Tony Ballantyne - Recursion

“Ah. Professional jealousy?”

Katie looked confused for a moment. “No. I don’t think so.” She frowned for a moment. “No. The point is, they’re saying he wasn’t from the right field. He just wasn’t studying the right areas to put together that expression. When questioned, he either refuses to, or cannot explain how the final answer came about. It’s all very strange.”

“Maybe he stole it.”

“That’s already been suggested, but no one else credible has come forward to claim the work as their own. Oh, there are plenty of cranks, but none of them can explain the expression’s origin, any more than Lovegrove can. It’s as if it just appeared on his computer overnight.”

Katie’s eyes were glowing. She was gripping each side of the plastic chair, making her look like a little girl. It was like the real Katie suddenly shining through from the tiny place where she had hidden herself, deep within her own body.

Eva spoke. “So do you think that Lovegrove formulated the expression, Katie?”

Katie smiled and shook her head. “No.”

Eva said nothing. Katie’s smile widened. She wanted to tell Eva everything, and in the middle of her shy, pinched little life, she had found the window to do so. She leaned a little closer and Eva smelled spearmint on her breath.

Katie spoke in a whisper. “It’s too perfect. It’s too tight. We’ve already built machines that reproduce. The factory robots they landed on Mars make copies of themselves, but they need millions of lines of code to achieve the result. This sums up the essential idea in a few thousand bits. It’s too neat. It can’t have come from a human’s mind.”

She lowered her voice a little. “You know, it wouldn’t be the first time that society had been given a little prod in the right direction.”

Eva leaned a little closer. “What do you mean?”

Katie shook her head. She nodded toward the window, out toward the mist-dissolved circle of limes and beyond them the woods.

“She’s talking about the Watcher,” said the voice.

I know .

Katie looked thoughtful. “Did you just hear the voice?” she asked.

“Yes,” replied Eva. She felt a little shocked. “How did you know?”

“Your body seemed to relax. Now that’s interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

Alison had just walked into the room. Katie retreated back inside herself instantly. She gazed down at her fingers, twisting and turning around themselves in her lap.

“Hello, Alison. Where have you been?” asked Eva.

Alison looked a mess. Her eyes were ringed with dark shadows; her hair was lank and lifeless. She wore a grey hairy sweater over her tartan flannel pajamas, the corner of a white tissue poking from one sleeve. She shambled across to one of the padded chairs and slumped into it.

“Sleeping. What else is there to do?”

Eva looked at Katie, but Katie was concentrating again on the program on the viewing screen. Pictures of sheep being funneled through a gap in a hedge were replaced by a shower of chocolate buttons falling into a pool of chocolate. The image flicked to a cartoon group of eight mice eating rice from little bowls.

“We were just watching a program about an expression that defines itself, weren’t we, Katie?” said Eva brightly.

“Have you seen Nicolas? Do you know where he is?” asked Alison, deliberately changing the subject.

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s in his room.”

“I hope so. I’m not in the mood to be stared at.”

Eva said nothing. Alison brought her knees up underneath her chin and wrapped her arms tightly around her legs.

“Doesn’t he creep you out? The way he’s constantly staring at your tits?”

“I thought he was your friend.”

“You don’t have any friends in this place, Eva. Remember that.”

“Ignore her. She’s always like this when she’s down.” Katie’s words came in a flurry, her eyes still fixed firmly on the screen.

Eva turned to get a better view of Alison, twisting on one leg of the chair, feeling it flex beneath her weight as she turned.

“Would you like a hot drink, Alison?”

“No. And don’t change the subject. You’re not telling me that you don’t find it offensive, the way Nicolas stares at your tits?”

“I don’t like it, no. But then again, he’s not in this place because he’s normal, is he? Nor are we. Let’s show him some tolerance. It never seemed to bother you that much before.”

“It didn’t,” said Katie. “Ignore her.”

“Shut up Katie. I wasn’t speaking to you. Watch your bloody program.”

Eva looked on, aghast. Yesterday they had been plotting together, brothers in arms, today…From the adjoining chair, Alison picked up a paperback someone had apparently dropped in a bath. It was swollen to twice its normal size, the pages curling up and around themselves. She flicked through it for a moment or two, before crossly hurling it to the floor.

“Bloody Nicolas!” she shouted, then turned to glare at Eva. “Do you know why he’s in here?”

Eva shook her head. Alison’s mood swings were disconcerting.

“I don’t know why. He seems lacking in confidence.”

“Too bloody true. I’ll tell you what, one good fuck would sort him out. I’ll tell you what else, I’m not going to be the one to provide it.”

She glared across the room. “What about you, Katie? Would you do it? That would put a smile on both of your faces, wouldn’t it?”

“This conversation diminishes us all, Alison. Please go back to your room until you’re feeling better.”

Eva and Alison stared in shock at Katie’s response, but she remained glued to the screen.

Alison breathed in deeply, trying to regain her composure. “I was talking about Nicolas. He’s got a massive inferiority complex. He also thinks he’s the most important person in here. In the world.”

“That sounds like a contradiction,” Eva said hesitantly. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to speak to Alison when she was behaving like this.

Alison gave a bitter laugh. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? It’s a classic pattern for loonies. Most of the people in here are the same. You certainly are.”

Eva kept silent.

“Look at you with your delusions of grandeur, the way you believe you should have got that promotion, and yet you also think that you’re stupid and of no consequence. You’ve got no friends, and yet you know you deserve lots-”

“Alison.” Katie spoke again without looking up from the screen. Alison paused, brushed lank hair away from her eyes, but then continued.

“Nicolas. He told me something once, about how he started a pension when he began work. Doesn’t that tell you something about the man? What sort of twenty-year-old is bothered about a pension?” She laughed again. “Anyway, he got back the details telling him what he could expect when he retired. Gave him his projected earnings based on the job they thought he’d be doing then, taking into account his intelligence and personality quotient and so on. He wasn’t happy. He thought he’d be doing far better.”

Eva nodded. “I can see that being upsetting. Nobody likes to be told they are a loser, especially at that age.”

“That’s not all. It wasn’t a huge step from there to finding his life expectancy. You know what it was? Sixty-eight. You know what that means?”

Eva was uncomfortable on the hard plastic chair. She got up and and sat down next to Alison, accidentally knocking over a half-full cup of coffee someone had abandoned by the leg of the chair. Eva swore as brown liquid splashed across the vinyl floor.

“Leave it,” said Alison. “Listen. Nicolas was told that he would die at sixty-eight. Well below the average. That means low social class.” She gave a bitter laugh. “It will be even lower now. Knock another ten years off for being in here.”