Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

“I think it had to do with that furniture, the Amido, the clock. Maybe they take back, from the people moving, everything that wasn’t paid for… The possessions remain in Mougarrie that way. The next person buys them on credit. Not a bad business to run. And of course it’s important, seeing as they went to such lengths to keep it out of the newspaper.”

“You think they killed the Bolyas?”

“I don’t know. The blood in the Amido doesn’t have to mean that. In three years I move to Tolz, but I won’t try to find out if Spig and Suzie Bolya are alive. You’re surprised?”

“Not at all. You always were a little shit, Humpty.” “Little” sounded funny, since Humpty was a head taller than him.

“Little shits live longer,” said Humpty. His blue eyes were so pale, they were hardly different from the whites. On his revolting mouth formed something that resembled a smile.

My idea, once it hatched, has become an obsession. I can’t look at reality now except as a narrative in a book. The days pass monotonously, however, as if the main action is not with me but elsewhere. At least the reading still absorbs.

Today I came across a note in the margin made by Wilcox: “Our world is a book. Dave, Zef, and I are all alter egos of the author.”

He got that right. Though the alter ego thing is an exaggeration. Wilcox was plenty smart, though he didn’t show it at the beginning.

If the book is a nested world, then its reader, by reading, moves time in it. When the reader stops, time stops. But how can time be stopped? Perhaps it becomes a semiconscious state of the world’s inhabitants, who reminisce. Because what can they experience beyond what has already been written in the book?

Another index card showed when Gavein turned the page. It was not dated. Perhaps it was out of order, stuck there randomly:

The creator of the nested world is the book’s author, whereas the reader’s role is only to set that world in motion. The Inhabitant of Superworld Minus One is immortal and omnipresent, so it is reasonable to assume there is only one. If there were more than one, they could not all be omnipresent at once. And if there is one, then He is both Author and Reader of Superworld Minus One.

Maybe the inhabitants of the higher-numbered worlds are also not people, thought Gavein. Simpler beings, like bacteria. Maybe that is how they can multiply so quickly, during their stay in a Land… And if there are many Lands, then the area of each must be very small. The globe would then resemble a biological tissue culture, in whose Land-cells lived the microorganisms that were the heroes of the narrative.

The Significant Name becomes a kind of thread of sequential information, resembling—as Linda said—a polypeptide chain. As if there were a Code of Death that played a role exactly opposite the role played by the transmittal of genetic information in living matter, the Code of Life.

Or could this be only a matter of semantics? A sufficiently long Code of Death, carrying complete information about the fate of its possessor, would also contain every fact about his physical makeup. In that case, one could not distinguish between the Code of Life and the Code of Death… They would in fact be one and the same Code… I don’t know how far to take the analogy. A pity you’re not still with us, Zef. Here I’ve come up with an idea of my own, and there’s no one to share it with… Ra Mahleiné has commanded me to read. She doesn’t want to hear from me about anything else.

In Jaspers’s world there is no time scale common to all Lands, which means that there is no road that goes from Land to Land in such a way that time elapses at a constant rate for the traveler. The same holds for all worlds of higher number than Jaspers’s.

In the world of Gary and Sabine there are lines of common time, thanks to which one can calibrate time in separate Lands.

We have surfaces of common time, which are determined by the altitude above the continental shelf. In a plane that flies at a constant height, time flows at a constant rate.

To sum up: in world number 3 there are points of common time, in world number 2 lines of common time, in the normal world (ours) surfaces of common time, and in Superworld Zero there is volumetric space of common time (either totally or to a great extent).

For time’s uniformity-symmetry to be increased in Superworld Minus One, it cannot flow at all. A strange conclusion yet consistent with the others, since the Inhabitant of that world is more easily immortal if no time elapses.

If the inhabitants of our hypothetical Superworld Zero are similar to us, the solitary Inhabitant of Superworld Minus One is both Author and Reader, that is to say, both Creator and Animator; is immortal, outside time; and is everywhere. With Him ends the hierarchy of authors and heroes of books. He is therefore in all respects a being apart.

When Dave returns, I will talk to him about Superworld Minus One. Laila isn’t interested, and Magdalena is too weak, too sick. Today we’re going out to renew some old acquaintances. I doubt that Earthworm, Beanpole, or Rooster will have anything valuable to say, but it’ll be good seeing them again after all this time.

That was Zef’s final note. Gavein put the book down and punched the number for the police.

Medved answered.

“Hello, Frank. Death here.”

“Stop that, Throzz. I have trouble enough as it is on your account. Spare me the jokes. What do you want?”

“Well, I think maybe I’m better than you at solving unsolved crimes.”

“No doubt, since you are their architect.”

“I’m not the architect of anything. I have a clue about the death of Laila Hougassian, NC, and Zef Eisler, R.”

“Go ahead. I’m recording this.”

“In a note from Zef I found, he speaks about going to meet with his old gang. He was reading a book and putting index cards in it, with his notes, as he went, and this is the last card. Laila went with him to this meeting.”

“All right, I’ve now pulled the gang from his file. It’s shrunk a bit. Hans Hartnung is dead…”

“Zef said he was going to see Earthworm, Beanpole, and Rooster.”

“I’ll send someone for the card.”

“Nothing doing. I need the card.”

“Then someone will come with a photocopier and make a good-quality copy for you to keep. Agreed?”

Gavein agreed.

Ra Mahleiné’s condition worsened rapidly. She didn’t leave the bed. In her face, grown unnaturally gray and thin, only her eyes shone. His reading the book no longer helped. An invisible force was now claiming her. He knew this.

Zef’s guesses and speculations had become certainty for Gavein. It annoyed him that Zef, despite all his powerful arguments, had left most of the conclusions in the form of assumptions only, postponing them for further discussion. Gavein could not resist the elegance and the beauty of the theory. It was clear to him, with the clarity of an obsession, that his world too was nested in another—in a greater, wider, perhaps more varied world. The sequence of worlds contained in the book did not stop with his world. He was the main protagonist of the book in which they called him Death. Events took place with particular vividness around him, while the rest, elsewhere, was shadowy, like a memory or allusion. His world continued only when it was read. Whenever the unknown reader put down the book, everything slowed and nothing essential could happen.