Quarantine

the eigenstate part of the mod… Didn’t you ever wonder why it was taking me so long to make the thing work? And I don’t know if I ever “see” two flashes, even for a moment; I suspect that my two states evolve too independently for that. What happens may be a bit like the many-worlds model, on a very small scale. Effectively, there may be two almost separate versions of me—if only for a fraction of a second before I’m collapsed. But whatever goes on in the rest of my brain, the two states of the mod definitely do interact—their wave functions interfere, strengthening one eigenstate and weakening the other. If not, the whole experiment would come to nothing—it would be just a metaphysical quibble.’

I hesitate, bemused, and try to back-track through the discussion to the point where it derailed from reality. Finally, I say, ‘Are you serious about any of this? You’re not just stringing me along for a joke? Paying me back for crashing into your room? Because if that’s it, you’ve won — I concede defeat. You’ve got me to the point where I can’t tell which parts are genuine, and which parts you’re making up.’

She looks hurt. ‘I wouldn’t do that. Everything I’ve told you is the truth.’

‘It’s just… this is all beginning to sound like the kind of gibberish the quantum mystics spout—’

She shakes her head vehemently. ‘No, no—they claim there’s some non-physical element to consciousness—something independent of the brain, some ill-defined “spiritual” entity which collapses the wave function. Yesterday’s experiment proved them absolutely wrong. The parts of the brain which the mod disables don’t do anything mystical; they perform a sophisticated—but perfectly comprehensible, perfectly physical — action.

‘I know it all sounds bizarre—but the whole point is that, in fact, it’s utterly commonplace. Everyone spends their whole life collapsing the systems they interact with. That’s a very old idea; many of the pioneers of quantum mechanics believed that the observer had a crucial role to play—that a measuring device alone wasn’t enough to collapse the wave function. But it’s taken more than a century to pin down exactly where in the observer it happens.’

I still don’t know whether or not to believe a word of this—but she seems convinced, so at the very least, it’s worth understanding precisely what she believes. I put aside my scepticism, and struggle to catch up.

‘Okay… so a “measuring device” isn’t enough, you have to have an “observer”—but what constitutes an observer? People, yes… but what about computers? What about cats?’

‘Ah. Existing computers, definitely not. Collapsing the wave function is a specific physical process—not an automatic by-product of a certain degree of intelligence, or self-awareness, or whatever—and computers simply haven’t been designed to do it… although no doubt some will be, in the future.

‘As for cats… my guess would be that they do it, but I’m not exactly an expert on comparative neurophysiology, so don’t take my word for it. It may be years before anyone gets around to finding out exactly which species do and don’t. Then there’s the whole question of the evolution of the trait—and just what “evolution” meant in an uncollapsed universe. People are going to spend decades unravelling all the implications.’

I nod dumbly—and hope that she’ll shut up for a moment, while I try to unravel a few implications myself. If all of this is true, what does it tell me about Laura? Could ‘manipulating eigenstates’ let her pick locks and elude security cameras? Maybe… but how could a chance mutation, or a random congenital abnormality, grant her such elaborate skills? The mere loss of the ability to collapse the wave function, yes—random damage can easily produce deficits. But what are the odds of brain damage resulting in the kind of sophisticated powers that Po-kwai claims the mod provides? And yet, Laura must have those powers; how else could she have escaped from the Hilgemann? And how else could the mod itself provide them? I can’t believe that BDI designed the whole thing from scratch—in six months— simply by studying the normal human trait that Laura was missing.

So, which is more preposterous: BDI inventing the neural manipulation of eigenstates, in less time than most companies take to develop a new games mod… or a random event handing Laura—and BDI—the finished product on a silver platter?

Po-kwai continues, ‘It’s a pretty sobering thought, though: until one of our ancestors learnt this trick, the universe must have been a radically different place from the one we know. Everything happened simultaneously; all possibilities coexisted. The wave function never collapsed, it just kept on growing more and more complex. And I know it sounds ludicrously—grandiosely—anthro-pocentric… or geocentric… to think that life on this one planet could have made such a difference, but with so much richness, so much complexity, perhaps it was inevitable that, somewhere in the universe, a creature would evolve which undermined the whole thing, which annihilated the very diversity which had brought it into being.’

She laughs uneasily; she seems almost embarrassed—the way some people become when recounting news of a disaster or atrocity.

‘It’s not easy to come to terms with, but that’s what we are. We’re not just the universe “knowing itself”—we’re the universe decimating itself, in the very act of gaining that knowledge.’

I stare at her, disbelieving. ‘What are you saying? That the first animal on Earth with this trait… collapsed the whole universe?’

She shrugs. ‘Maybe it wasn’t on Earth, but there’s no reason why it can’t have been. Somebody had to be first. And not quite the whole universe—one casual glance at the night sky would hardly have measured everything. It would have thinned out the possibilities considerably, though—fixed the Earth and the sun, for a start: condensed them out of the mixture of all possible arrangements of matter that might have occupied the solar system. Fixed the brightest stars to within the acuity of this creature’s vision, discarding all the alternative possible configurations. Think of the constellations that might have been; the stars and the worlds that vanished forever when this ancestor of ours opened its eyes.’

I shake my head. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘I am.’

‘I don’t believe you. What evidence is there? From one little experiment with silver ions, you’re claiming that this hypothetical ancestor of humans—and possibly cats—transformed some kind of grand, glorious mixture of every possible universe that might have happened since the Big Bang… into whatever minuscule fraction of that would give this creature a single view of the night sky? Obliterating all the rest? Committing a kind of… cosmological genocide?’

‘Yes. Maybe literal genocide. Life—intelligent life—need not collapse the wave function. If there was life before us which didn’t collapse the wave, then we would have collapsed it. Which might have meant obliterating entire civilizations.’

‘And you think we’re still doing it? Collapsing things light years away? Other stars? Other galaxies? Other forms of life? “Thinning out the possibilities?” Hacking away at the universe—just by observing it?’

I laugh, suddenly remembering. ‘Or rather, we were, until—’

I stop myself mid-sentence, and close my eyes for a moment, giddy and claustrophobic. The unspoken conclusion unfolds in my brain regardless, and no mod in my skull seems able to render it harmless.

Po-kwai says softly. ‘Yeah. We were. Until The Bubble.’

8

After a morning in the ion room, confirming that the previous night’s results were no fluke, Po-kwai is given a fortnight to rest while preparations are made for the next phase of the experiment. Being confined to the building doesn’t seem to bother her; she spends most of her time reading. ‘It’s what I’d be doing anyway,’ she says. ‘And if I can forget that I don’t have any choice, the whole situation is perfect: peace and quiet—and reliable airconditioning. That’s my idea of heaven.’

The chant vanishes from my dreams. P3 functions perfectly. Karen does not return. I ask