The End Of Mr. Y (47 page)

everything is real. But I thought that nothing was real. Derrida’s différance; Baudrillard’s simulacra. If thought is matter, then everything becomes real. But if you turn the equation around – if matter is actually thought – then nothing is real. Can both of these ideas be true at the same time? Can this equation work in the same way as ‘energy equals mass’?

‘Although thought doesn’t make more matter,’ Lura says, ‘neither thought nor matter can come from nowhere.’

‘No. I can see that, I think. But thought kind of … shapes …’ ‘Encodes,’ Lura says. ‘Thought encodes matter.’

‘Which means what?’ I take a sip of red wine and my hand trembles.

‘When you think, you potentially change things.’

I think about this, and everything she’s said. I imagine the little binary people in their world where all the stuff they see around them, and all their thoughts, are made of the same thing. Presumably, in this world, you could create things just by thinking them. There’d be no difference between a thought of rain and rain itself. But surely that doesn’t follow in this world?

‘Are you saying that if I think a tree, I can make a tree?’ I say to Lura, unconvinced.

‘Not in this world,’ she says.

‘But in the computer world? In the thought experiment?’

‘Sort of,’ she says. She looks at Burlem. ‘She has a very good knack for simplification,’ she says.

‘Not a skill you really need in an English department,’ he says. ‘But, yes.’

‘Why “sort of”?’ I ask Lura. ‘Why can I only sort of make a tree by thinking it, if I’m one of these beings?’

‘Because it depends on what sort of code you’re thinking in,’ she says. ‘Whether you can think in machine code or just within the software program.’

‘I’m having trouble with this,’ I say, frowning.

I can barely taste my food. I’m so aware that this is reality we’re talking about: this is the room I’m in, and the chair I’m sitting on, and my mind and my dreams and everything that makes me exist. I have the bizarre sensation that if I get any of these questions wrong, things will start melting around me: that the existence of everything depends on this.

And then I think, ‘Don’t be stupid: it’s just a theory.’

But I’ve seen the evidence for it. I’ve been in the Troposphere. But the Troposphere could mean anything, surely?

‘Trouble?’ Burlem says, laughing. ‘Oh, join the club.’

‘I mean, it’s as though the whole world is turning, I don’t know …’ ‘Upside down?’ Lura says.

‘Yeah. But in more dimensions than just four. I can’t …’ What do I want to say? I’m not sure. ‘So what is machine code?’ I ask. ‘And why can’t I think trees?’

She takes a sip of wine. ‘My whole book is about what this “machine code” possibly is. I’m not sure myself yet. I’ve got my hypothesis that it exists, but I’m still looking for the mathematics that completely explains it … I think I’m probably seventy-five per cent there.’ She puts her wine down. ‘You know, of course, that in the real world, you can’t make something just by thinking it. You can’t create a ten-pound note when you’re poor, or a sandwich when you’re hungry. The mind just can’t do that.’

‘It’s a shame,’ Burlem says.

‘But we also know – or we’ve agreed for the time being – that thought is matter. Thought is encoded; thought never goes away. Everyone’s thoughts exist in another dimension, which we are experiencing as the Troposphere.’

‘Yes,’ I say, putting my fork down.

‘We know thought is matter because it is happening in a closed system, in which everything is made from matter. Just like in the computer program in our thought experiment. There’s nothing in there that isn’t written in code because, well, you just can’t have something on a computer that isn’t written in code. Anything outside the system by definition couldn’t exist within it. But we also know that thought doesn’t create more matter …’

‘I can see that,’ I say. ‘The computer beings couldn’t just will more RAM into existence, for example.’ ‘Good,’ Lura says. ‘But the matter that is there can be manipulated.’

Where have I heard the term ‘spoon bending’ recently? This is what comes into my mind, but I don’t say anything. I’m not even sure spoon bending really happens, and there don’t seem to be any examples of people thinking of a goldfish, for example, and making one appear. Magicians who seem to turn silk scarves into doves don’t really do it: it’s just an illusion.

Lura keeps talking. She describes the two levels of code on the metaphorical machine: machine code and the software code. Machine code makes the machine work, and tells the software code what to do. The way she speaks is focused and urgent, as if she’s trying to talk down a passenger who’s been left to fly a plane in a disaster. For a second I get the impression that she thinks she’s going to die soon. Then the thought’s gone.

‘So, in our world, what is written in machine code?’ Lura asks me.

‘The laws of physics?’ I say, wondering if I’m the passenger who’s supposed to land the plane, and whether or not I’m going to crash.

‘Yes. Excellent. And?’

‘And …?’ I think for a few minutes. While I’m thinking, Burlem finishes eating; then he clears the plates away and stacks them in the dishwasher.

‘What about philosophy?’ Lura prompts me. ‘Metaphysics?’

I nod slowly. ‘OK. So … what are you saying? That some people think in this machine code?’ ‘Possibly,’ she says. ‘Who do you imagine would think in machine code?’

‘You mean as opposed to the more “ordinary world” kind of code?’ ‘Yes.’

‘So the code of the ordinary world is basically language, and machine code is the thoughts of … um

… scientists? Philosophers?’

‘Yes. Now think of a historical figure. Someone who would be capable of this.’ I sip my wine. ‘Einstein?’

‘Good answer. But now I’ve got the hardest question of all. When Einstein came up with his relativity theories, was he just describing the world as it was already or …?’ She raises her eyebrows and leaves a space for me to finish her sentence.

‘Making it work like that,’ I say. ‘God.’

‘Do you see it?’ Lura asks. ‘It’s odd, don’t you think, that Einstein found exactly what he was looking for, even though it shouldn’t have made sense? It was a brilliant theory, of course, but so outlandish compared with Newtonian physics. Then Eddington went off to look at the eclipse, and Einstein’s predictions were proven. They keep being proven. You can’t build a GPS system now without taking relativity theory into account. And even the cosmological constant, which Einstein rejected and said was his biggest mistake – even that refuses to go away completely. And then there’s quantum physics, which is basically the study of things you shouldn’t be able to see,’ she says. ‘It’s the study of things no one has ever looked at, or thought about very much. And what happened when people did look?’

‘They found uncertainty,’ I say.

‘No one had ever said what this tiny stuff should be doing,’ Burlem says. ‘So when they looked at it, they found it was doing whatever the fuck it liked.’

‘Oh, you do paraphrase in an awkward way,’ Lura says. ‘Matter doesn’t “do what it likes”. Quantum matter just had no laws. No one had decided whether or not light was waves or particles. And then people were surprised when they found that it was both at once. In terms of my theory, perhaps it’s not a surprise to find that, on that level, the electron is everywhere at once until you decide where it is – and therefore what it is. It fits the theory. Matter has to be coded before it can mean anything. And thought is what encodes matter. Thought decides where the electron is.’

We move onto the sofas with a cafetière full of coffee. Lura knits as she speaks: pale green cashmere turning from something that looks like string into something that looks like the sleeve of a cardigan as the grey needles click-click-click in her lap. I wonder who she’s knitting for. I have a strong feeling that it’s either herself or no one at all. While she knits, she explains to me the way in which she believes the laws of the physical world are constructed. She says that there was never any
a priori
existence: no sense that matter was anything, or obeyed any laws, until there was consciousness to perceive it. But, because consciousness is also made from the same matter, the two areas that we always think are distinct – the human mind and the world of things – started working together to create, refine and mould each other. Conscious beings started looking at things and deciding what things were and how they worked. Thus, the first fish didn’t just chance upon the weed it needed to survive: it created it. And no one ‘found’ fire by a lucky accident. Someone just had to think fire and, as long as the thought was in this ‘machine’ code, there it was. And, for a while, things worked exactly the way everyone assumed they did. And there were no competing laws, so everything was simple. The sun did revolve around the Earth, and magic did exist. But then other people came along – also people able to think in this machine code – and decided that the world worked differently. The sun became the centre of something called a ‘solar system’, and the stars stopped being the burnholes of the saints. Magic gradually faded.

We talk about chaos theory, and how butterflies suddenly acquired the power to cause hurricanes; and we talk about evolution. Lura explains her theory – part of her whole project – that once someone has thought something into being via this machine code, that theory has to survive. Some do and some don’t. Newton’s theory had some small glitches that were worked out in Einstein’s theory. Einstein’s theory was a mutation, but it was stronger. It survived. But something’s bothering me about this.

‘What about time?’ I say.

‘What about it?’ says Lura.

‘Well, no one thinks that relativity only existed from 1905, or whenever it was. People think that there was always relativity, but no one noticed it before.’

‘What do you think?’ says Lura.

‘I’m not sure,’ I say.

‘Maybe time doesn’t work quite the way you think it does,’ Lura says. But she doesn’t say anything else for a minute or so, and when I look at her lined face, it seems tired.

‘Who’s the writer you were talking about before?’ I ask. ‘The one who keeps leaving all the messages?’

‘Ah,’ says Burlem.

‘Oh,’ says Lura. ‘She’s interested in my theories, and she’s condensed some of them into a short story. She’s having it published in
Nature
magazine, but I wasn’t sure I wanted her to. She offered to put my name on the piece, but I’m not sure I want to put my name to all of this just yet. And as for my book …’

Lura’s eyes drift away from mine and settle somewhere on the table.

‘What’s your book called?’ I ask her.

‘
Poststructuralist Physics
,’ she says. Now the click-click-click noise stops. She sighs and puts her

knitting in her lap. ‘It’ll never be published, of course,’ she says.

‘Why not?’ I say.

‘Because there’s no evidence for anything I’ve said tonight. There is no such thing as poststructuralist physics. I can just imagine trying to explain it to my old colleagues. They’d think I’d gone mad. It happens to people after they retire sometimes. They …’ She shrugs: a small, almost imperceptible movement. Burlem and me both wait for her to continue the sentence, but all she says is, ‘Well.’ Then Burlem reaches over and picks up the ball of wool that must have dropped without me realising onto the floor and rolled under Lura’s chair.

‘What about the Troposphere?’ I say.

‘The Troposphere is going to be gone,’ Burlem says.

‘Gone? But … how?’

‘You’re going to destroy it,’ he says.

TWENTY – FIVE

I’
M SITTING ON MY BED
with my thoughts flapping in my mind like chaotic butterflies. Oh, fuck.

Now I understand why Apollo Smintheus took a special interest in me.

So I can change things in people’s minds – just like the KIDS can. I can make people such as Martin Rose want to go to the toilet so badly that he leaves his stake-out. And I made Wolf refuse to tell Adam where the book was when the Project Starlight men were surely in Adam’s mind, listening in. But I thought everyone could do that. I didn’t think there was anything special about me. Now it turns out that there is. Lura also thinks I could probably think in machine code; that I have that potential. And that’s why Apollo Smintheus wants me to seek out Abbie Lathrop and, through her, to change history. So now Burlem and Lura want me to go even further back and convince Lumas not to write the book at all. They say I can have as long as I want to plan my journey – after all, once the book is gone, then the knowledge is gone. The Project Starlight men will never find the book in the priory because the book will not be there any more. There won’t be any Project Starlight. But I am bothered by paradoxes again: they are pinning me down by my wings. If I had already done this, and been successful, then I wouldn’t need to go. And I don’t have all the time in the world, really. Martin and Ed could come here tomorrow and blow my brains out. The fact that they’re here, in this world, and they want to do this – surely that implies that I have already been unsuccessful?

Except … perhaps time doesn’t work in exactly the way we all think.

But maybe I’d better not think about that too much … I’m actually a bit scared of thinking anything, now I know what my thoughts potentially are.

So I wanted knowledge, and I got it. But did I ever want this kind of knowledge? Did I ever want to know that there is no God: that we ARE God? That there’s not necessarily a creator or a reason? We make reason, and only dream of creators: that’s all we can do. But I knew this all along, right?

Maybe. But how awful this is: how awful to be proved right; for someone to demonstrate to you that, yes, there’s no Daddy up there who’s going to approve of you because you got the puzzle right. No supreme being is going to clap and give you a special place in heaven because you understood some of Heidegger. God might be up there in the Troposphere, but the Troposphere is simply our thought. And there really is nothing outside of that. Our thoughts spin quarks up and down and smear electrons into whatever we want them to be.