John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

I leaned back in the divan, wondering if, all this time, Vanity had gotten the best catch out of the three.

Victor was unapproachable; Colin was crude. But Quentin…

I said, "When did you become the Answer Man, Quentin? Why do you know all these things all of a sudden?"

He picked up his gold-and-silver grimoire, and pointed to it. 'Warn et Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est .

Colin's Dad told me. He wrote this book. You know, this might have been the talisman meant for Colin, except… Happy birthday, Colin! More powers for you."

He took out the little brown envelope, on which was written in Boggin's crisp, wide-looped penmanship, Remember Next Time Not to Look ,

"My talisman! You and Victor got instruction books on how to use your powers. I guess my instruction booklet can be written on the three-by-five card." Colin opened the envelope and took out something about the size of a playing card. The back was embossed with a design of a poppy blossom. "Oh, great,"

said Colin, looking terrifically unimpressed. "What's it supposed to mean?"

"I don't know what it means," said Quentin. "I don't know what is on the face of the card."

"What do you mean? Look" Colin held the card toward him facefirst.

Quentin flinched and put up a hand to block his vision. "No, no, no! Don't show me. We all played around with looking at that card. Thanks, but no thanks."

I said, "Why? Does something terrible happen when you look at the card?"

"Amelia, can you hear me now?" asked Colin.

I said, "Of course, why shouldn't I be able to hear you?"

Colin looked at Quentin and whistled. "Wow."

Quentin said, "Same thing happens to me and to Vanity. Victor is unaffected. That doesn't make any sense on our table of oppositions, because I should be able to trump your powers."

I said, "What's going on? Is there something on that card I can't look at?"

Colin said, "You want to see it again?"

"What do you mean 'again'?"

"Here, look."

"I am looking. Hold up the card." I turned my head. Quentin was now sitting on the divan beside me, and Colin was in the chair Quentin had been in.

"Good trick," I said to Quentin.

"Here is a better one," said Quentin, handing me a piece of paper.

On the piece of paper were words in a flowing, delicate handwriting: Picture shows a man standing in black robes, stars in robe, cup of sparks in hand. Crowned w/

crescent moon. Cup tilted, sparks fall into pool at feet. V. pretty woman kneels by pool. Crowned w/poppies. Crying. Tears fall in pool. Basket in pool. Baby in basket.

Behind them dark forest, tall tower of wh spiral. Unicorn horn?

Heraldic emblem top of card. Winged horse w/ head dragon, rampant, propre.

It was my handwriting.

I looked up. "What does it mean?"

Victor from the across the room said, "The card is an artifact from Quentin's paradigm, not from Colin's.

It interferes with the time-binding function of the cortex."

I said, "I assume I was not asleep… I wrote this?"

Quentin said, "The thing that happens when one wakes in the morning, to make one forget one's dreams, is in that card. It does not affect Colin, because he is entirely made of dream stuff. It does not affect Victor, because, well, not to sound mean about it, Victor is a robot. No offense meant, Victor."

Victor replied, "None taken, puny flesh-slug."

I said, "He's not really a robot."

Quentin said, "But I don't think he has any part of his being made of dream stuff. I mean, that sums up all the differences and similarities between our four paradigms, doesn't it? Colin is all spirit, and Victor is all matter. I am both, an immortal spirit trapped for a time in a mortal body made of clay. You… Gee, Amelia, I do not know about you. Both? Neither?"

I said, "It's actually pretty simple. I have a controlling monad which is the final-to-mechanical causality nexus for governing other lesser nexuses, each of which has its own meaning axis and the non-meaning axis. What you call matter is an extension of non-meaningful relationships. They are objective and devoid of self-awareness or purposeful behavior. The other axis informs meaningfillness. Meaningful things are subjective. The meaning axis forms the context, the frame of reference, in which the non-meaning axis operates. Perception presupposes a perceiver and a perceived. The final cause of our perceptions, the reason why we have them, is to render matter meaningful; the mechanical causes of perception are the sense-impressions which arise from matter."

Quentin turned to Colin. "Can you translate Amelia glossolalia into the Common Speech of Westron?"

"She thinks matter and spirit are two parts of one underlying flung, I think," Colin said.

"No," I said. "I think questions like that are, by their nature, unanswerable and ultimately unaskable. Life requires us to adopt dualism, at least in our actions. We move thoughts by thinking, we move matter with other bits of matter. Matter is what we call those filings we cannot control with our thought alone. If everything was matter, everything would be inanimate, and there would be no deliberate action. If everything were thought, everything would be omnipotent, perfectly tranquil, and at rest, for there would be no need for action.

"Logic says there must be one underlying reality, a nexus of cause and effect, by which final causes relate to mechanical causes. This is called a monad. It cannot be investigated by introspection alone, because it is not made of thought alone. It cannot be investigated by material science alone, because it is not made only of matter. Therefore, we cannot investigate it at all. We know it must be able to influence and be influenced by thought; we know it must be able to influence and be influenced by matter. That is all we can ever know about it."

Colin said, "I said that. I said what she just said. She thinks mind and body are part of one underlying thing. How come no one listens to me?"

Victor said, "Everything is inanimate, if by that you mean things that operate according to cause and effect. Free will is an epiphenomenon, a misjudgment impressed upon us and sustained by the actions of brain molecules in motion."

Colin said, "Are we going to do philosophy? Everything is animate. Cause and effect is illusionary. We are all omnipotent, perfectly tranquil, and at rest. Our real selves. But we are dreaming. In our omnipotency, one of us or all of us conceived the desire to meet a challenge equal to our strength. Since we could have everything we wanted, voila! One of the things we must have wanted was not to be able to have everything we wanted. We got trapped in the illusion. Be careful what you wish for."

Quentin said, "You folks know what I think. The pituitary gland is the point where the spirit is connected to the flesh."

Colin said, "Since it is my birthday—I am the one getting presents here—I officially ban all further philosophy until further notice. Amelia is going to start talking in equations if we don't cut this off.

"And we are never going to agree," Colin continued. "In fact, I think, if any two of us did agree, one of the two would lose all his powers. Okay? Instead of figuring out the nature of the universe, let's figure out the nature of this card. It is smaller than the universe, and should be simpler to figure out, and we are all bright guys with big brains, so what the hell does it do? Do I eat it? Rub it on my head? Sleep with it under my pillow? Burn it? It seems like pretty much of a dud, to me. I got gypped."

I said, with some surprise, "Colin? Didn't I tell you who is on that card when I was under its amnesia spell?"

Colin shook his head.

"Ohh…" I did not say it aloud, but I knew why my earlier (and now lost) version of me had not said anything. I wanted to see and remember his reaction when I told him.