Multireal (58 page)

Natch stood before a massive workbench in the middle of the atrium,
watching the spectacle of the MultiReal code unfolding in MindSpace.
Most of the Thasselian devotees had been ordered to the hotel's upper
floors as a precondition for Natch to even open up the program. Only Brone and Pierre Loget remained. They sat together on the highest of
the crescent platforms, legs dangling fearlessly off the edge.

"And now you're ready to proceed?" said Brone, somewhat amused.
His voice was remarkably clear considering the distance.

"Maybe," scowled Natch. "Tell me what I'm doing."

"Let's call it a proof of concept," replied the bodhisattva. "A theory
I've been working on, which Pierre here has helped me fine-tune."

"What kind of theory? What are you talking about?"

"Indulge me."

Natch grumbled and nearly threw down his bio/logic programming bars. "Okay. So let's get on with it already."

The bodhisattva nodded. "This beacon"-Natch heard the mental
blip of an incoming message-"will take you to a little subroutine
Pierre and I put together. I'm sorry it's not more elegant, but without
access to the MultiReal code we had to do a lot of guesswork."

The entrepreneur followed the beacon and called up Brone's subroutine in a barren quadrant of MindSpace. It resembled an
exoskeleton of sorts, a threadbare coat into which the enormity of the
MultiReal castle might slip. There were remarkably few strands to the
code. It looked more like an upgrade patch than a typical subroutine.
"What does it do?"

"That's what the demonstration's for," snapped Brone, irascible.
"Come now. I've done what you asked. I sent all the other devotees
away. Pierre and I are sitting way up here on this ridiculous platform
so we can't meddle. And we'll happily sit here for the rest of the day
while you examine every strand of our little add-on. But whatever
you're going to do, please go ahead and do it. It's cold up here, and my
Frankenstein arm is starting to freeze up."

Loget seemed to find this funny. He chuckled, then lay back on the
platform and stared at the ceiling. By the rhythmic tapping of his feet,
Natch got the impression he was listening to something slow and mesmerizing on the Jamm.

The entrepreneur stared at the subroutine for a good ten minutes,
trying to get some inkling of what he was about to do. Finally, he
withdrew a pair of bio/logic programming bars from their holsters on
the side of the workbench and got started. Brone exhaled loudly in
relief.

After all the scheming and maneuvering and running Natch had
been doing for the past six weeks, it was a tremendous relief to finally
get back to MindSpace programming. MindSpace was a comfortable
and familiar place where he could simply slide into a groove without
devoting too much of his depleted energy to it. The metal bars felt like
extensions of his own arms.

It took the better part of the afternoon to attach Brone's spare scaffolding to Margaret's MultiReal fortress. Many of the connectors Brone
and Loget had provided were in the right place, but there were still a
lot of adjustments to make. Natch was puzzled to discover that most
of the fibers in the scaffolding were actually redundant, as if the Thasselians had attempted to re-create functions that, unknown to them,
had already been built into the original.

After completing the basic connections, Natch spent another hour
focusing on security. He knew the shapes of most of the common code
leeching and diluting routines; the scaffolding didn't contain any of
them. But after all Natch had been through, he wasn't about to leave
anything to chance. He double-checked. He triple-checked.

The Thasselians took Natch's paranoia with surprisingly good
humor. At one point, Natch overheard them discussing favorite novels,
with Loget choosing Bandelo's Mystical Requiem and Brone favoring
Melville's prehistoric Moby-Dick. They each dozed for part of the afternoon as well. How the rest of Brone's flunkies were occupying their
time upstairs, Natch couldn't imagine.

"All right," he said finally in a stentorian voice to get their attention. "I'm done."

Brone slowly found his feet and brushed himself off, while Loget cut his connection to the Jamm. The bodhisattva made a hand gesture,
causing the crescent platform to lower itself until it was only about
two meters off the ground. Then he burrowed his good hand into his
pants pocket, fumbled around for a moment, and finally emerged with
a handful of gleaming metal disks. Coins. You could find them by the
shovelful in just about any collectors' market on Earth.

Brone pinched a coin between his fingers and held it aloft. "Okay,
Natch," he said. "I want you to activate MultiReal."

Natch did so on tenterhooks, waiting for some malicious side effect
to rush over him. He felt only the normal insanity, the normal electric
charge of a mind on MultiReal. His exhaustion was quickly forgotten.

Pierre Loget peered over Brone's shoulder in keen expectation.

"Now catch this," said Brone. He threw the coin across the room.

Flash.

The MultiReal engine, throbbing, whirling, analyzing trajectories,
computing atmospheric conditions, preparing eventualities. Natch,
watching the possibilities unfurl on an infinite grid, zipping through
would-be's and could-be's while the coin hung suspended in midair, a
tiny moon for a dwarf planet. Narrowing-sorting-selecting-

Flash.

Natch launched himself across the atrium, following the track that
MultiReal had laid out in his mind. He stretched his hand out and
grasped the small circlet easily. The coin had the faint image of a squat
and many-pillared building on one side, while the other side had been
buffed smooth by the ages.

Pierre Loget clapped the bodhisattva of Creed Thassel on the back.
His face bore a mighty grin, as did Brone's. "I don't get it," said Natch,
stuffing the coin in his pocket. "Nothing's changed. That's how it
always works."

Brone nodded. "Precisely. Which is good, Natch. That means our
little add-on hasn't affected the program's basic functionality."

"So-"

"So when does it get interesting?" said Brone. He held up two
coins this time, one in each hand, and deposited the rest back in his
pocket. "Right about now, I'd say. This time, I want you to activate
MultiReal-and catch both coins for me."

Natch scratched his head. "But-"

"Do it!" cried Loget, stomping the platform for dramatic effect.
Just at that instant, Brone tossed the coins in opposite directions.

Flash.

Even frozen in the midst of a choice cycle with time moving at a
glacial pace, Natch could see that there was no possible way he could
accomplish such a task. The coins were headed for opposite sides of the
room. Catching either one of the coins was doable, but even a great
athlete with months to practice would find catching both outside the
realm of possibility. Doubly so for someone of Natch's average
physique.

Why, then, was MultiReal not generating an empty set? Why was
it, in fact, churning out possibilities by the thousands?

Choosing-

Flash.

Natch leapt in the air toward the left side of the atrium. He made
an acrobatic hop over a chair that someone had left standing in his
path, reached, snagged the coin, and landed gracefully on both feet.

Choosing-

Flash.

Natch leapt in the air toward the right side of the atrium. He built
up a head of steam, slipped agilely past the workbench and the satchel
of programming bars, then caught the coin a split second before it hit
the ground.

Flash.

A haze of vertigo swept through the entrepreneur as he stopped,
caught his balance, and realized that somehow he had achieved the
impossible. He was standing in two places at once. He had run to the left; he had run to the right. He had caught both coins, and both
objects sat squarely in the palms of his hands. The fabric of the universe felt like it might rip open at any moment, unleashing rabid
Demons of the Aether. The world wobbled, tilted, collapsed.

Flash.

Natch heard the clink-clink-clink of a coin striking marble. He
shook his head violently, then looked up and realized he had only
caught one of the two objects after all. It took him a few seconds to
figure out that he had, in fact, executed the second choice, and was now
standing on the right side of the atrium clutching a well-weathered
euro. Natch wondered if he had failed at his task until he heard the
sound of Brone and Loget's exultant laughter. The two were clapping
each other on the back, leaping up and down in triumph.

"Welcome," said Brone, "to Possibilities 2.0."

38

The stalk carrying Brone and Pierre Loget's platform slid languidly
down to the ground, giving Natch time to apply additional protections on the MindSpace bubble and shut it off. But Brone had no
designs on stealing Natch's hard-fought code, at least for the moment.
Instead he stood patiently beside the platform, eyes averted, and
waited for the entrepreneur to finish his prophylactic measures. Loget,
meanwhile, crept silently up the stairs without a word.

"Come," said Brone when the entrepreneur had dropped his
bio/logic programming bars on the workbench. "Let's explore the city
and find some coffee."

Natch nodded, still shaken by the bizarre MultiReal experience he
had just been a party to. He could use some fresh air in his lungs, even
if it was speckled with the debris of ancient conflict. The two strode
out the door.

Chicago in twilight was a surreal vision. Natch had wandered
through a few works of old-world SeeNaRee before, but they had all
failed to capture the profound emptiness of a fossilized city. Kilometer
upon kilometer of shattered concrete and rusty metal. Congealed blobs
of melted rubber serving as boundaries for makeshift roads. The ghosted
carcasses of office buildings standing mute sentry, some toppled. Books,
machine entrails, fused glass. And through it all, no sound but the distant susurration of the wind. There was no sign of life that Natch could
see; and yet, he couldn't help but feel like they were being watched.

"Let me ask you a question," said Brone, startling Natch out of his
reverie. The bodhisattva was pacing slowly down the street with hands
clasped behind him. "Why MultiReal?"

Natch snorted. "What kind of question is that?"

"I'm being completely serious. I watched that silly speech of Rey Gonerev's the other day. I've read all Ridglee's and Sor's absurd allegations: Natch doesn't care about MultiReal! He just wants money and power!"
Brone let out a morbid chuckle as he sidestepped a piece of corroded
plastic sheeting. "Ridiculous! You could have easily sold MultiReal for
more money than you could ever spend in a lifetime. So why keep it?"

Natch thought back to Jara's question all those weeks ago, when
MultiReal was nothing more than a will-o'-the-wisp hovering over the
horizon. So what is the end? Where do all those means lead to? A hundred
words jockeyed for position on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't
choose among them. He simply stared ahead and said nothing.

Brone shook his head. "Typical Natch," he said. "You've been
clawing your way up the Primo's ratings your whole life just to get an
opportunity like this, haven't you? Like we were programmed to do in
the hive. And you can't tell me why?" The habitual sneer was creeping
back onto his face, but Natch didn't mind. A disdainful Brone was
much more familiar than a welcoming one.

"Like it or not, Natch, you are the paragon of our trade," continued
his old hivemate. "Even Margaret Surina was no match for you! She
spent half a lifetime honing this technology to perfection-and then
you came along at the last possible minute and stuck your name on it.
As if you had anything to do with building Margaret's Phoenix
Project! As if you even knew what it was when you signed up for it."

On another night, Natch might have raged at his former hivemate
or sought to beat him bloody. Tonight, he was simply drained, beyond
emotion. "But you knew what it was, didn't you?" he said. "Or, at
least, your little sycophant Pierre Loget did."