Permutation City

order to guarantee its own internal consistency. Even with thousands of Copies in VR environments, that never happened back on Earth.'

'No -- but which is most like the real world: Elysium, or the Autoverse?' Durham laughed, without bitterness. 'We're all still patchwork Copies, most of us in private fantasy lands. Our bodies are ad hoc approximations. Our cities are indestructible wallpaper. The 'laws of physics' of all the environments in Elysium contradict each other -- and themselves -- a billion times a day. Ultimately, yes, everything runs on the TVC processors, it's all consistent with the TVC rules -- but level after level is sealed off, made invisible to the next, made irrelevant.

'On Planet Lambert, everything that happens is intimately tied to one set of physical laws, applied uniformly, everywhere. And they've had three billion years of that. We may not know what the deepest laws are, anymore, but every event the Lambertians experience is part of a coherent whole. If there's any conflict between the two versions of reality, we can't rely on our own version taking precedence.'

Maria couldn't argue for patchwork VR holding up against the deep logic of the Autoverse. She said, 'Then surely the safest thing would be to ensure that there is no conflict. Stop observing the Autoverse. Give up all plans of making contact. Isolate the two explanations. Keep them from clashing.'

Durham said flatly, 'No. We're already in conflict. Why else can't we shut them down?'

'I don't know.' Maria looked away. 'If the worst comes to the worst . . . can't we start again? Construct a new Garden-of-Eden configuration? Launch ourselves again, without the Autoverse?'

'If we have to.' He added, 'If we think we can trust the TVC universe to do everything it's programmed to do -- without altering the launch process, fouling it up . . . or even passing on the modified laws which we think we're escaping.'

Maria looked out at the City. Buildings were not collapsing, the illusion was not decaying. She said, 'If we can't trust in that, what's left?'

Durham said grimly, 'Nothing. If we don't know how this universe works anymore, we're powerless.'

She pulled her hand free. 'So what do you want to do? You think if you have access to more of the Autoverse than the data channels running out from the hub, you can make the TVC rules apply? One whole face of the pyramid shouting stop to the neighboring processors will carry more weight than the normal chain of command?'

'No. That might be worth trying. But I don't believe it will work.'

'Then . . . what?'

Durham leaned forward urgently. 'We have to win back the laws. We have to go into the Autoverse and convince the Lambertians to accept our explanation of their history -- before they have a clear alternative.

'We have to persuade them that we created them, before that's no longer the truth.'

29

Thomas sat in the garden, watching the robots tend the flowerbeds. Their silver limbs glinted in the sunshine as they reached between the dazzling white blossoms. Every movement they made was precise, economical; there was no faltering, no resting. They did what they had to, and moved on.

When they were gone, he sat and waited. The grass was soft, the sky was bright, the air was calm. He wasn't fooled. There'd been moments like this before: moments approaching tranquility. They meant nothing, heralded nothing, changed nothing. There'd always be another vision of decay, another nightmare of mutilation. And another return to Hamburg.

He scratched the smooth skin of his abdomen; the last number he'd cut had healed long ago. Since then, he'd stabbed his body in a thousand places; slit his wrists and throat, punctured his lungs, sliced open the femoral artery. Or so he believed; no evidence of the injuries remained.

The stillness of the garden began to unnerve him. There was a blankness to the scene he couldn't penetrate, as if he was staring at an incomprehensible diagram, or an abstract painting he couldn't quite parse. As he gazed across the lawn, the colors and textures flooding in on him suddenly dissociated completely into meaningless patches of light. Nothing had moved, nothing had changed -- but his power to interpret the arrangement of shades and hues had vanished; the garden had ceased to exist.

Panicking, Thomas reached blindly for the scar on his forearm. When his fingers made contact, the effect was immediate: the world around him came together again. He sat, rigid for a moment, waiting to see what would happen next, but the stretch of dark green in the corner of his eye remained a shadow cast by a fountain, the blue expanse above remained the sky.

He curled up on the grass, stroking the dead skin, crooning to himself. He believed he'd once hacked the scar right off; the new wound he'd made had healed without a trace -- but the original faint white line had reappeared in its proper place. It was the sole mark of his identity, now. His face, when he sought it in the mirrors inside the house, was unrecognizable. His name was a meaningless jumble of sounds. But whenever he began to lose his sense of himself, he only had to touch the scar to recall everything which defined him.

He closed his eyes.

He danced around the flat with Anna. She stank of alcohol, sweat and perfume. He was ready to ask her to marry him; he could feel the moment approaching, and he was almost suffocating with fear, and hope.

He said, 'God, you're beautiful.'

Order my life, I'm nothing without you: fragments of time, fragments of words, fragments of feelings. Make sense of me. Make me whole.

Anna said, 'I'm going to ask you for something I've never asked for before. I've been trying to work up the courage all day.'

'You can ask for anything.'

Let me understand you. Let me piece you together, hold you together. Let me help you to explain yourself.

She said, 'I have a friend, with a lot of cash. Almost two hundred thousand marks. He needs someone who can --'

Thomas stepped back from her, then struck her hard across the face. He felt betrayed; wounded and ridiculous. She started punching him in the chest and face; he stood there and let her do it for a while, then grabbed both her hands by the wrists.

She caught her breath. 'Let go of me.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Then let go of me.'

He didn't. He said, 'I'm not a money-laundering facility for your friends.'

She looked at him pityingly. 'Oh, what have I done? Offended your high moral principles? All I did was ask. You might have made yourself useful. Never mind. I should have known it was too much to expect.'

He pushed his face close to hers. 'Where are you going to be, in ten years' time? In prison? At the bottom of the Elbe?'

'Fuck off.'

'Where? Tell me?'

She said, 'I can think of worse fates. I could end up playing happy families with a middle-aged banker.'