Resonance (25 page)

He sighed, his face looking tired and drained.

"Anarchy, weapons proliferation, war and chaos. Every crackpot with a cause has New Tech weaponry and the world descends into a destructive spiral. Tens of millions die."

"That's the resonance wave?" asked Annalise.

"That's the result of the resonance wave. It's like there's this massive conveyor belt that nobody can get off."

"With a huge chasm at the end of it," added Sarkissian.

"And four years of decline and anarchy to wait and watch while you sit on the damn thing," said Tamisha. "With everyone powerless to get off or stop or do anything but give in to the inevitable."

"Can't you stop it?" asked Annalise.

"How?" said Kevin. "We can't even tell people what's happening. There's no proof we can give them. We can't show anyone a picture of a parallel world. We can't take anyone there or bring anyone back. All we can do is download data. Data which, to all intents and purposes, could have come from anywhere."

"That and ask people to trust us," said Tamisha, her tone becoming sarcastic. "We're scientists, we know what we're talking about. Forget the fact we've been lying to you for three years, telling you about our wonderful new AI engine that doesn't exist. Who's going to believe a word we say let alone do anything we ask them?"

"Can't you stop the weapons proliferation?" asked Annalise.

"It's not only a matter of weapons—it's everything," said Kevin. "The pace of change, the collapse of old industries, the shifts in power. It's . . ."

"Technological and economic meltdown," finished Sarkissian. "The genie will not go back into the bottle. The technology is out there and people are going to use it."

"Can't you sabotage ParaDim? Stop the new technology?"

"People have tried," answered Sarkissian. "On one world a couple of ParaDim scientists killed the entire core research team. They blew up the labs, destroyed all the data and then turned their weapons on themselves. The entire planet's knowledge and ability to access data from parallel worlds was obliterated overnight."

He paused.

"And ten months later a new start-up company appeared out of nowhere." Sarkissian took his glasses off and wiped the lenses. "A new team had spontaneously discovered the ability to access data from parallel worlds."

"Resonance?" asked Annalise.

"Resonance," he replied.

"But . . ." Annalise looked confused. "Surely the people at ParaDim—the ones in the know—they must see all the evidence from the other worlds. They must know the dangers. Why don't they slow things down? Why all this aggressive growth and marketing?"

Kevin smiled. "Because everyone thinks their world will be different. They won't make the same mistakes."

"And, anyway," added Tamisha sardonically, "they have four years to solve the problem. A lot can happen in four years. Someone might stop the resonance wave. If there really is such a thing."

"And if they don't push for expansion," said Sarkissian, "the board will soon find someone who can—so, goodbye big fat bonus."

"How did we get on this conveyor belt?" asked Annalise.

"You mean what started the resonance wave?"

"Yes."

"Good intentions, honey. The road to Hell's paved with them."

"Is that true?" Annalise asked Kevin.

"It's true," he said. "It started out as a simple plan to learn from others' mistakes. Simple and brilliant." He shook his head and looked wistfully into space.

"They'd been trying for years," said Howard Sarkissian, "to prove the existence of parallel worlds. They had the theory, they had the technology. All they needed was a slice of luck."

"Who?" asked Annalise. "Who needed a slice of luck?"

"The original ParaDim team," said Sarkissian. "One hundred and two years ago. Not on this world, obviously, but on a parallel one."

"A very advanced parallel world," Kevin added. "They wanted to communicate with a parallel Earth. They sought to set up a dialogue and prove to the world that other Earths were out there."

"But they couldn't do it," said Sarkissian. "They found a way to access electronically-stored data from other worlds. They even found a method of determining which parallel world the data came from."

"They mapped the entire dimensional spectrum," said Kevin. "It was inspired work."

"But," said Howard, "they couldn't transmit anything back. They could receive but they couldn't send. It was a one-way gate. If they wanted to transmit they'd have to practically throw away what they already had and start again."

"And then along came Lucius Xiang," said Kevin. "He was a junior member of the team."

"A student barely out of grad school."

"And he said, 'Why not use the information downloaded from other worlds to help solve the great problems of our day?'"

Kevin's eyes took on a distant look as he almost changed personas—presumably thinking himself into the mind of the young Lucius Xiang.

"'Think about it,' Xiang said. 'All those billions of worlds at various stages of development. Some are certain to be more advanced than we are. If not technologically, then perhaps socially, or culturally or economically. Worlds where they'd faced and found solutions to problems that we're still wrestling with. How to live together, how to cope with ageing nuclear arsenals, which lines of research to outlaw, which drugs to avoid.'

"'Think about the benefits,' he said. 'The ability to know if a certain drug in development today would later be found to have harmful side effects. To know which diseases can be cured and how. To learn from the successes and failures of a billion worlds. To peek into the future.'"

"So what went wrong?" asked Annalise.

"Haven't you guessed yet, hon?" asked Tamisha in a world-weary voice. "Haven't you been on this planet long enough to know where all the shit comes from?"

For a second, Graham thought Annalise was going to march over to the window and put Tamisha through it. She wavered visibly before turning back to face Kevin.

"Greed," he said. "That and curiosity. They were scientists, they wanted to know the answers to everything. They wanted the formulas, the theorems, the knowledge. They downloaded everything they could find. There was so much data, they couldn't keep up. They had to farm out the work, bring in more computer capacity, to scan, to sift, to search through the data from tens of billions of worlds."

"After a while," said Sarkissian, "people lost interest in the social data. They didn't want to know how worlds solved the problems of inequality, prejudice, hatred and war. That took too long. They wanted the easy stuff—they wanted the formulas, the equations, the patents, the money."

"So, Xiang was sidelined and a new project manager was brought in to put the project on a more sound commercial footing, and the ParaDim that we all know was born."

"That was enough to create a resonance wave?" asked Annalise.

"Not in itself," said Kevin. "Human nature
created
the resonance wave. As other worlds evolved technologically, they stumbled upon the same one-way gate. They downloaded the same data and came up with the same idea. Not every world had a Lucius Xiang, but every world had a scientist who saw an opportunity and grasped it with both hands. After all, if you can access all that data, what are you going to do with it? You've got to look, right? What would
you
do if you downloaded a file and found a formula for a drug that cured cancer? File it away? Or push for its development?"

Graham nodded in agreement. He could see the appeal. You couldn't turn your back on information like that.

"But why the subterfuge about the AI engine?" asked Annalise. "Why not go public and tell the world about parallel dimensions?"

"Fear of public reaction," said Kevin. "People in power have a very low opinion of the average Joe Blow. The assumption is that once people know there's a hundred billion parallel worlds out there, they're going to panic and do something stupid. And if
they
don't, then the leaders of every other country on the planet will. There'll be an arms race like you've never seen before. Each country will know that if they get their hands on the doomsday weapons of the future first they'll be top dog. So, they'll all demand their own ParaDim project, except they'll concentrate purely on weapons technology. They'll trawl the parallel worlds looking for the meanest, evillest, son-of-a-bitch killing machine they can find, and the world blows itself apart in three years."

"So ParaDim keeps quiet," said Annalise quietly to herself.

"Inventing something innocuous," said Sarkissian. "Like artificial intelligence or quantum simulation."

"But it still goes wrong?" prompted Annalise.

"It still goes wrong. They go too fast, too soon, and push the planet beyond its limits."

"And then the resonance wave kicks in."

"Exactly," said Kevin. "A resonance develops. As each world chooses the same path, the pull of that path on future worlds strengthens. A critical mass is achieved. Worlds that shouldn't have the capacity to start a ParaDim project spontaneously develop the technology. We, on this planet, shouldn't have the ability to build a dimension discriminator. We're a century away, at least, from such technology. But two years ago, it happened. Inspired research, we thought. A mixture of genius, persistence and luck."

He shook his head.

"Resonance. The ideas were dropping too patly. The team did not make one single mistake. Not one blind alley. They went straight from idle thought to working model in a matter of months."

"And from there it develops," sighed Sarkissian. "ParaDim grows, new technology proliferates, the rate of change accelerates, old industries become obsolete, companies go under, political systems can't keep pace, a power struggle begins and anarchy descends."

"You were our last hope," Tamisha said to Graham. "A lot of good people have died trying to figure out how you fit in. There are billions of project teams researching your every move this very minute. And now," she paused, "and now I wonder if our interest in you is real or influenced by resonance."

"Shhh!" said Kevin. "What was that?"

"What—"

"Shhh!" he said again, cutting Sarkissian off. "Downstairs," he whispered, pointing at the floor. "I heard something."

No one moved. Graham could hear a police siren a long way off, a background hum of traffic, a creak from somewhere in the house.

Tamisha crept closer to the window and peered outside. A few seconds later she turned to the others and shook her head.

Another creak from inside the house—louder this time and . . . was someone on the stairs?

Tamisha stood on tiptoe and pressed her face against the window, peering down at the pavement by the front door. She drew back almost immediately, terror written all over her face.

They'd come.

"Quick! Through here!" hissed Kevin Alexander, lifting a sheet on the wall and uncovering not a fireplace but an opening into the building next door.

They ducked through the gap, its sides toothed by jutting bricks, Graham near the back, Annalise pushing him through. The stairs creaked behind him—once, twice, three times in quick succession. People were on the stairs, probably more of them filing in from the pavement outside.

Graham came out into another room—more white sheets, musty smells—they ran to the door, onto the landing, along a short corridor into another room. The floorboards creaked and echoed as they ran. Shouts rang out from behind—"They're in here! Come on!"—barked orders and thundering feet.

Kevin threw aside another white sheet in the middle of the far wall—another unfinished doorway. They ducked through and followed the same course as before—all the buildings identical. As Graham reached the landing, Sarkissian broke away from the group and fled down the stairs. Graham hesitated. Should he follow? Were they splitting up? Annalise shoved him from behind and propelled him along the landing.

"Come on!" Tamisha hissed at them from the doorway. "This way's safer."

They crossed into the next building and the next. ParaDim had to be knocking them all into one big suite of offices, all the work was identical—the same sheets, the same stage of renovation.

Noise pursued them—shouts, threats, running feet—louder and closer and . . .

"Shit!"

Kevin Alexander stood by the far wall, tearing down white sheets. None covered an opening. Tamisha turned and pointed at the ceiling. Annalise reacted first, pushing Graham back towards the door and onto the landing. Maybe there was a way through on the next floor?

They ran upstairs, Annalise and Graham in the lead. More white sheets, more mirror-image rooms. No hole in the wall.

They tried the next floor. A shout came from below, "They're in here!" followed by more shouts and clattering feet. Their pursuers were in the building, two floors below. Graham tried to soften his tread but the stairs creaked and Kevin's boots clumped and Tamisha's heels clicked. Only Annalise seemed to glide noiselessly over the boards.

Annalise lifted the white sheet in the center of the far wall. Graham prayed. Kevin and Tamisha stood in the doorway, ready to try the next floor.

There was an opening. Annalise dived through. The others followed, swinging right then left into the next room.

No white sheets.

They ran back to the landing. Kevin took off, running down the staircase as fast as he could. Tamisha hesitated—looking up, looking down—her head jerking between the two options—up or down? A shout from below resolved the problem. Men were on the stairs, three floors down and coming up fast.

Graham, Annalise and Tamisha took the next flight, rounding the half-landing to find they'd reached the top. No more stairs. And no more white sheets or holes in the wall.

Sounds of a struggle came up from below. Shouts, a crash, several thuds. Had Kevin been caught?

Graham tried to push it all out of his head. He had to focus, find a way out, something!

They ran from room to room. Maybe there was a way back into the other buildings, maybe they could double back and slip past their pursuers?