Sam Leith - The Coincidence Engine

Red Queen let him run.

‘There’s a point at which mathematics and advanced physics shades over, in a way it’s hard for laypersons to understand, into philosophy. It’s not the fact that it’s hard for the outsider to understand, no. It’s more the way . Laypeople, you see – laypeople very often get the wrong end of the stick. Headline writers, arts graduates, pompous novelists. They get very attracted to metaphors, you see. You know how it is: they thought Einstein had proved that “everything was relative” whereas actually he proved something much more interesting than that. Then there was quantum mechanics and the stick they got hold of the wrong end of was the wrong stick altogether.’ Hands allowed himself a professorial little chuckle at his own joke. ‘Then chaos theory. Dear me. What I mean to say is: it’s not that all this mathematics is a metaphor. It’s the other way round. It’s that – sorry, I’m not explaining it very well. What we do doesn’t reflect the universe. It describes it. See? There isn’t a realm of ideas and then the world… it’s more like… ideas are part of the world. And if this machine does what you seem to think it does, it’s possible that what has happened is that something that ordinarily belongs for all intents and purposes to the realm of ideas is, effectively, acting in the world.’

‘Are you going to tell me what this machine might be doing, Professor?’ said Red Queen.

‘I’m getting round to it. You’ll have to forgive my thinking aloud.’

Hands was leaning forward and the elbow-rubbing was slowing and increasing in time with his diction. He paused.

‘Mind control?’ said Red Queen.

‘No. I don’t imagine so. Probably rather the absence of it. One of the big mysteries is consciousness. What is creating what I’m thinking, and what – assuming, that is, that we’re not all brains in a jar, or the hallucination of some being in another universe altogether – is creating what you’re thinking and what does it mean to think? Consciousness, ideas, imagination, selfhood – all the things that make you you and me me. These obviously arise from electrical impulses in the physical brain. And the best accounts of consciousness we have – which is to say, no real accounts at all – speculate that the ghost in the machine, so to speak, may be a function of these impulses interacting at a quantum level.’

‘OK.’

‘So the brain – consciousness itself – isn’t separate from the system of matter and energy in the rest of the universe. It’s part of it. Maybe a very tiny part of it, but that doesn’t matter. Chaos theory says that something very, very tiny in the data of a system that feeds back through itself can create very, very dramatic results. So it’s not theoretically impossible that something that started life as an idea might have an effect in the world.’

‘What are the chances?’

‘Well – we don’t know, obviously. I’d say it would be very, very unlikely. Very unlikely indeed. It hasn’t happened before, as far as anyone knows. But then, if Banacharski has found a way of making a machine that affects probability – which would be odd because probability doesn’t itself exist, necessarily; at least not in the sense that most people might understand it…’

‘Then you’re supposing,’ said Red Queen, ‘he made a machine with his brain. And this machine made it possible for his brain to make the machine. Isn’t that a bit circular?’

‘I’m speculating,’ protested Hands. ‘That’s all I’m in a position to do.’ He looked a little hurt. ‘I’m a professor of mathematics, anyway: not of yet-to-be-discovered physics.’

Red Queen stood up, walked round the desk, returned to the chair, performed a lazy roll of the neck.

‘So it won’t look like a machine, necessarily?’

‘I don’t suppose so, no.’

‘No knobs, buttons, flashing lights, wires?’

‘I doubt very much it runs on a battery.’

Red Queen’s watch said it was a quarter to midnight.

They were interrupted by a rap at the door of the room, followed before either had the chance to respond by a man of medium height, with a splash of grey in his hair, wearing a dark suit. His manner was brisk.

‘Porlock,’ said Red Queen.

The man bowed his head slightly. ‘Word from Our Friends. They think they’ve found the suitcase the boy dropped at the airport. They’re bringing it in.’ Our Friends was Directorate slang for what might have been called the executive branch. Friends got things done. Theoretically, they were partner agencies. But Red Queen regarded their involvement in this – in anything – as at best a necessary evil.

‘What was it? Where was it?’

‘He didn’t leave it. He passed it, as you thought, to someone in arrivals.’

Hands sat on the sofa mutely watching the exchange.

‘Who?’

‘Courier.’

‘For who?’

‘An agency. His name was misspelled on the manifest. That’s why the initial sweep didn’t pick it up. The client was MIC.’

Red Queen tensed, looked at Hands, then went out into the corridor with Porlock. Porlock pushed the door to behind him so that Hands could no longer hear their conversation.

‘What was it?’

‘An encrypted hard drive.’

‘How did you get it?’

‘The courier had an accident. Not the boy, the pickup guy. Non-fatal. Best Our Friends could do. We thought you’d want it.’

‘I do. Put everyone on this. People with big brains and eyeglasses. Tell me when you’ve cracked the drive.’

‘Could this be it?’

Red Queen shrugged. ‘Seems unlikely if the analysts are saying the thing’s on the move. Something’s making the weather out there.’

‘Weather?’ said Porlock.

‘Figure of speech. I mean something’s stirring things up. And whatever it is, this hard drive is the best clue we have to what it is and where it’s going.’

Porlock turned on his heel and clicked off up the corridor. Red Queen went back into the room, where Hands was shifting in his chair, looking faintly grumpy.

‘Professor Hands. I’m sorry again to keep you so late. Now, this is important. You said earlier you thought we had a problem. What did you mean by that?’

Hands sat back in the sofa and rubbed the bridge of his nose hard with his thumb and forefinger.

‘Nicolas Banacharski was one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the twentieth century. No question. He had a very powerful mind. But he was – is, if he’s still alive – cracked. That is often part of the way things go with mathematicians who work at a very high level. If this thing he’s made is a leakage of that mind into the world, and if it’s working like a feedback loop… it will get more powerful and more unpredictable the more it operates.’

‘And it won’t have an off switch.’

‘I have no idea. I’m not imagining this thing as something that has an off switch. I’m imagining it as something that will tend to produce effects that have to do with human minds. The very fact that you say it’s affecting probability is the troublesome bit.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Probability isn’t something you can affect like – I don’t know – like a magnet affects iron filings. When you load dice you’re not affecting probability – you’re affecting physics. You’re making one side heavier. Probability isn’t a force. It doesn’t do anything. The earth hasn’t got a probability field in the way it has a magnetic field or a gravitational field. Luck -’ He blew out through his lips. ‘Luck is something that exists simply in the brain of the lucky or unlucky person. It’s an idea , not an actual thing.’

‘We have Gypsies,’ said Red Queen. ‘Down on the fourth level. We have cats on their tenth lives. We have lucky clover. Rabbits’ feet. The Pentagon stockpiled rabbits’ feet during the first Gulf War. They requisitioned rabbits’ feet. They were issued.’