War in Heaven (76 page)

Danlo nodded his head in acceptance of Ede's new alliance, and then he said, "Once, you would have advised me not to trust Hanuman. Not to follow him into any web of lies in which he might try to ensnare me. What do you advise, now?"

"Only that you follow your heart, as Lord Hanuman has said."

"All right, then," Danlo suddenly said. He turned to look at Hanuman still standing silently by his side. "Show me what you have dreamed."

In the sky far above the sanctuary, more lights flashed out into darkness. And Hanuman li Tosh, Lord of the Way of Ringess, smiled down upon Danlo as the clearface computer suddenly blazed in violet radiance about his head. Danlo heard him draw in a deep breath, just as he heard the breaths of thousands of godlings thundering through the streets outside the cathedral. The whole of Neverness, it seemed, was calling for him and waiting for him to walk among them once again. And then Hanuman bowed his head slightly, and the interior of the dome surrounding him came alive with a dark and otherworldly glow. There came a moment when the cold floor beneath Danlo gave way and he felt himself falling. And then there was neither coldness nor light nor sound but only the terrifying black void of a new universe that went on and on without end.

What I'm really interested in is whether God could have made the world in a different way; that is, whether the necessity of logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all.

— The Einstein

If this is the best of all possible worlds, what must the others be like?

— Source unknown

Danlo knew then what he had suspected ever since his first meeting with Hanuman in the sanctuary: that the dome surrounding them was wrought in part of powerful neurologic circuitry, a huge purple and gold heaume encompassing not only their heads but their entire bodies. Once before, on Alumit Bridge, Danlo had entered a similar chamber. But where the neurologics woven into the walls of that faraway room had allowed him to interface a planetary computer network called the Field, he now turned his awareness towards a much vaster and infinitely more profound computer, for the entire sanctuary encoded the workings of Danlo's brain as radio waves and beamed them up through space to the Universal Computer. The sanctuary was like a window to the lightning-quick information fields of this ungodly machine. And the Universal Computer ran the programs that Hanuman had written for it, and beamed rivers of pure information back to the neurologics of the sanctuary. Thus Danlo finally faced the universe that Hanuman had made. He fell for a long time into a dazzling darkness; he fell on and on into the dazzling dream of a man who would be as God.

Never before — not even in the room of the Narain Transcendentals on Alumit Bridge — had he experienced such a total interface with a computer. The sanctuary's logic field that pulled at his brain was very powerful. Perhaps, he thought, the cybernetic arts of the Order's cetics were much advanced over those of the Narain. Or perhaps it was the paralysis of the warrior-poet's drug that caused him almost completely to lose the sense of his body. He could not feel his arms, legs, buttocks or back against the carpet of the sanctuary; he couldn't feel his belly or the breath as it filled his chest. It seemed as if the very tissues of his being had melted and flowed away like water. Only a faint burning behind his eyes reminded him that he was still a human being in a human body. And then, as the Universal Computer sent streams of photons flashing through its millions of miles of optical circuitry and the Field surrounding him intensified, even this old and familiar pain seemed to vanish. He became aware of himself as a different kind of body. Now, in this space of the alam al-mithral, which is what the cetics called their computer-generated reality, he looked upon his cybernetic self as a being woven of billions of bits of pure, glittering information. He floated naked and alone in a black void, at once fully human and completely other. His fingernails sparkled like white diamonds; the skin encompassing his godlike form glistened with flecks of aquamarine, emerald, topaz, violet and ten thousand other colours. And his eyes had returned to the deep and secret blue of the midnight sky. In truth, his eyes shone brilliantly like liquid jewels with a blue inside blue fire that astonished him. He had never dreamed that Hanuman, with a simple computer program, could capture the essence of his eyes so perfectly. He had never dreamed that Hanuman (or any cetic) could capture him so completely in any cybernetic space, and this dread of losing his true self was almost too terrible to bear.

I am not I. I am flaming crimson and glowing copper and streaks of blue-white light. I am light beyond light. I am light light light ...

It was very strange, he thought, that he could see his own eyes. Usually, upon instantiating into a surreality, various aspects of one's selfness would be represented symbolically or pictorially as images that were more or less human. In the fifth degree of instantiation, subtle programs would generate an icon almost exactly like that of the realtime person interfacing the computer. The icon would cark out into a cybernetic space and experience a simulated world in almost the same way as a man walking among a field of fireflowers. As with a man in the real world, one's perception would be directed outwards away from the icon's eyes towards various objects that the computer conjured up and made almost real. As Danlo fell through this strange cybernetic space called the alam al-mithral, it should have been impossible for him to look upon his own face. He was aware of himself as an icon of many flowing colours, for he could gaze at his hand as easily as a child watching himself reach towards the sun. But he could also see himself floating in the void from many angles all at once: he could look up at the naked soles of his feet or down upon the sable and flame-red hair falling down his back. It seemed that his awareness, and perhaps even his consciousness itself, had cathected many points of space all around him. He wondered, then, if it was Hanuman's purpose to share his vision of this surreality, which might well be of everything within it. If Hanuman were truly playing God to his own private universe, then perhaps he would wish to dwell within it and perceive it with all the power of the divine.

This is my world, Danlo. Thank you for joining me here.

Hanuman's voice spilled out into the blackness all around Danlo, coming from everywhere and nowhere. It echoed in the void a million miles outwards in all directions and pounded in unseen waves against his icon's chatoyant skin. Like the wind, it whispered in his mind — his very real and human mind which must still exist inside the cathedral's sanctuary in the real world almost infinitely far away.

"I ... cannot see you," Danlo said. Because he had no idea of which direction he should aim his words, he simply opened his golden lips and said, "Why don't you instantiate as an icon so that I may see you?"

I prefer this degree of instantiation.

"This is seventh degree, yes?"

In the sixth degree of instantiation, that of transcendence, the computer generates a transcendental self that can appear at different places almost simultaneously. Often this self is represented as an icon of pure light or tachyon beams that can flash from one point in space to any other almost infinitely quickly. In the seventh degree of instantiation, there is no self separate from the surreality being created. And therefore there is no need for an icon to move about within the computer's creation. In cybernetic vastening (or cathexis, as the cetics call this final degree) one
becomes
the entire field generated by the computer's program. In a way, one becomes the program itself, and this, the cyber-shamans say, is the ultimate vastening of human consciousness.

"But Hanu, no one can instantiate in the vastening degree for very long — it is too dangerous, yes?"

In truth, the seventh degree of instantiation was terribly dangerous. And therefore it was forbidden to all of the Order, even the cetics — and especially those cetic masters and computer adepts who called themselves cyber-shamans.

Of course it's dangerous. And of course it's forbidden — as it should be for almost everyone.

Danlo, still lying on the carpet of the sanctuary, shook his head in sadness at Hanuman's hubris. And he saw (and felt) his icon floating in the alam al-mithral shake his head, too. Many were the cetics, he thought, who had lost themselves into their computers.

"I can see myself," he said. "My face, my eyes. You have programmed it so that I am experiencing aspects of the seventh degree, yes?"

Of course I have. It's a most subtle program, you should know.

"I do not wish to become vastened as a computer program — even one that is infinitely subtle."

What do you wish, then?

"Only to see what you have created and to return to my true self."

Very well, Danlo.
This
is what I've created.

Suddenly a terrible, quick light filled the darkness surrounding him. In a vast, incandescent sphere centred at his eyes, it exploded outwards with a speed much greater than that of true light. For a moment, he had to hold his hand shielding his eyes against the brightness of it. And then, a moment later, the space around him coalesced to a brilliant clarity, and he found that he could see outwards to the ends of the universe.

"My ... God!"

For there, spinning in space that was now the essence of light itself, he saw many earthlike worlds. There may have been ten million of them — or many more. They filled the void around him like perfect, spherical jewels floating in a sunlit sea. There was something strange about his perception of these computer-generated worlds, for he could see the most distant of them with the same degree of resolution as the nearest. In truth, wherever he looked, at whichever world, he could make out the lines of the continents all around the circumference of the globe — all at once and from many different angles. The power of such seeing almost blinded him; it sent waves of nausea vibrating up through his belly and made him dizzy. After a while, however, he adjusted to this near-omnivision and began to study these worlds that Hanuman had made. Each of them, he saw, was exactly the same: a blue and white glory of deep oceans and soft blankets of clouds, an almost perfect replica of Old Earth. Not even the Solid State Entity, he thought, possessed such a drive to create. Not even Ede the God, in all the fullness of his power, in all his mysterious and terrible urge to design new worlds and new races of human beings, had ever dreamed of making so many earths.

"How ... many are there?" he asked. His voice resonated in his throat like a golden gong. And almost immediately, Hanuman answered him.

Now there are exactly 25,490,056,343 worlds. And in each second of computer time, more are generated.

"But why so many?" Danlo wondered. "And why
earths
, Hanu? Why are all these worlds the same?"

Because it's my will to create life as it could fully be. In a world — a whole universe — as
it
could fully be.

"But, Hanu — what kind of life could this
truly
be?"

Shall I show you, then?

"Yes, if you'd like."

As quick as light, Danlo found himself streaking down towards one of the earths. He fell through this space that wasn't really space, and then entered the earth's atmosphere that was composed of pure information rather than real air. But at first it
felt
like real air. It felt as biting against his naked flesh as the
sarsaras
that blow through Neverness when deep winter gives way to midwinter spring.
Almost
, Danlo thought. The glittering skin over his cheeks and nose tingled with a chill almost as if he were facing a real wind. But he felt no belly-cold, none of the terrible iciness of true cold that would pierce to the bone like ten thousand steel needles. This, he thought, was one of the limitations of computer simulation. True cold was aching teeth and freezing blood and ice crystals bursting open the cells of one's fingers and face; it was more than the firing of clusters of neurons registering the pain of such an event inside one's brain. The consciousness of cold — and consciousness itself — was spread among the body's four trillion cells, and deeper, down to the chains of proteins and lipids that formed the matter of living flesh. In a way, each spinning hydrogen atom in a water molecule felt the loss of its energy in vibrating more slowly and falling into coldness. And therefore it was impossible to simulate this sensation completely from the touch of the dome's neurologics upon his brain alone.

I am not truly cold
, Danlo thought.
I am not ...

And then he felt and heard his teeth chattering, and he was not so sure. He could not tell whether this sensation of enamel cracking against enamel originated in his real body lying in the sanctuary or was only part of the program that drove his icon closer to Hanuman's earth. And then, as he glided down to the lower and warmer layers of the atmosphere, his shivering ceased. He felt the soft breezes of a tropical ocean blowing over his nearly weightless body. Strangely, however, he couldn't feel the heat of the sun. Nor could he find any such orb blazing above him, even though he searched the blue sky from horizon to horizon.

There is no sun to see, Danlo. Because there is no sun.

"But how ... " Danlo's words died into the wind as he flew over the ocean towards a broad, glittering, white beach. "How can there be no sun?"

In this entire universe, there are no stars because light shines everywhere upon all things.

"No ... stars?" Danlo said, gazing up into the heavens.

Truly, he thought, there
were
no stars, but neither was there darkness, for Hanuman could not abide the absence of light. And then, as quickly as a diving sparrowhawk, he fell down to the beach which glittered everywhere with a light that came from nowhere — at least nowhere that he could see.