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sources: Buzzo's death;
Mosala's evacuation, and uncertain condition. But not her joke on the ACs: the
automatic dissemination of her TOE around the world.
Akili frowned intensely, silent for a long time. Something had changed in vis
face since I'd seen ver in the hospital; the deep shock of recognition at the
news of the supposed mixing plague had given way to a kind of expectant
gaze-as if ve was prepared, now, to be taken by Distress at any moment and was
almost eager to embrace the experience, despite the anguish and horror all its
victims had displayed. Even the few who'd been briefly calm and lucid in their
own strange way had swiftly relapsed; if I'd believed that the syndrome was
everyone's fate, I would not have wished to go on living.
Akili confessed, "We still can't fit our models to the data. No one I've been
in contact with can work out what's going on." Ve seemed resigned
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to the fact that the plague would elude precise analysis, in the short
term-but still confident that vis basic explanation was correct. "The new
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cases are appearing too rapidly, much faster than exponential growth."
"Then maybe you're wrong about the mixing. You made a prediction of
exponential growth and now it's failed. So maybe you've been reading too much
Anthrocosmology into four sick people's ranting."
Ve shook vis head, calmly dismissing the possibility. "Seventeen people, now.
Your SeeNet colleague isn't the only one who's seen it; other journalists have
begun to report the same phenomenon. And there's a way to explain the
discrepancy in the case numbers."
"How?"
"Multiple Keystones."
I laughed wearily. "What's the collective noun for that? Not an arch of
Keystones, surely. A
pantheon? One person, with one theory, explaining the universe into
existence-isn't that the whole premise of Anthrocosmology?"
"One theory, yes. And one person always seemed the most likely scenario. We
always knew that the
TOE would be broadcast to the world- but we always assumed that every last
detail would be worked out in full by its discoverer, first. But if the
discoverer is lying in a coma when the complete
TOE is dispatched to tens of thousands of people, simultaneously . . . that's
like nothing we ever contemplated. And nothing we can hope to model: the
mathematics becomes intractable." Ve spread vis hands in a gesture of
acceptance. "No matter. We'll all learn the truth, soon enough."
My skin crawled. In Akili's presence, I didn't know what I believed. I said,
"Learn it how7
Mosala's TOE doesn't predict telepathy with the Keystone-or Keystones-any more
than it predicts the universe unraveling. If she's right, you must be wrong."
"It depends what she's right about."
"Everything? As in Theory of?"
"Everything could unravel tonight-and most TOEs would have nothing to say
about it, one way or another. The rules of chess can't tell you whether or not
the board is strong enough to hold up every legal configuration of the
pieces."
"But every TOE has plenty to say about the human brain, doesn't it? It's a
lump of ordinary matter, subject to all the ordinary laws of physics.
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It doesn't start 'mixing with information' just because someone completes a
Theory of Everything on the other side of the planet."
Akili said, "Two days ago, I would have agreed with you. But TOEs which fail
to deal with their own basis in information are as incomplete General
Relativity-which required the Big Bang to take place, as but then broke down
completely at that point. It took the unification of all four forces to smooth
away the singularity. And it looks like it's going to take one more
unification to understand the explanatory Big Bang."
"But two days ago-?"
"I was wrong. The mainstream always assumed that an incomplete TOE was just
the way things had to be. The Keystone would explain everything-except how a
TOE could actually come into force. Anthro-
cosmology would answer that question-but that side of the equation would never
be visible." Akili held out both hands, palms pressed together horizontally.
"Physics and metaphysics: we believed they'd remain separate forever. They
always had, in the past, so it seemed like a reasonable
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file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Egan/Egan,%20Greg%20-%20Distress.txt premise. Like the
single Keystone." Ve interlocked vis fingers and tipped vis hands to a forty-
five-degree angle. "It just happens to be wrong. Maybe because a TOE which
unifies physics and information- which mixes the levels, and describes its own
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authority-is the very opposite of unraveling. It's more stable than any other
possibility; it affirms itself, it tightens the knot."
I suddenly recalled the night I'd visited Amanda Conroy, when I'd concluded,
tongue-in-cheek, that the separation of powers between Mos-ala and the
Anthrocosmologists was a good thing. And later, Henry Buzzo had jokingly
postulated a theory which supported itself, defended itself, ruled out all
competitors, refused to be swallowed.
I said, "But whose theory is going to unify physics and information? Mosala's
TOE makes no attempt to 'describe its own authority.' "
Akili saw no obstacle. "She never intended it to. But either she failed to
understand all the implications of her own work-or someone out on the net is
going to get hold of her purely physical
TOE, and extend it to embrace information theory. In a matter of days. Or
hours."
I stared at the ground, suddenly angry, all the mundane horrors of the day
closing in on me. "How can you sit here wrapped up in this bullshit? Whatever
happened to technoliberation7. Solidarity with the renegades? Smashing the
boycott?" My own meager skills and connections had already come to nothing in
the face of the invasion but somehow I'd
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imagined Akili proving to be a thousand times more resourceful: taking a vital
role at the hub of the resistance, orchestrating some brilliant
counter-attack.
Ve said quietly, "What do you expect me to do? I'm not a soldier; I don't know
how to win the war for Stateless. And there'll soon be more people with
Distress than there are on this whole island-
and if ACs don't try to analyze the mixing plague, no one else is going to do
it."
I laughed bitterly. "And now you're ready to believe that understanding
everything drives us insane? The Ignorance Cults were right? The TOE sends us
screaming and kicking into the abyss?
Just when I'd made up my mind that there was no such thing."
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