Permutation City

Peer said, “And if Durham runs your code through an optimizer which rescales all the unnecessary vectors, trims away all the inefficiencies… ?”

Carter shook his head. “I don’t believe he’d meddle with the code at all, but even if he does, optimizers can only track things so far. In the full version of the city, the results of your calculations will propagate so widely that it would take months for any program to deduce that the data’s not actually needed somewhere—that it ultimately makes no difference to the legitimate inhabitants.” He grinned. “Optimizing anything to do with Copies is a subtle business. You must have heard about the billionaire recluse who wanted to run as fast as possible—even though he never made contact with the outside world—so he fed his own code into an optimizer. After analyzing it for a year, the optimizer reported this program will produce no output, and spat out the optimized version—which did precisely nothing.”

Peer laughed, although he’d heard the joke before.

Carter said, “The fact is, the city is so complex, there’s so much going on, that even if it had all been left to chance, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some quite sophisticated secondary computations taking place, purely by accident. I haven’t gone looking for them, though—it would bum up far too much processor time. And the same applies to anyone searching for you. It’s just not a practical proposition. Why would anyone spend millions of dollars scanning for something which can do no harm?”

Peer gazed up at the blue schematic skeptically. Carter came across as if he knew what he was talking about, but a few plausible-looking graphics proved nothing.

Carter seemed to read his mind. “If you have any doubts, take a look at the software I used.” A large, fat book appeared, floating in front of Peer. “This modifies program A to surreptitiously carry out program B, given A is sufficiently more algorithmically complex than B. What that means, exactly, is in the technical appendix. Try it out, show it to your favorite expert system… verify it any way you like.”

Peer took hold of the book, squeezed it down to credit-card size, and slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans. He said, “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do everything you claim: piggyback us onto the city, hide us from searches, protect us from optimization. But… why? What do you get out of this? What you’re asking for is nothing, compared to what Durham must be paying you. So why take the risk? Or do you screw all your clients as a matter of principle?”

Carter chose to seem amused, not offended. “The practice of skimming off a percentage of a construction project has a long, honorable tradition. All the more honorable if the client’s needs aren’t seriously compromised. In this case, there’s also some elegant programming involved—worth doing for its own sake. As for the money, I’m charging you enough to cover my costs.” He exchanged a look with Kate—for Peer’s benefit, or he wouldn’t have seen it. “But in the end, I’m only making the offer as a favor. So if you think I’m going to cheat you, you’re welcome to decline.”

Peer changed tack. “What if Durham is cheating his clients? You’re only screwing them out of a few QIPS—but what if Durham doesn’t plan to run the city at all, just vanish with the money? Have you ever seen his hardware? Have you used it?”

“No. But he never claimed—to me—that he had his own hardware. The version of the story I got is that the city’s going to run on the public networks. That’s bullshit, of course; the Copies funding him wouldn’t wear that for a second—it’s just a polite way of telling me that the hardware is none of my business. And as for vanishing with the money, from what I can deduce about his cash flow, he’ll be lucky to break even on the project. Which suggests to me that someone else entirely is handling the true financial arrangements; Durham is just a front man, and the real owner of the hardware will pay him for his troubles, once the whole thing is wrapped up.”

“The owner of what? This hypothetical ‘breakthrough machine’ that nobody’s laid eyes on?”

“If he’s persuaded Sanderson and Repetto to pay him, then you can be sure he’s shown them something that he hasn’t shown me.”

Peer was about to protest, but Carter’s expression said: take it or leave it, believe what you like. I’ve done this much for my ex-lover, but the truth is, I don’t care if you’re convinced or not.

Carter excused himself. When he turned and walked away across the room, footsteps echoing in the cavernous space, Peer couldn’t believe he would have hung around for the fifteen real-time minutes it took to reach the exit. Not a busy man like that. In fact, he’d probably conducted two or three other meetings with Copies while he’d been talking to them, dropping in and out of the conversation, leaving a mask to animate his features in his absence.

Kate said, “What’s the worst that can happen? If Durham is a con man, if the city’s a hoax, what have we lost? All money can buy us is QIPS—and you’re the one who’s so sure that it doesn’t matter how slowly we run.”

Peer scowled, still staring at the exit Carter had used, surprised to find himself reluctant to drag his gaze away. The door meant nothing to him. He said, “Half the charm of this lies in stealing a free ride. Or bribing Carter to steal it for us. There’s not much… dignity in stowing away on a ship going nowhere.”

“You could choose not to care.”

“I don’t want to do that. I don’t pretend to be human, but I still have a… core personality. And I don’t want equanimity. Equanimity is death.”

“On the skyscraper—”

“On the skyscraper I rid myself of distractions. And it’s confined to that one context. When I emerge, I still have goals. I still have desires.” He turned to her, reached out and brushed her cheek with his fingers. “You could choose not to care about security. Or QIPS rates, weather control, the politics of computing—you could choose to view all the threatening noises of the outside world as so much flatulence. Then you wouldn’t need, or want, to do this at all.”

Kate left the body he was touching where it was, but took a step backward in another just like it. Peer let his hand drop to his side.

She said, “Once I’m part of this billionaires’ city, I’ll happily forget about the outside world. Once I have all that money and influence devoted to my survival.”

“Do you mean, that will be enough to satisfy you—or do you intend making a conscious decision to be satisfied?”

She smiled enigmatically—and Peer made a conscious decision to be moved by the sight. She said, “I don’t know yet. You’ll have to wait and see.”

Peer said nothing. He realized that, in spite of his doubts, he’d almost certainly follow her—and not just for the shock of creating a second version, not just for the sake of undermining his last anthropomorphic delusions. The truth was, he wanted to be with her. All of her. If he backed out and she went ahead, the knowledge that he’d passed up his one opportunity to have a version of himself accompany her would drive him mad. He wasn’t sure if this was greed or affection, jealousy or loyalty—but he knew he had to be a part of whatever she experienced in there.

It was an unsettling revelation. Peer took a snapshot of his state of mind.

Kate gestured toward the door which led to the sketch of the city.

Peer said, “Why bother with that? There’ll be plenty of time to explore the real thing.”

She looked at him oddly. “Don’t you want to satisfy your curiosity? Now—and forever, for the one who’ll stay behind?”

He thought about it, then shook his head. “One clone will see the finished city. One won’t. Both will share a past when they’d never even heard of the place. The clone outside, who never sees the city, will try to guess what it’s like. The clone inside will run other environments, and sometimes he won’t think about the city at all. When he does, sometimes he’ll mis-remember it. And sometimes he’ll dream about wildly distorted versions of what he’s seen.

“I define all those moments as part of me. So… what is there to be curious about?”

Kate said, “I love it when you go all doctrinaire on me.” She stepped forward and kissed him—then as he reached out to hold her, she slipped away into yet another body, leaving him embracing nothing but dead weight. “Now shut up and let’s go take a look.”

+ + +

Peer doubted that he’d ever know exactly why he’d died. No amount of agonized introspection, tortuous video-postcard interrogation of ex-friends, or even expert system analysis of his final scan file, had brought him any