The whole question of the timing of the collapse still unsettles me. Po-kwai has it easy; she’s given no choice. In my case, there must be eigenstates in which I choose to collapse earlier, or later, than I do in the state that’s finally made real. These attempts are inconsequential, of course; the collapse is only real if it makes itself real. That sounds uncomfortably circular, but at least it’s consistent: the entire wave collapses precisely when the chosen state includes the action which brings that about. Or rather, it’s consistent from the point of view of the version who becomes real—but what about the versions who attempt to collapse, and fail? Do they know that they’ve failed—and what that means? Or are they just mathematical abstractions who know nothing, feel nothing, experience nothing?
I take the padlock from my pocket and stare at it with increasing unease. People are notoriously bad at inventing truly random numbers; I wish I’d decided—before smearing—to ignore Lui, and use the dice. What if the combination is 9999999999? Or 0123456789? I have no doubt that it’s physically possible for me to hit the keys in any order whatsoever—but am I psychologically capable of ‘guessing’ such a ‘non-random’ sequence?
Well, I’d better be. Because if I’m not, I’m sure my smeared self—with the help of Ensemble—can find someone else who is.
I laugh that off. Change equals suicide? That’s Po-Kwai’s line, not mine. Besides, surely it’s too late for such qualms; if nothing’s real until the collapse, then surely I’ve ‘already’ collapsed. This whole experience has already been selected—and I’ve already become whoever I have to become in order to open the lock. And it doesn’t feel like much of a change to me.
But as I move my index finger towards the keypad, I suffer a sudden shift of perspective:
I’m one of at least ten billion people, sitting in at least ten billion rooms, confronting at least ten billion locks. If I guess the correct combination, I live. If not, I die. It’s as simple as that.
What makes me think that I have ‘already’ succeeded? The fact that the room looks normal? The fact that I’m experiencing anything at all? If the collapse doesn’t manufacture experience—if it merely selects it—then why should the perceptions of any one version of me be radically different from the others? Why should the state that happens to become real be the only one that seems real?
I start to put the lock down—nobody’s forcing me to go through with this—but then I think: That’s the very worst thing I can do. My smeared self is going to choose someone who opens the lock, not someone who abandons the whole experiment. If I give up, my chances of surviving are zero.
I stare at the lock, and try to psych myself out of these absurd fears. I’ve smeared before, and come through. Yes, of course I have—or I wouldn’t be here at all. That says nothing about my situation now. I shake my head. This is ludicrous. Everybody collapses. What do I think—everyday life is founded on a process of constant genocide? If I couldn’t swallow that for hypothetical aliens, why should I swallow it for human beings?
Hypothetical aliens? Who do I think made The Bubble?
So… what am I going to do? Sit here and wait for Lee to turn up and take the decision out of my hands? Or do I plan to find a way to spend the rest of my life unobserved? But even that wouldn’t save me: when the chosen version of me chooses to collapse, I’ll vanish—unless I am the chosen version… and the odds against that are worse than ten billion to one.
I don’t know what breaks the spell, but suddenly—mercifully—I’m sceptical again. Part of me muses: // quadrillions of virtual humans really are dying every second, then death is nothing to fear. It’s a purely intellectual observation, though; I don’t believe I’m going to die. I raise the lock and hit ten keys without thinking, almost without looking, then I stare at the tiny display above the keypad: 1450045409.
Too orderly? Too random?
Too late. I tug the ring.
Lui stands by the central pond in KowloonPark, throwing bread to the ducks. I think he’s seen too many bad spy movies. He doesn’t even glance my way when I’m standing right beside him.
I say, ‘There’s not much point pretending you don’t know me; I think our employer might already be aware of the fact.’ He ignores that. ‘What happened last night?’
‘Success.’
‘On the first try?’
‘Yes, on the first try. ‘ I glance down at the pond, and try to decide if I want to kill him or embrace him.
After a moment, I say, ‘It was a good idea. The padlock. It was torture—for five minutes—but I have to admit that in the end it was worth it.’ I laugh, or I try to—it doesn’t sound at all convincing. ‘I tell you, when that fucking thing sprang open, I’d never been so happy in my life. I almost died from sheer relief. And… there’s no logic to this, I know, but… nothing could have made me more confident that whatever happens now, I will come through.’
He nods solemnly. ‘Operating the mod isn’t the challenge. The challenge is learning how to think about it. You have to find a frame of mind which lets you pass through these situations, untroubled. We can’t have you succumbing to metaphysical terror in the middle of your raid on BDI.’
‘No.’ I laugh again, more successfully this time. ‘Mind you, I don’t think I’ll find many locks in BDI with such easy combinations. Ten nines, in real life? Hardly.’
Lui shakes his head. ‘Easy combinations? What does that mean? For you, they’re all easy, now.’
It takes me another week to master locks that ought to need keys. Lui shows me his calculations: the odds against a few quantum-dot transistors in a lock’s microchip spontaneously obliging me with all the right malfunctions are no worse than the odds against one hundred consecutive snake’s eyes. The fact that neither event would normally be expected to occur in the entire history of the universe (if such a time scale can be so glibly invoked, when it’s likely that nothing at all Occurred’—in the human sense—for most of that history) is beside the point. The point is, I’ve convinced myself that it can be done—and the smeared Nick Stavrianos seems to find that helpful.
Security cameras still worry me, though.
‘If I’m observed, I’m collapsed. Collapsed at random, by whoever’s watching the monitor.’
Lui says, ‘Not at random. You still have control of the eigenstate mod. And not collapsed—not if you make the probability small enough. You don’t collapse yourself when you don’t want to, do you? Even though that’s certainly a possible event. Stop thinking of your smeared self as this fragile, defenceless, precarious system which can’t survive a single glance.’
‘But one glance will destroy—’
No. Can, not will. One glance can collapse you, certainly. And dice can fall in all kinds of ways—but they don’t, if you don’t let them. Observation, in itself, doesn’t collapse the wave. You don’t become blind when you smear, do you? The collapse is a distinct process. If someone observes you, the two wave functions interact—they become a single entity. That gives the observer the power to collapse you—but it also gives you the power to manipulate the observer and prevent the collapse.’