Kyle was shaking his head. “It worked—sort of. Our Democritus did do only one calculation. The other number must have come from a parallel universe.”
“You can’t prove that,” said the dean. “Only two calculations means that only two thousand atoms were involved.”
“I know,” said Kyle. He breathed out. “Sorry, everyone. We’ll keep working on it.”
The dean frowned, presumably thinking of all the money that had already been spent. She left the room. The department head laid a hand briefly on Kyle’s slumped shoulder before he, too, left, followed by the lawyer.
Kyle looked at his grad students and shrugged. Nothing was going his way these days…
After the students went home, Kyle sat down in his chair in front of Cheetah’s console.
“I’m sorry,” said Cheetah.
“Yeah,” said Kyle. He shook his head. “It should have worked.”
“I’m confident you’ll figure out what went wrong.”
“I suppose.” He looked up at the print of “Christus Hypercubus.” “But maybe it’ll never work; researchers have been trying to accomplish this for over twenty years without success.” He dropped his gaze to the floor. “I just keep wasting my time on projects that never bear fruit.”
“Like me,” said Cheetah, without rancor.
Kyle said nothing.
“I have faith in you,” said Cheetah.
Kyle made a sound in his throat, a laugh aborted.
“What?”
“I dunno. Maybe that’s the whole problem. Maybe it’s my lack of faith.”
“You mean God is punishing you for being an atheist?”
Kyle did laugh, but it was humorless. “Not that kind of faith. I mean my faith in quantum physics.” He paused. “When I was a grad student, nothing excited me like quantum mechanics—it was mind-expanding, endlessly fascinating. But I felt sure that someday it would all click, you know—all make sense. Someday I’d really see. But I never have. Oh, I understand the equations in an abstract way, but I don’t get it, you know? Maybe I don’t even really believe it.”
“You’ve lost me,” said Cheetah.
Kyle spread his arms, trying to find a way to explain it. “I was at a party once, and this fat guy comes in, and he’s got a slice through a geode held to his forehead by a headband. I never asked about it—guy comes in with something like that, you don’t ask. But his companion, a scrawny woman, must have noticed me looking at the geode, so she comes over and says, ‘That’s Cory—he’s gifted with the third eye.’ And I’m thinking, Good Christ, let me out of here. Later, Cory comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, man, what time is it?’ And I’m thinking what good is the third eye if you don’t even know what fucking time it is?”
Cheetah was quiet for a while. “And your point would be… ?”
“My point is that maybe you do need some special insight to understand—really, deeply understand—quantum mechanics. Einstein never did, you know; he was never comfortable with it, calling it ‘spooky action at a distance.’ But some of these guys in quantum mechanics, they do get it—either that or they fake it really well. Me, I always thought I’d be one of those who’d get it, too—that it would click at some point. But it hasn’t. I never developed the third eye.”
“Maybe you should get a geode slice from the Earth Sciences Centre.”
Kyle grunted. “Maybe. I guess down deep, at some basic level, I just don’t buy quantum mechanics. I feel like a bit of a charlatan.”
“Democritus did indeed communicate with at least one other alternative reality. That seems to confirm the many-worlds interpretation.”
Kyle looked at Cheetah’s lenses. “That’s it,” he said simply. “That’s the problem. This type of quantum computing hinges on the many-worlds interpretation, but, come on, really, how plausible is that? Surely not every conceivable universe exists, but rather only the ones that have at least some likelihood of having occurred.”
“For instance?” asked Cheetah.
“Well,” said Kyle, “there’s no recorded case of anyone ever being killed by a meteor falling on them, but it could happen. So, is there a universe in which I was killed that way yesterday? Another one in which I was killed that way the day before? A third in which I was killed that way the day before that? A fourth, fifth, and sixth in which it was my brother, not me, who was killed? A seventh, eighth, and ninth in which both of us were killed on those days by meteor impacts?”
Cheetah did not hesitate. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because meteors have no volition—in every universe, precisely the same meteors hit the Earth.”
“All right,” said Kyle, “but say one crashes today in—I don’t know—say in Antarctica. Now, I’ve never been to Antarctica, and I never intend to go there, but is there some parallel universe in which I did go, and in which I happened to be killed by that meteor? And then aren’t there seven billion times as many universes, accounting for all the people alive who might instead have gone to Antarctica?”
“It does seem rather an awful lot of parallel universes, doesn’t it?” said Cheetah.
“Exactly. In which case there must be some sort of filtration process—something that distinguishes between conceivable universes and plausible ones, between those that we simply can imagine and those that have some reasonable chance of actually existing. That could explain why we only got one other factor back in the experiment.”
“I suppose you’re right and—oh.”
“What?” said Kyle.
“I see what you’re getting at.”
Kyle was surprised; he wasn’t sure he himself knew what he was getting at. “And that is?”
“The ethics of the many-worlds interpretation.”
Kyle considered. “You know, I guess you’re right. Say I find a wallet that contains an unlocked SmartCash card with a thousand dollars on it. Say the wallet also has a driver’s license in it; I’ve got the rightful owner’s name and address right there.”
Cheetah had a cross-shaped pattern of LEDs on his console. He could activate the vertical column of them or the horizontal row to simulate either nodding or shaking his head. He did his nod.
“Well,” said Kyle, “according to the many-worlds interpretation, anything that can possibly go two ways does go two ways. There’s a universe in which I return the money to the person who lost it, but there’s also a universe in which I keep it for myself. Now, if there are bound to be two universes, then why the heck shouldn’t I be the guy who keeps the money?”
“An intriguing question, and without impugning your character, such a dilemma does seem within the realm of possibility. But I suspect your moral concerns run deeper: I suspect you’re wondering about you and Rebecca. Even if in this universe you didn’t molest her, you’re wondering if there is some conceivable universe in which you did.”
Kyle slumped back in his chair. Cheetah was right. For once, the goddamned machine was right.
It was an insidious thing, the human mind. The mere accusation was enough to get it working, even against itself.
And was there such a universe? A universe where he really could creep into his own daughter’s room after midnight and do those horrible things to her?
Not here, of course. Not in this universe. But in another one—one, perhaps, where he hadn’t got tenure, where his control over life had slipped away, where he drank more than he should, where he and Heather were still fighting to keep the wolf from the door—or where they had divorced early on, or he was a widower, and his own sexuality was finding no normal outlet.