Blasphemy (21 page)

“I’m with you all the way, Gregory.”

“Take it to a hundred, Rae,” Hazelius said coolly.

“Okay.”

Dolby lunged for the keyboard, but Hazelius stepped into his way, blocking him.

“Ken,” Hazelius said rapidly, “listen to me. If the computer’s going to crash, it would have already happened. The controller software’s still running in the background. We just can’t see it. Give me ten minutes to trace this.”

“No way.”

“Five minutes, then. Please. This is not an arbitrary decision. My assistant director agrees with me. We’re in charge.”

“Nobody’s in charge of my machine but me.” Breathing hard, Dolby stared at Hazelius, stared at Mercer, then turned back, his arms at his side, fists clenched.

Without turning, Hazelius said, “Kate? We’re going to try what you and I discussed earlier: type in a question—anything. Let’s see if we can get it talking.”

“What the hell’s the point of asking it questions?” Dolby turned. “It’s a chatterbot program.”

“Maybe we can trace the output back to the source. Back to the logic bomb.”

Dolby stared at him.

“Rae,” said Hazelius, “if it outputs, you troll through the detectors looking for the signal.”

“Gotcha.” Chen jumped up from the console and went to another workstation, where she began typing.

The others stood almost paralyzed, as if in shock. Ford saw that Edelstein had finally put down his book to watch, a distant look of interest on his face.

Hazelius and Dolby continued their face-off, Hazelius blocking access to the power control board.

Greetings to you, too
, Kate typed in.

The LED screen above the console flickered, went dark. Then an answer appeared:

I am glad to be speaking to you
.

“It’s responding!” Kate cried.

“Did you get that, Rae?” Hazelius shouted.

“I did,” said Chen excitedly. “I’ve got a bead on the output stream. You were right, it
is
coming from a detector! This is it! We got it! Keep going!”

Glad to be speaking to you, too
, Kate typed. “Jeez, what should I say?”

“Ask who it is,” said Hazelius.

Who are you
? Kate typed.

For lack of a better word, I am God
.

A derisive snort from Hazelius. “Stupid-ass hackers!”

If you’re really God
, typed Kate,
then prove it
.

We don’t have much time for proofs
.

I’m thinking of a number between one and ten. What is it?

You are thinking of the transcendental number e
.

Kate took her fingers off the keyboard and sat back.

“How’s it going, Rae?” Hazelius called to Chen.

“I’m tracing it! Just keep typing!”

Kate straightened her shoulders and leaned forward to type again.

Now I’m thinking of a number between zero and one
.

Chaitin’s number: Omega
.

At this, Kate stood up abruptly and stepped back from the keyboard, her hand over her mouth.

“What is it?” Ford asked.

“Keep typing!” Chen screamed from her hunched-over position.

Kate shook her head, her face pale, hand over her mouth, backing away from the machine.

“Why the hell isn’t someone inputting!” Chen screamed.

Hazelius turned to Ford. “Wyman—you take over from Kate.”

Ford stepped forward to the keyboard.
If you’re God, then . .
. What could he ask? He quickly typed,
what’s the purpose of existence
?

I don’t know the ultimate purpose
.

“I’m getting it!” Chen shouted. “That’s it! Keep it going!”

That’s a fine thing
, Ford typed,
a god who doesn’t know the purpose of existence
.

If I knew, existence would be pointless
.

How so?

If the end of the universe were present in its beginning—if we are merely in the middle of the deterministic unfolding of a set of initial conditions—then the universe would be a pointless exercise
.

“All right,” said Dolby, in a low and menacing tone. “Your time’s up. I want Isabella back.”

“Ken, we need more time,” said Hazelius.

Dolby tried to step past Hazelius, but the physicist blocked him. “Not yet.”

“I’ve almost got it!” yelled Chen. “Give me just a minute more, for chris-sakes!”

“No!” said Dolby. “I’m powering down now!”

“The hell you are,” said Hazelius. “Damn it, Wyman, keep inputting!”

Explain
, Ford hastily typed.

If you’re at your destination, why make the journey? If you know the answer, why ask the question? That is why the future is—and must be—profoundly hidden, even from God. Otherwise, existence would have no meaning
.

That’s a metaphysical argument, not a physical argument
, Ford typed.

The physical argument is that no part of the universe can calculate things faster than the universe itself. The universe is “predicting the future” as fast as it can
.

Dolby tried to step around Hazelius, but the physicist darted to the side, still blocking him.

“Keep it outputting, I’m almost there!” Chen screamed, hunched over the keyboard, typing maniacally.

What is the universe
? Ford typed, plucking questions at random.
Who are we? What are we doing here
?

Dolby lunged forward, shoving Hazelius out of the way. Hazelius stumbled back, but he recovered quickly and flung himself on the engineer’s back, pulling him away from the console with astonishing force.

“Are you crazy?” Dolby yelled, trying to shuck him off. “You’re going to wreck my machine—!”

The two men wrestled, the diminutive physicist clinging like a monkey to the engineer’s broad back—and they fell heavily to the floor, the chair overturning with a crash.

The others were frozen with shock at the brawl. Nobody knew what to do.

“You crazy bastard—!” Dolby yelled, rolling on the floor, struggling to break free of the fiercely clinging physicist.

The logic bomb continued outputting to the Visualizer screen.

The universe is one vast, irreducible, ongoing computation, which is working toward a state that I do not and cannot know. The purpose of existence is to reach that final state. But that final state is a mystery to me, as it must be, for if I knew the answer, what would be the point of it all?

“Let me go!” Dolby cried.

“Somebody help me,” Hazelius cried. “Don’t let him touch that keyboard!”

What do you mean by computation
? Ford typed.
We’re all inside a computer
?

By computation I mean thinking. All of existence, everything that happens—a falling leaf, a wave upon the beach, the collapse of a star—it is all just me, thinking
.

“I got it!” Chen cried triumphantly. “I’ve—wait! What the hell—?”

What are you thinking
? Ford typed.

With a final wrench, Dolby broke away from Hazelius and threw himself on the console.

“No!” Hazelius screamed. “Don’t shut her down! Wait!”

Dolby sat back, breathing hard. “Power-down sequence initiated.”

The singing noise that filled the room attenuated, and the screen in front of Ford flickered, the words dissolving. He had just the briefest glimpse of some eldritch shape flurrying up and disappearing into a point in the center of the screen, and then it went dark.

Hazelius shrugged his shoulders, straightened his clothes, brushed the dust off his shoulders, and turned to Chen, his voice calm. “Rae? Did you get it?”

Chen stared back at him, her face blank.

“Rae?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I got it.”

“Well? What processor is it coming from?”

“None.”

A silence settled in the room.

“What do you mean,
none
?”

“It was coming from CZero itself.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just what I said. The output was coming directly out of the space-time hole at CZero.”

In the shocked silence, Ford looked around for Kate. He found her standing all alone and very still at the back of the Bridge. He quickly walked over to her and spoke to her in a low voice. “Kate? Are you all right?”

“It knew,” she whispered, her face white. “
It knew
.” Her hand sought his and closed around it, trembling.

EDDY EXITED HIS TRAILER, TOWEL OVER his shoulder, shaving kit in hand, and stared at the boxes of unsorted clothing that had arrived during the week. After his midnight trip up the mesa, he hadn’t been able to sleep and he’d spent most of the night online, haunting the late-night Christian chat rooms.

He gave the pump a few pulls and caught the cold water with his hand, dashing it into his face, trying to shock himself into awareness. There was a humming noise in his head from lack of sleep.

He lathered up and shaved, swished the razor blade clean in the basin, and dumped out the water into the sand. He watched as it soaked in, leaving clots of foam on the surface. It suddenly reminded him of Lorenzo’s blood. With a feeling of panic, he stamped down hard on the image. God had smote Lorenzo down—not him. It was not his fault—it was God’s will. And God never did anything without a purpose. And that purpose involved the Isabella project—and Hazelius.

Hazelius
. He found himself replaying in his mind the encounter of the day before. He flushed at the memory and his hands trembled. He kept rephrasing, again and again, what else he could have said; with each revision his speech grew longer, more eloquent, more full of righteous anger. In front of everyone, Hazelius had called him an insect, a germ—because he was a Christian. The man was an example of all that was wrong with America, a high priest in the temple of secular humanism.

Eddy’s eye wandered over to the boxes that had arrived the day before. With Lorenzo gone, he had a lot more work to do. Thursday was “clothes day,” when he distributed free clothes to the Indians. Through the Internet, Russ had worked out a deal with a half dozen churches in Arkansas and Texas to collect used clothing and ship it to him for distribution to needy families.

With his penknife, Eddy slit open the top of the first box and began sorting through the sorry pickings, pulling out a jacket here, a pair of jeans there, hanging them on racks or laying them out on plastic tables under the hay barn. He worked in the cool of the morning, sorting, racking, folding. The great form of Red Mesa rose up in the background, purple in the early light. His mind continued to orbit around Hazelius, replaying their scene. God had shown him what He would do to a blasphemer like Lorenzo. What more would He do against Hazelius?

He glanced up at the outline of the mesa rising above him, vaguely menacing, and remembered the darkness of the night before, the desolation, the emptiness. The humming and crackling of the power lines, the smell of ozone. He could
feel
the presence of Satan up there.

A telltale cloud of dust on the horizon indicated an approaching vehicle. He squinted into the rising sun, and soon a pickup materialized out of the dust, lurching and groaning along the potholed road. It came to a shuddering halt. A large Indian woman climbed out, followed by two boys. One carried a
Star Wars
gun, the other a plastic Uzi. They rushed off through the saltbush, pretending to shoot at each other. Russ followed them with his eyes, thinking of his own son growing up without him, and his internal rage increased.

“Hey, Pastor, how you doing?” asked the woman cheerfully.

“Greetings in Christ, Muriel,” said Eddy.

“What you got today?”

“Help yourself.” His eyes strayed back to the boys, who were shooting at each other from behind clumps of sagebrush.

The bell he had mounted on the outside of the trailer sounded to tell him the phone was ringing inside. He dashed in, searched for the receiver among piles of books.

“Hello?” he asked breathlessly. He almost never got calls.

“Pastor Russ Eddy?” It was Reverend Don Spates.

“Good morning, Reverend Spates. Christ be with—”

“I was wondering if you’d done any more looking around, like I asked.”

“I did, Reverend. I went back up the mesa last night. The houses and village were completely deserted. The high-tension lines, all three of them, were
humming
with power. My hair was just about standing on end.”

“Is that right?”

“Then around midnight, I heard like a vibration or a singing noise, coming from underground. It lasted about ten minutes.”

“Did you get past the security fence?”

“I . . . I didn’t dare.”

Another grunt and a long silence. Eddy could hear more pickup trucks arriving and someone calling his name. He ignored it.

“Lemme tell you my problem,” Spates said. “I’m doing my television talk show tomorrow evening at six—
Roundtable America
—and as my guest I’ve got a physicist from Liberty University. I’ve
got
to have something new on the Isabella project.”

“I understand, Reverend.”

“So like I told you the other day, you need to dig up something good. You’re my man on the scene. This suicide’s a start, but it’s not enough. We need something to scare people. What are they
really
doing out there? Is radiation leaking out, like those rumors you told me about? Are they going to blow up the earth?”

“I wouldn’t know . . . .”

“That’s the point, Russ! Get in there and
find out
. Trespass a little, bend the laws of man to serve the Law of God. I’m
counting
on you!”

“Thank you, Reverend. Thank you. I’ll do it.”

After the call, Pastor Russ stepped back out into the bright sunlight and crossed over to where half a dozen people were sorting through clothes—mostly single mothers with children. He held up his hands. “Folks? I’m sorry, but we have to shut this down. Something’s come up.”

There was a murmur of disappointment, and Eddy felt bad—he knew some of the mothers had driven a long ways to get there, despite the price of gas.