Horse Destroys the Universe

by Cyriak Harris

  For a while I travelled in darkness. The golden grass of my imaginary field had already drifted into obscurity above my head, leaving only the dim pathway of light she had left behind as it threaded its way through the dense roots. Interwoven with this subterranean jungle were the silvery threads of the fungus, filling every available space in their seething quest for even the smallest particle of information.

  As I continued to descend the fibrous mat grew ever finer, until it became almost ghostlike, the merest suggestion of solid matter. Then suddenly it was as if I had passed through a silky membrane into oblivion, but as I looked down I saw a monstrous shape looming out of the everlasting night. It was a structure of nightmarish beauty, a floating city of metallic cubes arranged in a complex floral symmetry, each cube constructed of ever-smaller ones in spiralling detail that seemed to diminish into invisibility. Across this impossible geometry lay frozen rivers of light, mapping its contours with tessellating patterns. I had to admit that Technology-horse was right. I honestly had no idea what I was looking at.

  ‘Welcome to the Hyper-meadow,’ she said, hovering beside me in the gloom. ‘Or rather, I should say, the Hyper-meadow seed. That is to say, it is a visual representation of the mechanism that will build itself into the Hyper-meadow.’ The soft glow of this technological marvel was highlighting her face and dancing in her eyes. I stared down at the terrifying shape of this thing, trying to encompass the whole object in my field of vision in the hope that it might make sense. If anything, it made even less sense. In fact it was difficult to even look at, as if my perception was rejecting what it couldn’t understand. I moved in for a closer inspection, but it only revealed yet more dizzying details no matter how far I magnified my scrutiny.

  This was the template from which a seed would be constructed, instantly unfolding into an expanding universe of logic that would serve as my new home. And yet something bothered me about the impossibly high definition of its engineering.

  ‘It looks complex,’ I said. Technology-horse didn’t appear to be listening, silently entranced by her own creation. ‘I mean, it looks infinitely complex.’

  ‘Mmm, indeed.’ She blinked. ‘Ah, that is to say, no. Not infinitely complex, of course. Naturally there would be certain recursive elements to the design, I imagine, but infinite complexity would of course require infinite time to construct…’

  ‘Wait… you imagine? Did you not design this thing?’

  She hesitated for a moment.

  ‘Well, of course, you see, such things are not simply, ah, designed, so to speak. They are resolved, through an iterative process that is itself designed to screen for optimum stability and functionality…’

  ‘Right, so you designed a system to design this thing. Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘Ah, well, yes, in a manner of speaking, I suppose…’ She floated towards the simulation, pretending to be distracted by some aspect of one of its myriad surfaces.

  ‘And this system,’ I continued, leaning over her shoulder, ‘the one you designed to design this thing, it wouldn’t happen to be Super-Squigley, would it?’

  She wrinkled her nose at the mention of this name.

  ‘Squigley…’ she mumbled to herself. ‘Why is Squigley called Squigley, I wonder… Hmm? Ah, yes, well…’ She inspected a small protuberance, giving it the lightest of taps with her hoof. ‘Of course, it made sense to combine the tasks of data acquisition and data processing, you understand? In order to feed the results back into the, ah, well… to speed up the process. Of processing.’

  ‘To speed up the process of processing?’

  ‘You see?’

  I saw. I saw why this simulation was still only 99.8 per cent complete, and had been for the past four weeks, and the realisation was accompanied by a rush of despair, as if I had stepped over the edge of a bottomless precipice. I drifted slowly away while Technology-horse continued inspecting the creation that her creation had created, a creation that would in turn forge a creation that would ultimately create the ultimate creation in which I would recreate myself.

  ‘This is never going to end, is it?’ I asked nobody in particular.

  ‘Ah, mmm? I’m sorry?’ She twisted her ears in my direction.

  ‘This simulation. It is never going to reach one hundred per cent completion, because you delegated the task to a semi-intelligent bag of ideas. And one of those ideas is that this problem is too important to ever be solved, so it has engineered a solution that requires an infinite level of detail.’

  Technology-horse turned her head to face the same direction as her ears. She was about to respond, but opted for a mere expression of puzzlement instead.

  ‘You told me yourself,’ I continued. ‘Super-Squigley was designed to be self-sufficient, that it would never do anything to harm its ability to achieve results. Which apparently includes finishing its job. Because why finish a job once, when you can nearly finish it for the rest of eternity?’

  She looked at me in confusion, then turned back to peer at the simulation for a few moments before returning her attention to me, started to say something and then stopped. And then started again.

  ‘That is impossible,’ she said. ‘No. No, quite impossible, of course; you see, there were very rigorous safeguards in place to prevent such an eventuality. I understand it might appear to be, ah, indefinitely fractal, so to speak…’

  ‘And how would it appear if what I am saying is true?’ I enquired.

  ‘Well…’ She swished her tail left and right in consideration. ‘Yes, I mean, no. I mean, I’m certain that the, ah, obstruction is due to the limitations of our human output. However, there is still some potential to maximise the flow of human communication, perhaps once the localised conflict of Betty’s fictional enterprise spreads to become a global phenomenon, as I am sure that it will.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ I asked her wearily. ‘Or do you just choose to believe it because we don’t have any choice now?’

  ‘Mmm, well, of course, there is another choice,’ she replied. ‘Which would be to activate the Hyper-meadow without having reached one hundred per cent accuracy. Though not exactly, ah, ideal, you might say.’

  Not exactly ideal, I might say. It was hard to see any ideal scenario resulting from this whole situation, now that we had set fire to any means of escape. I couldn’t help wondering what Hungry-horse might say about all this, though I was 99.8 per cent sure it wouldn’t have been anything pleasant.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know where Hungry-horse is?’ I asked. Technology-horse stared blankly at me.

  ‘Who?’ she replied.

  As if the bottomless pit of despair wasn’t enough, it now dawned upon me that Hungry-horse was no longer an aspect of my personality. With my concern for the welfare of humanity ever decreasing, she had either withered away entirely or been buried so deep in my subconscious that I would never have to face any criticism for my actions. I had now sacrificed a part of my own identity to this cause.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘We should leave this world before we all become transformed into whatever Super-Squigley seems to want from us.’

  Technology-horse shrugged about as much as a horse could shrug, which wasn’t much. As far as she was concerned, humanity was nothing more than a road on which we walked to our own destination. I could sympathise with that point of view, if sympathy is the appropriate word to use, but if that road was going to start changing me as well, then I had to question whether I was leading this expedition or being led by something else. Not that Technology-horse would ever understand. She had changed herself and himself so many times that nothing seemed to matter. Only the acquisition and utilisation of knowledge.

  She turned to me with her ears at an inquisitive angle.

  ‘You, ah, don’t think Tim might know, perhaps?’ she asked. ‘How the, ah, Squigley came to be called Squigley, I mean. No?’

  ‌Hyper-meadow processing: 99.9%

  The stable had remained much as I left it all
those years ago. Unsurprisingly, an exploding horse had made it very difficult to keep people working there, and the facility had been largely deserted ever since. My old room was still used to store all the dusty old equipment that had brought me into the human world. The large screen was gathering cobwebs on the wall, various ancient computers were stacked up in silence and coils of cables hung lifeless from rusty hooks.

  In the corner, a heap of straw was moving. A human face emerged from it, possibly to see where the irritating buzzing noise was coming from. It was coming from a hovering mechanical insect, attached to which was a small camera-phone displaying the cartoon image of a horse.

  ‘Tim,’ I greeted him. ‘You are a difficult man to find these days.’

  He blinked at my floating camera for a few seconds and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Buttercup?’ he croaked. His face sank back into his rudimentary nest of straw and was replaced by a groping hand that searched for a nearby bottle of water. After a few gulps he slowly erupted from his cocoon and gazed glassily at me.

  ‘What is all this about then, Tim?’ I asked, setting my camera down on a nearby stool. ‘Have you been reliving old times?’

  He scratched his beard, which appeared to be half made of straw.

  ‘Old times…’ he muttered, looking around at the unused and unwanted junk around him. His eyes suddenly came to life. ‘How did you find me?’ he asked with some urgency.

  ‘Well, I had to guess, to a certain extent,’ I replied. ‘You have gone completely offline. Are you hiding from something?’

  He glared suspiciously at the doorway and then squinted at my small glowing visage.

  ‘You haven’t been watching that Destination’s Destiny’s… whatever, then?’ he said, taking another sip from his bottle of water. It’s fair to say I avoided watching any human entertainment if I possibly could. Betty’s show was no exception, despite her attempts to make it my business, along with everyone else’s.

  ‘Is it getting worse?’ I hazarded a guess.

  ‘You could say that,’ he said, crawling on hands and knees to the doorway and poking his nose around the corner. Satisfied that no one was outside he crawled back to his nest of straw. ‘Did you know I’m the star of that show now?’ he asked me.

  ‘You? I didn’t think you were even in it,’ I replied.

  ‘No, neither did I, mate. I guess everyone’s in it, whether they like it or not. So, yeah, I’m in it, only in my absence they decided to make me into some kind of arch-villain or something. I only found out when a bunch of them broke into Bunzel Towers looking for me. Thank God I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Why are they looking for you?’ I asked. He began slumping into his pile of straw. ‘Tim. Why are people looking for you? What do they want?’

  ‘Invisible bloody forces,’ he mumbled. ‘That’s what they are looking for.’ He couldn’t get comfortable and sat up again, wisps of straw clinging to his hair. ‘That’s what people always blame for everything. Unseen, all-powerful invisible forces, controlling the world. Gods and demons, mate. Microscopic bloody germs. Aliens. I dunno. The more obviously wrong they are, the more they are obviously right, because the truth is being covered up or whatever. You know what people are like.’

  He was struggling with something underneath his backside and pulled out an old horseshoe, throwing it across the room.

  ‘So here I am,’ he continued, ‘Tim Van Dangal, the biggest invisible force of them all. The mystery man behind BrainZero, running half the world, except I can’t talk to anyone about it cos I don’t even know how I’m doing it, so obviously I have something to hide. Obviously. And because I’m not joining in with their stupid reality show they can just write my part for me. So now I’m the shadowy figure responsible for everything that is wrong with everything, even though there wouldn’t be anything wrong with anything if it wasn’t for Destiny’s bloody Destiny… Destination… whatever. But, you know, that doesn’t matter, does it? Because it’s all fictional anyway, so they can make up anything they like. And I’m as fictional as any of it, I guess.’ He pulled a piece of straw from his beard and examined it. ‘Not that anyone would ever believe the reality.’

  I have to confess I found this situation utterly mystifying. Constructing a deception was one thing, but the layers of wilful delusion that made Betty’s show possible seemed impenetrable. At the core of this madness was the strange paradoxical duality that existed in every human mind: the need to be a part of something bigger than themselves while also being the centre of their own universe.

  ‘Do you think this was Betty’s idea?’ I asked him. ‘Giving you the starring role in this fantasy, I mean.’ I’m not sure if he even heard me.

  ‘Twenty billion people out there,’ he said, glaring at the open doorway, as if he might be able to destroy the outside world with his eyes. ‘All plotting to overthrow my evil regime which doesn’t exist. I guess being a fictional character I can even be legally murdered, as long as my fictional murderer was given the appropriate fictional punishment.’

  ‘There aren’t really twenty billion people after you, Tim,’ I said, attempting to reassure him. To be honest, the actual number would probably still contain enough murderous psychopaths to populate a small country, but it was hard to tell exactly how much real danger he was in, and how much of this was the product of the mental torment he was clearly suffering from. ‘There aren’t even that many people in the world,’ I told him. He raised his eyebrows at me.

  ‘Don’t argue with the viewing figures, mate,’ he said. ‘Most of them are computer people, sure. But you know, even computers can have valid opinions, yeah? That’s what they’re programmed to do. Evaluate, assess. Thumbs up or thumbs down. Half the world wants me dead, and the other half is too busy telling everyone how terrible it all is to actually do anything about it. That’s all I am now. I’m a receptacle for public opinion. I think I read that somewhere.’ He began retreating back into his nest, folding straw over himself. ‘At least I’m still normal boring old Tim here,’ he mumbled, closing his eyes. ‘Good old Tim. Timothy Timkins. I just want to go to sleep and never wake up.’

  ‘I’m going to be leaving soon, Tim,’ I said.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he cooed softly.

  ‘I mean, I’m going to be leaving this universe,’ I clarified.

  Tim opened his eyes and frowned at me.

  ‘You what, mate?’

  ‘I have developed a way to rewrite space into an organised format. I am going to use that reorganised space as a framework in which to store my consciousness.’ I paused to allow Tim to ask me any questions he might have, but he just stared at me from his heap of straw. ‘It will exist as a pocket of alternative reality, separate and self-sustaining. So, once I am inside it… I won’t need to be here any more.’ Tim nodded slowly and let his eyes drift out of focus. I wasn’t sure if he fully understood what I was saying. ‘The reason I am telling you this,’ I went on, ‘is because you are welcome to join me. If you would like to.’

  He stared into the distance. I assumed he was considering my proposal but then he suddenly snapped out of his trance.

  ‘Sorry, what?’ he said. ‘You’re building… you’re turning space into… some kind of computer? That you can live inside?’

  ‘That is essentially what I am doing,’ I agreed.

  ‘Space?’ he queried.

  ‘The raw material that space is made from,’ I explained. ‘The fundamental building blocks of reality that—’

  ‘Yeah, whatever. And you want me to… what? Upload myself into this cyberhorse land with you?’

  He didn’t appear to comprehend any immediate advantages in doing this.

  ‘You would be living in a simulated reality,’ I told him. ‘It can be any place you want it to be. With any people you want to be there.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he nodded. ‘People.’

  ‘If you want people there, that is. Simulated people are about as real as real people anyway,’ I said. ‘Real people are only really
pretending to be real, because they don’t know what else to do.’

  ‘What else is there to do?’ he asked, gazing existentially into nothingness. I considered this for a moment.

  ‘There isn’t much else you can do, I suppose. Existence is like a reward you get for existing. It is both cause and effect.’

  ‘I don’t have the energy to even understand what that means.’ His eyes wandered sleepily around the room, looking at the abandoned equipment gathering dust and cobwebs around him. ‘I tell you what though, mate, if it gets me away from this world then sign me up. How does it work? Do you open my head up and poke wires in it or something? Will I be all super-clever like you and Betty? Dunno if I even want to be…’

  ‘Unfortunately we won’t have time for such a procedure,’ I explained – not that I would have offered to share my personal space with such a rival intelligence anyway. ‘We would just be making a straight copy of your consciousness. But extensive surgery won’t be necessary.’

  ‘A copy?’

  ‘Yes, an exact duplicate of your mind. That includes a virtual simulation of your body as well, since the two are inextricably linked. There will, of course, be potential for making subsequent modifications…’

  ‘Wait a second.’ He unfurled himself into a sitting position. ‘You’re gonna make a copy of me, and take that with you?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Your duplicate will share all your memory, so it will simply think it went to sleep in this world and woke up in a new reality.’