For one thing—and this is really kind of strange—it’s looking back at him.
His desk is absolutely spartan. Not a shred of paper out of place. Not a shred of paper even in evidence, actually. The surface is as featureless as a Kubrick monolith, except for the Sun workstation positioned dead centre and a rack of CDs angled off to the left.
“I thought she looked familiar,” he says. “When I saw the papers. Didn’t know quite where to place her, though.”
Jasmine Fitzgerald’s graduate supervisor.
“I guess you’ve got a lot of students,” Thomas suggests.
“Yes.” He leans forward, begins tapping at the workstation keyboard. “I’ve yet to meet all of them, actually. One or two in Europe I correspond with exclusively over the net. I hope to meet them this summer in Berne—ah, yes. Here she is; doesn’t look anything like the media picture.”
“She doesn’t live in Europe, Dr. Russell.”
“No, right here. Did her field work at CERN, though. Damn hard getting anything done here since the supercollider fell through. Ah.”
“What?”
“She’s on leave. I remember her now. She put her thesis on hold about a year and a half ago. Illness in the family, as I recall.” Russell stares at the monitor; something he sees there seems to sink in, all at once.
“She killed her husband? She killed him?”
Thomas nods.
“My God.” Russell shakes his head. “She didn’t seem the type. She always seemed so—well, so cheery.”
“She still does, sometimes.”
“My God,” he repeats. “And how can I help you?”
“She’s suffering from some very elaborate delusions. She couches them in a lot of technical terminology I don’t understand. I mean, for all I know she could actually be making sense—no, no. Scratch that. She can’t be, but I don’t have the background to really understand her, well, claims.”
“What sort of claims?”
“For one thing, she keeps talking about bringing her husband back from the dead.”
“I see.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“Should I be? You said she was delusional.”
Thomas takes a deep breath. “Dr. Russell, I’ve been doing some reading the past couple of days. Popular cosmology, quantum mechanics for beginners, that sort of thing.”
Russell smiles indulgently. “I suppose it’s never too late to start.”
“I get the impression that a lot of the stuff that happens down at the subatomic level almost has quasi-religious overtones. Spontaneous appearance of matter, simultaneous existence in different states. Almost spiritual.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true. After a fashion.”
“Are cosmologists a religious lot, by and large?”
“Not really.” Russell drums fingers on his monolith. “The field’s so strange that we don’t really need religious experience on top of it. Some of the eastern religions make claims that sound vaguely quantum-mechanical, but the similarities are pretty superficial.”
“Nothing more, well, Christian? Nothing that would lead someone to believe in a single omniscient God who raises the dead?”
“God no. Oh, except for that Tipler fellow.” Russell leans forward. “Why? Jasmine Fitzgerald hasn’t become a Christian, has she?” Murder is one thing, his tone suggests, but this…
“I don’t think so,” Thomas reassures him. “Not unless Christianity’s broadened its tenets to embrace human sacrifice.”
“Yes. Quite.” Russell leans back again, apparently satisfied.
“Who’s Tipler?” Thomas asks.
“Mmmm?” Russell blinks, momentarily distracted. “Oh, yes. Frank Tipler. Cosmologist from Tulane, claimed to have a testable mathematical proof of the existence of God. And the afterlife too, if I recall. Raised a bit of a stir a few years back.”
“I take it you weren’t impressed.”
“Actually, I didn’t follow it very closely. Theology’s not that interesting to me. I mean, if physics proves that there is or there isn’t a god that’s fine, but that’s not really the point of the exercise, is it?”
“I couldn’t say. Seems to me it’d be a hell of a spin-off, though.”
Russell smiles.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got the reference?” Thomas suggests.
“Of course. Just a moment.” Russell feeds a CD to the workstation and massages the keyboard. The Sun purrs. “Yes, here it is: The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead. 1994, Frank J. Tipler. I can print you out the complete citation if you want.”
“Please. So what was his proof?”
The professor displays something akin to a very small smile.
“In thirty words or less,” Thomas adds. “For idiots.”
“Well,” Russell says, “basically, he argued that some billions of years hence, life will incorporate itself into a massive quantum-effect computing device to avoid extinction when the universe collapses.”
“I thought the universe wasn’t going to collapse,” Thomas interjects. “I thought they proved it was just going to keep expanding…”
“That was last year,” Russell says shortly. “May I continue?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Thank you. As I was saying, Tipler claimed that billions of years hence, life will incorporate itself into a massive quantum-effect computing device to avoid extinction when the universe collapses. An integral part of this process involves the exact reproduction of everything that ever happened in the universe up to that point, right down to the quantum level, as well as all possible variations of those events.”
Beside the desk, Russell’s printer extrudes a paper tongue. He pulls it free and hands it over.
“So God’s a supercomputer at the end of time? And we’ll all be resurrected in the mother of all simulation models?”
“Well—” Russell wavers. The caricature seems to cause him physical pain. “I suppose so,” he finishes, reluctantly. “In thirty words or less, as you say.”
“Wow.” Suddenly Fitzgerald’s ravings sound downright pedestrian. “But if he’s right—”
“The consensus is he’s not,” Russell interjects hastily.
“But if. If the model’s an exact reproduction, how could you tell the difference between real life and afterlife? I mean, what would be the point?”
“Well, the point is avoiding ultimate extinction, supposedly. As to how you’d tell the difference…” Russell shakes his head. “Actually, I never finished the book. As I said, theology doesn’t interest me all that much."
Thomas shakes his head. “I can’t believe it.”
“Not many could,” Russell says. Then, almost apologetically, he adds: “Tipler’s theoretical proofs were quite extensive, though, as I recall.”
“I bet. Whatever happened to him?”
Russell shrugs. “What happens to anyone who’s stupid enough to come up with a new way of looking at the world? They tore into him like sharks at a feeding frenzy. I don’t know where he ended up.”
What’s wrong with this picture?
Nothing. Everything. Suddenly awake, Myles Thomas stares around a darkened studio and tries to convince himself that nothing has changed.
Nothing has changed. The faint sounds of late-night traffic sound the same as ever. Gray parallelograms stretch across wall and ceiling, a faint luminous shadow of his bedroom window cast by some distant streetlight. Natalie’s still gone from the left side of his bed, her departure so far removed by now that he doesn’t even have to remind himself of it.