Greg Egan - Luminous

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I woke disoriented, unsure why. I knew I was Iying on the narrow, lumpy single bed in Room 22 of
the Hotel Fleapit; after almost a month in Shanghai, the topography of the mattress was
depressingly familiar. But there was something wrong with the way I was Iying; every muscle in my
neck and shoulders was protesting that nobody could end up in this position from natural causes,
however badly they'd slept.
And I could smell blood.
I opened my eyes. A woman I'd never seen before was kneeling over me, slicing into my left tricep
with a disposable scalpel. I was lying on my side, facing the wall, one hand and one ankle cuffed
to the head and foot of the bed.
Something cut short the surge of visceral panic before I could start stupidly thrashing about,
instinctively trying to break free. Maybe an even more ancient response-catatonia in the face of
danger-took on the adrenaline and won. Or maybe I just decided that I had no right to panic when
I'd been expecting something like this for weeks.
I spoke softly, in English. "What you're in the process of hacking out of me is a necrotrap. One
heartbeat without oxygenated blood, and the cargo gets fried."
My amateur surgeon was compact, muscular, with short black hair. Not Chinese: Indonesian, maybe.
If she was surprised that I'd woken prematurely, she didn't show it. The gene-tailored hepatocytes
I'd acquired in Hanoi could degrade almost anything from morphine to curare; it was a good thing
the local anaesthetic was beyond their reach.
Without taking her eyes off her work, she said, "Look on the table next to the bed."
I twisted my head around. She'd set up a loop of plastic tubing full of blood-mine, presumably-
circulated and aerated by a small pump. The stem of a large funnel fed into the loop, the
intersection controlled by a valve of some kind. Wires trailed from the pump to a sensor taped to
the inside of my elbow, synchronizing the artificial pulse with the real. I had no doubt that she
could tear the trap from my vein and insert it into this substitute without missing a beat.
I cleared my throat and swallowed. "Not good enough. The trap knows my blood pressure profile
exactly. A generic heartbeat won't fool it."
"You're bluffing ." But she hesitated, scalpel raised. The hand-held MRI scanner she'd used to
find the trap would have revealed its basic configuration, but few fine details of the engineering-
and nothing at all about the software.
"I'm telling you the truth." I looked her squarely in the eye, which wasn't easy given our awkward
geometry. "It's new, it's Swedish. You anchor it in a vein forty-eight hours in advance, put
yourself through a range of typical activities so it can memorize the rhythms . . . then you
inject the cargo into the trap. Simple, foolproof, effective." Blood trickled down across my chest
onto the sheet. I was suddenly very glad that I hadn't buried the thing deeper, after all.
"So how do you retrieve the cargo, yourself?"
"That would be telling."
"Then tell me now, and save yourself some trouble." She rotated the scalpel between thumb and
forefinger impatiently. My skin did a cold burn all over, nerve ends jangling, capillaries closing
down as blood dived for cover.
I said, "Trouble gives me hypertension."
She smiled down at me thinly, conceding the stalemate-then peeled off one stained surgical glove,
took out her notepad, and made a call to a medical equipment supplier. She listed some devices
which would get around the problem-a blood pressure probe, a more sophisticated pump, a suitable
computerized interface-arguing heatedly in fluent Mandarin to extract a promise of a speedy
delivery. Then she put down the notepad and placed her ungloved hand on my shoulder.
"You can relax now. We won't have long to wait."
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I squirmed, as if angrily shrugging off her hand-and succeeded in getting some blood on her skin.
She didn't say a word, but she must have realized at once how careless she'd been; she climbed off
the bed and headed for the washbasin, and I heard the water running.
Then she started retching.
I called out cheerfulIy, "Let me know when you're ready for the antidote." l
I heard her approach, and I turned to face her. She was ashen, her face contorted with nausea,
eyes and nose streaming mucus and tears.
"Tell me where it is!"
"Uncuff me, and I'll get it for you."
"No! No deals!"
"Fine. Then you'd better start looking, yourself."
She picked up the scalpel and brandished it in my face. "Screw the cargo. I'll do it!" She was
shivering like a feverish child, uselessly trying ~ to stem the flood from her nostrils with the
back of her hand. ~ I
I said coldly, "If you cut me again, you'll lose more than the cargo."
She turned away and vomited; it was thin and gray, blood-streaked. The toxin was persuading cells
in her stomach lining to commit suicide en masse.
"Uncuff me. It'll kill you. It doesn't take long."
She wiped her mouth, steeled herself, made as if to speak-then started puking again. I knew, first
hand, exactly how bad she was feeling. Keeping it down was like trying to swallow a mixture of
shit and sulphuric acid. Bringing it up was like evisceration.
I said, "In thirty seconds, you'll be too weak to help yourself-even if I told you where to look.
So if I'm not free. . ."
She produced a gun and a set of keys, uncuffed me, then stood by the foot of the bed, shaking
badly but keeping me targeted. I dresses quickly, ignoring her threats, bandaging my arm with a
miraculously clean spare sock before putting on a T-shirt and a jacket. She sagged to her knees,
still aiming the gun more or less in my direction-but her eyes were swollen half-shut brimming
with yellow fluid. I thought about trying to disarm her, but it didn't seem worth the risk.
I packed my remaining clothes, then glanced around the room as if I might have left something
behind. But everything that really mattered was in my veins; Alison had taught me that that was
the only way to travel.
I turned to the burglar. "There is no antidote. But the toxin won't kill you. You'll just wish it
would, for the next twelve hours. Goodbye."
As I headed for the door, hairs rose suddenly on the back of my neck. It occurred to me that she
might not take me at my word-and might fire a par ting shot, believing she had nothing to lose.
Turning the handle, without looking back, I said, "But if you come after me-next time, Ill kill
you."
That was a lie, but it seemed to do the trick. As I pulled the door shut behind me, I heard her
drop the gun and start vomiting again.
Halfway down the stairs, the euphoria of escape began to give way to a bleaker perspective. If one
careless bounty hunter could find me, her more methodical colleagues couldn't be far behind.
Industrial Algebra was closing in on us. If Alison didn't gain access to Luminous soon, we'd have
no choice but to destroy the map. And even that would only be buying time.
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I paid the desk clerk for the room until the next morning, stressing that my companion should not
be disturbed, and added a suitable tip to compensate for the mess the cleaners would find. The
toxin denatured in air; the bloodstains would be harmless in a matter of hours. The clerk eyed me
suspiciously, but said nothing.
Outside, it was a mild, cloudless summer morning. It was barely six o'clock, but Kongjiang Lu was
already crowded with pedestrians, cyclists buses-and a few ostentatious chauffeured limousines,
ploughing through the traffic at about ten kph. It looked like the night shift had just emerged
from the Intel factory down the road; most of the passing cyclists were wearing the orange, logo-
emblazoned overalls.
Two blocks from the hotel I stopped dead, my legs almost giving way beneath me. It wasn't just
shock-a delayed reaction, a belated acceptance of how close I'd come to being slaughtered; The
burglar's clinical violence was chilling enough-but what it implied was infinitely more
disturbing.
Industrial Algebra was paying big money, violating international law, taking serious risks with
their corporate and personal futures. The arcane abstraction of the defect was being dragged into
the world of blood and dust, boardrooms and assassins, power and pragmatism.
And the closest thing to certainty humanity had ever known was in danger of dissolving into
quicksand.
It had all started out as a joke. Argument for argument's sake. Alison and her infuriating
heresies.
"A mathematical theorem," she'd proclaimed, "only becomes true when a physical system tests it
out: when the system's behavior depends in some way on the theorem being true or false."
It was June 1994. We were sitting in a small paved courtyard, having just emerged yawning and
blinking into the winter sunlight from the final lecture in a one-semester course on the
philosophy of mathematics-a bit of-light relief from the hard grind of the real stuff. We had
fifteen minutes to kill before meeting some friends for lunch. It was a social conversation-
verging on mild flirtation-nothing more. Maybe there were demented academics lurking in dark
crypts somewhere, who held views on the nature of mathematical that they were willing to die for.
But we were twenty years old, and we knew it was all angels on the head of a pin.
I said, "Physical systems don't create mathematics. Nothing creates mathematics-it's timeless. All
of number theory would still be exactly the same, even if the universe contained nothing but a
single electron."
Alison snorted. "Yes, because even one electron, plus a space-time to put it in, needs all of
quantum mechanics and all of general relativity-and all the mathematical infrastructure they
entail. One particle floating in a quantum vacuum needs half the major results of group theory,
functional analysis, differential geometry-"
"Okay, okay! I get the point. But if that's the case . . . the events in the first picosecond
after the Big Bang would have 'constructed' every last mathematical truth required by any physical
system, all the way to the Big Crunch. Once you've got the mathematics that underpins the Theory
of Everything . . . that's it, that's all you ever need. End of story."
"But it's not. To apply the Theory of Everything to a particular system, you still need all the
mathematics for dealing with that system-which could include results far beyond the mathematics
that the TOE itself requires. I mean, fifteen billion years after the Big Bang, someone can still
come along and prove, say . . . Fermat's Last Theorem." Andrew Wiles at Princeton had recently
announced a proof of the famous conjecture, although his work was still being scrutinized by his
colleagues, and the final verdict wasn't yet in. "Physics never needed that before."
I protested, "What do you mean, 'before'? Fermat's Last Theorem never has-and never will-have
anything to do with any branch of physics."
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Alison smiled sneakily. "No branch-no. But only because the class of physical systems whose
behavior depends on it is so ludicrously specific: the brains of mathematicians who are trying to
validate the Wiles proof.
"Think about it. Once you start trying to prove a theorem, then even if the mathematics is so
'pure' that it has no relevance to any other object in the universe . . . you've just made it
relevant to yourself. You have to choose some physical process to test the theorem-whether you use
a computer, or a pen and paper . . . or just close your eyes and shuffle neurotransmitters.
There's no such thing as a proof that doesn't rely on physical events-and whether they're inside
or outside your skull doesn't make them any less real."
"Fair enough," I conceded warily. "But that doesn't mean-"
"And maybe Andrew Wiles's brain-and body, and notepaper-comprised the first physical system whose
behavior depended on the theorem being true or false. But I don't think human actions have any
special role . . . and if some swarm of quarks had done the same thing blindly, fifteen billion
years before-executed some purely random interaction that just happened to test the conjecture in
some way-then those quarks would have constructed FLT long before Wiles. We'll never know."
I opened my mouth to complain that no swarm of quarks could have tested the infinite number of
cases encompassed by the theorem-but I caught myself just in time. That was true-but it hadn't
stopped Wiles. A finite sequence of logical steps linked the axioms of number theory-which
included some simple generalities about all numbers-to Fermat's own sweeping assertion. And if a
mathematician could test those logical steps by manipulating a finite number of physical objects
for a finite amount of time-whether they were pencil marks on paper, or neurotransmitters in his
or her brain-then all kinds of physical systems could, in theory, mimic the structure of the proof
. . . with or without any awareness of what it was they were "proving."
I leant back on the bench and mimed tearing out hair. "If I wasn't a die-hard Platonist before,
you're forcing me into it! Fermat's Last Theorem didn't need to be proved by anyone-or stumbled on
by any random swarm of quarks. If it's true, it was always true. Everything implied by a given set
of axioms is logically connected to them, timelessly, eternally . . . even if the links couldn't
be traced by people-or quarks-in the lifetime of the universe."
Alison was having none of this; every mention of timeless and eternal truths brought a faint smile
to the corner of her mouth, as if I was affirming my belief in Santa Claus. She said, "So who, or
what, pushed the consequences of 'There exists an entity zero' and 'Every X has a successor et
cetera, all the way to Fermat's Last Theorem and beyond, before the universe had a chance to test
out any of it?"
I stood my ground. "What's joined by logic is just . . . joined. Nothing has to happen-
consequences don't have to be pushed' into existence by anyone, or anything. Or do you imagine
that the first events after the Big Bang, the first wild jitters of the quark-gluon-plasma,
stopped to fill in all the logical gaps? You think the quarks reasoned: well, so far we've done A
and B and C-but now we must do D, because D would be logically inconsistent with the other
mathematics we've 'invented' so far . . . even if it would take a five-hundred-thousand-page proof
to spell out the inconsistency?"
Alison thought it over. ''No. But what if event D took place, regardless? What if the mathematics
it implied was logically inconsistent with the rest-but it went ahead and happened anyway . . .
because the universe was too young to have computed the fact that there was any discrepancy?"
I must have sat and stared at her, open-mouthed, for about ten seconds. Given the orthodoxies we'd
spent the last two-and-a-half years absorbing, this was a seriously outrageous statement.
"You're claiming that . . . mathematics might be strewn with primordial defects in consistency?
Like space might be strewn with cosmic strings?"
"Exactly." She stared back at me, feigning nonchalance. "If space-time doesn't join up with itself
smoothly, everywhere . . . why should mathematical logic?"
I almost choked. "Where do I begin? What happens-now-when some physical system tries to link
theorems across the defect? If theorem D has been rendered 'true' by some over-eager quarks, what
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happens when we program a computer to disprove it? When the software goes through all the logical
steps that link A, B, and C-which the quarks have also made true-the dreaded not-D . . . does it
succeed, or doesn't it?"
Alison sidestepped the question. "Suppose they're both true: D and not-D. Sounds like the end of
mathematics, doesn't it? The whole system falls apart, instantly. From D and not-D together you
can prove anything you like: one equals zero, day equals night. But that's just the boring old-
fart Platonist view-where logic travels faster than light, and computation takes no time at all.
People live with omega-inconsistent theories, don't they?"
Omega-inconsistent number theories were non-standard versions of arithmetic, based on axioms that
"almost" contradicted each other-their saving grace being that the contradictions could only show
up in "infinitely long proofs" (which were formally disallowed, quite apart from being physically
impossible). That was perfectly respectable modern mathematics-but Alison seemed prepared to
replace "infinitely long" with just plain "long"-as if the difference hardly mattered, in
practice.
I said, "Let me get this straight. What you're talking about is taking ordinary arithmetic-no
weird counter-intuitive axioms, just the stuff every ten-year-old knows is true-and proving that
it's inconsistent, in a finite number of steps?"
She nodded blithely. "Finite, but large. So the contradiction would rarely have any physical
manifestation-it would be 'computationally distant' from everyday calculations, and everyday
physical events. I mean . . . one cosmic string, somewhere out there, doesn't destroy the
universe, does it? It does no harm to anyone."
I laughed drily. "So long as you don't get too close. So long as you don't tow it back to the
solar system and let it twitch around slicing up planets."
"Exactly."
I glanced at my watch. "Time to come down to Earth, I think. You know we're meeting Ju1Ia and
Ramesh-?"
Alison sighed theatrically. "I know, I know. And this would bore them witless, poor things-so the
subject's closed, I promise." She added wickedly, "Humanities students are so myopic."
We set off across the tranquil leafy campus. Alison kept her word, and we walked in silence;
carrying on the argument up to the last minute would have made it even harder to avoid the topic
once we were in polite company.
Half-way to the cafeteria, though, I couldn't help myself.
"If someone ever did program a computer to follow a chain of inferences across the defect . . .
what do you claim would actually happen? When the end result of all those simple, trustworthy
logical steps finally popped up on the screen-which group of primordial quarks would win the
battle? And please don't tell me that the whole computer just conveniently vanishes."
Alison smiled, tongue-in-cheek at last. "Get real, Bruno. How can you expect me to answer that,
when the mathematics needed to predict the result doesn't even exist yet? Nothing I could say
would be true or false-until someone's gone ahead and done the experiment."
I spent most of the day trying to convince myself that I wasn't being followed by some accomplice
(or rival) of the surgeon, who might have been lurking outside the hotel. There was something
disturbingly Kafka-esque about trying to lose a tail who might or might not have been real: no
particular face I could search for in the crowd, just the abstract idea of a pursuer. It was too
late to think about plastic surgery to make me look Han Chinese-Alison had raised this as a
serious suggestion, back in Vietnam-but Shanghai had over a million foreign residents, so with -
care even an Anglophone of Italian descent should have been able to vanish.
Whether or not I was up to the task was another matter.
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I tried joining the ant-trails of the tourists, following the path of least resistance from the
insane crush of the Yuyuan Bazaar (where racks bursting with ten-cent watch-PC's, mood-sensitive
contact lenses, and the latest karaoke vocal implants, sat beside bamboo cages of live ducks and
pigeons) to the one-time residence of Sun Yatsen (whose personality cult was currently undergoing
a mini-series-led revival on Star TV, advertised on ten thousand buses and ten times as many T-
shirts). From the tomb of the writer Lu Xun ("Always think and study . . . visit the general then
visit the victims, see the realities of your time with open eyes"-no prime time for him) to the
Hongkou McDonald's (where they were giving away small plastic Andy Warhol figurines, for reasons I
couldn't fathom). I mimed leisurely window-shopping between the shrines, but kept my body language
sufficiently unfriendly to deter even the loneliest Westerner from attempting to strike up a
conversation. If foreigners were unremarkable in most of the city, they were positively eye-
glazing here-even to each other-and I did my best to offer no one the slightest reason to remember
me.
Along the way I checked for messages from Alison, but there were none. I left five of my own, tiny
abstract chalk marks on bus shelters and park benches-all slightly different, but all saying the
same thing: CLOSE BRUSH, BUT SAFE NOW. MOVING ON.
By early evening, I'd done all I could to throw off my hypothetical shadow, so I headed for the
next hotel on our agreed but unwritten list. The last time we'd met face-to-face, in Hanoi, I
mocked all of Alison's elaborate preparations. Now I was beginning to wish that I'd begged her to
extend our secret language to cover extreme contingencies. . FATALLY WOUNDED. BETRAYED YOU UNDER
TORTURE. REALITY DECAYING. OTHERWISE FINE.
The hotel on Huaihai Zhonglu was a step up from the last one, but not quite classy enough to
refuse payment in cash. The desk clerk made polite small-talk, and I lied as smoothly as I could
about my plans to spend a week sight seeing before heading for Beijing. The bellperson smirked
when I tipped him too much-and I sat on my bed for five minutes afterward, wondering what
significance to read into that.
I struggled to regain a sense of proportion. Industrial Algebra could have bribed every single
hotel employee in Shanghai to be on the lookout for us-but that was a bit like saying that, in
theory, they could have duplicated our entire twelve-year search for defects, and not bothered to
pursue us at all. There was no question that they wanted what we had, badly-but what could they
actually do about it? Go to a merchant bank (or the Mafia, or a Triad) for finance? That might
have worked if the cargo had been a stray kilogram of plutonium, or a valuable gene sequence-but
only a few hundred thousand people on the planet would be capable of understanding what the defect
was, even in theory. Only a fraction of that number would believe that such a thing could really
exist . . . and even fewer would be both wealthy and immoral enough to invest in the business of
exploiting it.
The stakes appeared to be infinitely high-but that didn't make the players omnipotent.
Not yet.
I changed the dressing on my arm, from sock to handkerchief, but the incision was deeper than I'd
realized, and it was still bleeding thinly. I left the hotel-and found exactly what I needed in a
twenty-four-hour emporium just ten minutes away. Surgical grade tissue repair cream: a mixture of
collagen-based adhesive, antiseptic, and growth factors. The emporium wasn't even a
pharmaceuticals outlet-it just had aisle after aisle packed with all kinds of unrelated odds and
ends, laid out beneath the unblinking blue-white ceiling panels. Canned food, PVC plumbing
fixtures, traditional medicines, rat contraceptives, video ROMS. It was a random cornucopia, an
almost organic diversity-as if the products had all just grown on the shelves from whatever spores
the wind had happened to blow in.
I headed back to the hotel, pushing my way through the relentless crowds, half seduced and half
sickened by the odors of cooking, dazed by the endless vista of holograms and neon in a language I
barely understood. Fifteen minutes later, reeling from the noise and humidity, I realized that I
was lost.
I stopped on a street corner and tried to get my bearings. Shanghai stretched out around me, dense
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