Permutation City

In real time, the answer was: probably not -- the probability of any kind of coherence arising at random being so small. Real time, though, was only one possible reference frame; what about all the others? If the states the machine passed through could be rearranged in time arbitrarily, then who could say what kind of elaborate order might emerge from the chaos?

Paul caught himself. Was that fatuous? As absurd as insisting that every room full of monkeys really did type the complete works of Shakespeare -- they just happened to put the letters in a slightly different order? As ludicrous as claiming that every large-enough quantity of rock contained Michelangelo's David, and every warehouse full of paint and canvas contained the complete works of Rembrandt and Picasso -- not in any mere latent form, awaiting some skillful forger to physically rearrange them, but solely by virtue of the potential redefinition of the coordinates of space-time?

For a statue or a painting, yes, it was a joke. Where was the observer who perceived the paint to be in contact with the canvas, who saw the stone figure suitably delineated by air?

If the pattern in question was not an isolated object, though, but a self-contained world, complete with at least one observer to join up the dots from within . . .

There was no doubt that it was possible. He'd done it. In the final trial of the second experiment, he'd assembled himself and his surroundings -- effortlessly -- from the dust of randomly scattered moments, from apparent white noise in real time. True, what the computer had done had been contrived, guaranteed to contain his thoughts and perceptions coded into its seemingly aimless calculations. But given a large enough collection of truly random numbers, there was no reason to believe that it wouldn't include, purely by accident, hidden patterns as complex and coherent as the ones which underlay him.

And wouldn't those patterns, however scrambled they might be in real time, be conscious of themselves, just as he'd been conscious, and piece their own subjective world together, just as he had done?

Paul returned to the apartment, fighting off a sense of giddiness and unreality. So much for forgetting himself; he felt more charged than ever with the truth of his strange nature.

Did he still want to bale out? No. No! How could he declare that he'd happily wake and forget himself -- wake and "reclaim" his life -- when he was beginning to glimpse the answers to questions which his original had never even dared to ask?

10

(Remit not paucity)

NOVEMBER 2050

Maria arrived at the cafe fifteen minutes early -- to find Durham already there, seated at a table close to the entrance. She was surprised, but relieved; with the long wait she'd been expecting suddenly canceled, she had no time to grow nervous. Durham spotted her as she walked in; they shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, ordered coffee from the table's touch-screen menus. Seeing Durham in the flesh did nothing to contradict the impression he'd made by phone: middle-aged, quiet, conservatively dressed; not exactly the archetypical Autoverse junkie.

Maria said, "I always thought I was the only Autoverse Review subscriber living in Sydney. I've been in touch with Ian Summers in Hobart a couple of times, but I never realized there was anyone so close."

Durham was apologetic. "There's no reason why you would have heard of me. I'm afraid I've always confined myself to reading the articles; I've never contributed anything or participated in the conferences. I don't actually work in the Autoverse, myself. I don't have the time. Or the skills, to be honest."

Maria absorbed that, trying not to appear too startled. It was like hearing someone admit that they studied chess but never played the game.

"But I've followed progress in the field very closely, and I can certainly appreciate what you've done with A. lamberti. Perhaps even more so than some of your fellow practitioners. I think I see it in a rather broader context."

"You mean . . . cellular automata in general?"

"Cellular automata, artificial life."

"They're your main interests?"

"Yes."

But not as a participant? Maria tried to imagine this man as a patron of the artificial life scene, magnanimously sponsoring promising young practitioners; Lorenzo the Magnificent to the Botticellis and Michelangelos of cellular automaton theory.

It wouldn't wash. Even if the idea wasn't intrinsically ludicrous, he just didn't look that rich.