Mercury Shrugs (26 page)

Chapter Forty-Four

“How did you get inside?” asked Green Mercury. He and the other Mercurys, along with Lucifer, Lucas, the woman who looked like Tiamat, and a few of the other cultists stood in a rough semicircle, staring at the pyramid. Most of the other cultists hung back, too afraid to approach the strange monument, while a few walked around it, banged on it, or even tried—without much luck—to climb up the sides.

“There’s a door in the center of this side,” said Blue Mercury. He took a step forward and waved his hand over the side of the pyramid where he’d seen the control panel appear. It took him a few tries, but ultimately the nine icons reappeared.

“Weird,” said Lucas. “It’s like a combination lock. You’d think these extradimensional beings or whatever they are would come up with something… I don’t know, fancier.”

“Pattern recognition security is easy to fool,” said Balderhaz. “Irises, fingerprints, voices, faces… just analog patterns that can be duplicated. Code-based security is much harder. Nine characters, eight digits. That’s nine to the eighth possible permutations. Just over forty-three million possibilities. At five seconds per permutation, it would take seven years to try them all.”

“We have about half an hour,” said Green Mercury.

“It’s worse than that,” said Red Mercury. “A wrong combination will cause the Eye to self-destruct, taking all of us with it.”

“And even if we could get inside,” said Blue Mercury, “we don’t know that we could figure out how to take control of it.”

“I think I can figure it out,” said Balderhaz. “That gooey interface in the Iris seemed rather intuitive.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Red Mercury. “We can’t get inside. And in any case, John will be back in half an hour. We can’t fight that guy.”

“I could take him,” said Lucifer.

“Good luck with that,” said Blue Mercury. “He controls the Eye, which is where you get your power. And he’s got powers that make angels look like these dumbasses.” He waved his hand to indicate the crowd behind them. “He could kill you just by looking at you.”

Lucifer swallowed hard. For a moment, everyone was silent.

“I, um, have an idea,” said Balderhaz. “But I think it might be insane.”

“Oh God,” said Blue Mercury. “If
you
think it’s insane, I’m afraid to even ask.”

“Shoot, Balderhaz,” said Green Mercury. “It can’t possibly make things any worse.”

“Well,” said Balderhaz. “What if we could try
all
the combinations?”

“We can’t,” said Red Mercury. “And if we did, we’d all be annihilated forty-three million times.”

“Forty-three million, forty-six thousand and seven hundred nineteen times,” said Balderhaz. “But we’d succeed once.”

Blue Mercury threw up his hands. “How the hell are we going to try every possible combination in twenty minutes? Unless you’re planning on duplicating us a bunch more times, it’s… oh.”

“No,” said Red Mercury, realizing where Balderhaz was going. “No more universe splitting.”

“What do we have to lose?” asked Green Mercury.

“Everything!” cried Blue Mercury. “John’s going to be back in a few minutes. Let’s say there’s a one percent chance that he was able to get approval to keep our universe going. Not great odds, I’ll grant you, but still a thousand times better than you’d get with Balderhaz’s plan.”

“Four hundred thirty thousand times better,” said Balderhaz.

“See?” said Blue Mercury. “Even Balderhaz knows it’s insane.”

“Any of you jerks plan on telling me what the hell you’re talking about?” asked Lucifer at last.

“A quoin,” said Red Mercury. “A quantum coin. Show him, Balderhaz.”

Balderhaz held out his hand, revealing the silver disk.

“It’s like a coin, but it taps into quantum mumbo jumbo something,” said Blue Mercury. “The point is, the outcome is completely unpredictable. Not determined.”

“Truly random,” said Lucifer. “Pure chaos. I like it!”

“But there are only two possibilities with a coin,” said the woman who looked like Tiamat. “Not forty-three million.”

“We’d need to flip it a bunch of times,” said Green Mercury.

“Twenty-six times,” said Balderhaz. “We’d get a random output of a binary number twenty-six digits long. A string of ones and zeroes, basically. Ones for heads, zeroes for tails. Then we convert that number to a four-digit base base-nine number. Translate the digits one through nine to the hieroglyphs on the panel, and we have our combination.”

“We have
a
combination!” exclaimed Blue Mercury. “A combination that is almost guaranteed to be wrong!”

“But we’d be doing it on forty-three million different universes,” said Green Mercury. “Right, Balderhaz?”

“Theoretically, yes,” said Balderhaz. “And in nearly all of them, we will be obliterated. But on exactly one, we will succeed.”

“Remember earlier,” said Red Mercury, “When I said our timeline-hopping plan was the most batshit crazy plan of all time? Turns out I was wrong by several orders of magnitude. That plan was basically a midnight trip to Arby’s compared to this. This is like Salvador Dali and Hunter S. Thompson on a peyote trip crazy.”

“I say we do it,” said Lucifer.

“Yeah, because you’re a psychopath,” said Blue Mercury.

“I don’t like it either,” said Green Mercury. “But I also don’t like leaving the fate of the universe up to some bureaucratic assholes.”

“We should let people vote,” said an older man in the group, who looked eerily like a seraph named Cravutius.

“No, we shouldn’t,” said Red Mercury. “We’re not leaving the fate of the universe up to a bunch of end times nutjobs. Particularly ones who are only here because one of them stole a part from our portal generator.” He glared at the Tiamat lookalike, who glared back.

“There’s no time for organizing a vote with all these people anyway,” said Lucifer. “We need to make a decision now. I think we should do it.”

“Me too,” said Lucas. “It’s worth a try.”

“No it isn’t!” yelled Blue Mercury. “This is why people buy lottery tickets. They don’t understand statistics. Help me out here, Balderhaz.”

Balderhaz shrugged. “I kind of want to try it.”

Blue Mercury sighed. “Of course you do. You’re insane too.”

“I’m with Blue Mercury,” said Red Mercury. “We wait for John to come back. It’s by far our best chance.”

Green Mercury nodded. “I’m inclined to agree. I don’t like it, but there’s no sense throwing the universe away on a one-in-forty-three-million shot.”

“So all the Mercurys are in agreement,” said Lucifer. “What a surprise. But they only get one vote.”

“We’re not voting!” yelled Blue Mercury. “This is not even a serious question. Even if the odds of John getting us a reprieve are one in a million, it’s still way better odds than trying to pick an eight digit combination completely at random!”

“I think it’s the principle of the thing,” said the Cravutius lookalike. The Tiamat lookalike nodded.

“What principle?” demanded Red Mercury. “The right to make ridiculously terrible decisions?”

“Well yeah,” said Lucas. “I mean it’s our universe. Shouldn’t we get to decide?”

“The kid makes a good point,” said Lucifer.

The Mercurys let out a simultaneous groan.

“You realize he’s literally Satan,” said Blue Mercury to the humans in the group. “He wants to destroy the universe.”

“What an absurd and offensive thing to say,” said Lucifer. “You wound me, Hermes Trismegistus!”

“Lay off the theatrics, Lucifer,” said Green Mercury. “These people deserve to know the truth. You’ve been trying to destroy the world for thousands of years.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what this man is talking about,” said Lucifer. “I just want to give the combination thing the old college try. Sounds like fun.”

“Seconded,” said the Tiamat lookalike.

The Cravutius lookalike nodded. The others in the group still seemed unsure, but the Mercurys remained the only ones arguing against the idea.

“You know what?” said Blue Mercury. “Screw it. Do what you want.”

The other two Mercurys nodded slowly in agreement. “I suppose it’s only fitting that the universe be wiped out in an orgy of irrational thinking,” said Green Mercury.

“Yeah, I’m out too,” said Red Mercury. “Balderhaz, if you want to try it, go for it. Better hurry up, you’ve only got about twenty minutes.”

Balderhaz nodded. “Okay, blond kid, grab that stick.”

Lucas grabbed the twig Balderhaz was indicating.

“I’m going to flip the quoin twenty-six times. If I say heads, you draw a one in the sand. If I say tails, you draw a zero. Got it?”

“Yeah, I think I can draw ones and zeroes.”

“Don’t be a smartass. No mistakes. You have to do it perfectly.”

“No mistakes,” said Lucas. “Let’s do this.”

“There are more possible quoin permutations than there are door combinations,” Balderhaz said, “so if we get an invalid permutation, we have to start over. Okay, here we go.” Balderhaz flipped the quoin and caught it. “Heads. That’s a one.”

“I know,” said Lucas, drawing a one in the sand. “Just say heads or tails. I got this.”

Balderhaz flipped the quoin again. “Tails,” he said.

Lucas drew a zero.

“Heads. Heads. Tails. Heads. Heads. Tails.”

As Balderhaz called out each succeeding toss, Lucas made the corresponding mark in the sand. A minute later they were looking at a twenty-six digit long string of zeroes and ones.

“Now what?” asked Lucas. The others stood in a circle around him and Balderhaz, and more of the cultists were joining them, curious about what was happening.

“Now everybody shuts up while I convert this to base nine,” said Balderhaz. He wagged a finger in the air as if writing, his lips moving silently. Then he scratched a four-digit number in the sand below the number Lucas had written. He did a few more mental calculations and then wrote another twenty-six digit string of ones and zeroes below that. He looked up at the group. “Does everybody agree that the top number and the bottom number are identical?”

There were nods and murmurs of assent.

“Good,” he said. “Mercury, go to the door.”

“Which one?” said the Mercurys in unison.

“The one in the pyramid,” said Balderhaz.

The Mercurys looked at each other. “I’ll do it,” said Red Mercury. The other two nodded. Red Mercury walked to the area on the pyramid where the door had appeared and waved his hand, revealing the control panel. Finding his hands were shaking, he took a deep breath to calm himself. “Ready,” he said.

“One to nine, left to right and then top to bottom, got it?” said Balderhaz. “Just like a telephone.”

“Got it,” said Red Mercury.

“First number is four,” said Balderhaz.

“Four,” repeated Red Mercury. “That’s the first icon on the second row.”

“Correct,” said Balderhaz.

“Done,” said Red Mercury, tapping the icon.

“Second number is three,” said Balderhaz.

“Third icon on the first row,” said Red Mercury.

“Correct,” said Balderhaz.

“Done.

“Third number is eight,” said Balderhaz.

“Second icon on the third row.”

“Correct.”

“Done.”

“Third number is six,” said Balderhaz.

“First icon on the second row.”

“Correct.”

In this manner, they went through the remaining digits, checking each one as they went.

“Done,” said Mercury, after tapping the eighth and final digit. “Any last words?”

No one spoke. There was nothing to say. If they had entered the wrong combination, then nothing mattered anyway.

“Just as well,” said Mercury. “And now, we reap the whirlwind. Goodbye, everybody. It’s been a hell of a ride.” He pressed the enter button.

Chapter Forty-Five

The door slid open. Red Mercury was so shocked that he almost passed out.

“That… can’t happen,” he said. “It’s impossible.”

“No,” said Balderhaz, walking up next to him. “Just highly improbable.”

“But the odds…” Red Mercury said.

“The odds were one to zero in favor of success,” said Balderhaz. “There was a one hundred percent chance the correct permutation would be selected.”

“No,” said Blue Mercury, approaching from behind. “They were forty-three million to one against.”

“Incorrect,” said Balderhaz. “They were forty-three million to one against for any given permutation. They were one to zero in favor for all possible combinations.”

“But the odds that we would pick the right one…”

“Were also one to zero in favor,” said Balderhaz. “If we didn’t pick the right permutation, we wouldn’t be here to ask the question.
[11]
So the odds of any group of beings in our situation being the ones who picked the right permutation are one to zero in favor. Before we entered that particular permutation, alternate versions of us existed who picked every possible permutation. Once we entered the correct code, though, all possible versions collapsed into this one. Us.”

“You mean they were obliterated,” said Green Mercury. “Forty-three million other versions of us, just vanished as if they had never been.”

“Semantics,” said Balderhaz. “For all practical purposes, those alternate versions of us
were
us. The only difference was that they picked different permutations of hieroglyphs. But those permutations were dead-ends, impossibilities. They led to oblivion, which is simply another way of saying they couldn’t happen. So they didn’t. And here we are.”

“You knew this would happen,” said Red Mercury.

“I suspected,” said Balderhaz.

“I can’t believe that worked,” said Lucas. The Tiamat lookalike and the others regarded the open doorway with awe.

“It shouldn’t have,” said Lucifer glumly. “Forty-three million to one. Ridiculous.”

“Sorry, Luce,” said Blue Mercury. “Better luck next time.”

“Okay, let’s not waste this chance,” said Red Mercury. “Balderhaz, let’s go. Blue, you too. We’re going to need all of us to figure out how to work the Iris. Green, keep an eye on things out here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Green Mercury.

Blue Mercury followed Red Mercury and Balderhaz into the Outpost, closing the door behind him.

“How much time do we have?” said Blue Mercury, as they walked down the hallway toward the sitting room.

“About ten minutes, I think,” said Red Mercury. “You think you can figure this thing out by then, Balderhaz?”

“I don’t have a clue,” said Balderhaz.

“What,” said Blue Mercury. “No reassuring ‘the odds are one to zero in favor’ talk?”

“Not applicable,” said Balderhaz. “We’re on virgin territory here.”

“Fantastic,” said Red Mercury. “We survive forty million to one odds just to get inside and find you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”

They crossed the sitting room and opened the door into the Iris. They walked across the glowing floor and approached the pedestal, the two Mercurys moving aside as Balderhaz regarded the glass dome.

“If this thing is password-protected,” said Blue Mercury, “I’m going to punch myself until I pass out.”

“Do me first,” said Red Mercury.

“You got it,” said Blue Mercury.

But as Balderhaz waved his hand over the dome, the chaotic assortment of images appeared once again. Balderhaz cleared it as John had done, and then brought up the display of their universe, which currently showed only the blue pyramid and several hundred people gathered around it. Green Mercury seemed to be arguing with Lucifer.

“Ugh,” said Blue Mercury. “What’s that about? Should we help him?”

“No time,” said Red Mercury. “We’ll have to deal with it later.”

Balderhaz did something and the view of the Eye shrank to a fraction of its size.

“Gaaahhh!” cried Blue Mercury. “Don’t do that!”

“Calm down,” snapped Balderhaz. “I’m just making the display manageable.” He tapped another icon and a view of the desert without the Eye appeared. He shrank this one too, and dragged it next to the other. He made another motion and a second display, identical to the one he had just brought up, appeared next to it.

“How are you doing that?” asked Red Mercury. “You don’t even speak this language.”

“Good UI design,” said Balderhaz. “Also, I’m a genius. Now shut up.” He paused a moment, staring at the three little windows. “Okay, so I’ve figured out how to duplicate universes,” he said. “And the little fountain icon deploys them. But that doesn’t do us any good if none of the universes are self-sustaining. Or if this one is unstable, for that matter. So the question is, how do I set this universe to vent ontological energy to the others?”

The three of them stared at the display for a moment.

“Well,” said Blue Mercury, “we know John artificially set up an energy flow to his backup universe. Can we view that setting somewhere?”

Balderhaz nodded and tapped the window holding the initial backup. The display once again filled the screen. After trying a few icons with unsatisfactory results—including one terrifying blinking red warning dialog that showed something that looked like a giant shrimp tossing a chicken in a wood chipper—he happened upon one that brought up a sort of settings window.

“There,” said Red Mercury. “That blue pyramid. That’s the energy source.”

“And that slider-looking-thing next to it is the energy level,” said Blue Mercury.

“Fine,” said Balderhaz, “but that doesn’t… aha!” He tapped on an icon below the pyramid, and another window popped up, showing a series of smaller windows. Several of them appeared to be pictures of some kind of landscape. The one on the far upper left was a desert scene with a blue pyramid in it. Hundreds of what looked like tiny insects moved around the outside of the pyramid. “It can’t be this simple,” said Balderhaz. He tapped on the picture with the blue pyramid and the window vanished. The simple blue pyramid had now been replaced with the picture he had just selected.

“Brilliant!” cried Red Mercury. “You’ve selected this universe as the energy source for the backup!”

“And look,” said Blue Mercury. “The energy level slider is halfway over. It defaulted to splitting the Eye’s output fifty-fifty between the two universes.”

“Hmm,” said Balderhaz. “But look at this.” He pointed to a line of red hieroglyphs below the energy level, which seemed to be a sort of warning message.

“Is that saying it’s unstable?” said Blue Mercury.

“That’s my guess,” said Balderhaz. “Too much energy. John had that slider pretty far down on his simulation. Probably less than one percent.”

“Try dragging the slider down until those scary red frogs go away,” said Red Mercury.

Balderhaz tried it, but he dragged it too far, and the warning message was replaced with another, even longer and scarier message.

“You’ve turned the scary red frogs into terrifying red turtles,” said Blue Mercury. “I don’t think that’s an improvement.”

“I’m doing my best!” Balderhaz snapped. “It would be easier if I could read the… oh.” He tapped a box above the slider, which currently held a series of seven hieroglyphs. A series of nine hieroglyphs appeared below it. Below this were three larger hieroglyphs. Together, the two rows seemed to comprise a sort of virtual keyboard for entering numbers into the box.

“We’ve seen two of those three bottom symbols before,” said Balderhaz. “The first one is ‘enter.’ The second one is ‘cancel.’ And the third is…”

“Erase,” said Red Mercury. The hieroglyph looked vaguely like a cloud raining on some kind of tablet.

“Right!” said Balderhaz. “And the ones in the row above it are digits.”

Blue Mercury nodded. “Base nine,” he said. “Just like the code panel for the door.”

Balderhaz closed his eyes for a moment, as if trying to picture the panel. Then he opened them again, looked at the number, and frowned. “There are too many symbols,” he said. “That one on the left isn’t on the door panel.”

“Maybe it’s a zero,” said Red Mercury. “The door panel only went from one to nine.”

Balderhaz shook his head. “No, it went from zero to eight. I converted from index zero to index one to avoid confusion with the ordinal numbers. Otherwise, the first number would have been the—”

“We trust you,” said the Mercurys together. “Let’s move on.”

Balderhaz continued, “In a base nine system, the digits go from zero to eight. Nine would be represented by a one and a zero. It has to be some other mathematical symbol.”

“Decimal point,” said Blue Mercury.

Balderhaz’s eyes lit up. “Yes!” he cried. “But it’s not a decimal point. It’s a radix point. Okay, let’s try for about one percent. If I erase everything in the box and just put one of these tree-looking things in there… hmm.”

“Still unstable,” said Red Mercury.

“Gotta go lower,” said Balderhaz. “Thank the Eternals for the radix point. And thank them for left-to-right oriented numbering too. That could have gone either way.” He erased the tree, inserted the radix point, which looked a little like a man with a long nose peeking over a wall, and then tapped the last symbol on the right.

The message remained.

“Still too much energy,” said Balderhaz. “No worries. We just replace this sickly sheep with this one-legged robot and… voila!”

The red message disappeared.

“Stable,” said the Mercurys together. “Now what?” asked Red Mercury.

“Going to check the lower end of the scale, just to be safe.” Balderhaz deleted the one-legged robot character and replaced it the one to the left of it on the keyboard, which looked a bit like an upside down eagle.

“Gaaahhh!” cried Blue Mercury. “Terrifying turtles!”

“Okay, radix point upside-down eagle is too low. If we reduce the energy level that far, the universe will fall apart. So the optimal value is somewhere between radix point upside-down eagle and radix point—”

“Balderhaz,” interrupted Red Mercury. “Not to tell you your business, but we don’t have time for this level of precision. Stable is good enough.”

Balderhaz frowned but nodded. “Okay, radix point one-legged robot it is.”

“Now what?” asked Blue Mercury.

“Now we do some math,” said Balderhaz. “We’ve got radix point one-legged robot as an optimal energy level for each individual universe. That’s point eight in decimal. The maximum value of that slider appears to be three sickly sheep, which equates to… seven hundred twenty-eight. Dividing seven hundred twenty-eight by point eight, we get…” Balderhaz closed his eyes for a moment. “…nine hundred ten.”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” said Red Mercury. Blue Mercury nodded.

“It means we need nine hundred ten universes to get the optimal energy distribution, assuming…”

“Assuming what?” asked Blue Mercury.

“Well, assuming no energy loss in transit, and about a thousand other things I don’t have time to figure out. We’re just going to have to assume all those factors are within the margin of error.”

“Cool,” said Red Mercury. “It’s not like the fate of nine-hundred and ten universes hangs in the balance or anything.”

“John said he’d reduced the energy flow to roughly a thousandth of the pyramid’s output,” said Blue Mercury. “So that jibes. Now what?”

“The universe we currently occupy is the energy source, and we’ve got John’s backup and a copy. So I just need to make nine-hundred seven more copies.”

“Better get moving,” said Blue Mercury. “Because John’s going to be back any minute.”

Balderhaz nodded. He duplicated the backup the way he had the first time, and then did it again. And again.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Red Mercury. “There’s no faster way to do it?”

“I’m sure there is,” Balderhaz said, “but the instructions are in Martian, so why don’t you pipe down and let me work?”

The two Mercurys backed off as Balderhaz continued the incredibly dull and time-consuming process of copying universes. A few minutes in, as the Mercurys were pacing the perimeter of the Iris, a flashing red warning message appeared overhead.

“What’s that?” the Mercurys said together.

Balderhaz frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. “It seems to be an unrelated subprocess.”

As they stood there, pondering the meaning of the strange message, a luminescent bluish-white circle appeared on the floor on the other side of the pedestal from Balderhaz. As it solidified, the message on the display changed, turning green.

“Incoming!” cried Red Mercury. “It’s a portal!”

While Balderhaz continued to furiously copy universes, the two Mercurys ran toward the portal, diving headlong toward the half-materialized form of John.

They were too late. John’s form solidified a moment before the Mercurys reached the portal. He held up his right hand, and suddenly the Mercurys were suspended in mid-leap, inches away from him.