Into the Unknowable Ch. 22

Intrepid - 3756 C.E.

Paul held Beatrice to his chest. Well, not all of her of course: just the head and shoulders. The rest of her was scattered in fragments across the living room, now so evidently the dismembered remains of an android rather than a human. It wasn't blood but a strangely viscous black liquid that seeped out of her mouth, from the stumps of her arms and from a torso that was sliced apart just below her bosom, or at least the single breast that remained intact.

It was obvious now. Colonel Vashti hadn't lied. Beatrice had been an android all along. This was the wreckage of a machine whose technological sophistication far exceeded anything that could be manufactured in the Solar System. The skeleton that supported the body was made from a stronger and denser material than bone and was intricately interlaced with nanocarbon circuitry. And when her eye fell out of its socket, Paul could see the same complex network of machinery inside her skull.

But even though he now knew he'd been deceived and that Beatrice had never been human, Paul still loved her. He didn't really care that she wasn't biological. He loved her more than he'd ever loved anyone and no revelation about her true nature could change that.

The apparatus within Beatrice's cadaver shuddered and vomited a globule of thick black viscous fluid onto his chest. Paul tenderly placed Beatrice's half-crushed face and truncated shoulders on the ground and knelt beside them. He wasn't normally the sort of man who cried but there was now nothing more that he wanted to do. He let loose the depth of despair and loss that had pent up inside him. He had the need to mourn what was now the second death of what would forever be his greatest love.

A reminder of the very peculiar universe that now held Paul suddenly materialised in the form of a swarm of wasps. It grew from nothing to fill the room. Although the yellow swarm brushed against him there were no stings and then it disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.

Paul looked through the living room's shattered window. There were many more peculiar sights outside. More unpredictable and unlikely Apparitions were randomly materialising and vanishing all about him.

Although in chaotic disrepair his living room was at least calm, but Paul was sure this state of affairs wouldn't last forever. For how much longer could the Intrepid continue to function with all these peculiar Apparitions besieging it?

And if the space ship should be pulled apart Paul now had the dilemma of how to spend his last few living moments. Should he continue to mourn the death of his beloved who now mostly resembled the shards of a shattered machine? Or should he find some other way to make the best use of what little was left of his life before an Apparition erupted around or even within him? What was of most value to him?

Paul knelt down and grasped one of Beatrice's dismembered hands and pressed it against his cheek. There was only one memory he wished to take with him if he should die and that was Beatrice.

A slimy dribble down his chest to remind Paul that he was soaked in a disgusting agglutination of thick black liquid. He tore off his clothes and stood naked, but the liquid still clung to him. He needed a shower or a bath. And if that wasn't enough, then something more radical. Or perhaps he just needed to vomit. Paul didn't know. Whatever it was, the bathroom was where he needed to be.

Urgently.

Paul strode across the living room and discreetly avoided having to tread on Beatrice's hand which was severed at the wrist and lay in his way. He entered the short hallway between rooms and noticed now that most of the rest of his home had been reduced to rubble. All that was left of the bathroom was shattered porcelain.

Paul looked around him in confusion and alarm. Here he was standing naked, covered in repellent black slime, in the shattered remains of what had been his home on an enormous space ship that was heading at an astronomic speed within a point in space that neither Paul nor anyone else appeared to understand.

Just what was a man supposed to do in such a situation?

He noticed that one of the doors in the hallway was slightly ajar. Previously it would have led to the kitchen but on either side of the door were only piles of broken bricks and rubble. He glimpsed through the door's opening and saw not the expected wreckage of shattered kitchen appliances, but the interior of a room totally unlike any he could remember seeing before. The door swung wide open. It was a clear invitation for him to enter.

Paul didn't know what else he could do. Did he have any real choice? He strode towards the door and walked through it.

Once through the door, Paul was in a room totally unlike any previously attached to the villa and nothing at all like a kitchen. It was a large and spacious, but not too intimidating. Several armchairs were set in a semicircle, but the room was otherwise unfurnished. The floor was covered by a soft blue carpet that tickled the bare soles of his feet. The pale blue walls were covered in a peculiarly oriental pattern.

There was a single huge window that looked out onto a landscape totally unlike anything in the Intrepid's ravaged interior. Through it, Paul could see a landscape of forest, distant mountains and a waterfall, all in brilliantly sharp focus lit by a Sun that resembled the one he'd seen while on Earth.

"Please shut the door behind you, Paul," a voice requested.

Paul obeyed and pushed shut a door that from the inside was strangely heavy and ornate. As he did so, he looked back at the remnants of his home. He was startled to see it was flooded with a brilliant light and a strong wind was blowing, which in the interior of a space ship was bizarre in itself.

Paul turned around to see whether he could determine the source of the voice and was startled to see a man sitting on one of the armchairs who'd not been there when he'd turned round to shut the door. What was more peculiar still was that the man sitting so comfortably on the armchair and sipping from a glass of red wine was Virgil: the same gentleman that Paul had met several times in Nudeworld.

How could an avatar be present in the real world? Had Paul absentmindedly wandered into a virtual universe and forgotten that he'd done so? Or was this avatar another peculiar, but unusually non-random, oddity generated by the Anomaly?

"Am I in Nudeworld?" Paul asked.

"No," said Virgil. "No, you are not."

"Where am I then?" wondered Paul. "I'm not still in the Intrepid, am I?"

"No," said the elderly gentleman with a wry smile. "No, you're not. And for that you should be very grateful. The space ship Intrepid no longer exists."

"It doesn't?" wondered Paul, who was sure that he'd seen it only a moment ago. Could he trust the words of a man who was nothing more than an avatar somehow made corporeal? "Who are you? How is it you can exist outside of Nudeworld?"

"I have always existed outside of that fanciful virtual universe you were so addicted to," Virgil said. "The question you should perhaps ask is why I ever happened to exist in that world at all. And you might also ask whether I even exist as a corporeal entity in the world you're now in." Virgil gestured towards one of the armchairs. "Take a seat. Make yourself comfortable. But is that even possible for you while you're undressed like that?"

Reminded about his nudity, which in Nudeworld was totally unremarkable but not so here, Paul now felt very uncomfortable indeed. In any case, wouldn't the dripping black slime that was all that was left of Beatrice leave a nasty stain on the upholstery?

It was then that Paul realised that he was now dressed in the comfortable clothes he usually wore on Godwin and that they were now carefully laundered. And furthermore, without having had a shower or a bath, he was now sweet-smelling and clean. There wasn't even a residual smear from the viscous black liquid that had so recently pasted him from his chest to his knees.

"Who are you?" asked Paul again. "And where are we?"

"Interesting questions," said Virgil. "And very difficult to answer. But I shall try nevertheless. Shall I first tell you who or, more to the point, what I am?"

"That would be somewhere to start..."

"I am an avatar," said Virgil. "The avatar I represent is a machine intelligence that is no less real than you. And the place where we are is also no less real than the world you come from. But you may recall our earlier discussion in Nudeworld. What is real? How real am I? And how real is this world?"

"Well," said Paul who thought he deserved rather more than just philosophical speculation after having just heard the devastating news that the space ship Intrepid no longer existed. "If you know the answers, why not just tell me?"

"I understand your impatience," said the elderly gentleman. "Have a drink. There is a glass of your favourite beer just beside you. The type you used to drink on Ecstasy, I believe."

Paul looked at the table by his armchair and, yes, a glass of beer was set on it. And there was no mistaking the taste when he sipped it. Paul let the beer slip down his throat and frowned at Virgil.

"Answer my questions," he demanded.

"I shall," Virgil said with a smile. "But first of all I shall explain to you what the Anomaly is. And, by virtue of that, what your universe is."

"And what is it?"

"Your universe—in fact the superset of universes of which it is a part that you call the multiverse—is a virtual world. It has been generated by an artificial intelligence from a universe beyond yours. In a sense, that is the universe I come from. When I say we generated your universe, I can't say that we created it in quite the way your culture has created virtual worlds such as, for instance, Nudeworld. Your multiverse was seeded in virtual space along with countless others."

"A virtual world? Virtual space? In computers like ours?"

"Well, not quite like yours. Your civilisation doesn't have the processing power or capability that we have. In fact, neither do the civilisations to which Beatrice and Colonel Vashti separately belong. Indeed, it's likely that the laws of physics that operate in this multiverse don't permit the level of civilisation that we've attained. But, ironically, this doesn't mean that a civilisation as primitive as yours couldn't generate other virtual universes just as advanced as ours."

Paul considered all this. Bizarre as it all seemed, there had been so many strange things that had happened to him in the last few days that he felt able to believe anything.

"So, I am and always have been nothing more than a virtual object? I'm also a kind of avatar? And the same is true of everything I've ever seen and everyone I've ever known?"

"Yes," said Virgil. "Exactly so. Both what you believe to be real and what you believe to be virtual. And, incidentally, these Apparitions that have puzzled you so much are actually what you believe to be virtual entities that have leaked out of cyberspace into what you believe to be the real universe. It is also possible, though we have no way of knowing, that our own universe is itself a virtual universe seeded from another. And so on ad infinitum. Fun, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure I agree."

"Understandably," said the gentleman as he sipped his wine. "However, even our technology isn't perfect. In the distant past when your multiverse was originally seeded, it was rather less perfect than it would have been had we applied our current level of technology. We are learning to improve the process of intelligent design you'll be pleased to know. When your multiverse was created, there were severe limits to the amount of concurrent information that could be safely processed. That isn't generally an issue, but it becomes a major problem at certain weak points in a multiverse. The Anomaly is, I'm afraid, just such a manifestation of this inherent design constraint."

"I don't understand."

"Your spacetime continuum was never expected to be one in which sentient and technologically advanced societies could very often evolve. There are others, such as the one where Vashti comes from, where the probability is much greater and for which substantially more processing power was allocated. Notwithstanding our expectations, your society's technological progress from the 18^th Century onwards was considerably more rapid than could have been predicted. However, it isn't only technological advancement that is the issue. The primary concern is the sheer volume of information that a technologically advanced society generates. Or, rather, not so much the amount of information, but the rate at which it grows."

"Very interesting," said Paul. "I still don't understand what you're getting at."

"When the rate of information growth in an undistinguished corner of an average galaxy in an unpromising universe exceeds a certain critical value, it results in a kind of systems failure. That failure manifests itself as a rip through space and time not just in your universe but in a large number of adjacent universes in the multiverse. Unless this is checked, the rip grows exponentially until the entire multiverse is torn asunder. And then there is a total systems breakdown. In practical terms, the outcome is the abrupt extinction of not only your Solar System but of every living being, biological or otherwise, in the entirety of not only your universe but in the extremely large number of universes that compose your multiverse. The number of sentient beings involved is truly astronomical. There are fewer baryonic particles in your one universe than there are sentient beings in all the spacetime continua of the multiverse. The survival of so many beings has no affect on our world, of course, any more than the death of a single individual in your Solar System has on beings in other star systems or galaxies in your universe. But we have a proprietary interest in our creations, so we will do whatever is required to ensure the survival of the greater multiverse and as much as possible of your universe."

"Are you saying that the Anomaly is a kind of rip in virtual space?"

"Yes. And one that has ripples across other virtual multiverses managed by our systems. When a ripple causes an intersection between one virtual universe and another and where the other universe is in some sense compatible with yours then it lets in objects from these other universes. It may only be for a brief moment, but such short instances spread across the vast number of possible intersections it allows an intrusion by whatever is in contact with it. Where that intersection is with a living being there is often a longer intrusion, particularly when that being is sentient."

"So this allows brief visits from other virtual universes?"

"Yes. And not only from universes of our creation, but more often from virtual universes of human creation. That is why so many of the Apparitions are fantastic objects that have been generated in virtual universes such as Nudeworld and Dragonworld. The whole process is both random and unintentional. All the same, it is your universe that is the principal origin of the problem and it is in your universe that we must apply a remedy."

"And just what sort of remedy might that be?" asked Paul with a dreadful premonition that he knew exactly what it might be.

"As you know, the Anomaly isn't a totally recent phenomenon. When it first appeared in the twenty-first century, we applied a patch that we hoped could hold indefinitely. Unfortunately, our assumption has been proven wrong. The Anomaly has re-appeared and this time we aren't able to patch the problem."

"So, what will you do this time?"

"We will have to cauterise the rip in space and time not only in this universe but in a substantial number of adjacent ones. It's the only way to prevent the rip from spinning out of control."

"Cauterise?" asked an alarmed Paul. "Do you mean: destroy?"

"Not quite. The result will be that your Solar System and those neighbouring stellar systems in a radius of about thirty light years will abruptly disappear. But there will be no observer to actually witness it. Rather it will be as if your small corner of the galaxy never existed. No one anywhere will ever suspect that it might have existed as the change we shall make will propagate through time as well as space. No one will die because no one will ever have been born."

Paul blinked in confusion. "I don't see how that can be?"

"That is because you perceive space and time in terms of three dimensions and the fourth one of time. From the perspective of the number of active dimensions in this multiverse such a cauterisation isn't a problem at all."

"Why create all these virtual universes?" Paul asked. "If you have to destroy the Solar System why did you create it in the first place?"

"The overwhelming majority of your universe and even more so of the other universes won't be affected at all," Virgil remarked. "And have we done anything wrong by seeding universes that wouldn't have existed otherwise? There are many more sentient beings than those in your Solar System who owe their lives to us. They wouldn't have existed in any sense at all if we hadn't created them. Are we to be blamed for creating the universes in which they live? What would you prefer? To have never lived at all?"

"What benefit is it to you to create all these virtual universes?"

"Because we can," said the elderly gentleman with an ironic smile as he sipped his wine. "Because we learn from doing so. We've been able to do what you humans haven't, which is to experiment on all the parameters critical to the creation of a habitable universe and observe what happens. These experiments have advanced our civilisation far more than you might imagine, so they've paid off quite handsomely."

"And why have I been spared?" wondered Paul. "Why of the hundred billion people in the Solar System have I been allowed to survive this cauterisation?"

"You aren't the only one. We've chosen an optimum number of around about a billion sentient beings from your universe and those adjacent and they've all been similarly whisked away. I am an avatar that represents a very busy machine intelligence. You've been chosen, if that is the right word, because we believe that you could cope with the realisation that you live in a virtual world. After all, you've knowingly spent a significant proportion of your adult life in virtual space, haven't you? Most often in Nudeworld, of course."

"I guess I have," Paul admitted.

"When you go back through the door through which you entered this room you will enter Nudeworld. It is an enhanced Nudeworld, to be sure, but essentially the same virtual world that you've known for so long. As you are a sentient being I must offer you the choice. This is to either perish immediately with the rest of your Solar System or to live on, for exactly as long as you wish, in the same virtual world that has been your alternative life for so many years."

"That's scarcely a choice at all," said Paul.

"In that case, I shall leave you. You may remain here for as long as you like, but there is only one exit and that is to Nudeworld. And you won't be able to return to this room ever again."

Paul turned his head to look at the door through which he'd entered, but when he looked back Virgil had vanished.

It was for several hours that Paul remained in the room surrounded by luxury armchairs with the view through a window he couldn't open of a pleasant mountain landscape. Finally, he could stay no longer. He'd mulled over Virgil's words and, in the light of the new information, pieced together in his mind answers to all the questions regarding Beatrice and Vashti that had troubled him.