Jintao Page 17

  “Father. Are you there?”

  Gradually, particles begin to flock together like trillions of tiny birds. A familiar shape begins to form. Within a few seconds, the specter stands in front of him once again—purple eyes fixed on him, unblinking.

  “Are you my father?”

  [I am.] The reply fills his head.

  “Why did you come here?”

  [The duality—a disparate harmony.]

  “What is this place?”

  [Infinite manifestation.]

  “And what have you learned?”

  [All is all. Infinite consciousness.]

  “And you? What are you?”

  [Immaterial.]

  “Your body looks different from mine in here. Why is that?”

  [Snow falls into the sea.]

  “Your body dissolved? Is that what you’re saying?”

  [Knock on the sky and listen to the light.]

  “You’re talking in riddles. Tell me what happened to you. How have you survived so long in here?”

  The face in front of him is unmoving, the voice resonates inside his head.

  [A marker in space-time.]

  “Why didn’t you return when the machine energy ended?”

  [Standing in your own shadow, you wonder why it is dark.]

  “What does that mean?”

  [Open your gift and see.]

  “What gift?”

  [Truth comes in many colors.]

  Multicolored specks begin to stream out from one side of the figure, drifting out, turning in midair, returning again to become part of the shoulder.

  “Talking with you like this . . . it’s unnatural. You speak in riddles. Makes me doubt you are real.”

  [I am.]

  “But what kind of existence is this? You’re alone here. Come back with me . . . back to our world . . . back to humanity.”

  The apparition turns away, dissolves into the mist—then appears a short distance away and looks back at Quan, beckoning to him. Then it dissolves again, reappearing a little farther away. Quan follows . . . first walking, then jogging as the figure lurches from one spot to another, picking up speed.

  Running after the figure, Quan begins to feel weightless. His feet don’t seem to strike anything hard—yet he is able to propel himself forward with each stride. The phantom is gaining speed. Quan pushes off with both legs, tilts his head back, arms and legs trailing behind him. He’s flying, propelled by he knows not what, following the apparition like a fish chasing a lure. Particles are streaming past his ears and eyes. He’s accelerating as if by will alone, being drawn by the phantom. Together they’re hurtling through the mist, particles streaking by. Everything around them is a blur . . . no way to gauge how fast they’re going. No idea how far they’ve gone.

  After a time, they begin to slow. Particles come into focus again and the air is becoming less dense. Ahead of them is a clearing where the particles end, a vast expanse of empty space, a huge cavity. They exit the boundary of seething particles. Quan looks up to see a boundary of seething particles. It curves away in all directions. Above them, glowing streams of particles flow down from a single point, cascading down an invisible curvature in drifts of sparkling gold and crimson, tracing an invisible dome. The figure next to him looks different now, like a vibrating iridescent shape made of gel, almost invisible, but still resembling his father.

  The figure floats upward and Quan ascends with him, heading toward the spot where the particles are coming from. Together, they travel through the dome’s upper boundary, rising above it. They slow to a stop. The dome is below them. Sheaths of cascading particles are pouring down the curvature, emanating from a single point on top of the dome. Around them is nothing, only blackness, blackness everywhere, darker than the darkest night. Below them, the specks continue to flow, endlessly pouring from a single point.

  [From nothing, returning to nothing.]

  “Where are we?”

  [World without end.]

  The apparition begins to move again, slowly sinking through the top of the dome. Words are filling Quan’s head as he follows, but he is awestruck and unable to concentrate on what he hears. His eyes are fixed on the source of the flow.

  From nothing? Returning to nothing? No. It must come from somewhere.

  The phantom lurches, appearing again at the far side of the dome. Quan follows. They plunge back into the dense atmosphere. The figure is just ahead, speeding through clouds of multicolored specks. There is no way to know where they are or how long they’ve traveled. At last they come to a familiar sight, the vague shapes of the laboratory. McGowen’s and von Ang’s black outlines are next to the equipment. Quan climbs onto the transfer mesh and turns to watch his father’s image slowly discorporate. Exhausted, he reclines, reviewing what he’s seen. His mind is reeling, striving to understand.

  It recycles, continually renewing itself . . . from within and from without . . . nothing created nor destroyed, only recycled . . . a world without end . . . an impossibility.

  In an instant, the particles are gone.

  Quan looked around. The hard-edges were back. The laboratory looked freshly made, crisp and new, as if everything had been washed clean.

  Von Ang broke the silence. “What did you learn?”

  Dazed, Quan struggled to recover his ability to speak. “It’s a lot to digest. So much . . . I don’t know where to begin.”

  Von Ang looked concerned. “There’s no rush. Gather your thoughts.”

  His thoughts were muddled. After a few more moments, Quan said, “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Go on.”

  “Our world and the Braneworld appear to be one enormous system. Matter springs out of nowhere . . . from nothing . . . and it returns to nothing.”

  “You saw all this?” asked von Ang. “Tell me more.”

  “I saw an endless stream of particles pouring into the Braneworld and beyond that there was nothing.”

  “How did you see beyond the Braneworld?”

  “I can’t explain it.”

  “Tell me about the tests.”

  Quan slid off of the side rail of the mesh and unbuckled the utility belt.

  “The spectrometer seemed to work. It registered several elements, although the mass calculations didn’t make sense. The other two didn’t work at all.”

  “I’ll check the buffers again,” said von Ang as he took the belt. “Any sign of the thing that looked like your father? Were you able to determine if that was him?”

  Quan’s mind struggled, wanting to talk about what he’d seen, but the words refused to form. “Same as last time, something that looked like him. It said things that made no sense. I asked about his body and got the impression it’s gone . . . dissolved somehow in that other place.”

  Von Ang looked deeply concerned. “I find that implausible. Don’t you?”

  “I know . . . it sounds bizarre. But at this point, I’m open to just about anything. The apparition, ghost, double-ganger, or whatever you want to call it . . . it seems to be acclimated to the conditions in there and it’s indifferent to the idea of having a body.”

  “Indifferent?” said von Ang, unclipping the microlite. “That doesn’t sound like your father. Is it possible, as we discussed, that what you saw was projected by an intelligent program?”

  “I don’t know; I don’t know. There’s something familiar. I feel connected to the essence of him . . . but something’s not right. I can’t explain. It’s a feeling. It’s like it’s him and it’s not him. And the things it says . . . it could definitely be a program. How long will it take to be ready for more tests?”

  “At least two days.”

  “Good. I’ll put together aTuring test to determine if the intelligence is artificial or human. Hopefully I have a definitive answer next time.”

  “The abstract answers you are getting may indicate the source isn’t human, however you must beware of the confederate effect—mistaking a human for a machine. It’s
been known to happen when the human is highly intelligent. The Turing test isn’t a very accurate predictor when it comes to highly intelligent behaviours, such as the ability to solve difficult problems using original insights. An advanced AI system is capable of that too.”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “Understanding words is not enough; you have to understand the topic as well. You should drill down into the knowledge base. Ask it to validate what it tells you.”

  Evening came and Quan was back inside the penthouse. He slid into his workstation and punched up the kaleidoscope of information he had put on his website. It still looked like a hodgepodge of visuals—animations, calculations, verses, vidi clips, tomes, and eigenvectors. In light of his latest experience, it seemed shallow. There was a deeper truth about the other world that he was now aware of and there was something buried in the experience—something that he couldn’t get a handle on logically. He had a feeling, a visceral connection with that other place that he couldn’t explain.

  An artist would know how to express it. An artist’s mind could extract the subtlety and make it real so that others could see it.

  Unfortunately, his was the mind of an engineer, more skilled at creating neat compartments and organizing facts in black and white. The gray areas were elusive. Nevertheless, he was determined to make an effort.

  He created a Sensurround simulation of what he’d seen. Not everyone had a Sosai workstation but no matter; it would work for those who did. Maybe by immersing the viewer, an underlying truth would come to the fore and hopefully someone would be able to put words to it.

  Sealy was at the doorway. “You’ve been in here a long time. Why don’t you come out and join us?”

  “I just created this,” he said, showing her the simulation.

  “What is it?” asked Sealy, hesitating to pass judgment.

  “What does it look like?”

  “It’s a room. Everything in the room zips up. Everything is sort of vacuumed up into a single point. Then it unzips. That’s what I see, but I don’t know what that means. What are you trying to convey?”

  “There’s something I learned about the other place. Matter comes from nothing and returns to nothing. But there’s something else . . . something behind it. I can feel it. I just can’t put my finger on it. I thought if I could simulate . . . I’m just trying to understand it.”

  Ning appeared at the study door. “Do you need my assistance?”

  “Assistance?” asked Quan. “With what?”

  “The duality? Disparate harmony?”

  Quan was stunned. These were the same words the apparition spoke.

  “What do you know about those things?” he asked.

  Ning stepped through the doorway, hands at her sides. Her mouth began to move so fast it became a blur, words bursting forth, overlapping as they reeled out. Quan could only catch a few key words as they flew by. “Matter . . . boundary . . . quark . . . dark flow . . . Higgs . . . reciprocal . . . duality . . . expression . . . summation . . . lepton . . . simultaneous . . . energy . . . resonant variation . . .”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” he interrupted. “Where are you getting all this from?”

  “I am the housekeeper.”

  “You were told about these things?”

  “I have access to everything in this house.”

  “What does it all mean?”

  Ning’s brows knit. Her lips became taut as she applied serious effort to the question. Sifting through stored conversations and references made by her brilliant benefactor, she struggled. Reaching into countless archives, trying to summarize all that she had heard, trying to deduce a succinct purpose; at last, she opened her eyes and said, “It is extempore. A meaning cannot be stated.”

  Quan realized that in those few seconds Ning had the ability to access volumes of information both inside the penthouse and outside, but she lacked the high-level processing necesssary to understand what it meant. Her ability to deduce was limited to her primary directives. She was, after all, only the housekeeper.

  It was conceivable that no one possessed the mental capacity to clearly state the meaning he sought—perhaps not even his father. Accepting this limitation, Quan narrowed his question. “One of the things you said was ‘resonant variation’. That was the first time I heard that phrase. Explain resonant variation.”

  “Resonant variation is a property of the quantum flux.”

  “Where did you learn that?”

  “From your father,” said Ning. “Is it not related?”

  “I know father used some sort of natural randomizer to alter the expressions of what became my gene code. I suppose he may have used the naturally occurring variation of quantum flux to randomize the gene expressions.”

  “Yes. It is how you were conceived,” said Ning.

  There was a long pause while Quan processed the meaning of it. He felt truth sink in, all the way to his core. The thing he was trying to express, the truth he sought—it was part of him. It was inside him—inside every cell of his body. To vary his genetic code, his father used a pattern found in nature’s random exchange of particles.

  “The gateway is part of me—a natural part of my instruction set.”

  Sealy’s face went pale. “Are you saying that you and this Braneworld place are related somehow?”

  “My genome has a built-in relationship to the exchange of particles. It’s explains the feeling I have . . . passing from here to there. It’s beginning to make sense,” said Quan.

  “I’m not understanding,” said Sealy. “What are you two talking about?”

  “My father’s modified genome created me and in the process he created a nexus between me and the Braneworld. And he led me to the machine. He knew I would follow the trail he left.”

  “How did he know what would happen?” said Sealy.

  “I’m not sure he did. It may have been accidental or deliberate. But I think he knew there was a potential and he wanted me to go there—to see for myself. It’s why transferring into that other dimension feels so natural to me.”

  “Maybe it’s not what you think. You told me that Wei person was also fine after he went there,” said Sealy.

  “Maybe he has a similar feeling. I don’t know. All I know is that I feel a strong affinity with that other set of dimensions.”

  23.

  Quan was alone in the study, thinking about the eerie words coming from Ning—the same words spoken to him by a ghost in the Braneworld. The fact that Ning overheard his father use those exact expressions conferred legitimacy on the specter. It must be him, or what was left of him. And it followed that his father must have transformed somehow into a being capable of living that other place. What had his father become?

  Early on Quan became aware that his genetic makeup had been modified, as were others who were modified for health reasons. Now he knew something more. The random rhythms of quantum flux were used to influence his composition. What did that make him? Was he a new species? Were there others like him?

  His wrist disk bipped. The ID showed McGowen, calling on an encrypted channel.

  Quan tapped and said, “Yes. I’m here. What is it?”

  “Two things,” said McGowen, “First of all, there’s something that you needn’t worry about, because I took care of it. Those government shoogles came back and started rummaging through your father’s laboratory and when they didn’t find what they were looking for, they threatened me. Can you believe it? I told the little buggers they could kiss my ruddy red arse.”

  “Threatened you? How?”

  “Deportation.”

  “A deportation action wouldn’t hold up. You’ve got Permanent Alien Employment status and the corporation can easily claim you are indispensable. Don’t worry. That will blow over.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “So, what’s the second thing?”

  “Right to the point. I like that. Well, sir, you’ve done five transfers now, and you said you saw somethin
g that looked like your father. What I’d like to know is . . . is it really him?”

  Quan got up from his workstation and walked across the room. He’d known McGowen a long time and trusted him. “I didn’t think so at first . . . but now I do.”

  “You said his body wasn’t real. Then what was it?”

  “It’s something else—something we don’t know about. It’s not a body in the same way we think of a body. I think it’s some other manifestation of him. Then again, nothing in there looks real.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” said McGowen, slurring his speech a little, revealing that he had had a few drinks, “it would be a blessing if you were able to see him again, but I’d be careful if I were you.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know about that other place. Where I come from there are stories about the world of the dead. They say it’s an abomination to go there. Maybe the stories are true—maybe not—probably just superstition, but I’d be careful just the same.”

  “If that’s the place we go when we die, wouldn’t there be lots of other people there?”

  Quan could hear McGowen take another sip of whatever he was drinking.

  “Hey, I’m no ben dan, ya know,” said McGowen with a laugh. “All I’m saying is that there may be more to this. I mean, what if there’s something in there masquerading as your father . . . a demon, say. They can be pretty clever, you know.”

  Quan wasn’t sure if McGowen was joking or if he actually believed in such things. Quan had read fables about the world of the dead and regarded them as fantasies. Trying to be diplomatic, he said, “I don’t know very much about that other place, but I’m fairly sure what I saw wasn’t a demon. I think I’d know the difference. It seemed benevolent, and I think the Braneworld is as safe as any other place in nature; which is probably not saying much.”

  “Mighten it be useful to have another perspective on this? Maybe it’s time for someone else to have a look. I must admit, I’m curious. I’d be willing to go, if you like.”

  There was a tinge of heartbreak hiding underneath McGowen’s husky voice. Quan sat quietly for a moment, reflecting on their conversation. He knew McGowen’s desire to protect was genuine; he was loyal through and through. At the same time, Quan suspected the suggestion wasn’t completely altruistic. McGowen was warning of the dangers in that other world but, at the same time, he was willing to go there. Then the idea became clear.