It is a first draft, so please feel free to criticise.
Paradox Engine.
He stood, placidly, and stared at the Ubritz, and was rewarded in turn by the glance in it’s, -in his-, eyes as the Ubritz turned to glance back.
He did not look like anything much; not like what he had been expecting. The Ubritz was another man, a bit taller than most perhaps, and with an unnerving passive look on his face, but a man.
Grant decided to speak to him. "The collective; is it on tonight?"
The Ubritz did not reply. Past those grey locks of hair hanging partially over his face, a look of complete disinterest was radiated out. I do not care to answer. Typical of the kind, really. They were never what a person could reasonably call great conversationalists, indeed scarcely did any one of them say a word.
He watched the Ubritz turn and walk onwards down the brightly-lit corridor, before turning a corner out of view, and pondered the phrase ‘any one of them’. It was accurate in that there were many, after a fashion, and yet clearly a lie as, to a very real extent, there was only ever one of the genius savants. The fact that there were many did not refer to a myriad series of separate individuals, but more of the mirrored alternatives of the one Ubritz…
No. Thinking like that was only liable to lead to confusion. He proceeded himself to walk the corridor, before turning into one of the inset dark rectangles, seven feet tall each, which lined it at it’s sides. He took a breath and closed his eyes.
-A dazzling sense of infinite speed-.
He opened them again, a mere second or two later and was no longer in the corridor. His surroundings were those of a tiny box, barely large enough to fit him in at all. Behind him, he knew, was the rectangle gate which had brought him here. In front of him was a wall, with more walls to his two sides and above him; all perfectly flawless, all perfectly white and glowing gently from within.
The air, however, was not the same, quite. Though the same supernaturally clean odour filled it from floor to ceiling as filled the corridor, there was now something else, almost on the edge of perception. The smell of dust and, perhaps, a tiny amount of contamination caressing the sinuses.
He ruffled his greying hair and spoke aloud. "System, I would like to exit the junction, please."
There was a pause of a second or two and a voice answered. It answered from all around him and the tones of the voice were so sharp as to be inhuman. Perfect punctuation and precise timing beyond human ability; the unmistakable mark of a computer. "Grant Ulysses Trent, be aware that this junction represents access to the exterior. Do you consent to this act?"
"I do, System."
The walls of the box greyed and darkened slowly, the lighting steadily falling in intensity until, looking down, he could hardly see his shoes anymore, resting as they were on what was now a black floor. A slight breeze stirred the box.
And the wall in front of him opened out.
The scene that met his eyes was one he was prepared for, but it was one that startled him all the same, and did so everytime he came out into the open. He breathed in the air, it’s scent of pollutants and airborne particles now strong, rasping against his throat, and observed the scene.
Massive structures stretched skywards, huge, grey and bristling with scaffolding and handholds for the spiderlike machines that crawled over them at all hours. Noise filled the air, making evident the record of construction going on in the very depths and belly of the city, along with the unceasing building and interconnecting of the huge structures all around him.
It was a city of Ziggurats, tall, proud and interconnected by a web of access tunnels, vacuum tubes and simple spiderweb scaffolding, along which machinery moved and worked. The web of interlinked threads and scaffolds grew deeper towards the base of the buildings, becoming almost a solid floor a mile down, as the floor of the city moved ever upwards with the city itself, just as its border moved ever outwards, turning country into suburb into industrial zone.
And over, around and through it all was the brown cloud of ever-present smog that clung to the vast industrial metropolis, tainting the air and scarring the throats of any who cared to breath it. It stained the lower levels of the buildings and blurred distant details.
The whole was a triumph of industry, construction and total contempt for nature. It sang a song of eternal and unstoppable growth and glory for its founders. He looked over the morass and sighed.
For not once, among all the vast towers, the smog and the countless dark machines constantly rebuilding and expanding the city, had he seen a single human individual amongst it all. Not once over the constant din of robotic construction had a single human voice rang out.
And so he turned his back from this industrious, loud, triumphant city of the dead and walked back into the junction.
"Another fine day in paradise." He said.
------------------------------------
The room was different from the usual. The carpet was thick and soft, a blazing log fire crackled merrily, heating it’s surroundings to a pleasant tingling warmth evenly distributed throughout the surroundings, but never any more than that. The elaborate mantlepiece displayed eccentric wooden figures; Buddhas, knights of old, a Zulu warrior, spear and shield grasped eagerly, and a single old man, standing with a slender stick, looking quite out of place. The walls were hung with paintings and photographs, images of deserts, towns and coastlines. Here a peasant farmer looked at the photographer with an impassive lack of interest and there a nomadic village moves with it’s herd across a desolate landscape.
The room itself contrasted sharply with the images in the paintings and photographs, appearing almost overstuffed and crude in it’s decoration and obsessive display of antimacassar’s. Light flooded the room, not just from the fire, but from three electric bulbs, clustered together and hanging from the ceiling under a single lightshade, the light they threw over the walls far more uniform than reality would suggest.
And amongst the decorations, the souvenirs and the fine woodwork of door and mantlepiece, in the very centre of the room, was a circle of four armchairs. Each was fine leather, glossy in the yellow lighting and embodying a faint scent, and each faced into the centre of the circle.
And in one of the chairs sat Grant Ulysses Trent, his legs crossed and his chin cradled in his right hand, looking tired and impatient.
He’s late. He thought, pausing only briefly to think about the description ‘he’ and how apt it really was to the present situation. The thought ended, as with all the others, with the decision that terming the visitor as a ‘he’ was really the only way it could be done. It would be far too awkward any other way.
He shifted in his seat, settling into a more comfortable position, and frowned again. He was stopped mid-frown by the sound of the door behind him opening. The visitor crossed in front of him, to sit on the leather seat opposite, crossing his legs in the same fashion as Grant. He was heavily tanned with some Afro-Caribbean ancestry evident. His hair was dark but greying and was of slightly above-average length, which in sitting position rested on the sides of the collars of his checkered blue-and-white shirt. He looked severe but tired, yet none of these was the most striking facet of his appearance.
For the visitor was an exact duplicate of Grant.
“You were late.” Spoke Grant.
“I’m sorry.” Spoke the duplicate before self-consciously uncrossing his legs, as if asserting individuality in the face of the evidence. He gathered himself. “So, what is of the collective?”
“It is serious.” A stern expression. “From what I hear, all the Ubritz’s will be there. Every one.”
“Hmmm.” The alternate-Grant looked no happier than he. Unsurprising; only a few times in the history of the near-legendary Ubritz think-tank had all two hundred and fifty or so of the Ubritz savants been required to attend in a single collective. It either signified a moment of wondrous opportunity or possible peril; one way or the other, it foretold a highly significant event.
“Could-” started Grant, before faltering as his counterpart also started talking. Both briefly lapsed into the embarrassed silence so common when alternate selves conversed face-to-face. Conversing with someone who had led a life almost the same as yours, who looked, acted and thought just as you did and who, to all extents and purposes, was you and knew all you did tended to trip up the staunchest of mindsets.
His counterpart started again before he could. “Is it possible that this could be the sleeper issue at last?”
A long pause. It was a daunting thought. “From what my sources tell me; yes. Very probably.”
"Jesus."
Grant nodded. One thing that he found did separate the two alternates was their respective levels of knowledge and influence in their own worlds. Grant, this Grant, myself is the more informed of us both on matters political, he thought, and it always brought a grin to his face when he exercised this particular piece of individuality in such situations where he met with an alternate.
"Stop grinning." Said the other, showing faux-irritation. Sure enough, he did. "How do you know for sure this is the Sleeper issue that is to be decided on?"
"I can’t." He shrugged. "That is to say I cannot know for sure; it is but an extrapolation. Only a few other times have the Ubritz met in their entirety and at no other point has the existence of rumour been so intense covering the issue."
"Not a sure thing, your guesswork, is it?"
"Quiet." The alternate opened his mouth to speak before receding in his chair, mouth taut and set straight. "That is not all. I have some very solid sources in the council that back those rumours up and those sources say the same of your own councils and your own society."
There was silence as the alternate considered this, and it’s ramifications. Disbelief could be seen on his expression, giving way to a stone-cut poker face and, finally, a form of acceptance. The sight of emotions so obviously feuding on the face of someone identical to him fascinated Grant. It was as if a person had parted his hair just-so in a mirror for years before finally seeing his image the correct way around in a television screen and marveling at how little he looked like his own mental picture of himself.
"If this is true, it means the government will finally stuff us all into virtual reality as they have been intending to do." Spoke the alternate. "There would be no coming back from it. It would mean finally giving all of our trust over to the machines which care for us and slipping away from reality for good."
"Rubbish." Grant found the look of surprised irritation on his counterpart’s face no less amusing as before. "We have been doing that for years already. Do you know how many of our population are now dreamers?"
"Yes, yes. I know all the statistics. Eighty-something percent, right?"
"Eighty two. Last year it was half a percent lower. The year before-"
"-Lower still." The alternate interrupted. "I know as well as you. When I was a child, the figure was barely fifty-fifty, if that. Fully half of us were living and working in reality as we should be. Now…" he waved his hands around vaguely. "It has all gone to hell. Four-fifths of the population live their entire lives in their own happy little virtual dreamworlds or on the networks, all snuggled-up and safe from the cold outside."
"And they do it voluntarily."
"That’s the worst part. Nobody sees themselves as being worth anything these days. We have no purpose and so we hide from the world. Hell, even of the twenty percent or whatever that are not full dreamers, the vast majority of them do no real work. They simply flit in and out of virtual reality and the network, using the real world only as a reference point. Of the couple of percent of the entire population which actually choose to live and work in the real, even then the majority are lowly-skilled and inefficient at what they do."
"And then, after all that, there is us." Spoke Grant. "We are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction. The last researchers, civil servants and architects that live in reality. It would make me feel special if I didn’t feel so distraut at everyone else."
"And then you have the Ubritz." Chuckled the alternate.
"But of course." Smiled Grant in return. "The ultimate minority."
"One to a world. Less than that, even; one to a hundred of otherwise identical worlds."
"And we still cannot predict what they are thinking." He sighed.
"Why should we?" Spoke the alternate, resting back in the chair and looking towards the fire, ever-burning. "They are geniuses. Savants. One in a thousand billion."
Grant nodded and let his neck arch backwards, so that he might stare at the ceiling. It was amazing, when one came to think about it, at the level of detail that it contained. Tiny marks and ridges in the thin layer of what looked like wallpaper on the ceiling. Tiny cracks, bumps and scars; all overlaid and criss-crossing each other. And all, except for moments like these, to waste. All ignored the vast majority of the time and blurred into irrelevance by the brain.
-And yet they remained there. Such startling detail!
"I hope I’m not boring you." Spoke the counterpart, snapping him back to attention.
"Oh no. Not at all." He grinned apologetically. "Sorry for appearing to be rude. I was just marveling at the room. It’s creators, man or machine, must have gone to such pains to give it such a level of realism, all to fool a couple of people that have no intention of being fooled." He gestured with his palms. "I mean, we could have chosen to simulate ourselves any backdrop at all for our meeting; grand canyons, colliding asteroids, a moving display of colour. Anything at all. –And yet despite all this we choose to stage a virtual meeting in a setting that looks almost real, even though we both know it isn’t. There is a certain humour to that."
"That there is indeed." The alternate looked around in the silence, studying his surroundings for appearance’s sake before adding. "Regardless, I fear I must leave. I trust I should pass the information onto the others?"
"Do so, by all means. They need to know."
"That we do." He waved. "Farewell then, for now."
And without any hesitation or any pretence at normality, -perhaps simply to sting Grant for his observation-, the alternate vanished. He left behind a room which showed no trace of his earlier presence save an indentation on the seat he had occupied.
Such a standard, ordinary setting and conversation and such a level of pretence involved. He had, just now talked to another version of him. An inhabitant of a shadow universe, one of an infinite series, which just happened to be near-identical to his own. And in this quiet room, the fire crackling, the carpet soft and thick and even with faint odours hanging in the air, an inhabitant of another universe had talked to him via a network that stretched almost immeasurably outwards and through the various levels of reality… and despite this, the setting seemed quite ordinary, save for it’s otherwise unnoticeable lack of real physical existence.
He left by the door. It seemed the right thing to do.
