Permutation City

For several minutes, they watched thousands of mismatched neurotransmitters bounce off one receptor, until Durham became bored and pleaded with the software, "Show us a fit." The image blurred for a second, and then returned to the original speed as a correctly shaped molecule finally stumbled onto its target. It hit the receptor and locked into place; Durham plunged the viewpoint through the cell membrane in time to show the immersed tail section of the receptor changing its configuration in response. He said, "That will now catalyze the activation of a second messenger, which will feed energy into the appropriate polymer -- unless there's an inhibiting messenger already bound there, blocking access." He spoke to the software again; it took control of the viewpoint, and showed them each of the events he'd described.

Maria shook her head, bedazzled. "Tell me the truth -- who orchestrated this? Three thousand neurotransmitters, three thousand receptors, three thousand second messengers? No doubt you can show me the individual structures of all of them -- and no doubt they really would behave the way you claim they do. Even writing the software to fake this would have been an enormous job. Who did you commission? There can't be many people who'd take it on."

Durham said gently, "I commissioned you. You can't have forgotten. A seed for a biosphere? A demonstration that life in the Autoverse could be as diverse and elaborate as life on Earth?"

"No. From A. hydrophila to this would take -- "

"Billions of years of Autoverse time? Computing power orders of magnitude beyond the resources of twenty-first century Earth? That's what Planet Lambert needed -- and that's exactly what it's been given."

Maria backed away from the screen until she could go no further, then slid down against the wall beside the red-draped window and sat on the plushly carpeted floor. She put her face in her hands, and tried to breathe slowly. She felt like she'd been buried alive.

Did she believe him? It hardly seemed to matter anymore. Whatever she did, he was going to keep on bombarding her with "evidence" like this, consistent with his claims. Whether he was deliberately lying or not -- and whether he was being fooled by another version of himself, or whether the "dust hypothesis" was right after all -- he was never going to let her out of here, back into the real world. Psychotic liar, fellow victim or calm purveyor of the truth, he was incapable of setting her free.

Her original was still out there -- with the money to save Francesca. That was the point of the whole insane gamble, the payoff for risking her soul. If she could remember that, cling to that, maybe she could keep herself sane.

Durham pressed on -- oblivious to her distress, or intent on delivering the coup de grace. He said, "Who could have engineered this? You know how long it took Max Lambert to translate a real-world bacterium. Do you honestly believe that I found someone who could manufacture a functioning -- novel -- pseudo-insect out of thin air . . . let alone an intelligent one?

"All right: you can't personally check macroscopic behavior against the Autoverse rules. But you can study all the biochemical pathways, trace them back to the ancestral species. You can watch an embryo grow, cell by cell -- following the gradients of control hormones, the differentiating tissue layers, the formation of the organs.

"The whole planet is an open book to us; you can examine whatever you like, scrutinize it on any scale, from viruses to ecosystems, from the activation of a molecule of retinal pigment to the geochemical cycles.

"There are six hundred and ninety million species currently living on Planet Lambert. All obeying the laws of the Autoverse. All demonstrably descended from a single organism which lived three billion years ago -- and whose characteristics I expect you know by heart. Do you honestly believe that anyone could have designed all that?"

Maria looked up at him angrily. "No. Of course it evolved; it must have evolved. You can shut up now -- you've won; I believe you. But why did you have to wake me? I'm going to lose my mind."