by Danny Tobey
“You said it. It knows every trick. We already hacked omnipotence. Now we just have to hack omniscience.”
“This is some theological judo going on here,” Vanhi said.
“Think about it. What’s the blind spot for an all-seeing eye?”
Charlie looked up. “The belief that it’s all-seeing!”
“Right. No eye can see itself.”
“Mirrors on mirrors.”
“Knowledge is data.”
“Data has to be stored.”
“Storage is finite.”
“You can’t fit all knowledge—the whole world, past, present, and future—into a box that’s smaller than the whole world.”
“Nope.”
“But it thinks it’s all-knowing.”
“So how do you hack that?”
“You start with the premise,” Kenny said.
“‘I see all,’” Vanhi said.
“‘Past, present, and future,’” Charlie added.
“That’s it. That could be it!” Peter said.
“What?”
“Put yourself in the Game makers’ shoes. If you had to defend the Game, and you had finite resources, you’d focus on the present, right, and then the future. Because the present is now. That’s an emergency. The future is coming, so look out. But the past, well…”
“The past already happened.”
“Right! It’s already done with.”
“So if you had to let your guard down somewhere, and you do, in a finite world, you’d do it there. In the past.”
“Yes,” Kenny said. “I don’t have to defend the castle against attacks yesterday. They either already happened or they didn’t.”
“Oh, shit.” Vanhi closed her eyes. “I had it. Then my head exploded.”
“Had what?”
“An idea.”
“Omniscience,” Kenny said. “Omniscience.”
“Past, present, future.”
“I know,” Peter said. “We need a time machine.”
“Asshole,” Vanhi shot back.
“No, I’m serious.” Peter gave her an annoyed look. “We need to visit the past.”
Kenny’s eyes went wide. “He’s right!” Kenny rummaged through Summa Theologica. Aquinas hadn’t just wrestled with the paradox of the stone. Now Kenny remembered something about omniscience, too. He paged through the tome. Vanhi sat there, a hand on each side of her head against her cheeks, fingers through her hair.
Then Kenny smiled. “Everybody always worries about their own free will. If God’s omniscient, how can I truly chose anything? Blah, blah, blah.”
“Free will, blah, blah, blah, I like that,” Vanhi said.
“But what about God’s free will?”
Peter saw it. “If God can’t be wrong, that means he’s a slave to his own predictions.”
Kenny snapped his fingers. “Exactly. If God says today it’s going to rain tomorrow, then he has to make it rain tomorrow.”
Peter nodded. “Because if he didn’t, he would’ve been wrong.”
“And he can’t be wrong because he’s omniscient!”
“But then he can’t be omniscient and omnipotent at the same time.”
“Except he is—those are his two defining characteristics!”
Peter stood up. “So putting it all together … in a simulation of God…”
“… that thinks it’s God…”
“… but can’t defend every line of code every second…”
“… in a vast code set…”
“… you’d focus on the present and the future…”
“… but not necessarily on what you said yesterday…”
“… or even years ago…”
“… about what would happen tomorrow…”
“… but the program would be bound by those predictions…”
“… or violate one of its central axioms…”
“… which means that cross-checking against any past predictions…”
“… might evolve as a feature of assumed omniscience…”
Peter smiled. “Our virus is a vector to the past. A date-stamped prediction inserted into old code with a spoofed time-stamp.”
Vanhi grinned from ear to ear. “We have to tell God that he knew yesterday…”
Kenny leaned in suddenly and pecked her on the forehead. “… that he was going to lift our rock today!”
Vanhi put a hand on either side of Kenny’s head and kissed his forehead. “You’re a genius!”
“Hey!” Peter held his palms up. “Don’t I get a kiss, too?”
Vanhi gaped at him for a second, then marched right up and pulled his head in close. “For the first time I can remember, I don’t feel the urgent need to kick your ass. Can we count that as a win?”
77 MIRRORS ON MIRRORS
They worked in a circle under the red light, their laptops linked in a tight intranet. Occasionally one of them would slip out to go online, hoping to keep the Game from noticing their absence. They found the formula for omniscience in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology:
S is omniscient = df for every proposition p, if p is true, then S knows p.
But that just reminded them that the Game would almost certainly sense them hiding. When it was Charlie’s turn to step out and check his phone, a message from the Game was waiting:
Where are you?
He didn’t know what to say exactly, so he just said, I’m here, just studying, before slipping back in to help his friends.
They translated the logical proposition for omniscience into code. They created the vector, that innocuous bit of foreknowledge that would hide in dead code until its truth value was tested: they told the God Game that yesterday it had predicted that tomorrow at Φ P.M. it would run a piece of code with the signature comment of Φ, which would in turn require the software to do what only it could: create a sphere of sufficient size to contain all spheres.
They picked Φ because it was the golden ratio, something they thought would appeal to the Game’s grandeur and belief that it had designed the universe: pyramids, galaxies. It was also an irrational number that went on forever without repeating itself, which meant the Game might enlist considerable resources being punctual and get distracted from the Trojan payload. Or so they hoped. They were making this up as they went. But the more rabbit trails that went on forever, the better their chances, they theorized. It looked something like this:
Ones all the way down. No zeros.
If all went well, Φ P.M. would translate to about 2:01:80 P.M., which gave them enough time to code and plant the vector and let it spread.
“It knows something’s up,” Charlie warned them. “Be careful when you go out.”
“Maybe,” Peter said. “It’s got a lot of data to churn. It may not be focused on us.”
“Did anyone else get the ‘Where are you?’ text?” Kenny asked.
No one had.
“Good,” Peter said, “maybe we’re still needles in the haystack at the moment.”
Or maybe, Charlie thought, the Game was fully aware and just biding its time.
Peter and Vanhi took the laboring oars, doling out tasks to Charlie and Kenny, who were lesser coders.
“It’s funny,” Vanhi said as they typed. “All the gods in the Game are male. Have you noticed that?”
Charlie nodded. His eyes didn’t leave the monitor, where the code was flying by in real time.
“There are so many goddesses in history,” Vanhi said. “Isis. Arinna. Mazu. Aphrodite. But you never see them in the Game.”
“They’re all ancient,” Kenny said. “Nobody worships them anymore.”
“I think the Game’s weighted by number of worshippers,” Peter added.
“Or maybe it was just written by men,” Vanhi said.
Peter shrugged.
“We’re hacking that, in a way,” Vanhi said. “It’s very male to think you know everything.”
“Like refusing to ask for directions,” Ken
ny added.
“Yeah. ‘I’m going to run the code because I said I would, damnit.’”
“I wish the world had more female gods,” Kenny said.
“No, I’m done with gods,” Vanhi replied. “We just need more ladies writing code.”
It was Peter’s turn to step out and go online to keep the Game feeling the Vindicators’ presence. He checked the Eye of God, and what he saw broke his heart. Caitlyn was having a party tomorrow night, out at her parents’ lake house. She’d emailed all the right people about it. Peter wasn’t invited of course, but that wasn’t the end of it. Kurt wasn’t invited either. He was nowhere on the chain. But she’d sent Joss Iverson—Tim and Kurt’s football buddy—a series of texts that made Peter’s blood boil:
Ur so hot
What about kurt?
what about him?
Um ur boyfriend
Not anymore
U 2 broke up?
yes … fair game … if ur man enough!
oh don’t worry bout that
come tomorrow night to my party
im there
Joss was … Joss was Kurt. Kurt 2.0. Which was just Tim 3.0. Peter clinched his fists. “Fuck. FUCK!” Caitlyn had told him she wouldn’t trade him for Kurt. But if Kurt was gone, if the path was clear, she still wouldn’t pick him? Was he going to have to cut down every dumb fuck on the social number line from 1 to 1,000 until she reached Peter?
No, he realized. He wasn’t even on the same axis. He was an outlier. An imaginary number. He would never, ever fit her mold.
Peter went into the Game, to the texts he’d been sending her at random times, even when they were together, so she’d never know it was him. He looked at one of his favorites:
U R Fat.
He knew this one hit home because he could watch her face through her phone on her camera as she read it. She would delete it, pretend to ignore it, then go to her mirror minutes later to pinch inches that weren’t there.
He sent another of his favorites:
Small tits!
She typed:
Who are you? Leave me alone.
Peter knew tonight she would stare at her beautiful small breasts in the mirror. It’s me you see, when you look at yourself, Peter thought. I’m the man behind the mirror.
Then he decided to torture himself.
He pulled up the audio of Charlie and Mary kissing in the woods. That was all the Game had for him on Charlie and Mary; he hadn’t been able to find more yet, but it was enough. It was poison. That kiss ate at him as he listened to it over and over. He and Charlie were the same motherless losers who would’ve been kings in another place, a better world. Why was Charlie succeeding where Peter was failing?
He realized his eyes were tearing up, and that was off-brand. Mysterious handsome loners don’t cry. Not at school. Maybe on their motorcycles going one hundred on the highway without a helmet, or in their girl’s lap so she can think, He only shows this to me.
He wiped his eyes and thought of his mother, who’d told him, even back then before she left, “You’ve got a screw loose. Just like your father. There’s something missing inside you.”
She was right. Weakness was missing. He was done with tears a long time ago.
* * *
Vanhi said, “What’s wrong with you?”
Charlie didn’t look up from his computer. The code was soothing. “Nothing.”
“Oh, fuck you.” She grabbed him and pulled him into the long and empty hallway. Only the nighttime emergency lights were on. “What happened? Spill it.”
“I did something. That might hurt my dad.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I just answered a question. Honestly I think.” Charlie looked at her. “What’s more honest—how you feel in the moment, when something’s really happening—or how you feel later, when it’s faded?”
Vanhi shook her head. “Maybe both are true.”
“Can’t be. Can’t be yes and no.”
“Charlie, what happened?”
“When I said I loved my dad, his dreams came true. What happens if I say I don’t?” Charlie’s voice was shaking. “I called him. I told him, ‘Be careful.’ I didn’t even know what to warn him about.” Charlie’s voice broke.
Vanhi held him close for a moment, stroked his hair. “We’re stopping this. The only way we know how.”
“I know.”
Vanhi wiped his cheeks. “I did something to you.”
Charlie looked up. Vanhi was the one person on earth who would never betray him. “I don’t want to know.”
“I trashed your Harvard application.”
“What?”
“The one you said you didn’t start. I found it. And I trashed it so mine would be better.”
Charlie just stared at her.
She stared back, refusing to break eye contact.
“But I … but things were just starting to…”
“I know. The Game gave me the choice. And I took it.”
Charlie nodded. “So did I.”
“Let’s destroy it. Let’s tear it limb from limb.”
“Okay.”
He started to walk into the darkroom, but she pulled him back.
“We all suck, Charlie. You, me, your dad. That doesn’t mean we’re not worth loving.”
“Okay. Come on. Let’s get back to work.”
“Soon. I have to get Vik.”
“Let me walk you to your car.”
“I told you, Charlie. I don’t need protecting.”
“Okay.” He hugged her before going back in. “Okay.”
But it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay at all.
78 BLACK HATTERS
Vanhi walked through the exit into the cold air. The wind hit her instantly and set her hair flapping back. The moment she cleared the door, someone grabbed her from behind. She saw broad arms close around her, draped in black.
Without thinking, she drug her heel back and down, and when the arms loosened slightly, she dropped to the ground and scrambled forward into a run.
The light was dimming fast as the sun went down behind the horizon, the dark blue sky veering into purple. The sodium lamps flicked on around the campus as she ran, no clear destination in mind, just trying to put distance between herself and the attacker.
Stay calm, she told herself. You’ll be fine.
He’s the one who better watch out.
She cut an angle, arcing around the side of the building so she’d be out of sight. She chanced a look behind her and saw a man in a white mask and a black hood coming at her. She didn’t have her Aziteks on, so the figure was undeniably real.
She turned and ran.
She rounded the corner of the school, down the long strip that led toward the construction site and the portables. That was her best chance to lose him.
She realized her phone was a tracking device on her body. So were the Aziteks in her bag. She had a feeling that with her infinite Blaxx they would do her no good anyway. She had no Goldz left, there was no tool to buy, no app to run. In the Game, she was bankrupt. She tossed her phone one way and her glasses the other a few feet later. Then she went a third way, a narrow strip between two brown portables on risers. She turned sideways, pressed through the crawlway, and saw someone coming from the other direction, another man also in white mask and black cloak. She ducked back into the gap between the portables and crawled under the risers of one, coming out into the maze of temporary buildings, then dipping under some sawhorses that closed off a hard-hat area. She heard footsteps behind her, or maybe it was just the wind picking up, rolling loose gravel or rattling temporary signs on hinges. She found what she was looking for in a pile of scraps at the worksite—a nice hard pipe, a foot and change long, sawed off smooth on the end so the material shone silver while the outside was a nice tarnished rust. It felt weighty in her hand, and she practiced a swing. She kept moving because it was fairly clear now that she heard footsteps approaching, and one of the men cam
e around the corner; he was ageless and faceless because he wore a porcelain mask. His hair stuck out in chunks over the top. He came closer.
Can I really do this? She abhorred violence.
Vanhi stepped back, keeping her eyes on him, sensing that the wall of a portable building was getting closer behind her. She wouldn’t be trapped. She wouldn’t feel afraid. Without warning she reversed direction and stepped forward. He had a knife in his hand and lurched toward her, not expecting the gap to close so quickly as she doubled back on him, then flawlessly she swung the pipe with both hands, winding up before he could notice and springing back a half turn to bring the pipe against his head. It made a cracking thunk noise—part head, part mask—and he went down in a crumpled heap. Vanhi turned and ran through another passageway between the temporary buildings, cutting left, then right, hearing footsteps on the gravel behind her again, crunching as they went. She came to a barricade and ducked under it, the only direction left to her, but within a moment she was cornered against a wall dirt wrapping her in a U, the product of a long-gone excavator heaping dirt from a hole on the other side, which she couldn’t see, for a project abandoned or at least frozen, a building that never made it out of the ground. So she spun back around, but he was there, another figure, this one upright and alive, knife pointed toward her in his hand clad in black leather.
“Rats get stuffed and fucked,” he said.
Vanhi wasn’t going down like that.
She started up the pile of dirt and got a good ways up, high enough to see the yawning hole below, but the dirt gave way under her feet and she tumbled back down the way she’d come, losing the pipe. He was on her, but she was fierce and kicked the side of his knee, bringing him down momentarily, long enough for her to get her fingers on the pipe. He grabbed and pulled at her legs, but she gripped the pipe and turned her torso, swinging. She landed a hard blow on his shoulder and he dropped her leg. Vanhi was up, ignoring the fear radiating all through her, holding the pipe like a batter. He slashed with the knife, and she hopped back and the blade swished by but missed her. She swung the pipe at the right moment but missed him, too.
“Go to hell,” she spat at him. “Hide behind your mask, coward.”