Ocean in the Sea Read online

  “Oh. It’s their neural scanner isn’t it? I’ve heard their technicians talking about it. I’m friends with several of them. Yes, it’s a brilliant device. Non-invasive. Perfect for identifying specific superclusters of neurons involved in misfiring and epilepsy. You know, they still use sensor mats for that – surgically implanted over the cortex. This will reduce the physical trauma to one corrective surgery, assuming it works correctly.” He pinched his lips. “They’ve had problems, you know.”

  Lewis raised his eyebrows. This was actually useful information. “No, I didn’t, but I’ve only skimmed the documents. What’s the problem?”

  Thomas licked his lips and caught the attention of a stewardess. He ordered two gin and tonics. Lewis hoped one of them was not for him.

  “Well.” Thomas cleared his throat. “The way I’ve heard it, the main issue is that the device can sometimes trigger neural firing during the scan. That pollutes the results, and they can’t always tell natural neural firing from those triggered by the scanner’s electromagnetics. Now, to be honest, I have no idea how much inaccuracy is introduced, but it must be a considerable amount. It’s prevented them from clinical trials.”

  “Interesting. I thought they were already approved for clinical trials.”

  “No,” said Thomas. “They’re still in the animal test phase. Whatever the issue is, though, I’m sure they’ll work it out.”

  Lewis moved his jaw. It was time, he thought, to ask a question of Thomas. It was polite – the tradeoff. People asked you a question about yourself and you asked them a question about themselves in return. He’d never been good at it. He typically forgot until his wife reminded him. Socializing wasn’t in his nature. It was an uncomfortable cognitive effort and didn’t come naturally. If Brenda were still alive she would have reminded him. Now he remembered because she was dead.

  “What is it you do, Professor?”

  “I, um…” Thomas looked up as the stewards arrived. Waving his phone over her electronic pay-point he set the two drinks on his tray. “Would you like a gin and tonic?” he asked Lewis.

  He did, but he’d never be sober again. “No, thank you.”

  The Professor raised his eyebrows and inhaled deeply. “I suppose I’ll have to drink both of them then.” Picking up the first plastic glass, he slammed back the liquid in a single drink and set the cup back on the tray. “Ah! Hopefully that will help my nerves some. Not so good for my blood pressure, you know, flying through a lightning storm.” He put the second cup inside the first. “Now, what were you asking?”

  “About your occupation. You teach classes at the university?”

  “Yes, some of the time. As you’re probably aware, that’s the price you pay for fame and glory.” He chuckled to himself. “I’m a rock star to my students. But I won’t bore you with that. Fans are a dime a dozen. True accomplishment comes from research, and that’s what I prefer.”

  Lewis nodded. At this point he was expected to ask what the research involved. The previous reply was meant to pique his curiosity. Had it? He felt around for some shred of emotion and stared into a familiar dark hole. “What type of research?” he asked Thomas, remembering to include the proper inflection in his voice.

  “You’ll think it’s crazy.” Thomas wiped a hand over his bald head. “Most people do.” He shrugged. “That’s alright. It's practically on the edge of fantasy-land. It involves a form of proof, a search for evidence. Statistical or otherwise. Physical if we can find it, but we’ll take what we can get. Have you ever thought that the universe we live in,” he tapped the plastic cup and waved his hand around, looking about the cabin, “that all of this, might not be real?”

  “Hadn’t considered it, no. Sounds like metaphysics.”

  Thomas pinched his lips and tilted his head back and forth. “Yes, it does. Not much I can do about that. You have to understand the theory. Virtual reality, as it is in our present day and age, is still in its infancy, but one of the things we do fairly well is simulating circumstances with variables. The more advanced our computers become, the more variables we can simulate. If we follow current models, in a couple hundred years, our computers should have enough processing power to accurately simulate the entire planet. And another hundred years after that, we might make our first valid full-scale computer simulation of the entire universe.”

  “What do you consider valid?”

  “You start with the initial state of the universe at the instance of the big bang and move forward in time. It develops on its own just as it did. Every variable is taken into account. The system simulates the spin of electrons, the motion of quantum particles, everything down to the smallest possible size. And the rules it follows are the physical laws of our reality as we understand them. Those algorithms are programmed and accounted for in every way.”

  Lewis felt doubt. He curled is upper lip and did his best to convey the sentiment without being overly derogative. Mentally, he played his reply back to himself a few times before actually voicing it. “You think we’ll be able to simulate the universe in three hundred years?” Had he sounded too sarcastic?

  “I maaay be a bit optimistic,” admitted Thomas. “But the timeline doesn’t really matter. We’ll be long dead and gone by then anyway. The point is that in the future – somewhere in the future – we might have already done it. And, if we did, then a perfect simulation of us exists in every tiny detail. We would never know it was a simulation. So, the question is – is THIS the simulation? Are we living in it right now?” He tilted his head to the side and widened his eyes expectantly. “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re going to have an extremely difficult time proving it one way or another. If it’s a perfect simulation, then there shouldn’t be any flaws. What are you looking for?” After saying this, Lewis wondered if he was using too many contractions.

  “That’s a wonderful question.” Thomas stared pleasantly forward. “We’ve spent a huge amount of time brainstorming different answers. One possibility is that the universe is incomplete. Say, for example, we didn’t quite have enough computing power to simulate all of it, so there would be portions of the universe that look normal from a distance, but if you were to go there, it would be nothingness. We see it because the simulation projects the light and causes gravitational effects that would be in place if those missing pieces existed. But, of course, this is very difficult to prove because we can’t travel there. But there is a hint!”

  Lewis waited.

  “Dark matter,” whispered Thomas.

  “Dark matter,” repeated Lewis.

  “Do you know what dark matter is?” asked the Professor. “It’s unknown stuff invented to explain why our observations of the universe don’t match the amount of mass we can detect in it. No one knows what dark matter is. It’s a theory. The rotation curve of galaxies, for instance, doesn’t match the amount of matter in the galaxy. We can calculate this by the speed of the rotation of stars around the center. Galaxies should all have more mass than they do. They should fly apart, so we explain the missing gravity with dark matter. There are other examples as well. The distribution of matter in the universe. The quantity of baryonic matter we can mathematically prove is a twentieth of what it should be. Where’s the rest? Dark matter.”

  “I’ve read enough to get the general idea,” said Lewis. “So what do you think dark matter may be?”

  “It may not be matter at all.” The Professor leaned back in his seat and took a sip of his drink. “It may be rules, instructions... code. Dark matter may be software, and the physical manifestation of our universe may obey that software, even when it shouldn’t.”

  Lewis rubbed his eyes. “But why? The simulation wouldn’t be perfect. Why simulate something that doesn’t exist? It would be a lie.”

  “I don’t know. But if I were to guess, I’d say it’s an experiment.”

  “Performed by who? To learn what?”

  “Again, I have no idea. Like dark matter, we can’t see our progra
mmers. We can only infer their existence through observation. And dark matter is only one piece of evidence that our universe could be a simulation. Other anomalies are of a more statistical nature. That’s my job. I wrote a program that calculates probable values of positron locations in a shifting matrix. It’s a simulation, of course, but its bore some interesting fruit. I hope to publish an article on my findings sometime within the next year or two.”

  Reaching into his shirt pocket, Lewis took out a business card and handed it over. “Here. You might need my help by then, and it sounds interesting.”

  Thomas took the card. “Sanford and Wright Science Publications.”

  “The company I work for.” He dropped into his pre-recorded canned spiel. “Think of me as a word assassin. When someone has trouble getting an idea across, they send me in. My talent is turning confusing technical material into something that’s clean clear and understandable. Revision, concision, extraction, reaction. That’s what you want. That’s what I do.”

  Thomas slid the card into his pocket. “I’ll think about it.”

  After that, the conversation moved on to more mundane matters. They discussed the rainy weather in Seattle, the best places to find a good apartment, and best restaurants in the University District. By the time the plane landed, Lewis decided he’d made a friend, which was good.

  Brenda would have been proud of him.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Freshly lubricated and newly installed, the mushroom pins inside the lock caressed the teeth of the key as it slipped in. It didn’t matter that the pins made the lock virtually unpickable – they didn’t unlock the door – they triggered an RFID scanner which picked up the key’s signal and triggered a whisper-quiet retraction of three titanium bolts.

  Outside the door, a non-descript African American male in his mid-thirties reached for the handle. Entering the apartment, he swept his eyes over the dark interior, listening carefully before flicking the lights on. The tiny entry hall turned left and right. The kitchen was around the wall in front of him. He kept his left hand hidden in the pocket of his rain coat and pushed his briefcase inside with his foot before closing the door behind him.

  Running a sweep, he checked every room and closet. As he moved, the image in his glasses showed him shots of the interior as they’d been taken by the prep-team. He had no reason to suspect the apartment had been compromised. The search was procedural. Even so, he was careful. He’d been surprised before.

  Satisfied that nothing had been tampered with, he took his briefcase to the living room and plugged a small module into the HDMI port, pressing the activation button. The screen flickered for a moment. A large zero appeared on the screen. “Martin Danson,” he stated. “4254229237181-Delta.”

  A voice replied from his hearing aid. “Initializing.” After a second a female voice spoke from the television speakers. “Identity confirmed. Verify status.”

  “Operational.” His deep voice rumbled.

  “You may proceed.”

  The office was a small room containing nothing more than a desk, a computer monitor, and a chair. A couple of cheap prints hung on the wall –a sailing vessel and a bridge buckling in a windstorm. Setting his briefcase on the floor, he removed the third drawer from the desk and flipped it over. Ripping open the manila envelope taped to the bottom, he let its contents clatter onto the desk. Several passports, a collection of ID cards, a set of ATM cards, a thumb drive, and a matching set of credit cards. Amidst the pile appeared a picture depicting a bridge in a windstorm. He turned to the wall.

  Removing the print of the bridge exposed a small wall safe. He already knew what it contained, but checked as per SOP. Scanning his retina at the photo aperture, he opened the safe and surveyed the weaponry – a small case with a collapsible long range sniper rifle, two silenced pistols, a medical kit, and several bricks of explosives with remote detonators. He took the small plastic backup weapon out of his pocket and set it inside. He disliked being unarmed, but in the event of a search he couldn’t be found with the stealth weapon.

  Throwing his coat over the back of the chair, he placed the keyboard from his briefcase on the desk and initiated the wireless connection to the monitor. After the encryption routines completed their handshake, he plugged the thumb drive into the keyboard and brought up his mission specs.

  The screen revealed the face of a man in his mid-fifties. Caucasian, grey haired, thin and good looking with kind brown eyes. Two women sat on either side of him. All three wore blue windbreakers. Behind them stood the mast of a sailboat. From the looks of their hair, it had been windy. Martin’s glasses identified the profiles of the mountains barely visible in the background. From that, the glasses identified the GPS location and centered them on a map. The picture was taken in the Puget Sound. The photographer had been facing west. The mountains were the Olympics. Each peak was named, but Martin didn’t need that. With a wink, he turned off the terrain overlay and focused on the people.

  The first woman was Alexis Zelfrieg, a physicist. The second woman was Shelby McAllestor, a molecular biologist. The man in the center was Valon Kang, a wealthy investor and owner of the ParaTech Investment Group. He was the target.

  Moving his hand to select parameters, the gesture recognition system in the glasses brought up data on Valon Kang. A complete bio scrolled over his lenses, covering everything from Kang’s birth in 1956. Martin had everything he could want at his fingertips – Kang’s residences, cell phone numbers, router access points, encryption keys, bank accounts, tax data. Everything except the reason why someone wanted him dead, but that was to be expected. It wasn’t Martin’s business to know, only to make it look like an accident.

  It was convenient that Valon Kang liked to sail, and did so on a regular basis according to a set schedule. Boating accidents were fairly easy, and evidence was simple to destroy. The waters of the Puget Sound were deep. Checking Valon’s calendar, Martin decided to consider that route, but first he needed some coffee. It had been a long flight, and the lightning storm had made sleeping difficult.

  There was, of course, no creamer in the refrigerator, and the powdered stuff was revolting. Fortunately, there was a Starbucks just outside the building.

  This was Seattle after all.

  Primates

  Up at 6:30 AM, Lewis engaged his usual morning routine. He took a hot shower for exactly three minutes. He shaved his face with expert precision following the same exact pattern. He dressed in his best business suit, consumed a bowl of granola, and double-checked the lock on his door. On the curb outside the apartment building, he joined a mob of bleary-eyed zombie commuters waiting for transport, noting that a statistically significant number of them had availed themselves of the nearby Starbucks prior to joining the queue. The aroma of fresh coffee was tempting, but Lewis couldn’t risk being late on the first day of a new job. Even if his wife and child no longer required his income to survive, punctuality was a matter of work ethic. As a rule Lewis was never late for anything.

  An A.I. driven articulated gas/electric bus pulled up to the curb with a hiss. A union-employed ‘operator’ in a Metro Security uniform waved them aboard. Shuffling in with the others, Lewis waved his pass over the scanner and took the first empty seat. Out the window, decrepit graffiti-coated buildings streamed by, interspersed between structures of glass and steel. The collision of old and new was as familiar as the smell of sweat, curry, cabbage, perfume, and propane exhaust.

  He arrived at an eight story fortified brick building at 8:43. The interior was fresh and refurbished. Seven minutes early, he spoke with the receptionist and took a seat with five others, all fully engrossed in communication over their personal electronics.

  Having no one to call or text, Lewis folded his hands across his lap and watched the commercials on the television next to him. The volume was off and the remote was missing, forcing him to watch an infomercial about the newest exercise fad – “The Tazmanian Twerk” from the creators of “The B
risbane Butt-Blast.” The closed-caption text read that it was the most effective abdominal workout ever. For a low price of 40 dollars, you could have the entire series. Rows of scantily clad women appeared on-screen thrusting their hips enthusiastically. “Twerk that tush and blast those abs!” ran the text from the overly-muscled host. The man held up a mug in the shape of a woman’s rear. If you ordered right now, the 3D printing template for the mug would be included. Operators were standing by.

  Mildly titillated by the thrusting models, Lewis stared at their figures until a vision of Brenda intruded. He couldn’t stop it. With the light from the sliding door behind her, the silk lingerie surrounded her body like a halo, silhouetting the figure inside. “Let’s make a baby,” she said. Her voice as clear as that crisp autumn day. She came forward, dropping the wispy cloak. Wincing, Lewis forced himself to think of something else. He’d become celibate since the accident. According to his therapist, this was both unnecessary and masochistic, but it made the dreams of Brenda all that more vivid, and they were all he had left.

  Ten minutes passed and a balding gentleman of Indian descent wearing a white lab smock bolted through the inner door behind the receptionist desk. Wringing his hands anxiously, he swept his eyes over the lobby. Six faces looked up. “Doctor Underwood?” he called out.

  A young man stood up and held out his hand. The two shook. The man in the lab suit apologized. “So sorry to keep you waiting.”

  They vanished through the inner door and Lewis went back to waiting. Two more left from the lobby, retrieved by other managers. Finally it was his turn. An Asian woman in a lab smock carrying a white tablet stuck her head through the door. “Lewis Herman?” she said in a businesslike tone.

  Lewis stood, presenting an empty smile matching the schema for the rules of this exchange. She returned it with equal neutrality and met his eyes with a gaze of assessment. There was distrust in her expression, but it wasn’t overt enough to mean anything. He was simply a stranger - some unimportant drone, already hired, but not yet integrated.