Accidental Gods (19 page)

Chapter 31

Week 8: Friday

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Most people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know better? What do we know about the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the universe come from, and where it is going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come to an end? Recent breakthroughs in physics, made possible in part by fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to some of these longstanding questions. Someday these answers may seem as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun—or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Only time (whatever that may be) will tell.

—Stephen Hawking, the opening of
A Brief History of Time

It was another Friday afternoon, and this time, Thomas had grabbed a few folks and corralled them into Bohrs II, named in honor of their first conference room at UT, to chat. Unlike the original Bohrs, Bohrs II was a perfectly rectangular room with matching chairs and lights that didn’t hum.

Everyone had been working too hard recently, and he missed the camaraderie and the philosophical debates from the earlier days. He hoped he could get something like that going again. Everyone was rummaging through the beers, trying to get their brand—which was still mostly Pacifico.

Ajay was still opening his bottle when he turned to Lisa and asked, “Do you remember that conversation we had when we were just getting started on this?”

I knew I could count on him,
Thomas thought.

“Which one?”

“The one where we talked about what was outside the universe and what was there when the big bang occurred?”

“Yes, where we concluded we could work around those issues. Besides, there was nothing to really go on to figure it out. Back to your edge problem,” she said with a smile.

“Yes, well…” He paused. “It has given me the creeps recently.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have been far more successful on this project than I think any of us expected. We have a thriving, intelligent race that we created—not just by accident. We created them by nudging a reality to lay the groundwork for their development. Our model of the big bang appears to be dead-on. It all works.”

“I don’t see what creeps you out about that,” Lisa said.

Stephen asked, “Is it the intelligent beings?”

Ajay said, “Not really.”

“Do you think they are intelligent?” Stephen pushed, turning the conversation in a different direction.

“They seem to be,” Ajay said.

“Do you think they’re alive?”

“Well, do you mean that in a technical sense?”

“No, I’m asking what you believe.”

“Oh, then,” Ajay said emphatically, “
yes
, I think they are alive. I think the SU is as real as our universe. It has to be, since it obeys the same laws.”

“So, as a physicist, you say that since it adheres to a set of natural laws that are similar to, if not exactly the same as, our own, that it is equivalent to our universe?”

“Yes.”

“What the hell!” Lisa blurted out. “Are you kidding?”

Ajay shook his head. “No.”

“It’s a simulation, for crying out loud.”

“Well,” Ajay retorted, “I haven’t spent much time in it, but if it has the same sets of rules as our universe and it follows them—both of which are true—then it is as real as our own universe. How can you not see that?”

“It’s a simulation!” Lisa said again, almost in the “I know you are but what am I” tone.

Stephen said to Lisa, “I know you haven’t spent as much time in the SU as some of us have, and actually, I would have agreed with you a few weeks ago. But…now I would say they’re alive. I see it every day, not through all the people, mind you. Rather, I came to see it through one: this girl, Nefirti. We’ve watched as she’s grown. She’s happy some days, most days, really, but sometimes she gets pouty or angry. It’s amazing. There is no way she can’t be alive.”

Lisa looked at him like he was crazy.

Mike suggested to Lisa, “Monday, come with us when we visit her. You’ll see what Stephen’s talking about.”

“Fine,” Lisa finally agreed. Everyone was looking at her.

Stephen asked, “Thomas, what about you?”

Thomas cringed inside. He had hoped to avoid getting sucked into this conversation.

“I’m undecided,” he said.

Lisa added gleefully, “Looks like you’re coming Monday, too.”

“Sounds fun. I haven’t been spending enough time in the SU recently, anyway. I’m looking forward to the updated tour!”

Stephen said, “Now that we have that resolved, what was creeping you out, Ajay?”

“Well, it is not so much what is happening in our simulated universe that creeps me out…”

“What then?”

“We did all this to learn about the beginnings of our universe—and it has delivered, in spades. We now have a much deeper understanding of the big bang, evolution, everything. We can examine it at any point in time in nearly infinite detail…”

Lisa asked, “And?”

“No one has talked about what this means about what is outside the universe.”

She squinted at him.

“Well,” Ajay said, “don’t you think that if we can create all this, that it is remotely possible…even highly likely…that our own universe is the same thing?”

Lisa gave a halfhearted chuckle.

Ajay continued, “…that some intelligent race created something similar to our simulated universe experiment and that we are part of it?”

Her face flushed red. “That is a little disturbing.”

Stephen nodded knowingly at Mike. “Like ghosts watching ghosts.”

Ajay ignored Stephen and said to Lisa, “Yeah, so what was there before the big bang, and what is there now outside the expanding edge of our universe? Just empty computer memory?”

She chewed on her lips and then said, “I suppose it’s possible.”

“So let me propose a thought experiment for you.”

She nodded slightly.

“Suppose that our simulated universe’s beings…I still can’t bring myself to call them people—”

“They are people!” Stephen said.

“Look,” Ajay said to Stephen, “it doesn’t matter for this.” Then Ajay turned back to Lisa. “Lisa, just suspend your skepticism for a moment. Clearly, they can evolve on their own, regardless of how ‘real’ you…” He glanced at Stephen again. “…or anyone thinks they are or are not.” He turned back to Lisa. “Suppose these beings advance to the point we are at now. This doesn’t seem unlikely. They are moving forward at a reasonable pace technologically.”

“Fine,” Lisa said. “I’ll accept your premise. So we’re imagining that they’re equal to us technologically.”

“Yes. So they decide to do the same experiment that we are doing.”

“OK.”

“And they succeed. They now have a simulated universe, with self-aware, intelligent beings populating it…” He paused. “Like ours.”

She chewed her lips again, still slightly nodding. Thomas wondered where Ajay was going with this.

“Hang on, though,” Ajay said.

He walked up to the white board and drew a big cube on it and then another slightly smaller one inside it, and another inside it.

He turned back to her and dropped his conclusion like a hammer. “So imagine their world does the same thing, and so on, ad infinitum.”

She was nodding, but seemed to be in intellectual shock. Her mouth hung open now; her eyes didn’t blink.

The rest of the room was silent.

Ajay said, “So now we have an infinitely deep sequence of nested universes. Each created by an intelligent civilization that is roughly its creators’ technological equal.” He tapped the board. “But the real trick is that it is infinitely deep.”

“I almost dread what you’re about to say,” she said.

“It is almost infinitesimally unlikely that we are at the top of that infinitely deep set of nested universes, which means we’re just another box in the chain—”

Stephen added, “Not to mention arrogant.”

“What? Arrogant?”

“Yeah. It would be arrogant to think we’re at the top of the nested universes.”

Lisa frowned. “This is all kind of depressing.”

“Yes,” Ajay said, “I know. That is why it’s creeping me out.”

“Well, there goes your Nobel Prize, since there isn’t one in philosophy.”

“You know what has me creeped out the most?”

“What?”

“This solves all the open problems in physics. It explains why all the constants are what they are, why the big bang happened the way it did.”

Stephen asked, “Because everyone keeps doing the experiment the same way because that’s what they know?”

“Yep.”

Lisa said, “Well, I’ll give you this, Ajay, it does seem to answer a lot of questions. But not in a way people are going to like.”

***

Stephen had been spending almost all of his time in the office—barely even leaving to sleep, which he largely justified as necessary to continue the development of Coliseum and to work on the language processing. While he did get a lot done on those things during the quiet weekend hours, he mostly came to spend more time with Nefirti.

SU-N11 Time: 495 PC [+13,508,915,713 Years]

He walked all over the house and couldn’t find her. He could use Coliseum to find her, but he wouldn’t. Somehow, that felt like an invasion of her privacy, one he was unwilling to make—it was strange, given the situation, but a rule he had imposed on himself nonetheless.

Finally, he walked out back, where he stopped, his eyes drawn to the pyramids. He always took a moment to take them in and not just because they were spectacular; they were a hallmark of the fact that an intelligent civilization thrived here.

As his eyes drifted toward the river, he saw her, sitting at the end of the small pier, her feet dangling over the edge, tapping the surface of the water.

He walked down the pier and sat next to her. He started to put his arm around her shoulders and then felt silly for trying.

He turned to face her and realized she was crying. He suddenly felt hurt, too, as if something had been torn in half inside his chest, and he felt tears well up within him. He couldn’t stand to see her hurt like that, and he wished more than ever that he could touch her, could wipe the tears from her cheeks.

As they sat quietly on the end of the pier, watching the Alpha star drift across the sky, he remembered seeing her out here other times.

“This must be her special place,” he said to himself quietly, “where she goes to sort things out, find herself—to be alone.”

That last word gave him a twinge of guilt, as if he were somehow violating her most private moment by being here. But then he realized that the SU had become that same thing for him. He came here to escape, to think, to be alone—but he never truly felt alone here, with her.

Chapter 32

Week 9: Monday

I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation—the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.

—Aldous Huxley

The next day, Thomas and Lisa showed up as promised. Ajay showed up, too, probably more to harass Lisa than because he cared about seeing the tour.

Mike and Stephen were waiting for them in Rendering Room 1, the largest.

SU-N11 Time: 496 PC [+13,508,915,714 Years]

“Let’s go live,” Stephen said and took them into the city.

He positioned them high above the city, so everyone could get an aerial view before zooming in further. He was pretty sure Lisa and Ajay had not spent any time in the city. He wasn’t sure about Thomas. But he figured it would be a nice way to give them an overview.

“On the east side of the river, there is only limited development. You can see the five completed pyramids—the sixth is nearing completion. You can see how the workers are still building there, but on the eastern side? The part of the pyramid visible to the city is complete.”

Mike added, “We think they do this to conceal from the city how long it will be before completion.”

“Interesting,” Ajay said. “Wouldn’t expect that in a simulation.”

Lisa glared at him.

“On the west side of the river, you can see the city anchored to the north by the pharaoh’s palace.”

“Pharaoh?” Thomas asked.

“Yes,” Mike answered. “We decided to use that notation rather than king or emperor because he shares many of the characteristics that were typical of pharaohs—most significantly, the fact that he appears to be viewed as a living god. We also went with Egyptian nomenclature in many cases because the civilization seems to most closely resemble them. Technologically, they’re pretty close to the Egyptian culture between three thousand and two thousand BC—early Bronze Age.”

“Makes sense.”

“South of the pharaoh’s palace is the city. You can get a good feel for the activity from up here. There are several active markets. Farther south and west, you can see a patchwork of farmland. They’ve got reasonably developed irrigation systems, which is actually a departure from the Egyptians. The Nile has a substantial floodplain, so irrigation wasn’t as common—it was more common in the Tigris-Euphrates area that is now Iraq.”

“Mike likes to play historian,” Stephen commented. “Don’t get him going on how tall the pyramids are here versus in our world.”

Mike smiled. “It’s fascinating stuff.”

“So let’s head down and meet Nefirti,” Stephen said as he guided them gliding down toward the row of houses on the river.

They landed in the courtyard that Mike and Stephen knew so well. Ajay and Lisa studied the tile mosaic on the floor. Stephen and Mike shared a conspiratorial grin.

Ajay let out a small yelp and jumped when the large cat walked out from the shadows in the corner of the room.

“What the hell is that doing here?”

“Don’t worry,” Stephen said with obvious affection for the cat, “that’s just Muu Muu.”

Mike added, “Yeah, they’ve domesticated large cats instead of dogs and smaller cats.”

Lisa studied the cat, which, almost as if he knew he was being watched, fully extended the claws on one of his paws and diligently cleaned them. Then Nefirti bounded through the outer door and into the courtyard from the street, mother in tow.

She skipped to a halt in the courtyard when she saw Muu Muu and roughly scratched the cat between his ears. In thanks, the cat gave her hand a big lick and then returned to bathing himself. The mother stopped, too, holding a bundle in one hand. She tussled Nefirti’s hair with the other, looking down at her daughter and their cat and smiling. She took Nefirti’s hand and led her into the house. Muu Muu swished his tail across the tiles a few times before following them.

The team followed them in.

Lisa looked uneasy as they entered the house, but whether from walking through the wall or from the invasion of privacy, it wasn’t clear.

“We do it all the time,” Stephen said. “You get used to it.”

She nodded and then after a brief hesitation said, “So you just go into people’s houses whenever you feel like it?”

“Yep. We felt a little weird about it at first, but now it’s no big deal. We just look away or go somewhere else if they’re doing something especially private.”

They watched for twenty minutes as the family went about its daily business. A servant briefly entered and left.

“Can we fast-forward?” Lisa asked.

“No,” Stephen said. “We’re on the time horizon of the SU.”

“Ah, I didn’t know we were at the horizon,” she said and then mumbled almost to herself, “You can rewind. Skipping back through lives…” While her voice faded, her mind added, “How different our world might be if we could rewind our lives. Especially if we could see the perspectives of others around us.”

“Yep,” Stephen said. “We can go back as far as we want.”

“Doesn’t this get boring, though?” Lisa asked.

“We don’t do this every day,” Mike jumped in. “Usually, we just check in for a bit and see what’s interesting, skip back to the last time point where we watched, and then start moving forward looking for specific things.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” Mike continued, “we’ve mostly been looking for conversations that might reveal new words. We’ve gotten a lot of the language figured out, but there are still weird gaps.”

“Oh.”

Mike said, “We haven’t quite gotten the written language cracked yet, but we are very close.”

Stephen asked, “So what do you think now?”

Lisa said, “It is hard to refute. The mother seems to love the daughter and the cat. They all seem so natural. And some of the activity is so mundane, it makes it hard to imagine that it’s not real.” She paused. “It’s almost like looking through a window into the past of our own world.”

Everyone seemed to expect a witty “I told you so” from Ajay, but it never came.

Mike noticed that Thomas’s expression had seemed to change while they had been in here. He wondered if maybe Thomas had been even more of a skeptic than Lisa. Mike thought that anyone who spent time in here would see that it was real.

After a few more moments of silence, Lisa said, “OK. OK, she is
so
cute. I see why you guys love her like a daughter.”

Right after Lisa finished speaking, Nefirti bounded across the room to Muu Muu, lost her footing, and landed in the large cat’s soft fur. Muu Muu seemed content to break her fall.

The room filled with laughter.