Six… at 0.0013 per cent.
Seven… at 0.000037 per cent.
Eight… at 0.0000010 per cent.
I stop feeding data into the program, and just stare at the dice landing the same way again and again, like some cheap, looping advertising hologram. Maybe the generator has malfunctioned, that’s all. Malfunctioned how, though? And why? Do I think I’ve ‘willed’ a change of circuitry that biases the thing? Am I going to crawl back to some cosy idea of telekinesis, by method unknown? I’m not even trying to influence the device; I’m just watching everything happen. Po-kwai was right: the smeared self does all the work.
I’m going to have to swallow the whole truth: I’m living through a pattern of events that will be (or has been) plucked from a few quadrillion possibilities, by the collective effort of a few quadrillion versions of me… most of whom I am about to slaughter (unless I already have).
I tick the OFF switch.
The dice keep falling: A three and a four. A two and a one. A pair of sixes. I wipe the sweat off my face; shaken, elated, giddy with success and fear.
I reach down and grip the seat of the chair; the cool, smooth metal is as solid as ever. It doesn’t take long to calm myself. I’ve come through unharmed, unchanged, haven’t I? And I have less to fear than ever; there’ll be no more mod failures, no more hallucinations. I’m in control now.
And whatever bizarre metaphysical convolutions I’m going to have to come to terms with, one simple truth remains: in the end, when I pull the plug, hit the OFF switch, collapse the wave… it still all adds up to normality.
10
In the spirit of the Canon, Lui sets the agenda for my conquest of the mod without ever suggesting that my own instincts on the matter could be anything but flawless. With his prompting, I move on to more elaborate dice tricks: cycles of two, three or four different outcomes; totals that are always prime numbers; dice that always agree. The objective odds against these conditions being met by pure chance are no more spectacular than those of my first success—and in some cases are far less stringent—but nevertheless, identifying and amplifying the eigenstates for these complex patterns seems like it ought to be more of a challenge.
Then again, perhaps the criterion in all cases is simply my belief that the outcome is correct; the state is chosen only because it contains a version of me who thinks he’s been successful… and if one of my virtual selves were to suffer a lapse of concentration and mistakenly believe that a five and a three had summed to a prime, he might end up being rewarded for his incompetence with the privilege of becoming real. (Maybe that’s already happened. Several times.
Maybe I’m slowly but steadily ‘mutating’ towards an increased capacity for inattentiveness and self-delusion. If this kind of ‘evolution’ could give Laura the brain pathways upon which Ensemble itself is based, I shouldn’t underestimate the effects it might have on me.) I could buy a pocket HV camera and start recording everything—replaying it only after collapsing—but I’m reluctant to smuggle in too much incriminating hardware. If I’m caught simply throwing dice, that could be passed off as an innocent enough amusement; I could claim that P3 was malfunctioning again, requiring some diversion to keep me sane through the early hours of the morning. I doubt that this explanation would stretch to making home movies on duty.
As the experiment proceeds, my resolve often wavers, but it never quite fails. This is what the true Ensemble requires of me; I’m certain of that. And if smearing is the antithesis of everything I stand for, everything I’ve spent my life trying to achieve—control over who I am and who I can become—then surely the perfect control that Ensemble grants me more than compensates for the risks… so long as it’s me who’s in control, however indirectly. So long as my wishes continue to hold sway when I smear.
At times, I still catch myself thinking: If I don’t know how to invoke Ensemble, who does? Which of my shortlived virtual accomplices learns the trick… and, having done so, why does he let himself die in the collapse? Why does he strengthen an eigenstate other than his own, when he could use the mod to make himself real?
But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Po-kwai’s view must be correct: my entire smeared self operates Ensemble, and there is no single version of me who possesses the skill. Whoever the collapse made real would mimic my protestations of ignorance. The knowledge must be distributed, like the knowledge in a neural net. No single neuron in my brain embodies any of my skills—so why should I expect any version of me to hold the secrets of my smeared self? And whether the smeared Nick Stavrianos rediscovers the skill anew each time he comes into being, or whether the knowledge survives the collapse, encoded in some ‘hologram’ in my brain, there are no virtual martyrs, no self-sacrificing alter egos who use the mod to give me what I want, at the cost of their own existence.
And my smeared self? He’s no martyr; he has no choice. One way or another, he must always end up collapsed.
Which is not to assume that he must always end up collapsed as me.
Just when the whole business is beginning to seem almost mundane (I want totals of seven… I get totals of seven… what could be simpler than that?), Lui hands me a wad of sealed envelopes.
‘These are lists of one hundred random outcomes. You might try making the dice produce them.’
‘You mean, read through the list as the dice are thrown?’
He shakes his head. ‘What would be the point of that? Consult the list after collecting the data—but before you collapse, of course.’
I baulk at this, instinctively—and fail, four nights running. And the truth is, I’m glad to faiclass="underline" defiantly, blasphemously, self-righteously fucking joyful—as if my failure implied some kind of reprieve for all the discredited, ‘reasonable’ explanations that I thought I’d stopped clinging to long ago. How can I make the outcomes match, when I don’t even know what they are? Of course I’m failing! It’s just not possible.
At the same time, I know full well that this task is nothing special, nothing new. It no more requires ‘clairvoyance’ than the other experiments required ‘telekinesis’. It’s just a matter of choosing the right eigenstate: of making the right present become the past.
On the fifth night, as before, I note the results in a MindTools scratchpad, then pull an envelope from my pocket at random and tear it open. After the first three matches, I’m sure that the other ninety-seven will agree, but I diligently check them one by one.
I don’t feel the least bit disoriented—or resentful—until after I’ve ticked the OFF switch and collapsed. But then, given the choice, why would I?
Lui gives me a combination padlock and suggests casually, ‘Why not open this on the first try?’
‘By throwing dice?’
‘No. On your own.’
‘Using von Neumann?’
‘No. By guessing.’
I sit in the anteroom, waiting for Po-kwai to fall asleep. I wonder what she dreams about when I borrow the mod; nothing at all, if my smeared self chooses her state correctly… but without waking her and asking her (before collapsing), on what basis does he make that choice?
Maybe versions of me do wake her and ask her.
I deprime, smear, then wait five minutes. I want to be sure that I’ll end up ‘sufficiently smeared’ to operate Ensemble—and it’s far less off-putting to go through all the waiting now, before even attempting the task, than to leave it until I’ve succeeded—and find myself confronting the fact that I have no choice: I can’t, I won’t, collapse too soon.