwell, were at the top of the pardon list. But after last night I must agree with the Governor. The risks are too great."
"So you'd rather go back to sleep," said Vernor, his voice filling with bitterness. "Safety or freedom. You can't have both. You've always backed the Governor against us. But you need us. Moto-O's idea didn't work, and without any higher-level consciousness, Phizwhiz and the Us is dying. You know that."
Burke hung fire, then answered, "When you came in, you said that you can make Moto-O's idea work. Can you build consciousness into Phizwhiz?"
"I can do it if you let me," Vernor said. "The crucial technological innovation is supplied by Professor Kurtowski's Virtual Field Generator . . . which you now possess. Unless your men have seen fit to smash everything in the Professor's lab?"
"I assume you're referring to the synthequartz sphere which the officers found you hiding in? This has been saved. But, Mr. Maxwell, why should I believe that you would be willing to effect the technological obsolescence of human consciousness?" Burke looked openly suspicious. "Surely you're not eager to trump the Angels' last card."
"Let's just say I'm stimulated by the scientific challenge," Vernor began, watching Burke's reactions. "If it's possible, it'll happen sooner or later . . . and I want to be in on it." Burke still looked dubious. Vernor continued, "Also I want to save my neck. I want a blanket pardon for past and future crimes. I don't want to go back to prison, and I don't want behavior modification." Burke nodded, and Vernor set the hook. "Why do I want to fix Phizwhiz so he doesn't need the Angels? Because I want to be on the winning side, Mr. Burke. I want to be a winner like you."
Burke smiled. "Actually," he said, "Phizwhiz predicted that you would come to me with such an offer. And he said I should accept it." He pushed a button on his desk and a Hollow of the Governor appeared.
The fuzzed image boomed in Vernor's direction, "I've been listening in, Vernor, and I'd like to welcome you back into the fold. Once you get Phizwhiz to thinking, I'll be ready to forget all about your record. Just make s
ure that he thinks the right way—like Us!"
"Like Us," Vernor echoed. "Yes sir. Things'll be better than ever once I'm through."
"You'll have three months to get results," the Governor said. "And remember..." Pre-vomit saliva filled Vernor's throat as the slogan arrived, "Us loves you because you're Younique!"
The hollow faded and Burke began shuffling papers. "We'll have an apartment for you right off the lab," Burke said. "You'll have full access to Phizwhiz and I'll have that gadget from Kurtowski's lab brought over. Is there anything else?"
"Yes," Vernor said, "as long as I'm going to be locked into the lab, I'd like to have my leg with me. I mean my woman friend."
"Which individual are you referring to?" Burke asked.
"Alice Gajary is the name. If it's all right with you I'd like to call her and ask her if she'll stay with me while I'm working here. Happy men make good workers, Mr. Burke." Vernor attempted a leer.
"I suppose it would be all right. Go ahead, you can use the phone over there." Burke seemed to think he had nothing to lose. As they thought they had Vernor trapped, they were willing to be generous.
While Burke politely pretended to be absorbed in his papers, Vernor picked up the phone.
"Who are you calling," a pleasant computer voice said.
"Alice Gajary, 32 Mao Street." Vernor heard a slight humming as the computer analyzed his words and located the proper circuit. His heart pounded. He heard a ring.
"Hello?" It was her.
"Alice, this is Vernor. Alice, baby, I've missed you so much."
"If you missed me so much why didn't you call?"
"I'm calling now. Look, I've been in jail most of the time. You know that. But now I've got this job at the EM building. I want you to come stay with me here."
"You're over there getting stoned, and I'm supposed to hold your hand? You're incredible, Vernor."
"You sound the same as ever, Alice. God, I've missed you."
"I've missed you too, Vernor. You come see me. We can go swimming. They've got a new baby whale at the Inquarium."