Last updated on August 19, 2024
The wind whistled through the gaps in the windows, a mournful sound, accompanied by the flapping snap of the plastic sheeting Derek Gentry had stapled up, in a half-hearted attempt to keep it out. The sounds formed an incongruous duet, but on the 400th floor, there is always wind; it’s his constant companion, or foe. He looked around the flat, the once trendy mid-23rd century holo-walls, defunct now, the genuine FlowglowTM lights, ditto, reduced to inanimate globular ornaments on the ceiling. He supposed he could change it, but he had a world to look after, so new lighting was way down the list.
He shuffled over to Ba, his old bird. She had hunted earlier that morning returning with a small mouse and was contentedly preening herself. She allowed him to stroke her feathers, as he said,
‘Well, old girl, it’s time for work, I’d better start.’ Ba watched him but continued to preen. He walked to the centre of the room and his worn dentist’s chair, surrounded by monitors, tubes, and wires. He tapped the monitor and watched as a faint surge of light came and went. There was still enough energy, but it was running low, he’d better get going.
He checked the tubing and wires carefully, running his gnarled fingers along them feeling for kinks or worn places. It paid to do the visual and the feely checks, but all seemed fine, all connected, the fluids running as they should, sans bubbles, the system running smoothly. He relaxed slightly, it had run like a dream (he had a little grunt at his own joke) for years past counting and it seemed it wasn’t going to fail today.
Peeling off his clothing, he eased into the chair, the hollow his body had formed over the years, accepting him like a swaddled baby. Taking a drip, he lifted its needle and held it, undecided, as he searched his body for a suitable vein. Old blue highways and byways traversed his body, main thoroughfares branching into lesser routes, small paths trickling in between his toes, even up his thighs into his groin. The map of my life’s work; he smiled and inserted the needle with a sigh before picking up a blanket of silky fibrous material that he laid across his withered chest and pot of a stomach, relaxing as the fibres penetrated him. Now for the helmet, which he was sure was getting heavier, but he pulled it over his head, glad he no longer had the hair that used to pull at the roots as he forced it on. He was cocooned in a soft silence but could still hear the wind’s faint lonely whine and the sharp snap of plastic calling to him. A gust of colder air caused goosebumps to pop up along his arms, the end of summer warmth, laced with an undercurrent of chill. He must find another jumper tomorrow, there was a pile of moth-eaten wool in his wardrobe to choose from. Now, he lay back, head resting against the chair and breathed to quiet his fretfulness; he was a little late starting today and there was always so much to do.
The visor was in place, where the magic happened, and he gazed at the blank screen and Observed.
In the faint light of dusk, the men approached the outskirts of the town, the last sign of civilisation before the tower, according to their maps. Not much in the way of civilisation now, Tay mused as they walked down the main road to the centre, past side streets of abandoned houses. If one was superstitious then one might be frightened by the thought of all the people that had once lived here, but he wasn’t the superstitious sort, although he picked up the pace enough that Teresi, lagging behind Biever at the back of their small group looked up and said ‘Hey, wait for me. I’m trying to get readings here,’ holding up the handheld energy monitor.
Biever, glad of a chance for a private word with Tay closed the gap to walk alongside him and said, ‘Excited, now we’re so close? What do you think now you’ve had a chance to consider it? What do you think we’ll find?’ His eager tone irritated Tay, but he said ‘Same as I thought when I organised this expedition. Artefacts, information, signs of some kind of old power source maybe.’ He didn’t want to talk about the other thing out loud. Superstition was one thing, but talking could jinx things, although he would never admit it. What he was after probably didn’t exist, had never existed and he felt embarrassed talking about it. He wasn’t going to repeat his mistake of tentatively raising it to Biever and Teresi. Teresi had been respectful and open minded, but Biever had laughed.
‘Yeah, artefacts, valuable ones. Maybe some old tech. Could make us rich, that’s what I’m thinking.’
Tay resisted the urge to walk faster to get away from him. After so many weeks travelling together, they’d had ample time to get to know each other’s personalities, the good and bad. He’d known Biever had a mercenary soul, but he was also the best navigator around, so he had to be here. Tay just wished he didn’t have to talk to him every day.
He understood Biever’s excitement though, money of some sort was a necessity for all of them, but Biever had sunk more than he could afford into funding this expedition. His idea of a return was material, things he could sell.
‘Gold would be good,’ Biever, continued, ‘but I’m thinking other metals, you know, old tech has all sorts, nickel, copper, palladium, which would be worth a fortune back home.’
‘Hmmm,’ Tay said, trying to discourage further talk. ‘Remember we are researchers, most of what we’re here for is information.’
Biever said, ‘Sure, sure’, but he looked annoyed and dropped back. Tay thought that was worth the price of irritating him.
After setting up camp they went over the plan, spreading the map out.
‘The tower looks close by according to this. Shame its dark, I thought there might be lights,’ Teresi said, as he peered at the lines on the paper. Teresi loved a map and could spend hours poring over them. ‘I wonder what it’s like? The reports were so vague.’
Tay said, ‘It’s a tower, that much we know for sure, but everything else was supposition, and tall stories, as you know. But if there’s no lights, and no electricity, then we can assume any lifts died long ago when most of the Tech did. So, it’ll be a long climb. It’s reported to be very high’.
‘I wonder what we’ll find,’ Biever said, shifting his large frame about on a log, trying to get comfortable, ‘Do you really expect to find the answers to your big questions?’
Tay looked at him sharply, ‘And you don’t? Then why come?’ although he knew the answer to that one.
Biever shook his head. ‘I do, I do. It’s just, now we are here, so close….’
Teresi chimed in, ‘Don’t worry Biever, I feel the same. It’s natural to question everything, being here, after all these weeks…But we should find something interesting.’ Biever looked at him grateful for the intervention.
In the morning, they emerged from their tents, blinking in the early morning light and stood dumbstruck by the monolith before them. They gawped, at the tower rising straight up from the ground, a thin impossible column, standing unsupported in a terrain of uncertain bedrock and shifting sands. But stand it did, to scrape the sky, 400 floors up, the top wreathed in wisps of cloud.
‘How?’ Teresi said. ‘The base is the same width as the top. That’s not possible.’
‘It defies physics,’ Biever said, beside him. ‘Maybe it’s true, maybe there is a…’
Don’t let’s get ahead of ourselves,’ Tay interrupted and turned abruptly back into his tent. ‘Come on, let’s pack up.’
As they got closer, they could see the decay, the concrete pitted and streaked, the windows broken and dunes climbing the lower floors as if trying to drag the tower down into their embrace, storey by storey. Biever looked morose as he said, ‘It’s not how I imagined it. I thought of grand ancient stones, or a slick steel and marble creation, not a cracked concrete tower block. It’s like an old city skyscraper.’
Tay shook his head, Biever was right. The tower was an ordinary tower block but crumbling and uncared for. But he took heart in the fact that although the structure shouldn’t be standing, there it was, 400 storeys high. So, maybe there was truth in the old tales.
He adjusted the straps of his pack, trying to find part of his shoulders that didn’t ache, and let the air cool his sweat-stained back for a moment, and they carried on.
At the base, they found an entrance clear of the encroaching dunes, somehow protected from the high sand walls around it, like the parted sea of fables and they cautiously entered. Inside the air was cooler, and they waited a while until their eyes adjusted to the gloom. The little light that filtered through the buried windows revealed a dull grey foyer, full of shadows. On the wall by the lifts a faded ‘out of order’ sign hung on the wall.
‘It looks so…ordinary,’ Biever said, snapping a shot on his camera. ‘It doesn’t look promising.’
Tay ignored him and pointed to the corner at the door marked ‘stairs’, ‘There we are. Let’s eat and drink, we have a long climb ahead.’ They chewed dried gristle, and a few locusts washed down with chemical tasting water, as Teresi took a few measurements on his instrument.
‘There’s nothing’ he said, disappointed. ‘Maybe this isn’t what we think.’
Tay thought of the more arcane and superstitious works, he’d read, those rejected by the purists; ones he hadn’t shared with Teresi and Biever. The nexus. Redemption. Plus, he had come this far, and he wasn’t going to give up now, ‘No. It’s the place, you saw it. How can this stand upright? The base isn’t wide enough, its old, it should have crumbled away to nothing.’
‘It’s not very …grand though, is it?’ Biever said.
Tay looked at him for a beat of silence and said, ‘We are going up,’ and the others nodded. They were here now, may as well see what was up there.
The climb was long and tedious, every flight a carbon copy of the one before it, except when a discarded object was found, a cause for comment, examination, an excuse for a rest at least. They checked many floors, but all were the same: four grubby flats, each unremarkable except for a dentist style chair in the living room, wires, and dust covered monitors. After a while, they pushed on past them, they didn’t have time to check them all.
Tay thought he could sense the thinning air, it was harder to breathe, although maybe that was the climb getting to him. His thighs were cramping, but they were close now. He called a rest stop, and they all discarded their packs with groans of relief.
‘Ok, this is it. We’re on floor 398. In 2 more floors we’re there. Take on food and drink now, we don’t know what we’ll find, whether the reports are true. There may be nothing.’
The others looked worried at this thought, Tay was the one whose belief could not be shaken, no matter what doubts the others expressed. ‘Or it may be all that we wanted. Either way, we must all be on the alert,’ Tay said.
Rest over, they hauled the packs on and continued. Floor 400 was identical in layout to every other floor, but they smelt the rich scent of loam and greenery before they saw the garden, created by knocking through the walls of three flats to make a large space, crowded with frames and beds of abundant fruit and vegetables.
They looked at each other in excitement, food meant people. They gathered before the fourth door. Teresi took measurements but shook his head: nothing.
Tay took a moment to brace himself and acknowledge the significance of this occasion. A moment of ceremony. Then he turned the handle and pushed the door.
They stood for a few moments as they gazed on a man – old, judging by his liver spotted, skinny hands – reclining in a dentist chair, wired and plugged into monitors, and a drip. On his head, they saw a helmet with a visor, on which they could see the flicker of movement.
‘Hello,’ Tay called, but there was only silence, broken by the hum of machinery.
Tay and Teresi walked to the monitors, while Biever checked the other rooms. Tay watched the man breathing for a moment, and Teresi said, ‘Look at this. I think it’s a signal readout from the visor.’ Tay looked at the data wending their way across the screen, and another showing a round dot radiating outwards like a dartboard. ‘The Airy pattern?’ he heard Teresi say under his breath.
He leant over the man to look more closely at the visor. There were ghostly shapes moving on it, and he thought he could make out images of a city skyline, then a farm, some people, but they winked in and out of existence too fast to be sure. He heard Teresi muttering as he read various screens, but the only words he could make out were ‘quantum’ and ‘probability amplitude.’
Biever was inspecting the flat, a look of faint disgust on his face. ‘What do you think?’ Tay asked.
Biever shook his head, kicking the dentist chair. ‘Nothing of value here.’ He looked upset, but before he could continue, Derek said, ‘Welcome’, and the three researchers jumped.
‘Hello!’ Tay said. ‘Are you…? He started again, ‘Who are you?
‘I’m Derek.’
‘Derek? Derek who?’
‘My full name is Derek Tamar Gentry’.
‘You live here?’ he said before he could stop himself. Idiot, what did he think it looked like? The room showed all the signs of habitation, some crockery, clothes, a few fresh vegetables in a dish and a live falcon in the corner, watching them intently. The room needed a clean, and the windows repairing. It was also small, with most space being taken up by the contraption in the middle. There didn’t seem to be anyone else, but he asked, ‘Do you live here alone?’
‘I do!’ Derek said in a bright voice. Teresi came over and waved his device over Derek. There was nothing, then suddenly a small blip showed, and he gasped in surprise. ‘Tay! Look,’ angling the display towards him.
Tay looked at the instrument then put out his hand to touch the helmet on Derek’s head, but Derek said, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t if I were you.’
He snatched his hand back and looked at the blanket covering Derek. He hovered his fingers over it and watched in fascination as tendrils from the blanket started to reach upwards to his hand. He pulled away. He looked up and saw Teresi, mouth open watching, fascinated.
‘Feel,’ he said. Teresi put his hand out and felt the heat and hum of energy radiating from the old man.
‘It IS you, isn’t it?’ Tay asked Derek, his voice hopeful.
Derek was silent. Biever said. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? This old man – no offence,’ he said turning to Derek, ‘cannot be ….’
Tay shrugged, ‘I think it is. It’s him.’
Derek smiled but didn’t move.
‘Nah nah nah, no way’ Biever said. ‘There’s got to be more than this.’
Teresi watched as the signal on his device increased and said, ‘The instruments do show…’
‘NO!’ Biever shouted. ‘No. I’ve sacrificed everything for this. My marriage, seeing my kids, my reputation…everyone thinks we’re nuts… and…what? We get Derek? You just need him to be special, or this is even more of a waste of time than it’s turned out to be.’ He strode over to the window and looked out over the desert. Tay left him to cool down and heard Teresi say, in an awed voice, ‘The device shows… so much energy.’
Tay turned to Derek, ‘What are you doing? With that helmet? With this…’ he gestured, ‘set up?’
Derek said, ‘Watching.’
Teresi was playing with more instruments and scribbling results down as fast as he could. ‘Tay. Tay, this is incredible. The numbers are off the scale.’
Tay looked at Derek, ‘Watching? Watching what?’
‘The world come into being.’
Teresi’s eyes widened, and he looked at Tay, ‘Quantum states,’ he breathed.
Tay shook his head; he didn’t have time to work out what Teresi was saying. He had to ask his question. He looked at Derek for a while, unable to speak the words, to ask the biggest question of all, until Derek said, ‘Ask.’
‘Are you…him? It? Are you…’ he struggled to say the word, ‘God?’
All three of them waited, not daring to breathe until Derek, pursing his lips, said, ‘Depends what you mean by ‘God’. I wouldn’t call myself God, capital ‘G’, nor even a god, small ‘g.’’
‘Oh,’ Biever groaned and dropping into a crouch hid his face in his hands. ‘This is a disaster. All the work, the time spent…’
‘Sit down’ Derek demanded. ‘I will tell you a story. And then you must go.’
Tay and Teresi sat on the edge of an old dining table pushed against the wall, while Biever sat on a rickety chair.
‘Once upon a time…’ Derek began. Biever groaned, but the others shushed him.
‘Once upon a time’ Derek repeated, ‘this building was full of…beings…such as myself and we worked, for eons, visualising all the potentials, all the infinite probabilities available, until we brought a world into existence, filled with enchanting flora and fauna, intertwined in a perfect balance of harmony, living contented lives, in their own way, and this was the state of the world for most of what you call history.
But there came a day, when one of us, Apep, decided that was not enough. The animals we had made were simple and thought only of mating and eating, but in his hubris, Apep wanted to make creatures that could in turn look back upon us, their creators and worship us for making them. He craved adoration, so, he made you. Humans became.
And for a long time, it was good, and there was plenty, but humans were made in Apep’s image, and although they inherited his drive, curiosity and passion, they were also bestowed with his pride and arrogance, his dissatisfaction with what they had. They wanted more. What else? they asked. That arrogance in turn became aggression which led to wars and the danger was not seen by us all, until it was too late.
Apep tried to undo the damage, but it was impossible, for what weobserve, we make real, we create. A cycle of creation. The more warped human nature became, so too he became distorted and he in turn created humans evermore misshapen in spirit until a cycle of destruction was inevitable.
Then came the great wars, as you know from the salvaged histories, during which much of the world was destroyed and with it, any of us associated with those extinguished parts, for we put much of our…consciousness you would call it… into our creations. Many of us perished and the hallways and flats became empty. Now you are… fewer and your creator has gone. We were lost in the wars, all of us, except myself. I am the only one left now.
There. I have told you all you need to know and now you must leave me, for I am busy.’
The others sat in silence mulling this over.
‘What does that mean?’ Biever asked, throwing up his hands. ‘What use is that to us?’
Teresi however, leant forward, brow creased in concentration, his sharp mind processing, ‘When you say ‘visualising potential…probabilities…? Do you mean as in wave functions?’
Derek smiled, ‘You pay attention. Good.’
Tay and Teresi looked at each other. Tay’s excitement mounted, the old papers had spoken of this, the Observer…
He remembered the papers on von Neumann and a thought came to him, only a seed at present. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t, and yet… probabilities observed, becoming certainties.
‘Are you saying…? Did you…create us?’ He was half horrified, half hopeful of what the answer might be.
Teresi looked aghast and Tay knew he had caught on. ‘That knowledge is mainly lost,’ Teresi said, struggling to recall what he had read, ‘But you are talking about a…a… conscious being observing a probability wave and reducing its probabilities into a…a fact?’
‘Consciousness brings reality into being.’ Tay said half wondering.
Teresi echoed, ‘Creating …. reality.’
Tay launched into rapid-fire questions, ‘Did you make the world? Was there really an Adam and Eve? What is Time? Is there life after death? What does it all mean? How old are you….’ the questions tripped over each other until Derek raised his hand and he stopped.
‘We create the world and all in it, including you.’ Derek said, his voice soft and melancholy.
Biever had been following this exchange and now looked at them, and said ‘What? Wait. Is he saying that he imagined us into existence? You have got to be kidding. That’s complete crap.’ He sat up straighter as he thought of something, ’If that’s so, if our so-called creator was destroyed, and if we are all somehow a kind of figment of his imagination, sorry –consciousness – then how are we here?!’ he said, with a triumphant glance at Tay and Teresi.
Derek looked sad, ‘What do you think I am doing now?’ he asked. ‘It is hard work for one. Reality can hold for a little while without my intervention, but it must continue to be brought into existence. It is ceaseless work.’
Biever rolled his eyes, whispering, ‘For Pete’s sake,’ and walked to the window once more. He looked back at the others.
‘You’re not buying this, I hope? You’re saying this old man is supposed to be a-, a, – a demi-god, or superbeing, or whatever the hell you want to call it?’ The others were quiet, staggered by Derek’s revelations, their minds reeling.
‘Look at him!’ Biever shouted, stalking over to the Derek, ‘This,’ he said pulling at the wires and tubes, ‘is just so much shit made up by a decrepit old man -offence intended,’ he enunciated to Derek ‘who has gone mad with the loneliness of living here.’
Teresi stood up slowly, ‘No it makes sense. We were told this was the place. The last place, and the first place- the origin. All the old writings say this is it. What? You think because he’s not a 40ft man with a beard, he can’t be … g…,’ he looked at Derek and changed it to, ‘the creator?’
‘Well, I expected more than someone who looks like they’re about to kick the bucket!’ Biever said, smacking his hand on a monitor, making the lines stutter before they flickered out.
Derek sighed, ‘Oh, Apep my friend, what an idiot you were,’ he said under his breath.
Tay came forward and said, ‘We have questions. If you are willing to answer them?’ he bowed his head. If this was indeed the creator, he had to think quickly, there were so many questions. ‘You said there were many of you? You were all, creating the world, but they are gone, yet the world is still here. How is that possible?’
Derek tapped his fingers on the armrest and said, ‘There are so few of you now. I create only what’s needed.’
Biever gave a crow of laughter, ‘Oh this gets better and better! What? So, you’re saying that somewhere on earth, where no one’s looking, there’s – what? – a big hole? Nothing?’
Derek nodded, ‘That’s about the size of it, young man. I can only collapse so many probabilities at once.’
Biever shook his head and laughed. ‘Yep, of course, there’s big holes of nothing all over. Sure. And I guess if we travelled to one of these holes, it would be magically filled in?’
Whilst they talked, Tay was thinking of all the ways Derek could help. He could create new towns, people, and technologies just by thought. Could he restore humankind to what they were in the past?
He considered the world as it was now, vast tracts of emptiness, humans surviving in small pockets of civilisation, living on old tech, farms and roadways of the past. Derek could return the world to how it was, to its glory.
‘No. I won’t do that.’ Derek said, and Tay looked up in alarm, how had he heard? Had he said it aloud?
‘What are you saying?’ Biever asked, his manner belligerent. Tay looked at him nervously, his temper was fraying, he needed to get out of here, it’s too much for him.
Derek continued, ‘I won’t restore humanity. I will help the ones that are left for as long as I am here, such as your beautiful city Athenai, and your loved ones. But I am tired and long to return.’
‘Return?’ Tay asked.
‘Return. To Zero. The basis of all mathematics, the great nothingness that underlies all. To lose my consciousness and rest.’
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Biever said, starting to pull wires out. Tay watched Derek wince in pain and shouted, ‘Stop!’ Teresi tried to pull him away, but Biever kicked the drip over, ripping the needle out of Derek’s arm, white liquid splashing the floor.
‘No!’ Teresi yelled, ‘Don’t you get it? He’s the only one keeping us alive!’ Biever pushed him away and tore at the blanket covering Derek, yanking the fine tendrils out of his skin, which retracted, like startled snails.
Tay leapt onto Biever’s back, trying to stop him, whilst Derek lay supine, yielding to the attack and only laughing, ‘Apep, Apep, Apep, see? Look at your children now!’ Biever seized Derek’s head, struggling to pull the helmet off.
‘If you stop him, we are dead!’ Tay grunted in Biever’s ear, and Teresi shouted, ‘He is collapsing wave functions, creating reality as he does so. If you stop him, this all disappears. It all goes. Us, the world, your children too.’
But Biever was deafened by fury, stoked by Derek’s laughter, by his ruined hopes for a temple, treasure, technological information, signs of a real deity, anything that wasn’t as prosaic as this old man in a wreck of a room.
The power from Derek suddenly increased and they watched as his form appeared to flicker between an old man and a small sphere, shining with pulsating energy.
Teresi from the floor, looked up with a terrible realisation as he said, ‘Derek Tamar Gentry…. Derek Tamar Gentry…. Dark Matter Energy.’
Tay looked at him in dawning wonder and renewed his attempts to stop Biever, but the helmet was loosened and with a suck of air it was off and …
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