Loop (32 page)

Then, as she left the room, she turned back to glance at the patients in their beds, exactly as Hana had done just now. The look in the nurse's eyes had not evaded Kaoru's notice then: it had been one of certainty that there were those among the patients she would not see, could not see, when she returned in a year. And not because they'd have checked out. Her look was a wistful one of final-for this life, at least- farewell.

The patient in the bed next to Kaoru's father had just learned that his lung cancer had spread to his brain. The next patient over had just lost his manhood to prostate cancer. Kaoru's father was the only one with some vitality left. All the rest were proceeding steadily toward their dates with death.

Awareness of that had informed the nurse's gaze. And now Kaoru had seen that same gaze directed at himself.

Why did Hana look at me like that?

It made him uneasy. He'd ask her directly if he could.

But as it turned out, Kaoru was never to see Hana again.

The next morning, at the usual time, there was a knock at the door. Kaoru opened it expecting to see Hana, but found Eliot instead, his huge feet sticking out in front of his wheelchair, his huge hands resting on the wheels.

Seeing that Kaoru was recovering smoothly, Eliot gave a satisfied nod. "How are you feeling?"

Kaoru's endurance was at its limits: he had so many questions, and all of them had been put on hold for so long. Hana's cuteness had helped him to bear it for a while, but facing Eliot he knew he couldn't keep them back much longer.

How am I feeling? You've got to be kidding. Why am I always the one who's got to answer questions? My physical strength is back, but at this rate I'm going to turn into a nervous wreck. How am I feeling, indeed!

He bit back his anger, but not all that effectively. His voice shook as he said, "Knock it off already."

Eliot evidently noticed the tension in Kaoru's voice. He held up his hands as if to tell Kaoru to hold on a minute, then paused. At last he spoke. "I get it. I think I understand your feelings. It's about time we get underway with our plans."

Plans? What plans? And what have they got to do with me?

With a hard look on his face, Kaoru began to press Eliot for answers. "First I want you to tell me where I am and what you're up to."

Eliot pressed his palms together.

"First I want to ask
you
something."

Kaoru waited silently for him to continue.

Eliot's voice was grave when next he spoke.

"Do you believe in God?"

Eliot showed him into a room with no windows. Why was this whole place sealed up like this? Kaoru disliked windowless rooms. This room was bigger than the last, though. There was a leather living room set in the middle of it.

Eliot invited Kaoru to have a seat on the couch. Kaoru did as he was directed. Then Eliot got out of his wheelchair. He stood up, rear end thrust backward, and without using a cane hobbled over to seat himself opposite Kaoru.

Kaoru couldn't help but stare. Since Eliot used a wheelchair, Kaoru had naturally assumed he couldn't walk. But he could: somewhat awkwardly, but fairly steadily.

Noticing Kaoru's surprise, Eliot flashed a triumphant grin. "You must learn to look at things without preconceptions. Trust nothing."

But Kaoru was already quite accustomed to suspecting everything. One thing he'd learned crossing the desert was how to keep his balance as he walked the hazy line between reality and virtuality. It was the one thing he'd most wanted not to lose during that rainstorm on the ridge.

"When are you going to answer my questions?" Kaoru said sulkily, ignoring Eliot's words. Eliot raised his hands in a gesture that seemed to say,
Any time you want.

There were so many things Kaoru wanted to ask. He decided to lay aside his basic questions for the moment, and instead to start by exploring something Eliot had said earlier and which had been nagging at Kaoru ever since.

"I was fated to come here, from long ago. That's what you told me, correct?" Kaoru wanted to know why he'd said that. Doubtless he'd been speaking figuratively, but the way he'd said it troubled Kaoru deeply.

"It's a little early yet to explain that. If we go out of order, you're liable to end up screaming."

"In that case, you're going to explain things to me so that I understand, so that I don't end up screaming-right?" Kaoru was on edge again. Eliot's roundabout way of speaking rubbed him the wrong way. Kaoru got the feeling that this man held his life's rudder, and was laughing at the mother and father who'd brought him into the world.

"This was the only way to do it. I decided I would never be able to force you here. You had to come of your own free will. And looking at you now I can see that I was right about that." Eliot spoke as if to himself, then smiled. He spoke as someone who'd intervened in Kaoru's life. At that moment, Kaoru wanted to wring the old man's neck.

Eliot was unfazed by Kaoru's violent glare. For a time they were both silent.

It was Eliot who resumed speaking. "How much do you know about the Loop?" His hands were clasped in front of him, and there was something boyish in his upwards glance at Kaoru.

"It's an extremely well-designed computer simulation."

Eliot frowned, not content with that answer.

"Well-designed? That doesn't even begin to cover it. When I made the Loop, I made a world perfect in every respect."

"You made it?"

"I should say 'we,' I guess, but really, I was the one who had the initial idea for its structure." Now that he was discussing the Loop, there was a perceptible note of pride in Eliot's voice. The words came like water from a burst dam now; at times something like ecstasy was visible on his face.

"I was still a student at MIT. That's right, I was about the age you are now-this was nearly seventy years ago. The world was in love with astronauts-we'd just landed on the moon-and everybody was convinced that before long science would bring us space stations and space tourism. But I wasn't interested in outer space. My gaze was turned on another world, one I was trying to build myself."

Having said that much without pause, Eliot ducked his head and pursed his lips.

"Incidentally, do you know what makes the world go round?"

"The real world, or the Loop?"

It was easy to see what made the Loop go round: electricity. But the real world, that was a different story.

Eliot laughed at Kaoru's question.

"In this case, they're a lot alike. They move according to the same principle. The thing that makes the world go round-both worlds-is funding."

Eliot waited a few moments for the import of his words to sink in, then continued. "If the gargantuan project that was the Loop hadn't been funded, then that world would never have come into being. Neither this world nor that one will move without money."

Kaoru was listening closely now, eager to see what Eliot would say next, and how it would all connect to himself.

If only there had been funding, we might all be aboard space stations now.
Eliot was right. Science, Kaoru knew, did not progress along a straight line in a vacuum sealed off from social conditions. Instead, it changed direction from time to time in response to the situation. Budgets were controlled by the opinions of societies and governments-priorities were determined according to what people wanted most at a given time. Seventy years ago, outer space was the canvas on which the future was expected to be drawn. Everybody imagined that humanity would make colonies of the moon and Mars, that shuttles would make regularly scheduled trips between the planets. It was the stuff of novels and movies.

But by Kaoru's day, not only had man not been to Mars, he hadn't even returned to the moon. In the end, man's presence on Earth's satellite had been limited to that one brief, shining moment. Since then plans for space exploration had moved along at a snail's pace, if at all. And for one simple reason.
No funding.

In hindsight, it seemed odd that nobody had been able to predict that grinding halt.

Eliot, however, was saying that he had, in fact, predicted it. He was boasting of his foresight in turning his prodigious talents in another direction entirely.

He'd chosen as his academic fields computers, which at that time were unbelievably primitive compared to the ones Kaoru was familiar with, and molecular biology, which had just been revolutionized by the discovery of the double helix.

Eliot had had the uncanny intuition to combine these two emerging fields. His first research project had asked the simple question of whether or not it was possible to create artificial life within a computer.

He'd pursued this question through highly original means, and at length, his work began to bear fruit. Just as Eliot had foreseen, society's interest began to shift from space exploration to the creation of a user-friendly world of information. Computers were the stars of the age, and Eliot suddenly found that he had venues in which to present his work, and listeners to present it to.

With new wind in his sails, Eliot proceeded to develop the first self-replicating program, and then the first software that could evolve on its own. All without losing sight of his initial question.
Is it possible to create artificial life in a computer?

He first realized his goal sooner than even he had expected, in the final years of the twentieth century. He'd never expected it to happen before the end of the century, he said; he'd shocked even himself. Of course, the beings he called life at that point were quite simple in structure, moving around onscreen in a way that resembled nothing so much as parasitic worms.

Then he caused male and female to appear, and at the beginning of the new century, new life had appeared within the computer of its own accord. The new cells divided again and again, and eventually they crawled around in the display just like their parents. Eliot called it a sight worthy of the new century.

Things accelerated after that. The basic process was much the same for all kinds of life forms. Producing fish or amphibians was all a matter of accumulating adaptations.

Having accomplished that much, Eliot allowed for an evolution in his ultimate goal. The question now became:
Is it possible to create in a virtual space a biosphere on the scale of the Earth's?

This was the germ of the Loop project, an idea that at this stage was already pretty clearly defined.

At Eliot's invitation, scientists the world over began working toward a single goal. Computer scientists, medical doctors, molecular biologists, evolutionary theorists, astrophysicists, geologists, meteorologists-people from every branch of the sciences were involved. But interest wasn't confined to the hard sciences-economists, historians, political scientists, and social scientists of all stripes were paying attention, too.

Because it turned out to take more than just science to create a virtual Earth. It took an understanding of the humanities and social sciences as well. For this reason it was expected that the results of the Loop experiment would contribute to all fields. In addition to the basic evolutionary and biological mysteries, it was hoped that creating intelligent life forms in a virtual world would help provide clues to social problems such as wars and population increase, even fluctuations in the stock markets, areas in which it had been impossible to find definitive governing principles. Leading scientists in every field recognized the importance of the Loop project.

So the Loop started to function formally, in reality, with a budget equivalent to that of a full-fledged country.

Due to the reservations of certain government actors, the project couldn't be conducted in the open at first. Nobody could predict what might come of it-some new strategy for world domination, perhaps-and so it was felt that it should be carried out with the greatest circumspection. In the end, with no great ceremony, the project was launched as a joint effort by the U.S. and Japan.

The next name Eliot mentioned was one dear to Kaoru.

"Hideyuki Futami… Yes, he was a brilliant researcher. Young-fresh out of grad school-but he made the biggest contribution of anybody on the Japan side, I think." Eliot's phrasing tickled Kaoru-as was Eliot's intention, no doubt. Hearing one's father praised like this would make anyone feel good. Certainly that was the effect it had on Kaoru.

"Have you met my father?" Kaoru asked enthusiastically.

"Not face to face. But I heard about him, from my assistants."

Hideyuki had never talked much about the Loop. Kaoru was curious as to just what role Hideyuki had played in the project. He resolved to ask next time he saw him.

Eliot went on, interrupting Kaoru's thoughts of his father.

"I think you know what happened to the Loop after that."

"It turned cancerous."

"In the end, yes. But up to that point it was simply incredible. We'd never expected it to go so far."

He gave Kaoru a portentous look, as if urging him to ask the question.

"There was something you hadn't predicted?"

"Does it not surprise you? After all, you've seen a part of the Loop with your own eyes."

"So many things surprised me that I'm not sure what I should be surprised at."

Kaoru wasn't replicating Eliot's excitement, and this seemed to take the wind out of Eliot's sails: he sat there with his mouth half open, spittle dribbling from a corner of his lips. When a drop of drool began to descend on a clear string, Eliot finally noticed and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

"We'd expected that with physical conditions the same as on Earth, we'd get roughly the same sorts of life forms. We didn't dream that they'd be
exactly identical.
In those days everybody thought that the course of evolution was guided by chance. It couldn't happen the same way twice."

That was indeed one of the things that had surprised Kaoru. The course of evolution in the Loop had been exactly the same as on Earth, down to the last detail, and it certainly mystified him.