The Monadic Universe, page 13
On the middle screen the ship was rushing toward a great mass of stars; toward a billion suns rushing through dust clouds, unaware of the tiny gnat from earth. Actually the ship was a ghost in normal space time and invisible. His thoughts wandered and for a moment he did not notice that the stars on the right screen were gone. A face appeared and smiled at him. A large hand pressed on the outside of the middle screen. The hand became a fist and smashed the screen and reached in from the outside to grab him. He jumped from his chair and moved back toward the door. He felt sweat running down his back underneath the green coverall he was wearing. As he watched, the hand withdrew and the screen became whole again; but the face on the right screen was laughing—the face of a woman with classical features and long brown hair. Then in a wink it too disappeared and the screens showed the view aft and side and the forward rush of the ship.
Rescher found Captain Guillaume Hoyt sitting alone in the large mess hall, drinking a bowl of soup out of the same large mug which he would later use for coffee. Hoyt was a tall man and he had to lean down to the table as he sat. He held his elbows on the table, keeping the mug close to the chiseled features of his face. Captain Hoyt was the only member of the crew with whom Rescher was not on a first name basis. Hoyt himself addressed people by their first or last names as it pleased him, it seemed. Rescher sat down opposite to him and nervously told what he had seen.
Hoyt downed the rest of his soup and put the empty mug down on the polished metal of the table. “You’re half asleep, Frank.” Then he rubbed his crew-cut dirty blond hair with the palm of his left hand.
“I’m all right,” Rescher said.
“Get something to drink, or eat. I recommend it,” Hoyt said.
“Look,” Rescher said, “we can run back the screen record up in the control section.”
Hoyt looked directly at him, seemingly more alert. “You’re not jesting, are you, Rescher?”
“No, I’m not,’’ Rescher said, trying to look his most serious.
“I suggest that we go check it,” Hoyt said. He stood up, dwarfing Rescher in his chair. Even when Rescher stood up to follow him out of the hall, the Captain was a head taller.
They went down the way between a row of fifty -tables, all chairless except for the one they had been sitting at, and stepped out into the hallway where the footlights stretched away into the vanishing point and the center of the ship. The elevator was only fifty feet down the hall. As he walked toward the open door Hoyt said over his shoulder to Rescher, “Dunn is up in the control area now.” In the elevator going up he continued: “Something might be wrong with the tie-in to normal space. I suggest we check it, then you.”
“I’m all right,” Rescher said.
“I suggest we wait. Dunn might be playing a practical joke. It wouldn’t be too hard to program any kind of visual into the screens.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Rescher said. He had raised his voice slightly to the Captain. He shut up. In the silence he knew that he had reached Hoyt enough to worry him.
II
The tie-in mechanism with normal space-time was a black box six feet long and four feet tall. It was located a deck below the control area. The room was small. The light flashed on into a harsh electric blue as the three men walked in and the door slid shut behind them. They stood in front of it for a few moments, trying to make some sense from its outward appearance. Finally Dunn walked slowly around the box and stopped on the other side. Reseller remembered the look on both Hoyt’s and Dunn’s faces as they played back the record of the tie-in visual since the start of their waking watch. Jay Dunn, the youngest of the three, had shaken his head and said, ’’Ridiculous, something’s messing our reception somewhere.”
Rescher looked at him now as he walked around the black box. Dunn scratched the back of his head, twisted his light moustache and said, ’’This thing here channels and organizes our visual contact with normal space into the screen. I wonder what could be wrong with it?”
“You’re the physicist,” Hoyt said. He seemed to be taking all of this as a personal affront.
“Yeah, I know that,” Dunn said looking up at the tall man. “I know how to fix things, which is why I
get to wake up a lot, but if this involves more theory than I can handle we’ll have to get help from the stiffs below, or I spend a lot of time in the library asking questions until I get the right answers.”
“It’s got to be here, Jay,” Rescher said. “The Captain and I both have medical degrees and we’re sure that we all saw what we saw on the screens. It’s here that something is wrong.”
“Hey,” Dunn said smiling, “you two wouldn’t be pull—” He stopped in midword, and Rescher could see by the boyish expression on Dunn’s face that he didn’t believe it.
Captain Hoyt was shaking his head, apparently unamused by Dunn’s words. Rescher saw a moment of confusion in Dunn’s face, as if the younger man feared possible failure in his assigned tasks.
“The problem is real,” Rescher said. But this seemed to make Hoyt even more impatient.
“That cable on the floor; where does it go?” Hoyt said, pointing to it.
“Into the computer in the control section,” Dunn said. “I can ask the computer some diagnostic questions to start… I guess we should get up there. But I wonder why the computer hasn’t started screaming alarm at us by now …”
Rescher looked at the black box sitting there, a mysterious mass on the floor, and felt suspicious of it. Everything the ship saw in normal space depended on it. If it failed the screens would fade to show the gray nothingness of other-space, the terrifying vastness beyond familiar reality, an infinite limbo which could swallow them all up in its endless unreality …
“Come on you two,” Hoyt said and turned to the door. It slid open for him. They went out after him.
The computer was singing a high sing-song when Rescher came into the control room behind Dunn and Hoyt. The control area was an ultra-lighted room a hundred and fifty feet square. When fully staffed it would hold twenty-five crew members. There were four oversize screens, one on each wall. The computer console was located beneath the forward screen opposite the wall where the sliding doors which gave entrance were situated. Together now, the three men sat down in three of the station posts in front of the console. Captain Hoyt crossed his long legs and put his elbows heavily on the armrests. Dunn sat forward and placed his fingers near the operations controls. Rescher sat back and took a deep breath.
Dunn began punching buttons. The computer cut short its sing-song and gave out a monotone midrange tone.
“Standard check,” Dunn said, “I’ll have it answer on audio as well as on printout.”
The monotone signal changed into a recognizable voice which shaped its words with faultless precision:
ALL UNITS OPERATIONAL
EXPECTED EFFICIENCY
NO MALFUNCTIONS
“Check tie-in with normal space-time,” Dunn said slowly.
UNIT WORKING AS DESIGNED
NO MALFUNCTIONS
“Look, Jay,” Rescher said suddenly, “ask how it works.”
“Describe how the unit functions,” Dunn said. “Use elementary terms.” He gave Rescher a questioning look, a serious looking pout, Rescher thought. Rescher looked past him to Captain Hoyt who sat clutching his elbows now and leaning toward the colored pilot lights on the panel with the usual stoic look on his Germanic face. He did not know the man at all, Rescher realized. The Captain’s inner workings seemed distant and unimaginable, even though they’ were probably fairly ordinary. Dunn could be reached regularly, by the simplest words or behavior; but Hoyt was a citadel against the whole universe.
The computer gave its answer:
THE TIE-IN IS NOT A TRUE VISUAL
CONTACT WITH NORMAL SPACE-TIME
IT IS A SIMULATION BUILT UP OUT
OF RELIABLE DATA
ALL THREE SHIPS WERE PROGRAMMED
WITH THE SAME SIMULATION A
SENSORY EXTRAPOLATION OF THE
VISUAL ROUTE TO THE TARGET AREA
IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE TO SIMULATE
CREDIBLE CONTACT WITH THE OTHER
TWO SHIPS NO OTHER CONTACT WITH
NORMAL SPACE-TIME IS POSSIBLE SEE
STANDARD FILE ENTRY FOR DETAILS OF
THIS PROGRAM AND ITS INCEPTION
Dunn said, “It was telling the exact truth when it said the unit was functioning as per design.”
“A ploy to keep us happy,” Captain Hoyt said softly.
“They left it for us to find out, if we asked the right questions,” Dunn said.
“But still,” Rescher said, “we know what I saw and none of this explains that.”
“Anyway, our black box is in fine working shape,” Dunn said with derision. He gave a hopeless sigh and sat back in his seat.
Captain Hoyt turned in his seat and said, “Anything that damned thing shows us will be approved by the computer. What do you two make of it?”
“Maybe it’s to keep us on our toes,” Rescher said.
“It is a pretty good view, after all,” Dunn said.
“I can see why they thought they had to do it,” Hoyt said. “They had to let us know gently, and still keep the goal before us. I think there’s more to this.”
Rescher knew he was right. He imagined how it would be without the view on the screens—a blank wall of gray for the stiffs to face as they woke up. On earth they had decided not to take even the slightest chance with the future of humanity—what was left of it. Keep them busy, the psychs had said, or something like it. If a few of them go poking behind the scenes, let them find out. They may not tell the rest, and again they may. They might laugh at our management, laugh and go on their own way. Get through! Survive. What more could there be to this?
Next to him Dunn leaned forward suddenly, punched a tab and asked, “Give more details, search the library.”
THE SIMULATION IS A GOOD LIKENESS
OF THE WAY TO THE TARGET AREA
PROBABILITY IS NEAR NINETY PER CENT
THAT THE MODEL AND THE REALITY
RESEMBLE EACH OTHER A DIFFERENCE
WHICH MAKES LITTLE DIFFERENCE CAN
IN THIS CASE BE IGNORED
“Can the simulator be turned off?” Dunn asked.
YES
IT IS NOT ADVISABLE IN TERMS OF
ASSUMPTIONS OF DESIGN THE MAIN
UNIT CAN BE DISCONNECTED FROM
THIS COMPUTER BY DIRECT ORDER
OR BY DETACHING THE CONNECTING
CABLE
“What—what will we see on the screens?” Reseller noticed the nervousness in Dunn’s voice. Hoyt shifted in his seat.
NOTHING
AN INDETERMINATE PLENUM
AN UNDEFINED CONTINUUM
“What is our presence in this plenum? Do we have any effect?”
The computer took thirty seconds to answer. Captain Hoyt cracked his knuckles and shifted in his seat again.
WE CREATE SPACE SEMI SPACE
WITH THE SHIP’S PRESENCE
MORE FACTS CAN BE DEDUCED
IN TERMS OF EARTH DERIVED
DATA CONCERNING SPATIAL
CONCEPTS
“I don’t know what else I can ask,” Dunn said looking at Rescher and then at Hoyt.
“There would be no point in turning it off,” Hoyt said. “It is all we have. A rough progress map, but the only one.”
“We can never know just how real the simulation is,” Rescher said. “We have to take the computer’s word for it, and they could easily have programmed it to say what we need to hear.”
“We will leave it on,” the Captain said as he stood up to his full height. “Let’s see if we get any more freak sights on the screens. Rescher, you go up to the library consoles and look up the standard file on this whole thing which the computer mentioned. There may be much more to this. Come back with what you find. Dunn, finish your regular rounds. Gentlemen, I was the first one up this decade and I’m going to get some regular sleep.”
“I’ll do it now,” Rescher said.
Jay Dunn left the control section. Hoyt sat down again at his computer station and looked at Rescher. “Frank,” he said smiling, “maybe the whole universe is some kind of shadow play run by some kind of extra-cosmic black box?” The Captain didn’t look right to Rescher. How long has he been awake, a year, five years? Does he take his long-sleep regularly? The lines in his face were deep. Doesn’t he want to get where we’re all going? Rescher thought.
“That would be mind boggling, Captain.” Hoyt didn’t answer, but sat back in his chair, seeming very tired; and as Rescher looked at him, he felt his own suspicions, shapeless as they still were, reinforced.
III
“Whoever you are, listening to this now—I must tell you that we had to keep what I’m going to tell you from you so that you would make the attempt, at least, to leave the solar system. You might not have left otherwise.’’ The old man on the screen in the library cubicle spoke very deliberately, with a voice which seemed too forceful for his old frame. “I hope only one person is listening to this, three at most. If you are one listening to this, then try to understand, son, that you must tell the others carefully, perhaps not at all. You know now that the visual tie-in with normal space is a kind of sham. But there is something more important.”
Suddenly Rescher hated the old man on the screen. He hated him and all the planners who had made it so easy for him and all the sleepers to toss their lives into a gray nothingness, tricked by the promise of seeing the promised land on the screens throughout the journey. His palms became sweaty as he gripped the armrests of the chair.
”… a problem you will have to face concerning the nature of hyper-space,” the old man was saying. The skin on his face appeared to be almost transparent. Rescher could tell he was in pain, as the insides of his body slowly fell apart, functioned less and less well within the field of the system-wide anomaly. Rescher felt dread at the thought of further words from the figure on the screen.
“No ship has ever shifted into hyper-space and come back out without acquiring a deadly kind of energy-potential, which caused the ship to be torn apart upon re-entering the normal continuum. The unfortunate thing about all this is that we suspect that the solar anomaly which now isolates the solar system from the rest of the galaxy was triggered by our experiments with hyper-spatial drives. And, as it turned out afterward, the only way to leave the solar system after the onset of the anomaly Was through hyper-space. We had to make you leave this way, or humanity would not survive at all. So we set up a program by which you would discover all the problems for yourself—and hopefully the solutions. Exactly how you have been led to listen to me I will never know. These are terrible things I’m saying, I know, but there was no other way that we could believe in. Everything we know is in your computer banks. Use it, add to your data if possible, and begin your computer analysis—begin from as many starting points as suggest themselves to you.’’
The screen faded, leaving Rescher with his fears. He knew that the old man was probably dead—no, surely dead. He tried to visualize how it must have been on earth during those last days, when reality itself was falling apart, and all the commonplace ways of nature no longer held. Normal metabolic functions could no longer be trusted; the simplest foods would very often kill. World-wide famine. And at night the sky was filled with streaks, smudged stars, and strange lights—the signs of rival forces struggling for dominion over the earth. During the days millions of eyes watched the heavens, but this time it was no mere eclipse, but the sight of a dull red sun, enormously flattened at both poles and dotted with sunspots, another sign of the cancerous wrinkling of space-time which would soon obliterate them all. The vision still managed to stagger Rescher’s imagination: the completely unpredictable unknown had swallowed the entire solar system. Like a frog swallowing a fly.
In the mess hall Captain Hoyt stared into his food as he ate. Dunn sipped a drink. Rescher buttered a piece of synthetic bread slowly. Hoyt and Dunn had been stunned after he had told them the situation. The ship might be the only reality they would ever know.
“I’m scared out of my wits,” Jay Dunn said. “I wish you two would talk a little.”
“We’ve got to start some kind of work on this exit from hyper-space problem. Maybe we can solve it before it comes time to come out into normal space?”
“There are two other ships … out there somewhere,” Dunn said, “and they probably know what we know by now. Maybe … we’ll not be the ship which gets through?”
“Shut up, both of you,” Hoyt said without looking up. “I’ll have no panic on my ship.”
Dunn turned to him and said, “I only meant to—”
Hoyt suddenly threw his knife and fork into his plate and stood up, pushing his chair back noisily.
“Everybody relax,” Rescher said. “Please sit down, Captain.”
“Look,” Dunn said, eager to inject a hopeful note into the scene, “the whole mess revolves around what we know and don’t know about hyper-space and the ship’s drive. For example, how the hell does it know exactly where to go in hyper-space?” Rescher looked up at Hoyt, who seemed to be looking down at them as if in mockery. Then the tall man sat down, seemingly calmer, and resumed eating.
“I’m going to get some answers, good answers,” Dunn said, “because we have to have them.” Rescher thought he detected a note of hysteria in the young man’s words, but he knew that they would all have to convince themselves, each in his own way, of some kind of hope. He was certain that Jay was thinking off the top of his head. What he was saying seemed hopelessly vague, and probably all wrong. “Go on,” Hoyt said, calm now.
