The Reality Thief (Deplosion Book 1)

by Paul Anlee

  “What kind of a human was he?” Mary asked, curious despite her despair.

  Darya was caught off guard by Mary's question. Most people didn’t want—outright refused—to relate to Alum as a human being. How many times had she held similar meetings with earlier incarnations of similar groups? She reviewed her logs of past conversations with this group to verify. Yes, this was the first time she’d ever discussed Alum’s origin with any of them.

  “I guess in the millennia we’ve known each other, I’ve been so focused on building the resistance that I’ve never really talked about what Alum was like back then.” Her thoughts turned back to an ancient age and she recalled the young man she had known.

  “The memories are a little vague and maybe even degraded. But I know He was a man of Yov, young for a charismatic spiritual leader of millions. After what happened on Origin, he became understandably more cautious and conservative. He was a spiritual man in an age when science was tearing at the last vestiges of the supernatural. It was a difficult time for the self-named "True Believers" back then.

  “Though not formally trained in science, Alum developed an incredible understanding of many fields all on his own. He was a genius, perhaps not completely ‘natural,’ but he never outgrew his fundamental bias that the universe was so perfectly put together that it must have had a divine Creator. Even though he was familiar with Darian Leigh's theory, he couldn’t accept that the universe really did come from nothing.” Her casual mention of Darian Leigh, the evil Da’ar, whose real name was long forgotten by all but her small group, caused nervous eyes to scan their immediate surroundings.

  "I think Alum lacked the courage to follow where reason took him, so he turned to his religious roots for answers. He chose his faith over science. That didn’t stop him from using scientists to achieve his goals, though. Or maybe he just thought religion was a better road to power. The notion of an infinite and uncaring universe, with no special place or purpose for humanity terrified him. It terrified many of us. Even those of us who believed that science would inevitably dispel the very idea of the supernatural were still scared and confused when Origin was threatened.

  “But it hit those who believed in an Intelligent Designer particularly hard. When the Da’arkness threatened to destroy our world, it just confirmed most people’s suspicions that science couldn’t be trusted to operate without strict moral supervision. They cried out for a leader of high moral principle, one who knew enough to oversee the scientists’ efforts to save the planet.”

  “What happened?” asked Leisha, completely caught up in the story.

  “They chose Alum, and he saved us. When humanity’s survival was threatened, he managed to get us all to work together, Cybrids and humans alike, to find a solution. Ultimately, he invented the starstep and endless energy, and he was able to take everyone to safety.

  “We made him our leader, the Supreme Leader. But he couldn’t stand to live in a universe without a God, so he became that God. He established a new socio-political system with himself as the central deity. It’s been stable for over a hundred million years now. It provided a vision for humans and Cybrids, and a way to conquer the universe.”

  “So what’s the problem, if it’s stable and it works so well? Is it really all that bad?” Qiwei asked.

  “The problem is, at His core, Alum still hates the apparent futility and randomness of it all. His vision of a purposeful universe does not accept the chaos that underlies reality. There are too many, uncertainties, too many things he can’t control. You can’t have purpose in a universe that just is. For there to be an ultimate purpose to the universe, you need a person, an intelligent and willful being, who determines that purpose. Using ancient beliefs as his template, Alum intends to be that person, the one who gives the universe its purpose.

  “I didn’t see it until too late. This has become his primary motivation, pushing him to favor deterministic systems over stochastic ones, to crave order over unpredictability. His desire for the predictable and perfectly knowable had no chance against the sheer magnitude of the chaotic universe.

  “Instead of giving up, he imagined a re-Creation. A complete reset. A do-over, if you will. Alum’s Divine Plan was conceived, I suspect, of his desire to bring perfect order to this messy universe, even if that means destroying it in order to try again.”

  A tear trickled down Darya's cheek, as much from anger as profound sadness. “For ages, we were told that the machinery we’d been constructing here around the black hole at the center of the Milky Way was intended to create a mini-universe in which humans and Cybrids could cohabit and live safely forever under the loving guidance of Alum. A sort of perfect Heaven; a reward for our hard work in this universe."

  "Of course, it was all a lie," Darya spat, "a lie meant to appeal to the Cybrid’s love of the inworlds. This mini-universe, the one we've been working toward, may sound like the perfect physical implementation of a perfect inworld sim. But to Alum, a separate mini-universe, no matter how nearly perfect to us, might still be threatened by some unforeseeable external force if the potential for intelligence in any other universe remains. And he is not going to allow that to happen."

  Qiwei struggled to absorb the implications. "So, Alum's true intention is to re-create the entire universe?" The acolytes waited anxiously for Darya to respond.

  "Yes," confirmed Darya, "and to remove all those bothersome uncertainties while he’s at it. The machinery we Cybrids have been working on for the past million years will first stop and then reverse the ongoing expansion of the cosmos.

  “Our universe will deflate faster than the speed of light—space itself will contract—until it finally implodes, reversing the Big Bang. This process of deflation and implosion—or "deplosion" as I call it—will continue for about ten million years until everything is condensed into a space smaller than a single atom.

  “At that point, Alum will initiate a new Creation with a set of less stochastic natural laws more to his liking, resulting in a more ordered and manageable universe.

  “As a side benefit, his new universe will also have a provable Creator, and that Creator would be Alum. He would be the unquestioned God of the Cosmos, and the clear purpose of everything in that cosmos would be to sing his praises forever.

  “It’s not enough for him to create a Heaven as a reward to his followers. He wants the whole universe, all possible universes, to be destroyed and rebuilt as his version of Heaven.”

  28

  DR. PRATT LUMBERED OUT OF HIS SEAT and requested a microphone from one of the assistants. He tapped it twice to make sure it was working. Thank goodness that’s over. And I thought it was painful listening to Darian talk about the human soul.

  Aloud, he said, “An intriguing hypothesis, I’m sure, Dr. Leigh. Thank you for explaining your ideas so elaborately. Perhaps I could begin the question period by asking you, how dangerous is it to try and alter the laws of nature, even at the smallest level? I’m sure you’ll recall the concerns many of us had over the experimental work on the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle. Although that work turned out to have no dire large-scale consequences—at least, none that we know about so far—it seems to me that your own research may pose an even greater potential for disruption. How do we know that your work is not moving us toward some horrific and irreversible disaster on a universal scale?”

  “Thank you for your question, Dr. Pratt,” Darian replied equitably. “As you point out, the fears around the Higgs boson research were indeed exaggerated. However, that is not the reason we think our current research poses no danger.

  “The reason we do not fear some unforeseen disaster resulting from our research is that the real universe is incredibly stable.

  “The universe of real particles is much more robust than, say, people’s perception or memory. People think they remember things happening that didn’t really happen at all, sometimes that couldn’t have happened. Unlike imagination or memories—let’s call those our perceived reali
ties—an objective reality actually exists. It is formed out of countless, consistent and well-defined resonances between the virtual particles that, altogether, make up the real particles of the universe. It is definable, measurable, predictable, and can be consistently recreated.

  “It is, however, exceedingly difficult to calculate how even a small number of stable real particles might interact with their adjacent virtual particles. That’s why we are generating the RAF—the Reality Assertion Field—in as much of a complete vacuum as we can. Until we understand how artificial microverses interact with the real universe, we want to avoid any contact between these two different kinds of matter.”

  Satisfied with his answer, Darian turned to the audience and asked, “Other questions?” A hand shot up immediately. Darian recognized the speaker from campus, “Yes, Mr. Lim?”

  The third-year physics major beamed at being identified by name by the world-famous scholar. It didn’t occur to him how easy it was for Darian to access SFU's confidential registration data via his lattice in the brief time between seeing a raised hand and acknowledging it. An assistant handed the student a microphone. “I’m confused about the quantum fields—”

  “I believe that feeling is widely shared,” Darian joked, “even physicists have struggled with the complexities. But what is it in particular that you find confusing, Mr. Lim? Perhaps I can help clarify.”

  The undergrad smiled shyly and continued in a quiet, precise voice. “I’ve been taught that all quantum fields are associated with a real particle. So how could one extend across the universe, when most of the universe is empty space? How can a field exist in the absence of any particles?”

  “An excellent question, Mr. Lim. You have touched upon something that has bothered many theoretical physicists for quite some time.

  “Remember my earlier description of static electric charge? As charged real particles move, they interact with virtual particles that are constantly and spontaneously arising all around them. Some of the virtual particles will resonate by chance with the real particles. These, in turn, may resonate with other nearby virtual particles. Stringing these together, leads to the transmission of the resonance outward from the material.

  “Actually, what we call the quantum field is simply the potential for resonance by the virtual particles. But virtual particles permeate the universe and beyond. So the field itself isn’t a real thing; it's more like a representation of potential, a mathematical convenience, if you will. The part of a field closest to an actual thing is this traveling wave of resonance which is transmitted through the cloud of virtual particles. Does that clarify it for you?”

  Mr. Lim nodded his thanks and sat down, even more confused than before. He wasn’t the only one lost. The majority of individuals who attempted to follow the conversation displayed bewildered looks.

  “Don’t worry too much about the details,” Darian said. “This is not easy to convey in words, and it’s an awful lot for you to absorb in one short session. I know this isn’t a common or obvious way to think about the universe.

  “The best way to get a sense of it is by asking how a universe of virtual particles would behave. Once you see that the only way to go from the virtual to the real is through resonance effects of adjacent particles, you will realize that all matter, forces, and fields can be explained through this mechanism.

  “When you finish your classes next year, I hope you’ll join my graduate seminar to see how the math works, Mr. Lim. I think you’ll find it much easier to grasp when you can see it laid out in the formulas.” Darian smiled, encouragingly he hoped, and was rewarded with an enthusiastic nod and ear-to-ear grin from Mr. Lim.

  “I believe we have a question from the other hall,” said Dr. Pratt. “Theater 3, your question, please?”

  The monitor displayed a thirty-something woman with lustrous brown hair and fashionable attire. She reached awkwardly for the microphone being offered to her by a theater assistant. “But…but isn’t it all….” Her voice faltered as she spoke into it, as if she was surprised by her own sound. Feedback squealed through the speakers in both halls. The assistant winced and pulled the microphone to an inch away from the woman’s mouth. He gestured to her to begin again.

  She cleared her throat, and her eyes darted to the group sitting next to her. Several severe-looking men along the row bobbed their heads in stern encouragement. She returned her focus to the speaker and started again.

  “Dr. Leigh, your ideas are rather fantastical, invoking things that sound like fairy tales, particles that no one can see, the whole universe springing into existence by random chance, a reality field. It all sounds so…unbelievable, and so unbelievably complicated.”

  She took a shaky breath as Darian and the rest of the audience waited for a question.

  “My question is, why should I believe your complex and incredible story instead of simply believing that the Lord God made it all? The story of creation as told in the Bible makes a whole lot more sense to me.” She looked around the audience, pleading with her eyes for people to join her in the firm and comforting belief in her God.

  Back in the other hall, Darian composed himself. “Your question contains so many assumptions, and it is so steeped in ignorance, that it is difficult for me to answer in the short amount of time that we have here.”

  The audible intake of breath and the hurt, angry look on the woman’s face in the monitor made him realize that his reply must have come across too harsh. He rushed to repair the damage, for both their sakes.

  “What I meant is that in order to really understand the theory, one would need a lifetime of studying mathematics and physics. You are ignorant only in the sense that you lack knowledge in these areas of study, perhaps in science altogether. Sadly the word ‘ignorant’ has become so clouded with emotion in modern use that people are offended when it’s used to describe them.”

  The audience watched the woman on the screen turn to her neighbor and mouth something. Darian's lattice had no trouble reading her lips. He nodded in response as if she had spoken to him directly.

  "For the rest of the audience’s benefit, the speaker commented—to her neighbor's approval—that she does not ‘believe’ in science.” The woman looked simultaneously chagrined and embarrassed.

  “Well, folks, if it were legal, I could duplicate my neural lattice within their brains so that both she and her neighbors could benefit from sufficient understanding of scientific knowledge to properly judge whether or not it is believable. But let’s see if we can demonstrate that without such a drastic approach.

  “Is science just another belief system in an essentially subjective universe? I think that is the essence of the question. Certainly it is a kind of belief system, a belief that the universe is real, that it works through definable and reliable laws of nature, and that these physical laws can be shown through data. We might call this belief system empirical physicalism.

  “But even magical versions of the universe behave according to definable and reliable rules. Pantheistic magic, for example, has rules for invocations. The magic of the Abrahamic God also operates according to rules. The main rule for that particular form of magic is that God must will it; if so, the universe bends to God’s will.

  “A number of philosophers and writers have posited that the universe is not real, that we are all asleep in some greater outside universe. Some philosophies even suggest that our lives in this universe are just fractions of our real lives in the greater universe, that a life here is but one night's dream in the true universe. This is one of the models behind the idea of reincarnation, and it has a certain appeal. The biggest problem I see is this: if we have no way to know if this universe is real, how could we be sure that life in the greater universe is real and not just another dream in an even greater universe? Is it just dreams all the way up? How would that even work?

  “Then science comes along. Science is built from our common experience that the universe works in a predictable way according to well-de
fined rules: the laws of nature. In the early history of humanity, many of these rules were too complex for us to perceive. We could explain that wood was something that burned, while rocks didn’t; that was easy. But the coming and going of storms, the cause of lightning, and so on, those were too complicated for our early minds.

  “We invented gods, hundreds or even thousands of them, to explain what we perceived as the capriciousness of natural behavior. Over time, we started to understand the workings of more and more things, and the ancient gods died off. I don’t mean literally, because they never really existed. We just stopped turning to them as a way to explain natural occurrences.

  “Nature is complex and it begets complex science. At a certain point, the complexity of scientific knowledge overwhelmed the ability of the human mind to grasp. So we specialized. Physicists used their understanding of electron movement in semiconductors to invent things like transistors. Mathematicians invented ways to represent and manipulate information, and computers were developed. Biologists and biochemists gleaned an understanding of the chemical basis of life and became capable of engineering new organisms.

  “Faced with the overwhelming complexity of nature, and with the sheer volume of the knowledge being amassed by scientists, many people turned back to an older and simpler view of the universe for relief. That view is the ancient one where the magical powers of God determine how everything works.

  “But the scientific approach to understanding the universe isn’t just any belief system. Its essence is pragmatic; it works. It just works. Throughout history, once we achieved significant and correct understanding of natural phenomena, we were able to use that understanding to do things. We could build automobiles, airplanes, submarines, computers, the internet, insect-resistant crops, nuclear bombs, and so on.