Peter Watts - Beyond the Rift

Wait a second.

Who was Louis Pasteur? asks the WAIS, trying to get a handle on educational background.

A virus, Fitzgerald said.

Back up the list. Here’s another one, on the previous page: Who was Winston Churchill? And again: a virus.

And fifteen questions before that : Who was Florence Nightingale?

A famous nurse, Fitzgerald responded to that one. And her responses to all previous questions on historical personalities are unremarkably correct. But everyone after Nightingale is a virus.

Killing a virus is no sin. You can do it with an utterly clear conscience. Maybe she’s redefining the nature of her act. Maybe that’s how she manages to live with herself these days.

Just as well. That raising-the-dead shtick didn’t cut any ice at all.

She’s slumped across the table when he enters, her head resting on folded arms. Thomas clears his throat. “Jasmine.”

No response. He reaches out, touches her lightly on the shoulder. Her head comes up, a fluid motion containing no hint of grogginess. She settles back into her chair and smiles. “Welcome back. So, am I crazy or what?”

Thomas smiles back and sits down across from her. “We try to avoid prejudicial terms.”

“Hey, I can take it. I’m not prone to tantrums.”

A picture flashes across the front of his mind: beloved husband, entrails spread-eagled like butterfly wings against a linoleum grid. Of course not. No tantrums for you. We need a whole new word to describe what it is you do.

“Debugging,” wasn’t it?

“I was going over your test results,” he begins.

“Did I pass?”

“It’s not that kind of test. But I was intrigued by some of your answers."

She purses her lips. “Good.”

“Tell me about viruses.”

That sunny smile again. “Sure. Mutable information strings that can’t replicate without hijacking external source code.”

“Go on.”

“Ever hear of Core Wars?”

“No.”

“Back in the early eighties some guys got together and wrote a bunch of self-replicating computer programs. The idea was to put them into the same block of memory and have them compete for space. They all had their own little tricks for self-defence and reproduction and, of course, eating the competition.”

“Oh, you mean computer viruses,” Thomas says.

“Actually, before all that.” Fitzgerald pauses a moment, cocks her head to one side. “You ever wonder what it might be like to be one of those little programs? Running around laying eggs and dropping logic bombs and interacting with other viruses?”

Thomas shrugs. “I never even knew about them until now. Why? Do you?”

“No,” she says. “Not any more.”

“Go on.”

Her expression changes. “You know, talking to you is a bit like talking to a program. All you ever say is go on and tell me more and—I mean, Jesus, Myles, they wrote therapy programs back in the sixties that had more range than you do! In BASIC even! Register an opinion , for Chrissake!”

“It’s just a technique, Jaz. I’m not here to get into a debate with you, as interesting as that might be. I’m trying to assess your fitness to stand trial. My opinions aren’t really at issue.”

She sighs, and sags. “I know. I’m sorry, I know you’re not here to keep me entertained, but I’m used to being able to—

“I mean, Stuart would always be so—

“Oh, God. I miss him so much ,” she admits, her eyes shining and unhappy.

She’s a killer, he tells himself. Don’t let her suck you in. Just assess her, that’s all you have to do.

Don’t start liking her, for Christ’s sake.

“That’s—understandable,” Thomas says.

She snorts. “Bullshit. You don’t understand at all. You know what he did, the first time he went in for chemo? I was studying for my comps, and he stole my textbooks.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he knew I wasn’t studying at home. I was a complete wreck. And when I came to see him at the hospital he pulls these bloody books out from under his bed and starts quizzing me on Dirac and the Bekenstein bound. He was dying , and all he wanted to do was help me prepare for some stupid test. I’d do anything for him.”

Well , Thomas doesn’t say, you certainly did more than most.

“I can’t wait to see him again,” she adds, almost as an afterthought.

“When will that be, Jaz?”

“When do you think?” She looks at him, and the sorrow and despair he thought he saw in those eyes is suddenly nowhere to be seen.

“Most people, if they said that, would be talking about the afterlife.”

She favours him with a sad little smile. “This is the afterlife, Myles. This is Heaven, and Hell, and Nirvana. Whatever we choose to make it. Right here.”

“Yes,” Thomas says after a moment. “Of course.”

Her disappointment in him hangs there like an accusation.

“You don’t believe in God, do you?” she asks at last.

“Do you?” he ricochets.

“Didn’t used to. Turns out there’s clues, though. Proof, even.”

“Such as?”

“The mass of the top quark. The width of the Higgs boson. You can’t read them any other way when you know what you’re looking for. Know anything about quantum physics, Myles?”

He shakes his head. “Not really.”

“Nothing really exists, not down at the subatomic level. It’s all just probability waves. Until someone looks at it, that is. Then the wave collapses and you get what we call reality . But it can’t happen without an observer to get things started.”

Thomas squints, trying to squeeze some sort of insight into his brain. “So if we weren’t here looking at this table, it wouldn’t exist?”

Fitzgerald nods. “More or less.” That smile peeks around the corner of her mouth for a second.

He tries to lure it back. “So God’s the observer, is that what you’re saying? God watches all the atoms so the universe can exist?”

“Huh. I never thought about it that way before.” The smile morphs into a frown of concentration. “More metaphoric than mathematical, but it’s a cool idea.”

“Was God watching you yesterday?”

She looks up, distracted. “Huh?”

“Does He—does It communicate with you?”

Her face goes completely expressionless. “Does God tell me to do things, you mean. Did God tell me to carve Stu up like—like—” Her breath hisses out between her teeth. “No, Myles. I don’t hear voices. Charlie Manson doesn’t come to me in my dreams and whisper sweet nothings. I answered all those questions on your test already, so give me a fucking break, okay?”

He holds up his hands, placating. “That’s not what I meant, Jasmine.” Liar. “I’m sorry if that’s how it sounded, it’s just—you know, God, quantum mechanics—it’s a lot to swallow at once, you know? It’s—mind-blowing.”

She watches him through guarded eyes. “Yeah. I guess it can be. I forget, sometimes.” She relaxes a fraction. “But it’s all true. The math is inevitable. You can change the nature of reality, just by looking at it. You’re right. It’s mind-blowing.”

“But only at the subatomic level, right? You’re not really saying we could make this table disappear just by ignoring it, are you?”

Her eye flickers to a spot just to the right and behind him, about where the door should be.

“Well, no,” she says at last. “Not without a lot of practise.”

What’s wrong with this picture?

Besides the obvious, of course. Besides the vertical incision running from sternum to approximately two centimetres below the navel, penetrating the abdominal musculature and extending through into the visceral coelom. Beyond the serrations along its edge which suggest the use of some sort of blade. Not, evidently, a very sharp one.