Brasyl (38 page)

"Whatever's in the frog skin allows our minds to perceive on the
quantum level."

"What did you see?"

"Like everything had a halo, had other selves ... " She
hesitated over the two words that would turn her world upside down,
shatter it into glittering dust. "Many worlds."

There are three main interpretations of quantum theory
,
Heitor had said. It had been three days after carnaval, when all the
marvelous city still had huge stashes of recreational drugs to use up
before the feathers and the sequins and the skin glitter were put
away and the world of work reaffirmed its dull authority. Marcelina
had been reeling around the apartment blessed on 1guaçu white,
practicing her booty shake before it was put away until the New Year
Yemanja festival.
The Copenhagen interpretation is considered a
purely probabilistic interpretaation in that in physical terms it
gives undue prominence to observation, information, and mind. The
Bohm carrier-wave theory is essentially nonlocal, in that every
particle in the universe is connected across space and time to every
other, which has been seized on by various New Age charlatans as
supporting mysticism. The Everett many-world theorem reconciles the
paradoxes in quantum theory by positing a huge, maybe even infinite,
number of parallel universes that contain every possible quantum
state.

Why are you telling me this why is this important what does it
mean come and have some coke
, Marcelina had jabbered. She had
never forgotten Heitor's answer.

What it means is, any way you cut it, it's a mad world.

Again the room, the fundação, Jesus on his mountain
spasmed around Marcelina.
I am seeing across multiple universes,
parallel Rios, other Marcelinas. What of the ones I can't see, the
ones who were that hair too slow on Rua Rabata Ribeiro and were cut
open under that knife?
She took a sip of her strong, now-cold
coffee.

"I think you're going to have to explain this to me."

Mestre Ginga sat back in his chair.

"Very well then. You won't believe it, but every word is true."

"There is not one world. There are many worlds. There is not one
you; there are many yous. There is no universe; there is the
multiverse, and all possible quantum states are contained within it.
Write down ninety-nine point nine and as many nines after that until
you get bored with it. That many universes are empty, sterile,
exercises in abstract geometry and topology; two-dimen-sional,
gravityless, impossible. Out of that chain-of-zeroes point one that
remain, the greater part are universes where the constants of physics
vary by a tiny degree, a decimal here or there, but even that
minuscule variation means that the universe immediately collapses
after the big bang into a black hole that expands infinitely in a
fraction of a second so that every particle ends up so far from its
neighbor that it is effectively in a universe of its own, where stars
do not form, or burn out in a three-score and ten. And in the same
fraction of those universes as they are to the multiverse, the
fine-tuning of constants allows the ultimate unlikelihood of life to
exist, to exist intelligently, to found empires and build beautiful
Rios, to learn martial arts and make television programs and quest
into the nature of the universe in which it finds itself so
improbably. We have penetrated to ten to the three hundred thousand
universes and still we are not a thumbnail's thickness into the rind
of the multiverse, let alone begun to exhaust the universes where we
exist in some form recognizable to ourselves.

"Everyone's got a theory. Ask any Rio taxi driver and he'll give
you his free. Taxi drivers know how to make a better country and a
perfect Seleçao as well as all the best places to eat. What
matters is, how useful is your theory? Does it explain the everyday
as well as the weird and spooky? Physics is no different. We've had
Newton and we've had Einstein and we've had Bohr and Heisenberg, and
each time the theory gets a little better at explaining what's real;
but we're still a long long way from a final Theory of Everything,
the ultimate taxi driver theory that you plug a value in and it gives
you everything from the reason there is something rather than nothing
to the soccer results. Physics is now a roda: all the malandros
standing round clapping and singing while two theories go in and try
to out-jeito each other. There are two big strong boys who think they
have the malandragem to be the theory of everything. One of them is
String theory, or M-theory as it's also called. Facing it in the ring
is Loop Quantum Gravity. They're calling names at each other, taking
each other's measure, trying to trick the other into a simple mistake
they can use to make him look stupid, like you made Jair look stupid
with that boca de calça. The LQG boys, they're shouting at the
String theorists that it's not even wrong. The Stringeiros, they
shout back that it's just dreadlocks in space. Which is right? I'm
just a guy who runs a capoeira school and who needs some theory to
explain what a little book with a frog on the cover has shown him,
and that's a hell of a lot of parallel universes.

"Me, I go for dreadlocks in space. Loop Quantum Gravity's main
theory is that everything is made from space and time woven into
itself. Everything can be made from loops of space and time pulled
through themselves. Yeah, it's not dreadlocks, it's knitting. But I
was reading on online forums—I read the physics forums, why
shouldn't I?—and there's a guy in the terreiro at Rio U who
says that maybe what we think of as space is just connections between
pieces of information. Everything is connected information in time,
and we have a word for that: it's computer. The universe is one huge
quantum computer; all matter, all energy, everything we are, are
programs running on this computer. Now, stick with me here. What I
know about quantum computers, they can exist in two contradictory
states at the same time, and this allows them to do things no other
computer could. But I know, because I've seen them, that reality is a
multiverse, so those computations are being done in many universes at
once, so in fact all the multiverse is one vast quantum computer.
Everything is information. Everything is ... thought. Out minds are
part of it. Out minds run across many universes—maybe all of
them. That's what the curupairá does, reduces our perceptions
to the level where we become aware that we are part of the multiverse
quantum computer. And listen, listen well, if it's all information,
if it's all thought and computation, then that information can be
rewritten and edited. You can write yourself into any part of the
multiverse, any place, any time. And another you has written herself
into this universe, and will run you down and kill you. Think of her
as a kind of policeman. A militar. She is part of an organization
that polices the multiverse, that seeks to keep the true nature of
reality secret, controlled only by a small, elite group. She will
take your place, and then she hoped to use that to infiltrate us, and
eliminate us all.

"I told you you wouldn't believe it. But it's the truest thing
there is."

Marcelina rocked back in her chair.

"Have you got, could you get me, I really need something to
drink."

Mestre Ginga went to the refrigerator. Full dark had fallen; the blue
light from the cool cabinet was painful as he hunted for a Skol.
Marcelina started at the sound of car tires squealing on the greasy
road. Every twitch, every fidget and rustle was an enemy. Marcelina
drank the beer. It was stupidly cold and gloriously real and it slid
through her like rain through a ghost, touching nothing. The Mestre's
cellular rang; a slow ladainha for solo voice and betimbau. As he
talked—low, short phrases—realization passed through
Marcelina in the shadow of the beer.

"I'm a fucking cop out there. Somewhere."

Mestre Ginga clammed shut his phone. Dew ran down the sides of the
cans. "In a sense, yes. The term we use is an
admonitory
; it's an old religious expression. There is an organization; call it
an
order
. It's old—it's a lot older than you think, it
all goes back to that book I gave you. The Order's purpose is to
suppress knowledge about the multiverse; that it is possible to cross
it, that it exists at all. I can understand why: all our beliefs
about who and what we are challenged; the great religions just
comfortable stories. Humankind cannot stand too much reality. The
Order suffered a partial defeat when quantum theory itself developed
the many-worlds interpretation, but they still have a firm grip on
their central mission, to control communication and travel across the
multiverse; and deep down, that is the ability to rewrite the
programs of the universal quantum computer. They are the reality
cops. Locally the Order is hereditary; it runs in certain old
families who have access to the highest level of government,
business, and the military. When Lula got elected, the first thing
they did was shake his hand and say 'Congratulations, Mr. President.'
The second thing they did was take him into a back room and introduce
him to our Brazilian Sesmaria. The Sesmarias move slowly; the last
thing they want is to attract attention. They have to live here;
they're not allowed to cross between worlds. But sometimes the
opportunity arrives to strike a blow, and that's when they call in an
admonitory."

"Me, when I started looking for Barbosa, that was their
opportunity."

"You were doing all their work for them. First they discredit
you; then they replace you. And when they're finished, they walk away
into the multiiverse again."

"It's nothing to do with me, is it? I'm just convenient, a way
for the Order to get to you."

"In the multiverse, you are everything you can be. Villain,
mother, assassin, saint. Maybe even hero."

A crunch of tires. A horn blew twice. Mestre Ginga looked up. He left
the small kitchen with its lingering tang of dende. Doors opening,
doors closing; voices on the edge of audibility. Marcelina felt
Mestre Ginga's bright kitchen expand around her until it became a
universe, her trapped in it, alone, isolate. Heitor used to say that
when God is dead all we have left is conspiracy. This cold illusion,
this book of ghosts would have satisfied his hard, gloomy worldview:
the whirling noise and color and life of the city a dance of dolls
knitted from time and words. Mestre Ginga's cellular lay on the
table. Cellular, beer, a coffee mug for a futebol team, a book from
another universe. A Brazilian Last Supper. She could pick up that
phone. She could call Heitor. He alone remained. Career, friends,
family had been stripped away from her like a skin peel, deeper and
deeper, rawer and rawer. She should call Heitor, warn him. Pick up
the phone. Press out the number. But she had said that the next voice
he heard would not be hers. He would not believe her. But she might
have gotten to him already. Her: the other Marcelina. She knows you;
she knows everything about you because she is you. Your thoughts are
her thoughts, your strengths her strengths. You are your own worst
enemy.

Your weaknesses her weaknesses.

The creak of the wrought-iron gate, footsteps on the floor tiles. The
kitchen door opened. An old man, hair gone grizzle-gray bur his skin
still bright and black and his bearing upright and glowing with
energy, entered. He wore a light linen suit, pants taper-cuffed,
high-waisted, and an open-necked silk shirt. Mestre Ginga followed.
It was evident in every motion and muscle that he held the visitor in
the greatest reverence. Marcelina felt compelled to rise. The old man
shook her hand and settled himself heavily on a kitchen chair. "Good
evening to you, Senhora Hoffman. I am very pleased to see you well. I
am the man who made all Brazil cry."

Two by cab. Two on the Metro Linea 4, on separate trains. Two in the
van, the biggest risk; two already out and running in the rig. Edson
by moto-taxi. Last of all, Fia. In one hour she will take a minibus
cab to the rendezvous at the dead mall.
No different from a show
, Edson thinks. It's all choreography. Each player is equipped with a
one-shot cloned identity and has been rigorously de-arfided. Hamilcar
and Mr. Smiles's bill had taken the jaguar's share of the
A World
Somewhere
prize money; even so, Edson, clinging to the moto boy
as he accelerates between two lines of traffic, imagines the talons
of the Angels of Perpetual Surveillance reaching for his kidneys.

Efrim checked the restaurant thirty-six hours before go-day. Long
tables, clean tiled floors, good food, and no one put their thumbs on
the scales. Now in his Edson persona, he picks the big table by the
window. The car pound runs from front to back on the block opposite;
they'll make their entrance from the rear.

Emerson and Big Steak first. Shake hands, a little high-carb,
low-protein dinner. Then Edimilson and Jack Chocolate, that's the
garage team on-site. First real risk here: their gear is in a
false-registration van parked out on the street. No one should get
curious, but Edson taps his long, tapered fingers together in
anxiety.

"Here, eat something." Edson passes a roll of reis to the
mechanics. He's not eating, himself; he took a little corajoso when
he paid the moto-boy, and it kicks in with an accompanying swooping
nausea. His stomach lurches as he watches the mechanics load up on
meat from the churrascaria.
Keep it down, Edson
. Waguinho and
Furaçãio in the rig will arrive on target at the
designated time. Where are Turkey-Feet and Treats? He flicks the time
up in the corner of his I-shades. Fia will already have set off from
the fazenda. Mr. Peach will drop her by the rodoviaria in Itaparaca;
there is something headed into town every two minutes. He picked the
old mall because it is enclosed and free from the eyes of cameras,
but it's big and out of the way and full of weirds and he doesn't
love the idea of her hanging around among them too long.