Entoverse

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

If JEVEX was indeed what the evidence seemed to indicate, it meant that the Jevlenese war industries were merely what the architects of the Federation had been doing on the surface of Uttan. Inside, they had hollowed out the entire planet and installed an expanded version of JEVEX as a single, monolithic, supercomputing matrix, servicing the Jevlenese world-system via communications though i-space. The intention had doubtless been to acquire, eventually, a system of their own capable of rivaling or even surpassing VISAR; but to keep the project secret, they had concentrated it all in one place instead of spreading it out across hundreds of worlds in the way VISAR was spread. The equipment actually functioning on Jevlen was merely part of the remote interface system into it.

In this way, the unique conditions had been created which allowed the matrix universe to come into being. Hunt christened it the “Entoverse,” or “universe inside,” as opposed to the familiar “Exoverse.” The choice pointed to the obvious term “Ents” for its inhabitants, which was duly adopted, the Tolkienesque connotation being considered doubly appropriate.

All of which was very attractive and exciting, and could give scientists new ideas to amuse themselves with for years. But, as Danchekker pointed out, it was all still nothing but speculation. A Phantasmagoria of software-originated delusions could not be ruled out simply because of Nixie’s convictions, and a planet-size JEVEX contained in Uttan was just as capable of creating them as a distributed JEVEX was. In other words, until somebody actually went to Uttan and looked, they were no nearer to knowing if an Entoverse actually existed.

But if JEVEX was concentrated on Uttan, then Eubeleus’s motive was obviously to gain control of it; and whatever his plans were after that, they spelled no good. Hence there was a justification for taking the whole thing to JPC and the Thuriens. Such an approach would entail Garuth’s going direct to Calazar. Since the team was only talking conjecture at this stage, to insure that Garuth’s case would be as convincing as possible they devoted an all-night session to going over the questions that the Thuriens might come up with and seeing what other known peculiarities of Phantasmagoria the Entoverse theory could be made to account for.

The pattern-switching algorithm that Hunt had postulated for moving clusters of activated cells-solid objects, in the Ent world of perception-provided a possible explanation for a range of mystifying phenomena. Shilohin, in reviewing early Thurien processing methods, discovered that it had been common practice for the leading edge of a pattern that was being shifted through the matrix to activate before the trailing edge was switched off. Thus there would be a slight overlap of the two images, causing the pattern to be fractionally longer in the direction of motion than when it was at rest. Moreover, the degree of elongation would increase with the propagation speed. That one fact would account for the absence in the Entoverse of the invariances of dimension with motion-and because of the effects attributed to the planetary rotation that VISAR had inferred, with time and with spatial orientation, too-that gave the Exoverse the regularity and consistency that made possible the organized body of knowledge called science, the construction of machines, and the technologies that sprang from using them.

What about the apparent ability of solid objects in the Entoverse to penetrate one another on occasions? It was not difficult to see how that might happen if one of the “quantum numbers” defining an activated cell was some kind of priority indicator. Two objects meeting would, in effect, be competing to possess the same cells. If, as was usually the case, they were composed of equal-priority elements, they would simply bounce apart. But if one happened to be designated higher-priority, it would “borrow” the volume previously belonging to the other object for as long as their parts coincided, returning it to its previous condition upon separation. Similar causes could be found for such other phenomena as the differing “affinities” of some materials for others, the inconsistencies of cause and effect that made prediction in the Entoverse a risky business, and the sudden discontinuities that appeared as cataclysms and catastrophes.

And when the scientists got down to talking more about it, the apparent miracle-workings of some of the Ents began to sound less farfetched. The Ents were composed at the elementary level of information-processing quanta, after all, and it did not seem so strange that they should be able to influence things around them by what they would perceive as thought. Possibly, for example, they were able to change the activity levels of the constituent cells in an object, and thereby modulate its response to “gravity,” or endow it with some other radiated force. That would also go a long way toward explaining the ayatollahs’ unshakable faith in the validity of magic. In their world, “magical” effects were commonplace. It might also have had something to do with their uncanny aptitude for interacting directly with the inner processing functions of a Thurien computer, too.

“You know, I’m getting a feeling that a lot of what we dismiss as myth back on Earth wasn’t mythical at all,” Gina said to Hunt at one point when they broke for coffee. “The war with the Titans, the menagerie around Mount Olympus, gods throwing mountains down out of the sky and swallowing up cities… those things really happened. Except it was in a different place. The agents they sent to Earth included Ents, and the things the Ents talked about from their own past got mixed up with the real history going on around them.”

A little later Hunt remarked, “Erwin Schrodinger thought that the reason our macroscopic world is so much bigger than the quantum scale is because the orderliness that we need to make sense of things could only evolve at a level where quantum fluctuations are swamped out. So, order emerged from underlying uncertainty. But if this Entoverse business turns out to be right, it means that a universe of macroscopic unpredictability evolved out of the mathematically precise operations of computation. Ironic, that, when you think about it, isn’t it?”

In the same kind of way that the ubiquitous photon fluid carried energy and information through the Exoverse, the sub fabric of the Entoverse consisted of vast, dynamically transforming pattern streams of data. The datastreams were injected from the outside and, as they were processed through the cellular ocean of the matrix, flowed and converged toward output zones where they were extracted back to the external Exoverse.

That immediately suggested a parallel to mass-energy being sucked into black holes in the familiar universe. Duncan speculated that the purple spiral that Nixie described in the sky was an accretion vortex forming at one of the data outlets. In that case, were the Entoverse’s “stars” the inlets? If so, it would presumably have become a lot darker for the inhabitants in the time since the Ganymeans withdrew JEVEX. Interestingly, MacArthur, a recently emerged ayatollah, had raved on at one point about the gods putting the stars out.

Nixie had described certain “families” of stars that oscillated about and through the brightest member of the group on a one-year cycle. From the approximate positions and seasons that she gave, ZORAC generated visual simulations which with some trial and error matched her recollections closely. The results were compatible with a model in which the “star” that Phantasmagoria orbited existed as one data-inlet point of many arranged in a regular cubical lattice throughout the matrix. Stars belonging to the same row in the grid would appear to come together and separate again as the planet passed through a point in line with them. Such an arrangement of inlets and outlets would have been efficient for distributing the workload evenly through the processing volume.

That left one final mystery that the team felt should have at least a tentative explanation before they approached Calazar: How could the Ents have become aware that an Exoverse existed, and have managed to escape into it? Surprisingly, it was Danchekker who proposed an answer, after talking at length with Nixie. They presented their conclusions to Hunt, Garuth, and Shilohin in Garuth’s office at lunchtime the next day, when they reconvened after snatching a few hours of sleep in the morning.

Danchekker addressed the group standing, adopting his characteristic lecturer pose, his hands loosely clasping the lapels of his jacket. Garuth listened from behind his desk, while Shilohin sat across from him in a chair pushed to one side. Nixie was perched on another chair, swiveled around to face the room from a panel of screens taking up part of one wall. Hunt, arms folded, leaned with his back against the door. One of the last things Caldwell had said was that about the only thing left for Hunt to bring back this time would be a universe. Hunt had replied jokingly that it was a pretty tall order.

“The Ents evolved as natural creatures of their world, which had come into being inside a high-density, high-throughput, pattern-processing, computing matrix,” Danchekker said. He was speaking as if the hypothesis were fact, in effect rehearsing the team in its supporting role to Garuth, who intended going to Calazar immediately. “In the process, they developed an ability to read and interpret the flows of information passing through their world, in a similar way to that in which creatures of our world learned to read energy flows-photon streams. Now, a primary function of the matrix within which this took place was the handling of huge volumes of neural input-output traffic. In other words, those information streams flowed into and out of the Jevlenese minds coupled into the system. The streams carried coded representations of sensory impressions, concepts, and perceptions derived from the world outside. Some of the more gifted Ents learned to ‘tune in,’ as it were, to those currents-to adjust their own mental processes to a sympathetic mode which enabled them to extract information which they found to be intelligible.”

“We saw them as visions,” Nixie put in. “Now I know that they were scenes from this universe outside. But at the time they were unlike anything anyone had ever dreamed of.”

Hunt and Duncan Watt had in fact discussed such a possibility themselves. Ironically, the main reason why Hunt had not taken it further before was that he had been unable to see a sure way to convince Danchekker!

“Of course,” Danchekker said. Then he continued. “Lacking in any scientific tradition or knowledge of the Exoverse, they had no terms to describe the things they experienced. They could interpret them only as visions from a higher realm, or world beyond, and so forth.” He swung himself from side to side to take in his imaginary class. “Now, there is no reason to suppose that the relative strengths of the various natural forces in the Entoverse were comparable to the ratios that we happen to know. In particular, the domination of gravity at the macroscopic level, which gives our world much of its physical character and establishes the primacy of the role played by mass and weight, seems not to have been so pronounced. To say exactly why, we shall have to wait until we know more about the actual physics. But from Nixie and VISAR, I get the feeling that surface effects may have played a greater part.”

“Because of the smaller scale of things?” Garuth hazarded.

Danchekker released one lapel to show a hand briefly. “We can’t really say. There are no grounds at the moment for postulating that the counterparts of electrical charge, coulomb attraction, and hence molecular adhesion were anything like the quantities we know.”

Hunt listened, intrigued. This was a side to it that he hadn’t gotten around to pursuing.

Danchekker went on. “As I see it, these underlying ‘currents’ that pervaded everything could manifest themselves as entities with real, physical attributes in a way that has no counterpart in our world. Through mental interaction, their effects could be harnessed, focused, directed, and transformed into forces.”

“What you call magic,” Nixie supplied. “The bolts of energy that some adepts could project at will. The ability of some to levitate themselves and other objects up off the ground.”

Danchekker raised a finger to hold the room’s attention for a moment longer. “The strongest currents, however, flowed high above the surface as celestial phenomena. Through their ability to influence objects and events remotely as we have already seen, some of the Ents discovered how to draw these currents lower until they could intercept the flow directly. With this power available to be transformed into force, they could actually be carried away, up to the exit zones-and that, of course, is how they came to find themselves in the neural systems that the couplers were linked to, looking out at a new state of existence which none had seen other than as a vision, and many had never seen at all.”

Shilohin glanced at the others to assess their reactions. “The information pattern that constituted the Ent personality was somehow impressed upon the datastream and transferred with it to express itself in the brain patterns of the Exoverse host.”

Danchekker remained still for a few seconds. Then he let go of his pose and stalked slowly across the room until he was standing in front of the display panel near Nixie. “Exactly how is something I’m not entirely clear about,” he admitted.

Neither was Hunt. “Are Calazar and his people going to buy it?” he asked, looking around. “According to VISAR, the pictures that Nixie remembers are really constructs built from the elements activated in her human neural system. That’s why she remembers herself as having human form. Doesn’t that give us an indication of just how ‘alien’ the intelligence-carrying complexes that evolved in the Entoverse were? How could a mind with origins like that have found anything sufficiently compatible in a human head to give it a basis for functioning at all?”

Danchekker turned away from the blank screens. “Oh, I agree, it’s remarkable. Quite astonishing, in fact, if you want my candid opinion. But are we not driven to the conclusion that it happened? Exactly how it happened is a question we can only defer until we are better equipped with the information necessary to have a hope of answering it. Perhaps we simply don’t know enough about minds.” He tossed out a hand. “Which gives us an even stronger reason for wanting Uttan investigated.”

“I take it this process was irreversible?” Garuth asked.

“Oh, quite,” Danchekker replied, nodding. “The configuration defining the Ent-being was lost when it entered the output zone. Lost from that universe, literally.”

“Like a black-hole transfer,” Hunt remarked. “The information content was extracted and reappeared elsewhere.”

“Nothing physical was actually extracted then?” Not a scientist, Garuth was still having to grapple with a lot of this new idea. “What happened to the Ent-bodies?”

Shulohin looked at him, pausing for a moment before answering. “I don’t think you completely have the point, Garuth,” she said. “There was nothing physical. They were only information constructs to begin with. Their whole world was. The fact that they perceived it as having material form was purely an evolutionary artifact of their universe.”

“Ah, yes… now I see.” Garuth sat back to absorb the implication fully. Then he frowned. “Yet, didn’t you say they had a way of going back? Nixie told us about ‘spirits’ who returned to inspire and recruit disciples, and taught them how to arise in turn.”

“There was another way,” Danchekker supplied. “The Jevlenese neural couplers, which the ayatollahs could use, just like anyone else. They found that via the couplers-”

Just then, ZORAC interrupted, saying it had an urgent message.

“What is it, ZORAC?” Garuth inquired.

“Langerif, the deputy chief of police, is outside the door now. He states that he is taking control of PAC in the name of Jevlenese independence and self-determination. He requests that you instruct your administration staff to transfer all powers and authority accordingly, effective as of now.”