John Wright - The Golden Transcendence

Daphne, who had been silent, watching him, now leaned from her throne, and said, "Darling, you are really creeping me out talking to yourself that way. You know it is just a fraud! If you are going to talk to the Nothing Machine, talk to the other illusion, the one with the wild hair. At least it looks dead and unnatural and has a fashionable tailor. Not to mention background music. But don't think those are your words just because they are coining out of what looks like your mouth!"

A ring of chimes accompanied the soft words issuing from the silver mask. The feathery antennae nodded. "The image is accurate. Phaethon, should he consent to hear the evidence, and learn the facts, will, without any outside interference, be convinced."

Phaethon looked over at her. He pointed at the mirror showing the thought-diagram of the Nothing Mind, the whirlpool. "I don't know why the gadfly virus did not do anything. Maybe the irrational mathematics somehow can work, or... or something. There is something wrong with what we are seeing, but I don't know what it is...."

Daphne said, "Snap out of it! There is no paradox! There has to be a core logic. It is just hidden. I'm making a data-ferret, and loading it. I'll find the damn thing. That conscience redactor has to be in there somewhere. There has to be a command-level core logic running this whole thing, and the redactor will have access to it. Keep talking! We just have to hit a topic that the conscience redactor will react to! Once it shows itself, we win!"

"But what if-" Phaethon started.

"What if the Nothing is right after all?" Phaethon's reflection finished.

The silver mask said mildly, "My thoughts are open for your inspection. There is no deception here."

Daphne was listening to the conversation between Phaethon and Phaethon.

Perhaps she was thinking of her old vocation, because Daphne uttered a word that referred to horse droppings. Then she said, "Just keep talking! If he convinces you, then he convinces you- fine. We'll both turn into monsters and go kill our family and friends, and then jump down a black hole!"

"At least we will be together, my dear," said Phaethon's reflection said to her.

"Will you shut him up?!" Daphne scowled, frowning at the mirror in front of her, and unfolding an old-fashioned command-easel from her throne arm. She muttered, "Doesn't even sound like you...."

Daphne was startled to see her own face appear in the mirror.

"Oh, no! Not you, too!" She pointed an angry finger at the reflection. "Don't you start with me! Switch off!"

The reflection ignored the command. Instead she said, "You've never turned your back on truth before, no matter how it hurt. Do that now, and you are just like Daphne Prime! And you're not like her! And deciding not to listen to what I have to say before you hear me say it, well, that's just another type of drowning. And that's just not the way you are! I should know!"

Daphne looked skeptical. "And just how many simulations of me did he have to run before, by chance, he found one who was convinced? A thousand? Ten thousand?"

The reflection seemed to lean forward, as if she were able to come blazing out of the glass by sheer force of conviction. "Don't you dare talk to me that way! I do not change my mind for little things and I do not let people tell me what to do! Not even me. Or you. Or whatever. Listen. Are you going to listen?"

"Who? Me? Trapped onboard a sunken ship with a monster and my fiance ex-husband who is slowly going mad? Where am I going? Talk yourself blue in the face. But I'm looking to see how many simulations he ran."

Daphne called up the information on the simulation runs and frowned. There was something odd here.

She slowly turned and stared at her reflection.

"Just... what... did ... he ... say?"

"You mean, what did he say to convince me in one try... ?" The mirror image smiled Daphne's private smile, the one she only used in looking glasses, when she was very pleased with herself. "Something wonderful! Listen: What is the one thing we are afraid of?"

"Bacon."

"Besides bacon. And don't say pork hash."

"Pork hash. And... you know."

The image nodded.

Dying.

The image said, "It'll happen eventually anyway, you know. Just like Pa and Ma always said. The noumenal recording might last a million years, or two, but eventually everything runs down, decays, runs out of energy. All the heroes die young. All the color runs out of life. And the only people left are withered, tired, scared, useless old things, mumbling over memories of brave adventures in their youth they were always too scared to attempt, bright fires they were afraid to touch. And those gray leftover people are only playing a delaying game, playing stay-away with life so they can have more lifetime.

"But life loses. Life always loses. Heroes stop being heroes, and then they live boringly ever after, and then they die. Entropy wins. Everything ends. Logic enforces that law. Everywhere where there is time and space, everywhere where there is cause and effect, that law always wins.

"But"-and now an elfish twinkle gleamed like fire in her eye-"but what if someone did not want it to be that way? Someone a little Like Phaethon. A whole race of Phaethons. An heroic race, a million of them, each as fierce and free as Phaethon. A race not willing to give in.

Not willing to give up. What if they found a trapdoor out of this dead universe? A hole? A black hole? A place where the tyranny of time and space couldn't reach? A realm where laws of logic don't apply?"

Daphne said in dreamy, angry, half-breathlessness, listening, unwilling to listen: "What-what in the world do you mean? You're talking nonsense!"

"All fairy tales are nonsense. That is what makes them beautiful."

"But fairy tales aren't true."

"Not unless you find someone, someone great, great enough to do deeds of renown, who can make them true for you."

Daphne said, "So the Second Oecumene people shot their brain information into a black hole to find... what? A wormhole? An escape exit? There is nothing inside a black hole!"

"Yes, he is," The reflection smiled with pride.

"Escape from where? From reality? From life? There's no other place to go, outside the universe."

"Listen, sister-me. You know it's true. Even a prison the size of a universe is still a prison. And it is every prisoner's duty to escape."

At that moment, Daphne saw, clear as crystal in her memory, an image from a fairy tale.

She saw an heroic man, shining in gold armor, who rode on a winged boat to the top of the sky. Surrounded by frost, he raised an ax in bloodstained hands high overhead, and swung to crack the crystal dome of the sky and see what lay on the other side. His face was set, and held no hint of fear at all, even though the world he had left far underfoot was calling out in craven terror.

The image trembled in her heart. She felt as if a dam inside her broke. Emotion caught her throat. She blinked tears.

Could there be a realm larger than the universe?

Could there be a life larger than entropy? Was there nothing brave enough to find that realm, that life?

Daphne turned to Phaethon, who sat motionless in front of his reflection in the mirror.

Daphne said, "Darling, I'm getting edgy. Nothing is beginning to make sense."

Phaethon said coldly, "You're starting to believe it? So am I."

"Does that mean we're wrong?"

"That means we haven't figured out the problem yet. Let's just find out what's going on. Let's find what's broken, and who broke it. We'll fix it."

There was perhaps a hint of doubt in his voice, and yet, somehow, beneath that hint, Daphne heard an echo of Phaethon's deep confidence.

He said, "We'll figure it out. We'll fix it. Agreed?"

She said, "Agreed. We'll figure them out; and boy, will we fix them."