Biblical (50 page)

If he did that, and if the insanity that he found himself sharing with Gillman and Blackwell was justified, then this monstrous hallucination should stop.

In every street he could see glass people in glass buildings and it reminded him again, vaguely, of some novel he had read once by a long-forgotten Russian author. Every insubstantial figure he saw was frozen, and he realized that the glass people who now inhabited his world were also Dreamers, each trapped in this vision of Hell, helpless and at the mercy of their deceived senses. Only he could help them. Only he could stop the hallucination.

He made his way along what he knew must be Grønningen – the Kastellet Park was to his right and the trees appeared as frozen vaporous clouds, almost invisible against a volcanic spume. His progress was painfully slow: like a drunk man constantly having to steady himself, Macbeth repeatedly had to refocus his mind, concentrate on the shapes of the trees, the roadway, the buildings. Halfway along Grønningen he stopped abruptly. As if the insanity and confusion of navigating two superimposed worlds was not enough, he had suddenly become even more disoriented. For a second he had been sure that the park beside him was Boston Common. What new trick was this? It passed and he regained his bearings, pushing on.

The sky above him lowered even darker and the clouds began to fizz and crackle with lightning. He didn’t have long.

He reached Østerbrogade and the Lakes, but again he had to focus not just to keep the traced-out structure of his world clear while the primeval Earth groaned and spluttered lava high into the dark sky, but also to dispel the temporary belief that the insubstantial shimmer to his left was the Lakes and not the Charles River. What was happening to him?

He became totally disoriented again when, for a moment,
he thought he recognized the liquid-glass street he was in and the building that took insubstantial form ahead of him. But it couldn’t be. He could have sworn he was in Beacon Hill, looking at the glass ghost of Marjorie Glaiston’s house. He closed his eyes again, forcing focus once more. His mother. That was who Marjorie Glaiston had reminded him of. When he looked again he knew where he was, turned and headed along Blegdamsvej and towards the Niels Bohr Institute.

All the consciousnesses in the world.

Had he really lived the life he thought he had? Why was his autobiographical memory so bad? Was that the reason behind his quest to understand the nature of consciousness?

If there is no world around us, we invent one.

What had he invented? Was he inventing this? Was Astor right and all of this was only really happening in his own head?

He ran through a landscape, an event, a time that could not be.

The book. John Astor. Had he put the book there on his computer? Had he written it himself and forgotten it? Was he John Astor?

There were people in the university building. Immobile, transparent, glass people dreaming their way into extinction. No one moved, no one challenged or tried to stop him. It had taken Macbeth over two hours to make a journey that would normally have taken him thirty minutes on foot.

He found his way to where he knew the janitorial store to be and found a fire ax, looking absurdly fragile in its transparency.

He was making his way up to the laboratory when the dark near-night, clearly visible through the filmy structure of the Institute, gave way to a new, sudden brightness. Macbeth looked up and saw it: the terrible, hypnotizing beauty of Theia in her final approach. She would soon smash into the Protoearth, ejecting into space billions of tons of debris that would coalesce
and form the unlikely dual-planet system of Earth and Moon. The rare combination that would create deep oceans, plate tectonics, a liquid iron outer core to the Earth and a magneto-sphere to protect the planet from solar winds. The extremely rare conditions that would allow life not just to exist, but to persist and develop into advanced form.

He had to destroy Project One. He had to kill the consciousness within it. End its dreaming. He was gripped with panic at the idea that his own mind was synthetic, created to understand a past that could not be relived. Maybe it was
his
consciousness in Project One. Maybe he was everyone who had experienced the visions. Maybe he was everyone and no one.

If there is no world around us, we create one
.

Theia loomed huge, blocking out the sunlight but illuminating everything with its own thermal violence as the bigger Protoearth’s gravity ripped at it.

“Too late!” Macbeth heard his own voice cry out. “It’s too late!” And with that the glassy-edged world became even less substantial. He dropped the ax and was surprised when it didn’t shatter. Instead it made the hard, metallic clang it should have, reassuring him of its invisible solidity.

How can I stop this? he thought desperately. How can this ever be made right? Even if I destroy Project One, people won’t forget, they will remember this and they’ll know everything is false, a simulation. How can this ever be put right?

I know the truth, he told himself. It can’t be put right as long as I know the truth.

He closed his eyes again and thought of his father, of Casey. Of Melissa. Of Mora. When he opened them again he resolved not to look back at the sky and found the Institute had taken more shape again.

Determined to shut out all else, he navigated the corridors to Project One. He went straight to the suite, feeling with his fingertips the buttons he could not see clearly enough on the
entry pad. He pulled at the door but it didn’t yield: he had mis-keyed the code. There was a long, low, bellowing cry that shuddered through him and it took him a second to realize it was the Earth screaming as Theia pulled at her, bulging her surface. Cracking it open.

He swung the ax at the door, at the keypad lock, over and over. Translucent wood splintered into slivers of glass. He slammed his shoulder to the door and it refused to yield. The glass ax arced through the air, Macbeth uttering an animal cry with each blow. Once more he slammed his shoulder into the door he could now barely see. This time it gave way. He was in.

Again he felt the Earth shudder beneath his feet; lurch and moan in protest at Theia’s increasing pull.

Don’t look up
.

He focused on the control room. Everything was still molded out of liquid glass and it was impossible to read anything on the ethereal monitor. There would be no deprogramming or erasure. Only complete, physical destruction of the computer and its backups would work. He made his way to the main body of the computer, a self-contained array of drives. Maybe, if he destroyed these first and the backups later … maybe that would do …

All around, through the ghostly walls of the lab and the university, Macbeth saw giant spumes of magma arc up into the sky as the Earth embraced its approaching mate. He had only seconds.

I know the truth, he thought again. The Earth still screamed in its death–birth pangs and Theia still closed in on him. I know the truth and it is not enough to destroy the computer.

First removing the automatic, Macbeth placed the rucksack at his feet.

The hallucination continued, Theia now filling the whole sky.

I know the truth. No one can know the truth.

He was aware he had no idea how to set the detonators, but realized now that that didn’t matter. Everything, for everyone else, would be restored. Reset. Not for him: he knew the truth. He was a paradox that needed resolving.

The knowledge lives in my consciousness and can only be erased if my consciousness is erased.

There were tears on his face. He grieved for Casey, for the others who had died, he grieved for the lives he would save yet were not real. He grieved for his consciousness.

I don’t know how to set the detonators, he told himself once more.

John Macbeth, who had never had much of a belief in himself, in his identity or existence, aimed the automatic at the glassy ghost of an explosives-filled rucksack at his feet.

He pulled the trigger.

There was a moment’s silence. John Astor let his statement hang in the artificially constant air of the Mainframe Hall.

“Macbeth committed suicide?” said Project Director Yates. “That’s what you’re saying?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” said Astor.

“How can that be? How could Macbeth commit suicide?”

“Immediately before self-shutdown there was a massive spike in neural activity. It would suggest a highly agitated state of mind.”

“I’m sorry,” said Yates, “but listen to yourself: ‘state of mind’ … ‘suicide’ …” She looked at the four small, dark-gray boxes, each enclosed in a glass case.

“But those are exactly the concepts we’re dealing with,” said Astor.

“If you’re saying that Macbeth destroyed itself, then it must have had a concept of self. It must have become fully self-aware.”

“I believe that’s exactly what happened. I have to say that I expressed concern when I took over running of the project,” said Astor. “Each of the four synthetic brains was running a different disorder program, but only on specific neural clusters. Only Macbeth began to display global activity. A full working brain. My guess is that, in the absence of real sensory input, it began to simulate its own reality.”

“That’s against everything we set out at the start of the project – why did it happen?”

“Until Dr Hoberman was let go from the project a year into its running, I suspect he’d been privately testing his controversial Dissociative Identity Disorder theories on Macbeth, investing the program with multiple personalities. Alters. Somehow the Macbeth program coalesced these into a single identity.”

“And you didn’t know this when you programmed in the paranoid schizophrenia?”

“Of course I didn’t,” said Astor. “If I’d thought there was anything approaching a complete mind or self-awareness it would have gone against the project protocols. I rather fear that we have created genuine suffering.”

“In a machine?” Yates shook her head.

“In a mind. There’s evidence that Macbeth started to access a broad range of data from the mainframe and beyond. General knowledge, if you like: history, geography, the sciences – including neuroscience – philosophy and literature. Lots of literature. It also connected to other simulations – geophysical and astrophysical programs run elsewhere. I think it was trying to make sense of its own reality.”

“And now?”

“Now it has shut down completely. No neural activity. Macbeth ended its own neurological life, somehow. Like I said, suicide. It’s a pity. It may have had some interesting answers to offer about our own reality.”

“And the other programs?”

“No problems,” said Astor. “Like I said, they’re still only partial simulations. Hamlet, Lear and Othello are still fully operational.”

“Will we get Macbeth up and running again? It’s a billion-dollar piece of equipment.”

“The program has basically self-wiped, but the neural architecture is intact, so yes. I’ll reconnect it to the mainframe and only reactivate the elements relevant to whatever disorder we decide to program in.”

“Good.”

They both looked up at the holographic displays above the three functioning program units: virtual representations of the synaptic activities of each synthetic brain. Connections sparkled and flashed and glowed; patterns formed out of nothing before disappearing, only to be replaced by other even more complex patterns. Only the air above the Macbeth program remained empty.

“Okay, John,” said Yates. “I’ll leave you to it. I’ve got a meeting to go to. Have you heard these reports about mass hallucinations?”

“No …”

“Mmm … there’s been quite a few incidents recently, different locations around the world. My opinion is desired, apparently. See you later.”

After Elizabeth Yates left the Mainframe Hall, John Astor stood gazing at the virtual displays above Hamlet, Lear and Othello, the three functioning programs. After a while, he keyed in the codes to reconnect to the mainframe the small, glass-cased unit that held the Macbeth program. A single streak of light arced in the air above it, followed by another.

“Welcome to the afterlife, my friend,” said Astor, before leaving the Hall.