Грег Иган - Permutation City

"Do you have any hard evidence?"

"No. I've rerun the old validation experiments, the ones I ran during the launch, and they still work -- wherever I've tried them -- but I can't even instruct the processors running the Autoverse to diagnose themselves, let alone probe what's happening there at the lowest level. I don't even know if the problem is confined to the region, or if it's spreading out slowly . . . or if it's already happening everywhere, but the effects are too subtle to pick up. You know the only way to validate the rules is with special apparatus. So what do I do? Disassemble half the processors in Elysium, and build test chambers in their place? And even if I could prove that the rules were being broken, how would that help?"

"Who else knows about this?"

"Only Repetto and Zemansky. If it became public knowledge, I don't know what would happen."

Maria was outraged. "What gives you the right to keep this to yourselves? Some people might panic . . . but what are you afraid of? Riots? Looting? The more people who know about the problem, the more likely it is that someone will come up with a solution."

"Perhaps. Or perhaps the mere fact that more people know would make things worse."

Maria absorbed that in silence. The sunlight spilling through the terminal cast radial shadows around her; the room looked like a medieval woodcut of an alchemist discovering the philosopher's stone.

Durham said, "Do you know why I chose the Autoverse in the first place -- instead of real-world physics?"

"Less computation. Easier to seed with life. My brilliant work with A. lamberti."

"No nuclear processes. No explanation for the origins of the elements. I thought: In the unlikely event that the planet yielded intelligent life, they'd still only be able to make sense of themselves on our terms. It all seemed so remote and improbable, then. It never occurred to me that they might miss the laws that we know are laws, and circumvent the whole problem."

"They haven't settled on any kind of theory, yet. They might still come up with a cellular automaton model -- complete with the need for a creator."

"They might. But what if they don't?"

Maria's throat was dry. The numbing abstractions were losing their hypnotic power; she was beginning to feel all too real: too corporeal, too vulnerable. Good timing: finally embracing the illusion of possessing solid flesh and blood -- just as the foundations of this universe seemed ready to turn to quicksand.

She said, "You tell me. I'm tired of guessing what's going on in your head."

"We can't shut them down. I think that proves that they're already affecting Elysium. If they successfully explain their origins in a way which contradicts the Autoverse rules, then that may distort the JVC rules. Perhaps only in the region where the Autoverse is run -- or perhaps everywhere. And if the TVC rules are pulled out from under us --"

Maria baulked. "That's . . . like claiming that a VR environment could alter the real-world laws of physics in order to guarantee its own internal consistency. Even with thousands of Copies in VR environments, that never happened back on Earth."

"No -- but which is most like the real world: Elysium, or the Autoverse?" Durham laughed, without bitterness. "We're all still patchwork Copies, most of us in private fantasy lands. Our bodies are ad hoc approximations. Our cities are indestructible wallpaper. The "laws of physics" of all the environments in Elysium contradict each other -- and themselves -- a billion times a day. Ultimately, yes, everything runs on the TVC processors, it's all consistent with the TVC rules -- but level after level is sealed off, made invisible to the next, made irrelevant.

"On Planet Lambert, everything that happens is intimately tied to one set of physical laws, applied uniformly, everywhere. And they've had three billion years of that. We may not know what the deepest laws are, anymore, but every event the Lambertians experience is part of a coherent whole. If there's any conflict between the two versions of reality, we can't rely on our own version taking precedence."

Maria couldn't argue for patchwork VR holding up against the deep logic of the Autoverse. She said, "Then surely the safest thing would be to ensure that there is no conflict. Stop observing the Autoverse. Give up all plans of making contact. Isolate the two explanations. Keep them from clashing."

Durham said flatly, "No. We're already in conflict. Why else can't we shut them down?"

"I don't know." Maria looked away. "If the worst comes to the worst . . . can't we start again? Construct a new Garden-of-Eden configuration? Launch ourselves again, without the Autoverse?"

"If we have to." He added, "If we think we can trust the TVC universe to do everything it's programmed to do -- without altering the launch process, fouling it up . . . or even passing on the modified laws which we think we're escaping."

Maria looked out at the City. Buildings were not collapsing, the illusion was not decaying. She said, "If we can't trust in that, what's left?"

Durham said grimly, "Nothing. If we don't know how this universe works anymore, we're powerless."

She pulled her hand free. "So what do you want to do? You think if you have access to more of the Autoverse than the data channels running out from the hub, you can make the TVC rules apply? One whole face of the pyramid shouting stop to the neighboring processors will carry more weight than the normal chain of command?"

"No. That might be worth trying. But I don't believe it will work."

"Then . . . what?"

Durham leaned forward urgently. "We have to win back the laws. We have to go into the Autoverse and convince the Lambertians to accept our explanation of their history -- before they have a clear alternative.

"We have to persuade them that we created them, before that's no longer the truth."

29

Thomas sat in the garden, watching the robots tend the flowerbeds. Their silver limbs glinted in the sunshine as they reached between the dazzling white blossoms. Every movement they made was precise, economical; there was no faltering, no resting. They did what they had to, and moved on.

When they were gone, he sat and waited. The grass was soft, the sky was bright, the air was calm. He wasn't fooled. There'd been moments like this before: moments approaching tranquility. They meant nothing, heralded nothing, changed nothing. There'd always be another vision of decay, another nightmare of mutilation. And another return to Hamburg.

He scratched the smooth skin of his abdomen; the last number he'd cut had healed long ago. Since then, he'd stabbed his body in a thousand places; slit his wrists and throat, punctured his lungs, sliced open the femoral artery. Or so he believed; no evidence of the injuries remained.

The stillness of the garden began to unnerve him. There was a blankness to the scene he couldn't penetrate, as if he was staring at an incomprehensible diagram, or an abstract painting he couldn't quite parse. As he gazed across the lawn, the colors and textures flooding in on him suddenly dissociated completely into meaningless patches of light. Nothing had moved, nothing had changed -- but his power to interpret the arrangement of shades and hues had vanished; the garden had ceased to exist.

Panicking, Thomas reached blindly for the scar on his forearm. When his fingers made contact, the effect was immediate: the world around him came together again. He sat, rigid for a moment, waiting to see what would happen next, but the stretch of dark green in the corner of his eye remained a shadow cast by a fountain, the blue expanse above remained the sky.

He curled up on the grass, stroking the dead skin, crooning to himself. He believed he'd once hacked the scar right off; the new wound he'd made had healed without a trace -- but the original faint white line had reappeared in its proper place. It was the sole mark of his identity, now. His face, when he sought it in the mirrors inside the house, was unrecognizable. His name was a meaningless jumble of sounds. But whenever he began to lose his sense of himself, he only had to touch the scar to recall everything which defined him.