Permutation City (24 page)

He shuffled across the one-brick's-width ledge, fighting an impulse to mutter Ave Marias.
Pray for us sinners?
He realized that he'd stopped weeping. A drain pipe ran close to the far side of the window. He imagined tearing his palms open on jagged rusty metal, but the pipe was smooth; it took all his strength to hold himself in place, gripping it with hands and knees. When he touched the ground with his feet, his legs gave way. But not for long.

He hid in a public toilet for three hours, staring up at one corner of the room. The lights, the tiles, could have belonged to a prison or an asylum. He found himself disconnected, from the world, the past; his time breaking up into moments, shocks of awareness, shimmering droplets of mercury, beads of sweat.

This isn't me. This is something else that believes it's me. And it's wrong, wrong, wrong.

Nobody disturbed him. At six o'clock he walked out into the morning light, and caught a train home.

15

(Remit not paucity)

APRIL 2051

Durham's north Sydney flat was small, and very sparsely furnished; not at all what Maria had expected. The combined living room and kitchen was all she'd seen, but it was clear from the outside that there wasn't space for much more. Durham was on the sixteenth floor, but the building was hemmed in on all sides by ugly late-twenties office towers, blue and pink ersatz-marble monstrosities; no expensive harbor views here. For someone who was ripping off gullible millionaires -- or even someone who merely sold them insurance -- Durham didn't seem to have much to show for it. Maria thought it unlikely that the place had been set up entirely for her benefit, to fit the story he'd told her: to demonstrate the frugal lifestyle which supposedly enabled him to pay her out of his own pocket. He'd invited her out of the blue; she would never have had a reason to insist on seeing where he lived.

She put her notepad down on the scratched dining table, and turned it so that Durham could read the graphs. "These are the latest results for the two most promising species.
A.
lithophila
has the higher mutation rate, per generation, but it reproduces much more slowly, and it's more vulnerable to climate change.
A.
hydrophila
is more prolific, with a stabler genome. It's not intrinsically hardier; it's just better protected by the ocean."

Durham said, "What's your gut feeling?"

"What's yours?"

"
A.
litho
evolves into a few promising species -- which all get wiped out by one major crisis.
A.
hydro
slowly builds up a huge stock of survival-neutral mutations, some of which turn out to be useful on land. The first few hundred thousand species which blow out of the sea don't make it -- but it doesn't matter, there are always more. Or am I just being swayed too much by terrestrial preconceptions?"

"The people you're trying to convince will almost certainly think the same way."

Durham laughed. "It wouldn't hurt to be
right,
as well as persuasive. If they're not mutually exclusive ambitions."

Maria didn't reply. She stared down at the notepad; she couldn't look Durham in the eye. Talking to him by phone, with software filters, had been bearable. And the work itself had been an end in itself; immersed in the elaborate game of Autoverse biochemistry, she'd found it all too easy to carry on, as if it made no difference what it
was for.
But she'd done next to nothing to make Durham more likely to take her into his confidence. That was why she'd agreed to this meeting -- and why she had to take advantage of it.

The trouble was, now that she was here, she was so ill at ease that she could barely discuss the most neutral technicalities without her voice faltering. If he started spouting lies about his hopes of debating the skeptics of the artificial life mafia in some future issue of
Cellular Automaton World,
she'd probably start screaming. Or, more likely, throw up on the bare linoleum floor.

He said, "By the way, I signed the release on your fee this morning -- I've authorized the trust fund to pay you in full. The work's been going so well, it seemed only fair."

Maria glanced up at him, startled. He looked perfectly sincere, but she couldn't help wondering -- not for the first time -- if he knew that she'd been approached by Hayden, knew exactly what she'd been told. She felt her cheeks flush. She'd spent too many years using phones and filters; she couldn't keep anything from showing on her face.

She said, "Thank you. But aren't you afraid I might take the first plane to the Bahamas? There's still a lot of work to be done."

"I think I can trust you."

There wasn't a trace of irony in his voice -- but there really didn't need to be.

He said, "Speaking of trust . . . I think your phone may be bugged. I'm sorry; I should have told you that sooner."

Maria stared at him. "How did you know?"

"Know? You mean, it is? You've had definite signs?"

"I'm not sure. But how . . . ?"

"Mine is. Bugged. So it makes sense that yours would be, too."

Maria was bewildered. What was he going to do -- announce that the Fraud Squad were watching him? If he came right out and said it, she didn't think she could dissemble any longer. She'd have to confess that she already knew -- and then she'd have to tell him everything Hayden had said.

Taking the pressure off completely. Ending the farce for good.
She had no talent for these stupid games; the sooner they could both stop lying to each other, the better.

She said, "And who exactly do you think is doing it?"

Durham paused to think it over, as if he hadn't seriously considered the question before. "Some corporate espionage unit? Some national security organization? There's really no way of telling. I know very little about the intelligence community; your guess would be as good as mine."

"Then why do you think they're -- ?"

Durham said blithely, "If I was developing a computer, say, thirty orders of magnitude more powerful than any processor cluster in existence, don't you think people like that might take an interest?"

Maria almost choked. "Ah. Yes."

"But of course I'm not, and eventually they'll convince themselves of that, and leave us both alone. So there's absolutely nothing to worry about."

"Right."

Durham grinned at her. "Presumably, they think that just because I've commissioned an Autoverse planet, there's a chance that I might possess the means to actually
run it.
They've searched this place a couple of times; I don't know what they expected to find. A little black box, sitting in a comer of one of the rooms? Hidden under a pot plant, quietly cracking military codes, raking in a fortune on the stock market -- and simulating a universe or two on the side, just to keep from getting bored. Any five-year-old could tell them how ludicrous that is. Maybe they think I've found a way to shrink individual processors to the size of an atom. That would just about do it."

So much for an end to the lying.
He wasn't going to make this easy for her.
All right.
Maria forced the words out evenly: "And any five-year-old could tell you that if anyone searched your flat, it was the Fraud Squad."

Durham was still giving nothing away. "Why do you say that?"

"Because I
know
they're watching you. They've spoken to me. They've told me exactly what you're doing." Maria faced him squarely now. She was tense at the prospect of a confrontation, but she had nothing to be ashamed of; he was the one who'd set out to deceive her from the start.

He said, "Don't you think the Fraud Squad would need to get a warrant, and search the flat in my presence?"

"Then maybe it hasn't been searched at all. That's not the point."

He nodded slightly, as if conceding some minor breach of etiquette. "No, it's not. You want to know why I lied to you."

Maria said, "I
know
why. Please don't treat me like an idiot." Her bitterness surprised her, she'd had to conceal it for so long. "I was hardly going to agree to be your . . .
accomplice --
"

Durham raised one hand from the tabletop, a half conciliatory, half impatient gesture. Maria fell silent, more from astonishment at how calmly he seemed to be taking all this than any desire to give him a chance to defend himself.

He said, "I lied because I didn't know if you'd believe the truth or not. I think you might have, but I couldn't be sure. And I couldn't risk it. I'm sorry."

"Of course I would have believed the truth! It would have made a lot more sense than the bullshit you fed me! But, yes, I can see why you couldn't
risk it."

Durham still showed no sign of contrition. "Do you know what it is that I'm offering my backers? The ones who've been funding your work?"

"A sanctuary. A privately owned computer somewhere."

"That's almost true. Depending on what
you
take those words to mean."

Maria laughed cynically. "Oh, yes? Which words do you have trouble with? 'Privately owned'?"

"No. 'Computer.' And, 'somewhere.'"

"Now you're just being childish." She reached out and picked up her notepad, slid her chair back and rose to her feet. Trying to think of a parting shot, it struck her that the most frustrating thing was that the bastard had
paid her.
He'd lied to her, he'd made her an accomplice -- but he hadn't actually swindled her.

Durham looked up at her calmly. He said, "I've committed no crime. My backers know exactly what they're paying for. The Fraud Squad, like the intelligence agencies, are jumping to absurd conclusions. I've told them the whole truth. They've chosen not to believe me."

Maria stood by the table, one hand on the back of the chair. "They said you refused to discuss the matter."

"Well, that's a lie. Although what I had to say certainly wasn't what they wanted to hear."

"What
did
you have to say?"

Durham gave her a searching look. "If I try to explain, will you listen? Will you sit down and listen, to the end?"

"I might."

"Because if you don't want to hear the whole story, you might as well leave right now. Not every Copy took me up on the offer -- but the only ones who went to the police were the ones who refused to hear me out."

Maria said, exasperated, "What do you care what I think, now? You've extracted all the Autoverse technobabble from me you could possibly need. And I know nothing more about your scam than the police do; they'll have no reason to ask me to testify against you, if all I can say in court is 'Detective Hayden told me this, Detective Hayden told me that.' So why don't you quit while you're ahead?"

Durham said simply, "Because you don't understand anything. And I owe you an explanation."

Maria looked toward the door, but she didn't take her hand off the back of the chair. The work had been an end in itself -- but she was still curious to know precisely what Durham had intended to do with the fruits of her labor.

She said, "How was
I
going to spend the afternoon, anyway? Modeling the survival of
Autobacterium hydrophila
in sea spray?" She sat. "Go ahead. I'm listening."

Durham said, "Almost six years ago -- loosely speaking -- a man I know made a Copy of himself. When the Copy woke up, it panicked, and tried to bale out. But the original had sabotaged the software; baling out was impossible."

"That's illegal."

"I know."

"So who was this man?"

"His name was Paul Durham."

"You? You were the original?"

"Oh, no.
I was the Copy.
"

16

(Toy man, picture it)

JUNE 2045

Paul felt a hand gripping his forearm. He tried to shake it off, but his arm barely moved, and a terrible aching started up in his shoulder. He opened his eyes, then closed them again in pain. He tried again. On the fifth or sixth attempt, he managed to see a face through washed-out brightness and tears.

Elizabeth.

She raised a cup to his lips. He took a sip, spluttered and choked, but then managed to force some of the thin sweet liquid down.

She said, "You're going to be fine. Just take it easy."

"Why are you here?" He coughed, shook his head, wished he hadn't. He was touched, but confused. Why had his original lied -- claiming that she wanted to shut him down -- when in fact she was sympathetic enough to go through the arduous process of visiting him?

He was lying on something like a dentist's couch, in an unfamiliar room. He was in a hospital gown; there was a drip in his right arm, and a catheter in his urethra. He glanced up to see an interface helmet, a bulky hemisphere of magnetic axon current inducers, suspended from a gantry, not far above his head. He thought: fair enough, to construct a simulated meeting place that looked like the room that
her
real body must be in. Putting him in the couch, though, and giving him all the symptoms of a waking visitor, seemed a little extreme.

He tapped the couch with his left hand. "What's the message? You want me to know exactly what you're going through? Okay. I'm grateful. And it's good to see you." He shuddered with relief, and delayed shock. "Fantastic, to tell the truth." He laughed weakly. "I honestly thought he was going to wipe me out. The man's a complete lunatic. Believe me, you're talking to his better half."

Elizabeth was perched on a stool beside him. She said, "Paul. Try to listen carefully to what I'm going to say. You'll start to reintegrate the memories gradually, on your own, but it'll help if I talk you through it all first. To start with, you're not a Copy. You're flesh and blood."

Paul coughed, tasting acid. Durham had let her do something unspeakable to the model of his digestive system.

"I'm flesh and blood? What kind of sadistic joke is that? Do you have any idea how hard it's been, coming to terms with the truth?"

She said patiently, "It's not a joke. I know you don't remember yet, but . . . after you made the scan that was going to run as Copy number five, you finally told me what you were doing. And I persuaded you not to run it -- until you'd tried another experiment: putting yourself in its place. Finding out, firsthand, what
it
would be forced to go through.

"And you agreed.
You
entered the virtual environment which the Copy would have inhabited -- with your memories since the day of the scan suppressed, so you had no way of knowing that you were only a visitor."

"I -- ?"

"You're not the Copy.
Do you understand? All you've been doing is visiting the environment you'd prepared for Copy number five. And now you're out of it. You're back in the real world."

Her face betrayed no hint of deception -- but software could smooth that out. He said, "I don't believe you. How can I
be
the original? I spoke to the original. What am I supposed to believe?
He
was the Copy? Thinking he was the original?"

"Of course not. That would hardly have spared the Copy, would it? The fifth scan
was never run.
I controlled the puppet that played your 'original' -- software provided the vocabulary signature and body language, but I pulled the strings. You briefed me, beforehand, on what to have it say and do. You'll remember that, soon enough."

"But . . . the experiments?"

"The experiments were a sham. They could hardly have been performed on a visitor, on a physical brain -- could they?"

Paul shook his head, and whispered, "Abulafia."

No interface window appeared.

He gripped the couch and closed his eyes, then laughed. "You say I
agreed
to this? What kind of masochist would do that? I'm going out of my mind.
I don't know what I am."

Elizabeth took hold of his arm again. "You're disoriented -- but that won't last long. And you
know
why you agreed. You were sick of Copies baling out on you. You had to come to terms with their experience. Spending a few days believing you were a Copy would make or break the project: you'd either end up psychologically prepared, at last, to give rise to a Copy who'd be able to cope with its fate -- or you'd gain enough sympathy for their plight to stop creating them.

"The plan was to tell you everything while you were still inside, after the third experiment. But when you went weird on me in there, I panicked. All I could think of was having the puppet playing your original tell you that it was going to pause you. I wasn't trying to frighten you. I didn't think you'd take it so badly."

A technician came into the room and removed the drip and catheter. Paul propped himself up and looked out through the windows of the room's swing doors; he could see half a dozen people in the corridor. He bellowed wordlessly at the top of his lungs; they all turned to stare in his direction. The technician said mildly, "Your penis might sting for an hour or two."

Paul slumped back onto the couch and turned to Elizabeth. "You wouldn't pay for reactive crowds. I wouldn't pay for reactive crowds. It looks like you're telling the truth."

+ + +

People, glorious people: thousands of strangers, meeting his eyes with suspicion or puzzlement, stepping out of his way on the street -- or, more often, clearly, consciously refusing to. The freedom of the city was so sweet. He walked the streets of Sydney for a full day, rediscovering every ugly shopping arcade, every piss-stinking litter-strewn park and alley, until, with aching feet, he squeezed his way home through the evening rush hour, to watch the real-time news.

There was no room for doubt: he was not in a virtual environment. Nobody in the world could have had reason to spend so much money, simply to deceive him.

When Elizabeth asked if his memories were back, he nodded and said of course. She didn't grill him on the details. In fact, having gone over her story so many times in his head, he could almost imagine the stages: his qualms after the fifth scan; repeatedly putting off running the model; confessing to Elizabeth about the project; accepting her challenge to experience for himself just what his Copies were suffering.

And if the suppressed memories hadn't actually reintegrated, well, he'd checked the literature, and there was a two point five percent risk of that happening; electronically censoring access to memories could sometimes permanently weaken the neural connections in which they were encoded.

He even had an account from the database service which showed that he'd consulted the very same articles before.

He reread and replayed the news reports that he'd accessed from inside -- and found no discrepancies. He flicked through encyclopedic databases -- spot-checking random facts of history, geography, astronomy -- and although he was surprised now and then by details which he'd never come across before, there were no startling contradictions. The continents hadn't moved. Stars and planets hadn't vanished. The same wars had been lost and won.

Everything was consistent. Everything was explicable.

And yet he couldn't stop wondering about the fate of a Copy who was shut down and never run again. A normal human death was one thing -- woven into a much vaster tapestry, it was a process which made perfect sense. From the internal point of view of a Copy whose model was simply
halted,
though, there was no explanation whatsoever for its demise -- just an edge where the pattern abruptly came to an end.

But if the insight he'd gained from the experiments was true (whether or not they'd ever really happened) -- if a Copy
could
assemble itself from dust scattered across the world, and bridge the gaps in its existence with dust from across the universe . . . then why should it ever come to an
inconsistent
end? Why shouldn't the pattern keep on finding itself?

Or find a larger pattern into which it could merge?

The dust theory implied a countless number of alternative worlds: billions of different possible histories spelled out from the same primordial alphabet soup. One history in which Durham
did
run Copy number five -- and one in which he didn't, but was persuaded to take its place as a visitor, instead.

But if the visitor had been perfectly deceived, and had experienced everything the Copy did . . . what set the two of them apart? So long as the flesh-and-blood man had no way of knowing the truth, it was meaningless to talk about "two different people" in "two different worlds." The two patterns of thoughts and perceptions had effectively merged into one.

If the Copy had been allowed to keep on running after the visitor had learned that he was flesh and blood, their two paths would have diverged again. But the Copy had been shut down; it had no future at all in its original world, no separate life to live.