The Machinery of Light

“Claire’s no student.” Sinclair points toward her. “Look at that face. Look at those eyes. Enough to make even Carson lose his way—”

“God damn you,” says the Operative.

“That would be tough,” says Sinclair.

“You’ve been playing us the whole time,” says Sarmax. “You needed us to make it in here.”

“Another of these funny words,” says Sinclair. “Need’s right up there with why. There was a pattern involving all of us. And all I’ve been doing these past few days is—”

“Steer,” says the Operative.

Sinclair smiles. “Quantum decoherence necessitates the splitting-off of world-lines. Every time anyone makes a choice—every time a particle goes down one of two paths—the universe divides anew. Every time. All the other interpretations of quantum mechanics were just desperate attempts to explain away the problem by those who couldn’t accept the idea they weren’t the center of some single existence. Meaning the real question is how to exploit existence’s true nature. Once Deutsch refined Feynman’s quantum computer concept to postulate a machine that computes across multiple universes—that contains more calculations than any one universe—the road ahead was clear.”

“Clear as mud,” says Sarmax. “This is about a lot more than just a rogue quantum comp—”

“Of course.” Sinclair moves over to where Sarmax is looking up at him. He looks down at Indigo—”

“We can bring her back, you know,” he says quietly.

Bullshit,” whispers Sarmax. But he feels hope rise within him even so—”

“Or the next best thing,” says Sinclair. “Plucked from another world with almost the same memories. Albeit perhaps a slightly different set of loyalties. But she’d be as real to you as—”

“But what about the other Sarmax?” asks Lynx.

“What?” says Sarmax.

“Your evil twin,” says Lynx. “Some poor fuck who would just end up missing her as much as you ever did —”

“Shut up,” says Sarmax.

“To be sure,” says Sinclair. “The tyranny of randomness—some of you live with her, some of you live without. We’re all just specks caught in the blast of fate—”

“Except for you,” says Carson.

“The advantage of the first-mover.” Sinclair laughs at his own joke, but no one else seems to be in the mood. “Once someone is able to tune his mind into other realities, he’s no longer confined to a single universe. That’s when the game gets interesting.”

“He breaks out into the multiverse,” says Lynx.

Sinclair gazes at him. “And there you go thinking too small again.”

What the hell do you mean?”

“I’m sure Carson can fill you in.”

“Think about it, Lynx.” The Operative wonders if Sinclair is testing him—wonders if he might actually survive this. “This isn’t about any one multiverse. Each one is myriad parallel worlds but—”

“Not even parallel,” says Sarmax faintly. His voice drifts among them, sounds almost hollow. “More like intertwined. Interfering with each other constantly. The whole idea of ‘universe’ is an absurdity, because they’re all—”

“Connected,” says the Operative. “And if you roll them back to the Big Bang that kicked them all off, all you find is that we’re on just one branch of something much larger. Something that—”

“So what’s outside these walls right now?” asks Linehan.

“Nothing,” says Sarmax.

“Or everything,” the Operative shrugs. “Same difference in the end. The walls of the Room constitute a barrier on space-time—an envelope sustained by the aetheric fluid of those culled in the slaughter that’s going on outside—and then harnessed by the generator-membranes and channeled through the primary node itself—”

“Haskell,” mutters Sarmax.

“Wait a second,” says Lynx, “you’re saying this really comes down to human sacrifice? To the burning up of souls—”

“That’s a loaded word,” says Sarmax.

“So strip it of its baggage,” says the Operative. “Sanskrit calls it prana. The Taoists know it as chi. It’s the aura that Kirlian photography captures. The life force within each of us. Absurd that science for so long thought it absurd—”

“A totally surface understanding,” says Sinclair. “We’re harnessing the consciousness of all that cattle. The assimilation of their quantum viewpoint to augment our own, allowing us to manipulate the cosmos—handing us the reins of aggregated decoherence to shape reality the way no individual observer-effect ever could. The conveying of mere psychic energy to the Room’s engines is just one source for the turbines cranking up around us—”

“In another age they’d have called you a magician,” says Sarmax.

“A black one,” says Linehan. “He wields the dark arts—”

Sinclair laughs. “You just don’t get it, do you? Science and magic are merely different sides of the same coin. Newton worked on his Principia by day, his alchemy by night—struggling against more than a thousand years of superstition while he did so. Never underestimate the impact that religion had on science—how much it deadened it, made it crave orthodoxy, gave it such a narrow view of all that’s possible even among those who thought they’d escaped faith’s baggage. The greatest tragedy in history was the triumph of monotheism—of ideologies that claimed a monopoly on magics while they engaged in mass hypnosis to prop up texts written in the fucking Bronze Age. Someone had to restore sanity before—”

“But God exists,” says Linehan. “He’s real.”

“Have you spoken with Him?”

“I’ve felt Him—”

“Real trick’s getting an answer,” says Haskell.

Her voice is coming from all around—from every screen that’s hung about the inner Room. The face of Claire Haskell sits on all of them. Each one’s saying the same thing.

“Nice to see you again, Matthew.”

Linehan’s already clocked it—Haskell’s body’s still contained within that pod. Sinclair isn’t even bothering to look. Presumably he’s already taken it all in. He’s just gazing at one of those Haskells on one of those screens— smiling as he does so—

“So glad you could join us, Claire.”

“But you weren’t counting on it, were you?”

“Such assumptions don’t—”

“Your future-sensing ended when you got to the Room.”

Sinclair says nothing. And suddenly Haskell’s voice sounds in Carson’s head—

get ready to move fast

The Operative shakes his head violently as though to clear it—can’t seem to establish any kind of return communication. He has no idea what the hell she’s planning—no idea if it’s even her anymore. Maybe Sinclair doesn’t either. Because Haskell’s voice has taken on what might almost be a certain wary confidence—

“I’m right, aren’t I? You knew exactly what would happen up until the point you stepped within. But you can’t postulate the condition of a structure cut off from all space. Nor could you anticipate what course your creation would take when cut off from all time, a bubble universe adrift amidst the sea of—”

“But there you go again,” says Sinclair. “With your assumptions. A luxury the trapped can’t afford.”