The Cusanus Game

  She circled me on her long, somewhat too-thin legs like a spider surveying its prey.

  “Hmm,” she said, sticking her long, aubergine-painted claws in the padding that had in recent years settled around my waist, pursing her lips, grasping me under the breasts and holding them up with a scrutinizing gaze. “Hmmm.”

  Sibyll van Campen nodded. “Go over there,” she commanded.

  Suddenly my body was covered with red meridians crossed by green circles of latitude.

  “Please turn. Yes, and now in the other direction. Now all the way around. Yes, good. Now two long strides”—she demonstrated them for me—“yooob, yooob. And now please take short, rapid steps: tap-tap-tap-tap-tap! Good. Now please a curtsy to the left—knees bent—yes, now please the same thing to the right. Thank you. You can get dressed again now.”

  When I came out from behind the folding screen, I stopped with surprise, for I saw myself standing stark naked in the room. Sibyll van Campen circled my holograph and ran her claws over the touchscreen of her Wristtop, which she wore like a pincushion strapped to her wrist. And suddenly my holographic avatar was covered with a sacklike linen garment held together by a narrow band between chest and waist.

  “What’s that?” I asked, taken aback.

  Sibyll eyed me over her glasses with a schoolmarmish, reproving look. “A basquine,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “though made of simple material, without lace.”

  “Sleepwear?”

  She closed her eyes and raised her fingertips to her temples as if she were struggling to maintain her composure. “Where you’re going, young woman, people sleep naked, with whomever—in any inn, any lodgings. Three, four, five to a bed. People will immediately assume a stigma or an illness if you sleep clothed. This here is a simple basquine. I cannot dress you as a woman of rank, or else an identity would have to be created for you. But something like that is easily verifiable. Nobility is out of the question—though a country girl is too. You’d be in too much danger, my dear. Every cart driver, every charcoal burner would reach under your skirt. We’ll fashion something in between: young widow on a pilgrimage, runaway convent girl, nun of better stock on a mission on behalf of her order—something along those lines.” Oh God! My spirits sank. I watched myself curtsying. An openwork breast cloth lay over my bosom; then it disappeared again.

  “No, that shows too much, is at most for special occasions, celebrations and the like. Perhaps a plastron?”

  An embroidered front piece took shape.

  “Not bad. Yes. But in everyday life it would be better not to be so revealing.”

  A modest bodice covered my nakedness; a blouselike top followed, an ankle-length skirt, a smocklike overgarment, another skirt over the first one.

  “For the cold season,” explained Sibyll.

  A cloak appeared on my shoulders, dark, heavy, with cords and clasps as fasteners. A bonnet, another bonnet—and a third. For home, for the walk to the market, for traveling, a firm winter bonnet made of felt, almost a helmet.

  “So, my dear. How do you like yourself?”

  “I … well, I think, I … look enchanting.”

  “Sarcasm is out of place here, child. Listen to me carefully! Enchanting would be completely wrong. Mysterious—okay. There can be no objection to that. Everyone at that time signals their social status through clothing and is obligated to do so. Down to their hairstyle. You see? Also their regional background. That’s the point of dress, understand? But you’re traveling. You have no geographic place. You come from afar, so cannot be clearly classified. But under no circumstances should you appear too foreign, understand? The xenophobia threshold is low. On top of that, there’s envy. So be careful! Still, some intimidation never hurts. Not everyone’s—not every man’s—prey. But not lofty either. That attracts sycophants, scroungers, parasites, thieves. There’s cheating and stealing. We’ve learned that the hard way. Don’t worry, you’ll be taught how to deal with that. But for the interior the psychologists are responsible; I provide only the outward appearance. Next week, Ms. Ligrina. Everything has to be sewn by hand, after all, with special threads and yarns, of course,” said Sibyll van Campen.

  “Please no wooden shoes!” I pleaded; my toes still hurt from the attempt to walk in Grit’s clogs.

  Sibyll gave a wave of her hand. “Too peasantlike. Besides, you’ll be traveling to Germany, I was told. There only the very poorest wear clogs. There’s enough leather.”

  I was relieved.

  In parting she held out her aubergine claw to me. I grasped it vigorously and gratefully, for I knew I was in good hands. I valued her competence.

  “Bye-ee!” Sibyll sang, baring her teeth.

  “Thanks,” I sputtered, intimidated. “Thank you, Ms. van Campen.”

  * * *

  “THE FILTH IS the worst. In the beginning, I found it hardest to sleep with complete strangers in one bed—naked!” Grit said with a chuckle, wrinkling her nose. “They’re unwashed and never brush their teeth. They stink of sweat and I don’t know what else. They fart and grope around on you, groan and screw next to you, and when there’s finally peace and quiet, then come the fleas, the bedbugs, and the lice. But the most astonishing thing is—you somehow get used to it. It’s really strange, hard to explain; somehow a sense of security, of coziness sets in, being among other people at night. You move close together, cling to each other. Outside is the wilderness—and it’s really still a wilderness! Inside people snuggle up to each other like puppies.”

  “Or like piglets,” said Renata.

  We laughed. Grit liked to laugh and did so often, even though she had gone through a lot on her travels. As one of the first researchers, she had conducted fieldwork in the late fifteenth century. Grit was among the pioneers; as a historian and sociologist, she was predestined. In the 1490s, she had witnessed several witch-burnings in Trier, Aachen, and Worms and had herself only narrowly escaped prosecution for witchcraft. In Mainz she had been forced to renounce all vengeance and then leave the city in which she had been based. After six missions Grit had entered the training cadre of the CIA and was now charged with advising and educating us beginners.

  Grit was a small, energetic person; she was strong and had become somewhat plump with age. As she lived in Zandvoort and often spent time on the beach, she was suntanned. She wore her gray hair short.

  “Originally there were attempts to make provisions for the travelers not only temporally but also spatially. There were thoughts of inns, hostels, and the like, to offer at least a minimum of comfort. Even the founding of an order with the papal blessing had been considered, but after several simulations the idea of creating havens outside the destination-time stations was discarded. For such establishments soon attract whole flocks of needy people—among them beggars, vagrants, thieves, and all sorts of rabble. As a result, they come under the scrutiny of the authorities and quarrels must be adjudicated. Inevitably, investigations take place, questions are asked. In short, it’s too risky to operate undisturbed in hiding.”

  “So only the people in the destination-time stations of the tunnel are a help to us as well as the trustworthy time-natives they work with,” I concluded from what she had said.

  “But what about the other travelers?” Renata interjected.

  Grit shook her head. “No, my dear. The missions usually last only one or two months, half a year at the longest. Among the few travelers spread across the fifteenth century, you can reckon that they won’t exactly be tripping over each other’s feet. It can happen, of course. I’ve heard about it, in any case.”

  “Have you never thought about staying there?” asked Renata.

  Grit shook her head. “Never!”

  “And why not?”

  Grit thought for a while, then said: “For two main reasons: First of all, there are so many illnesses, so much misery, so much brutality and indifference toward fellow human beings, so much know-it-all arrogance—and all that stems from the terrible
ignorance. And you’re standing there with your knowledge advanced by centuries; you could help, could save lives—and are not permitted to.”

  “And the second reason?” I asked, when she did not go on.

  “Yes,” she continued, bowing her head, even more bitterness in her voice. “It’s an unfinished world. A world in a raw state. Just one example: I love music. I think that music is capable of warming the world—makes it more inhabitable. Where you’re going, there’s barely any music. There are the simple prayer songs of the monks, the ecstatic warbling of nuns. Granted, I encountered a few minstrels—entertaining, bold, and brilliant in their way—but the prismatic clarity of Bach, the solemnity of a Gluck or Handel, the brightness of Mozart, the pathos of Beethoven, and the pomp of Bruckner—all that lies in the distant future. That makes that world so impoverished, so cold, so cheerless … In any case, that’s how I experienced it. I practically froze. It was like sensory deprivation. I could never feel at home there.”

  “With painting it’s no different,” I said, remembering the wings full of Madonnas from the Middle Ages in the Vatican Museums through which my father had led me before I saw the painting by Peter Wenzel, Adam and Eve in the Earthly Paradise, which had appeared to me as a child like a revelation.

  “That’s probably true,” said Grit, “but I’m not as well versed in painting as I am in music.”

  “It liberates,” I said. “It gives the world color. And the colors are the place where our brain and the universe meet. That’s how Paul Cézanne felt.”

  * * *

  WHEN THE SUN broke through, the auditorium was interlaced with nets of white light, made by the water of the IJ on the glass roof. Auerbach looked up, frowning as he contemplated a school of fish moving westward at a leisurely pace, heading downstream with the outgoing tide. The professor, like everyone in the hall, had an unhealthy complexion from the filtered light.

  “None of you are physicists,” he told us, “but all of you probably know what a world line is, which every body—your body too—describes through the space-time continuum. It’s the trace of its existence. In a similar way”—he drew a horizontal line across a touchscreen on his lectern, which appeared on the wall monitor like a vapor trail—“the multiverse as a whole can be depicted schematically as a sort of rope made up of countless thin, intertwined fibers, each of which represents the world line of an individual, self-contained universe. In contrast to a rope made of synthetic or natural fibers, however, we’re dealing here with an active, virtually living material, which constantly buds, sprouts, and branches.”

  He provided the line with tendrils on both sides, until it resembled a bristle worm.

  “This rampant structure unfurling offshoots extends from the beginning of time”—he wrote an alpha on the left end—“that is, from the Big Bang, to its end…” He drew an omega on the right end.

  “The time waves or solitons are undulations that pass through this structure. They move from alpha to omega and back again—back and forth, incessantly. The rope is thereby shaken, so to speak. Through that process, the individual fibers are constantly tested for their durability. Only the strongest—that is, the established realities—withstand the strain. The branches that cannot stabilize themselves are broken off. They rot, collapse, curl up into Planck dimensions, and disappear. That holds in check the rank growth that for most physicists made Everett’s quantum interpretation—the theory of realities splitting off at every moment—into a nightmarishly elaborate, not to say ridiculously overblown hypothesis, with which every theoretical physicist always felt decidedly uncomfortable. Old J. S. Bell”—Auerbach bared his teeth—“known for his understatements, called it ‘extravagant’ when he heard about it.”

  He drew a structure on the touchscreen that looked like a fertilized egg cell in advanced mitosis.

  “Everett’s multiverse is often compared to bath foam, with the bubbles that are formed representing parallel worlds. The foam structure grows and grows as long as enough water is flowing in. If you turn off the faucet, the foam gradually collapses. With a particular influx of water, the formation and breakdown of bubbles balance each other out. The process of breakdown becomes clear when we recall how we sent soap bubbles on their way as children. Often there were double bubbles, at times triplets, and not infrequently even quadruplets—bubbles that clung to each other by adhesion, separated from each other by internal membranes. These structures tend toward fusion—that is, the membranes disappear. Quadruplets turn into triplets, triplets into double bubbles and ultimately single ones.”

  “If they haven’t burst beforehand,” said someone in the auditorium.

  Auerbach looked up and squinted.

  “Objections?” he barked.

  No one raised objections.

  “I know the comparison with the soap bubbles is feeble,” Auerbach declared gruffly. “But everyone can picture it in their mind’s eye, right? That’s my point.” He nodded emphatically.

  “Who, or what, you will ask, causes these undulations along the temporal dimension?” He moved his hands as if he were pulling on both ends of an elastic band.

  I was having more and more trouble following him. My eyelids sank. The constantly moving, flickering light had a hypnotic effect on me. I saw that it affected the other listeners the same way. Neither the city planners nor the architects had considered that when they had made the bold decision to build parts of the Hendrik Casimir Institute on the north shore of the IJ underwater. The optical effect from the south, seen from Java, was impressive. The glass facade of the building slid like a glacier tongue from the shore down into the water and glowed at night like an undersea palace, which delighted tourists, but brought the users as well as the Amsterdam city fathers nothing but chagrin and immense maintenance costs.

  “… is it a sort of cosmic entity that”—Auerbach drew a circle around the omega—“sits at the end of times and tugs and shakes at the rope? An unimaginably sophisticated supercivilization, which must fear for its existence if its past crumbles, frays, is beset by Everettian division, and splits apart? Why does this entity nonetheless allow our activities, which are liable only to tangle up the fibers even more, sow disorder, and possibly weaken the sensitive structure? Why? We are permitted activities the consequences of which we cannot assess and the meaning of which remains hidden to us, but which must in some way have a positive impact. Perhaps our blind interventions usher in important new growth processes with which weak points are removed, the architecture improved, and the structure optimized. Might we through our doings unconsciously be improving its condition? Yes! We believe that we can proceed on that assumption.”

  Auerbach snorted.

  “Now, my colleagues Surtees, McFarlane, and Beltrame go a step further in their interpretation. They see in the multiverse”—he thickened the bristle worm with decisive strokes of his data stylus—“a living creature, whose evolution is not yet complete. They regard it as a multidimensional spatiotemporal body in which billions upon billions of universes like ours are incorporated like the cells in an organism. In this body new cells are constantly being formed. The body selects those that are conducive to its well-being and promotes their thriving, while it destroys those that diminish its well-being. Is the adrenaline molecule aware of its function? Does the endorphin have any idea of its effect? Does histamine comprehend its task? Does testosterone know what it is capable of? Those are their questions directed at us. Our travelers, in their view, are assigned the role of such messenger substances. The solitons, which form the vehicle and in the multiverse body perform the function of the blood circulation, wash them to the points where they can best carry out their work. If by chance or mishap more harm than good is done, if the initiated, planned development goes off course, then—to stick with the metaphor—a cancer cell emerges. At that point, other messengers are sent to provide on-site damage control and cut off the unwanted development.”

  The sun disappeared, and the lecture hall now seemed like a
marine aquarium darkened by algae. The main problem of the underwater buildings was the uncontrollable algae growth, which of course especially thrived in those areas where the sunlight was meant to stream in. In response, our marine biology colleagues had introduced a species of snail that had been developed by Konuki Genetics and that bore the designation Noboyushi Number Twelve. The Japanese had supposedly had the best experiences with it in their undersea airport buildings in Tokyo Bay. Resettled in Dutch waters, however, the small, unsightly creatures displayed an entirely different behavioral repertoire. Instead of grazing the algae growth from the glass surfaces with their tiny radulae, they spurned the food supply. Were they homesick? Did they not like the taste of the water? In any case, they seemed to have lost their appetite. They conglomerated into ugly, lumpy settlements in the corners of the clerestories, wasted away, and ultimately turned into a black sludge that plunged corridors, lecture halls, and offices into gloom and darkness. Now nanobots—also a Japanese creation, from the laboratories of the NNTR in Kobe—were supposed to finally bring about a change to brightness and cleanness, but they mysteriously seemed to stay away from the sunlit areas, either because they were driven by sheer survival instinct to avoid the bombardment of intense radiation or because the algae had in the meantime developed an active agent that struck fear into the tiny machines. The nanotechnicians were still puzzling over it.

  “As impressive as this SMB interpretation—the explanation offered by Surtees, McFarlane, and Beltrame—might be,” Auerbach went on, “to my mind—and not only mine—it’s too biologistic. To presuppose that their conceptions, derived from the model of earthly life, would have validity in the whole universe—indeed, in all universes—is an anthropocentrism blown up to absurd proportions. But the idea that these processes involve a mechanism of self-correction, of self-preservation, or self-defense is undeniable. Imagine”—now he was even soaring into pathos, which rarely happened with him—“the multiverse as a gigantic data processing network! As a supercomputer on which a cosmic repair program is running, if you will, with which all possible developments are simulated and the unwanted are eliminated…”