‘Ego, has the computer finished the diagnostic program on the fines in this cubicle?’
‘Yes. The diagnostic has been passed. The machine is safe.’
Next to the vents in the cubicle ceiling was a full-face mask. It slid down like a periscope. David turned aside as two decades of dust hissed out. When the apparatus was producing good air, he attached it to his head, which was now locked in relation to the cubicle. The door closed automatically. Next he heard a whine from above. A warm, viscous liquid poured on his head. White droplets covered his mask, and then his vision was obscured entirely by the deluge.
The liquid evaporated to a crumbling residue, which soon lifted from his naked body as though blown by a wind from below. It formed a swirling, buffeting storm. Each microscopic mote in that mist was a ‘fine’: a smart particle not unlike a bumble bee in appearance. The uncountable billions of fines could move according to instruction and induce temperature through friction. They were a haptic cloud of edges, shapes, and objects. They created the solidity, texture and danger of physical reality.
David watched some log-file text slide across the internal screen of the mask.
‘My voice is my passport,’ he said. ‘Verify me.’ The computer heard the keyword and checked his voice against a database. Its essential components had not changed in twenty years.
The log-file text was replaced by an epic vista. As always, its beauty staggered him. The image was rendered on a screen with pixels so small his eyes could not discern them individually.
He was looking over the ocean of Onogoro. The dawnlit waves at his feet lapped against a sugar-white shore. The grains beneath his feet were virtual surfaces created at whim by the fines; but the feeling was like coming home. It conjured a sudden, painful nostalgia for glory days.
A virtual square appeared. On it was a user interface. One icon would summon The Word, the programming language that controlled the universe. He moved his virtual hand over this panel and a blue dot appeared beneath his index finger. He hesitated over ‘shut down’. A gesture would stop the program. It would send him back into the real world forthwith. He could not guess where it would send Bruce.
He touched another icon. It was a picture of his younger self. His old account.
‘Professor,’ said Ego, ‘the low-frequency transmitter has received a response from McWhirter. He seems upset.’
‘Go on.’
‘I will paraphrase. He knows about the fire that destroyed your home in Oxford this morning, and wants you to cease all activity while an emergency shaft is sunk to remove you from the laboratory.’
‘How long do I have?’
‘The estimate is one hour. McWhirter already has the equipment on site. Do you have a reply?’
‘Tell him to go fuck himself. No need to paraphrase.’
Chapter Seven
David rushed into the image of the ocean and shore, which blurred away as though he had been accelerated to the speed of sound. He flew over lakes and trees, through mountain passes never seen, across waterfalls, into grasslands and desert, over ice floes and volcanic islands. Night fell in seconds. He slowed, felt vertiginous, and landed in a tropical glade. The mimetic cloud of fines rendered the springy crunch of the undergrowth perfectly. Experience told him not to imagine his real body. He made a mental effort to place himself here, now, walking in the woods: its strange blue fronds; its dampness; its predators. Onogoro had no moon, but he could adjust the brightness using the command console. Doing so, he walked on through this alien world. Its plants were blue, not green, and typically angular. Through breaks in the canopy, he saw a snow-smudged mountain. The peak was bright with dawnlight. Was he being watched?
If a race of intelligent beings had evolved in this universe, and developed science, their physicists would discover that matter is continuous, not discrete. Their astronomers would find that their planet is the only planet, their star the only star. They would correctly place themselves at the centre of the universe. Should they build a computing machine, it would never outrun the computer that ran their universe: and what, indeed, would they hypothesize the limiting factor to be? God?
The ground inclined. Ahead, David saw a cabin that had been modelled on an Alaskan hunting lodge from a hiking magazine and, by dint of Word, conjured. It overlooked the lower forest. David turned to the vista. The valley throat opened at the east and he could see the mist of a waterfall and a double rainbow in the opening eye of sunrise.
It began to rain.
‘Quite a view,’ called a man.
Bruce Shimoda, whose rat-smothered body was lying only metres from David in the abandoned laboratory, stepped from the cabin. He wore a haphazard patchwork of fronds and looked like a survivalist. The computer had used the instructions in his DNA to forge this body anew in zeroes and ones, so he was twenty years old once more and bearded. Yet there was a greater, unplaceable difference.
David said, ‘I didn’t know about the fancy dress code.’
Bruce smiled. ‘That’s rich, coming from a giant, sparkling bogey.’
The difference: His eyes were clear and steady. Bruce Shimoda, blind in the outside world, could now see.
Bruce stirred the fireplace. His feet rested on the rump of a grizzly bear rug, a photographer’s idea of a lodge accessoire. The kitschery continued with tasselled lamps, a mahogany bar, shotguns, and mounted animal heads.
David moved towards the fire. He felt the fines mimic its temperature. He was reminded of McWhirter. ‘I’ve got about half an hour, Bruce. Can we talk?’
‘I jinxed the room. It’s encrypted.’
‘For you, maybe. McWhirter could be listening at the door to my immersion chamber.’
‘Jesus, is he still alive?’
‘And kicking, you bet.’
Bruce sighed. ‘How much do you know, David?’
‘Not much. Our mutual friend, whoever she is, told me to accept the summons to Scotland, which I did. She told me my house would go up in smoke, and it has. I know I have a job to do.’
Bruce leaned on his hand. He coughed with a scraping sound that David associated with the pneumonia cases of his junior doctoring days. When the fit passed, Bruce looked up. There were red flecks on his teeth.
‘I’m infected, mate. On Onogoro, we’ve got all kinds of animal—analogues of them, anyway—from birds and fish to viruses. I wasn’t born in this world. I have no history of exposure. My immune system hasn’t been toughed up. Vaccinated.’
‘The program I wrote should have compensated, but it was never tested.’
‘Me. The test pilot. The dog in orbit.’
David’s tired eyes dropped to the floor.
‘Dave?’ said Bruce.
‘What?’
‘I’m dying. But.’
‘But what?’
‘I haven’t seen hills and trees for forty years.’
‘Was it worth the wait?’
‘Every second.’
The estranged friends watched each other.
‘Bruce, talk to me.’
‘I’m already dead. Unplug me, I die. Shut down the computer, I die. The computer has me by the balls.’
David drifted to the edge of the room. Rain sizzled at the pane. He ran his hand along the sill. He withdrew it quickly and looked at the palm. A droplet of blood grew from the hair-line wound. He made a fist and looked again at the edges. They did not precisely align. The exposed planes were infinitely sharp.