Permutation City

Durham said, "Well, that's something. They haven't managed to shut us out completely."

Repetto grimaced. "You make it sound like the Lambertians have taken control of the processors -- that they're deciding what's going on here. They don't even know that this level exists."

Durham kept his eyes on the screen. "Of course they don't. But it still feels like we're sneaking up on some kind of . . . sentient adversary. The Lambertians' guardian angels: aware of all the levels -- but jealously defending their own people's version of reality." He caught Maria's worried glance, and smiled. "Only joking."

Maria looked on as Durham and Zemansky ran a series of tests to verify that they really had plugged in to the Autoverse region. Everything checked out -- but then, all the same tests had worked when run through the authorized link, down at the hub. The suspect processors were merely acting as messengers, passing data around in a giant loop which confirmed that they could still talk to each other -- that the basic structure of the grid hadn't fallen apart.

Durham said, "Now we try to stop the clock." He hit a few keys, and Maria watched his commands racing across the links. She thought: Maybe there was something wrong down at the hub. Maybe this whole crisis is going to turn out to be nothing but a tiny, localized bug. Perfectly explicable. Easily fixed.

Durham said, "No luck. I'll try to reduce the rate."

Again, the commands were ignored.

Next, he increased the Autoverse clock rate by fifty percent -- successfully -- then slowed it down in small steps, until it was back at the original value.

Maria said numbly, "What kind of sense does that make? We can run it as fast as we like -- within our capacity to give it computing resources -- but if we try to slow it down, we hit a brick wall. That's just . . . perverse."

Zemansky said, "Think of it from the Autoverse point of view. Slowing down the Autoverse is speeding up Elysium; it's as if there's a limit to how fast it can run us -- a limit to the computing resources it can spare for us."

Maria blanched. "What are you suggesting? That Elysium is now a computer program being run somewhere in the Autoverse?"

"No. But there's a symmetry to it. A principle of relativity. Elysium was envisioned as a fixed frame of reference, a touchstone of reality -- against which the Autoverse could be declared a mere simulation. The truth has turned out to be more subtle: there are no fixed points, no immovable objects, no absolute laws." Zemansky betrayed no fear, smiling beatifically as she spoke, as if the ideas enchanted her. Maria longed to know whether she was merely concealing her emotions, or whether she had actually chosen a state of tranquility in the face of her world's dethronement.

Durham said flatly, "Symmetries were made to be broken. And we still have the edge: we still know far more about Elysium -- and the Autoverse -- than the Lambertians. There's no reason why our version of the truth can't make as much sense to them as it does to us. All we have to do is give them the proper context for their ideas."

Repetto had created a puppet team of Lambertians he called Mouthpiece: a swarm of tiny robots resembling Lambertians, capable of functioning in the Autoverse -- although ultimately controlled by signals from outside. He'd also created human-shaped "telepresence robots" for the four of them. With Mouthpiece as translator, they could "reveal themselves" to the Lambertians and begin the difficult process of establishing contact.

What remained to be seen was whether or not the Autoverse would let them in.

Zemansky displayed the chosen entry point: a deserted stretch of grassland on one of Planet Lambert's equatorial islands. Repetto had been observing a team of scientists in a nearby community; the range of ideas they were exploring was wider than that of most other teams, and he believed there was a chance that they'd be receptive to Elysian theories.

Durham said, "Time to dip a toe in the water." On a second window, he duplicated the grassland scene, then zoomed in at a dizzying rate on a point in midair, until a haze of tumbling molecules appeared, and then individual Autoverse cells. The vacuum between molecules was shown as transparent, but faint lines delineated the lattice.

He said, "One red atom. One tiny miracle. Is that too much to ask for?"

Maria watched the commands stream across the TVC map: instructions to a single processor to rewrite the data which represented this microscopic portion of the Autoverse.

Nothing happened. The vacuum remained vacuum.