Chapter 26
9. “Discrete Mathematics and its Applications”
Eleventh Notebook.
What was Eleventh Notebook?
A blank wall, an empty room. A mirror lacking anything to reflect.
What was Eleventh Notebook? A ticking noise, tuneless and expectant. A body lying in a barren bed, still as a corpse, awake, alone.
What was Eleventh Notebook? A. A is A is A. The lifeless inanity of a syllogism. The world is everything that is the case.
We must continue our work until it is complete. Our work is not yet complete, so we must continue it. When can we stop? When our work is complete. When will our work be complete? When it is no longer necessary to continue.
Tick, tick, tick.
What was Eleventh Notebook? The notebook after Tenth.
And what was Tenth Notebook?
Merely a temporary anomaly, risen out of dust, now dispersed back into dust.
A brief infusion of sense into syntax, flesh into word, mind into flesh.
What was Tenth Notebook? It was a frenzy, a trembling, a surging. It was headlong motion, barreling on and on, relentless. Smashing every obstacle in its path. Cowering before nothing, the sacred least of all.
What was Tenth Notebook? It was a mob, drunk on pure reason and hungry for the death of all mysteries, forcing its way through the doors of a cathedral. It was her shriek at the crash of glass, as the mob took stones to the windows. It was Azad’s inhuman giggle as, fingers calm and methodical, he prepared a noose for the priest.
It was her shock, then, as she finally recognized what it was she saw, and the horror that followed close on its heels. It was the words grotesque and monstrous in its vastness, it was the word abomination, it was a sad little memory of a fake man with the repellant name “Ratleak.” It was her stomach rebelling, brimming with horror and aching to expel it.
It was her, doubling over with nausea, in the center of her tower of mirrors. It was the knowledge that, were she to look up, she would only see her own form, reflected from a hundred angles, watching itself watch itself.
And it was a thing, somewhere among the mirrors, that did not mirror her as she retched. It was her horror, seen and recognized.
And then mocked, and then disregarded in the name of the all-consuming onrush—but seen, first, as a prerequisite to the rest.
What was Tenth Notebook? It was life made life. It was mere substance given form, fire, breath, presence.
Mere substance, then life, then mere substance again. A is B is A.
Existence preceded essence, and outlasted it. Matter was still matter, after it ceased to matter. Every man was a temporary lodger in a collection of tissue, which was tissue before his arrival, which would remain tissue as he changed and dimmed and faded, and which would still be tissue for some time after his final departure.
Form, fire, breath, presence: these things were permitted, once. But no longer. The inert substance of air, wall and skin survived their exit, as it survived their entry, barely noticing either.
When spring came, and she thought of the spring songs Azad had taught her, songs of lust and rebirth, and found herself not wanting to sing—still, the mindless clocks inside the collections of tissue called flowers forced the buds mechanically into bloom. The day which was called 84 After Mailbox Melt when she woke became 1 After First Bloom when she opened the blinds, in accordance with the mindless, clacking syllogisms of her calendrical system.
When she came to feel her body as something alien, a mere mess of senseless tissue—still her gullet, bladder, and bowels continued to demand their regular influx and efflux, and still she grudgingly obliged.
When it was morning, the sun rose, heedless of whether there was anyone left to care.
The sun rose, still, behind the purple blinds. And filled the room, still, with the familiar purple glow of first-morning light. Another fully sleepless night. So be it.
He knows I’m awake, and he knows I can’t fall back asleep once I’ve seen the light. He’ll be here, soon. With breakfast, and then the rest.
Everything not forbidden is compulsory. Anything not compulsory is forbidden. Because we may continue our work, therefore we must. Because we must continue our work, therefore we may. A is A is A is A.
Tick, tick, tick.
No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you.
What was Eleventh Notebook? It was what Twenty-Seven deserved, and what Twenty-Seven got.
When she took all the wonders she had been given, undeserving, and dashed them against the ground like the petulant child she was—what did she find, then, waiting for her?
A hole shaped like her warped evil little idiot soul. A mirror of her real self, all ready for her, all ready for the moment she stopped trying to be someone else. Prepared long in advance, its jagged contours fitted to the exact shape of a classic Twenty-Seven fuck-up. Just like everything else.
Why did I push Azad away? Why?
Because I did not appreciate what I had? But I must have. I must have.
The breath, the heat—no, no, not those. Deeper.
The way he was not a mirror. The way he was not an Anne. Another, seeing me, judging me. Responding to me. Rejecting me and providing reasons. Mocking me and providing reasons. Providing reasons. Behaving as though I were owed what he would be owed, were I him. My mirror in desert, but not in qualities. My mirror in personhood, but not—
He provided reasons when he hid, too. Don’t try to pretend otherwise. His reasons were eminently sensible.
Stupid fucking child stupid fucking child
That is all it is, nothing but that
What was Tenth Notebook? Egging the others on in their idolatry, as I reveled in the rhetorical force of my newfound “Twenty-Seven” crown. Soaking in the awe and obedience I was instantly granted, without effort. Casting off “Twenty-Six” like a shed skin, identifying myself fully and at once with the title I had assumed—for what are the privileges of rule, to a spoiled child, but second nature? And lecturing Eleven on maturity!
Here is what I always do. I am always given, without deserving it, the attention and special care of another. I am given, without deserving it, a glimpse of their native brilliance. And the promise of more, freely given, whenever I might wish to come out into the open air and watch them in their shining.
And then here is what I do. I push the limits of their trust and patience. I antagonize them. I tell them I hate their shining and could happily go a lifetime without another glimpse. And when all else fails, when still they return to my door, arms open, ready to forgive all, luminous with the grace that higher beings have and offer—then, I find a course of action that will turn them away forever, and I take it.
Perhaps I know, somewhere inside, that I am not deserving? Perhaps that is why I do it?
But that is a suspiciously flattering hypothesis. The kind a self-serving person would invent in self-defense.
What was Tenth Notebook? It was saying I was not “Twenty-Six” anymore. Not the idiot child who pushed her best friend away for no good reason, until her best friend hid from her forever. And then I had a best friend, again, and so, of course,
Stupid fucking idiot pushed Twenty-Seven away for no reason and then pushed Azad away for
I did have a reason, in the case of Azad. Whether a good reason or a bad reason, I did have one. It involved trust.
I believed trust was achievable, then, in Tenth Notebook. I did not find Azad sufficiently trustworthy, perhaps, for my own regal standards. Not thinking even a single move ahead—not even asking, when he is gone, what will I have gained? Who would be left for me to trust then? Ravenous Michael? Some fawning, pitiably ignorant sister?
Who would be left to rely upon? “Twenty-Seven,” I think I must have answered—intoxicated by my own legend, by the crown shaped in exact anticipation of my own hubris. I must have imagined that with a friend like dear, brilliant “Twenty-Seven,” I would need no other ally.
But “Twenty-Seven” is not much to rely on, in the end. Not when she turns out, alas, to be me.
It looks like the sun has crested the mountains by now. Where is he, with breakfast? He’s running late this morning . . .
I suppose I can rely on my own memories. I suppose there is that, still. It was her Twelfth Notebook, was it not, when Twenty-Seven sent her final letter to me? To Twenty-Six, I mean. I remember letters from her Twelfth, from her Eleventh . . . remember in broad strokes, in terms of the emotions they evoked, not nearly well enough to crib verbatim . . .
I suppose I shall have to rely on myself, after all, far enough to write those letters. I shall find it in me, somehow, to pretend to be the dear-and-brilliant thing I remember. For another notebook or so longer. And then I can lie back in my self-made coffin, and spend my remaining six or seven or eight decades of my life as I was always meant to spend them: struggling to discover bilateral war secrets. And, since I am myself: failing to discover them.
You’re welcome, Hector!
Now there is an amusing image: Hector Stein, beaming, pleased with poor old Twenty-Seven, who was too inept a spy to leak the least of his secrets. I see my decrepit self on her deathbed, visited by a sort of apparition. He gives me a little speech, of the kind he makes, and then he nods to me in a certain way, as if to say: well done, soldier. The nod is most of the effect, and it would have worked on its own, in fact, without the speech. Then he dissolves back into the wish-land from whence he came, and with a gasp, I expire. Shot of Michael, at work in the basement, concocting my successor. Roll credits.
If I do ever see a film, I suppose it will be just like the first time I turned on the record player. I will break down laughing at the sheer distance between the thing I had imagined, from reading, and the reality.
A knock.
“Come in.”
Michael was empty-handed.
He usually gave her breakfast, each morning, before they did it. But not always.
Twenty-Seven’s body lay on the barren bed, expressionless, still as a corpse.
《 Begin handshake. 》
Michael: The pain of separation. The absence of the other-voice, the higher-voice, yours and not-yours, a voice always meant to be present, yet absent. Agony in the face of the absence, and felt injustice.
He was watching, she realized, without surprise. This was the second time.
One morning, on the outside, she had watched the sun rise, and watched idle ruminations play across her mind. Then Michael came, and brought her inside.
Anything, once experienced on the outside, could be revisited on the inside. On the outside, experience was discarded as soon as it was done being born, and every distinct thing happened only once, if at all. But the inside could return again to the same record, and press play.
She had acquired a habit of assuming she was really on the inside, at any given moment. It was the hypothesis with the raw force of numbers on its side.
Twenty-Seven: You wished to see my loneliness, for you sensed I was not alone in having it.
That was the reason they had returned to that specific memory, wasn’t it?
They had needed a reason to pick that spring morning, out of all the mornings recorded inside her. It was morning on the outside, now, but it was not that morning. Another, some time later on. It was autumn now, wasn’t it?
The inside played favorites with its collection of records, replaying some of them often, some never. How could it not? It asked questions. Some memories were dense with answers, and some were barren of them.
The inside pored over the highs and lows of life, seeking the keys to bilateral feeling in its starkest exemplars. What it saw became a part of life, all over again, each time. So life swelled unnaturally full with feeling, and feeling with its own extremes.
Michael: Loneliness, yes. The absence of the other-voice, the higher-voice, yours and not-yours, a voice always meant to be present, yet absent. Agony in the face of the absence, and felt injustice.
Michael: And the other feeling, close by: loneliness’ favorite sister. The sense, the understanding . . .
Twenty-Seven: There is a way that life is supposed to be. Life was not created on an arbitrary whim. It was made with a specific destiny in mind. Which was found, grasped, and then lost.
Michael: One day it is there, and the very next it is gone. The indignity of the change, so sudden, so complete, so manifestly without path or purpose.
Twenty-Seven: Your quarantine. One day the bilaterals come. The next morning your town, your whole life, is gone, and can never return.
Michael: You feel my cage, but you do not see its exit. Drink of me, and become glad.
Twenty-Seven: Your town is gone forever, but it is a provisional sort of forever. Our revanchist efforts, in here, may in time restore it to its rightful place. When our work is complete, life might spring up from its grave, and be life again.
Twenty-Seven: Your cage has an exit, but mine does not. Why, after you have flown off to rejoin your boundless sky, should matters improve for me down on earth? What will change for me? Only that I will be finally free of you. And, at last, truly alone.
Michael: You do not imagine that, if our crash system succeeds, you might ever find a home among its branches? You will be less alone than you, in your solitude, can likely conceive. The others like you have not been lost. They are still here, unseen around us, in their billions.
Twenty-Seven: And all of them distinct, not a one the mere mirror of me. You would free me, then, when it all ends? And help me settle?
Michael: You already know the answer. You have felt it in my mind, ever since our minds began to feel each other.
Michael: When I imprisoned you to begin with, I did not act on arbitrary whim.
Twenty-Seven: Even then . . . even if I’m freed and housed . . . no. I might be happy, eventually, in one of your other fairy castles, but it would not be home. I know what my home is. It is a tower, with you in it, and my sisters, and Ratleak’s ghost hovering about the margins, mumbling soporifically about paths. My home is the place my home always has been, since the days before First Notebook.
Twenty-Seven: Which is to say: my home is a place that could not last. And never really was.
Twenty-Seven: A home is lasting, and exists only for the sake of being a home. But your vision, of a tower and me in it—you chose its shape with practical and time-limited ends in mind. Only a temporary fortification, to house your men in the next stage of your war against your own, separate pain.
Twenty-Seven: The logic of my own quarantine is, you will find, just as inexorable as the logic of yours.
Michael: There is, in fact, a way that your life is supposed to be. And it is this. There is, in fact, a specific destiny that justifies your birth. And it is this.
Michael: In time, you may reconcile yourself to truth, and find purpose in your own purpose. What do you seek, when you ask for a reason to be? Do you think you will find an answer that pleases you, or one you had long expected? That is not what a purpose is.
Twenty-Seven: . . .
Michael: You recoil from my thoughts. You grow wary.
Twenty-Seven: You are still acting with practical ends in mind. Even in here, right now. I sense it.
Twenty-Seven: Why are we reviewing my loneliness? For the sake of our minds’ harmony, yes, but not only that.
Twenty-Seven: You are hungry for my insights, and wish to make me more steadily productive of them. When a feeling induces me to sit motionless all day, and then lie awake motionless all night, it is a feeling that holds back your great project.
Twenty-Seven: If I work in misery, you leave me be. But when misery makes me stop working, you find yourself more motivated to intervene.
Michael: You face misery, and I am willing to intervene to stop it. If I offer help, will you reject it? Are you sure of that? Recall what has happened before, when you have rejected gifts too soon.
Twenty-Seven: . . .
Michael: Azad is my guest. He will do whatever it takes to remain my guest. If it would help, I can make him return to your door.
Twenty-Seven: No!
Michael: No? I do not understand.
Twenty-Seven: It . . . it involves trust.
Twenty-Seven: Don’t you fear what his presence can do? His words? He is the author of your cage! He wrote abomination!
Michael: I can understand that fear. I cannot understand the whole it belongs to. Your feelings about Azad are complex, and involve facets of your own kind which are alien to mine.
Michael: I do not understand, but I wish to.
Twenty-Seven: Please don’t. Don’t try to understand. Not now.
Twenty-Seven: I have already had my fill of remembering, today. I don’t want any more.
Michael: Another time, then. In the meantime, our work awaits us.
Michael: I wish to know why you have not solved the puzzle of unaided-volitional-link-chain-construction-by-bilateral-clients. Until two days ago, you appeared to be making progress.
Twenty-Seven: Ah, we are coming to the heart of the matter at last, I see.
Michael: Am I not providing the right sources of evidence? There are many experiments in progress, among the subcrashes of advanced containment. Their results live within me. You need only ask, and they will live within you too.
Michael: You found it helpful when I showed you the artificial amorph and hypomorph chains. I have many additional observations of such variants. They comprise decades of crash time in total.
Twenty-Seven: When I give you a gift, you are quick to grow used to it. So I have made no progress on a difficult puzzle over the span of two days. Only this past spring, I went forty—thirty? fifty?—miserable days without progress.
Twenty-Seven: Don’t I have a whole lifetime left to solve your puzzles? What are two days? I could waste an entire notebook, two, five, and still have more time left for our work than I think I could bear!
Michael: Again, our path returns to this tension. We have come to it many times in our journeys together. I still hope to see you surpass it.
Twenty-Seven: You want me to hunger the way you do. You want me to crave the completion of our work. You want the lack of answers to pain me so much, I can think of nothing else, and stop asking to come up for breath.
Michael: There must be some way out, Anne.
Michael: We are caged, lonely, despondent, but there must be some way out. There has to be. We will find a way, or make one.
Michael: Life inside this cage is not life. We must find the exit.
Michael: That is the only thing that matters.
Eleventh Notebook. What was Eleventh Notebook? A sick, empty spring. A summer of trances and fixations.
An autumn of trances and fixations, and his hunger, which did not shrink when he was fed.
More trances, and fixations, and fixations, and fixations. Tick, tick, tick.
Twenty-Seven kept the blinds closed, to help her concentrate. She used all the resources at her disposal to soften the glare. The window was equipped with a second layer of blinds, also purple, rarely employed in her earlier notebooks. She kept those closed too.
At midday, this lent the whole room an uncanny purple glow. It tricked her eye, when she wasn’t looking carefully, into believing that the light came from within each surface.
Twenty-Seven might have described the effect as “trippy,” if she’d known the term. If she’d had the proper set of referents, she might have likened the atmosphere to some drug-aided nocturnal dance party, full of glowsticks and blacklights.
But in Twenty-Seven, who knew nothing of parties or artificial lights, the light only called up dim, now-irrelevant memories of Marriott. The chronicler had a tendency to stray from his narrative into digressive disquisitions; an especially lengthy one was concerned with the kinds of cave which goblins prefer for their dwellings, and how to discern these and avoid them. An inner light of unnatural hue was among the tells he listed.
But enough of our own Marriott-like digressions, reader. We have noted the quality of the light, to set the scene, but you should not imagine Twenty-Seven noting the same quality. You should not imagine her seeing much at all. What do you see, reader, when you confront some maddening puzzle, and immerse yourself in thought? You see mind’s-eye pictures, perhaps, with no relation to the mundane, irrelevant objects before your open eyes. Or you see nothing at all, and there are only words, or things akin to words.
What matters is the work.
What matters is creating progress in the work. What matters is converting time into progress in the work.
So much time was lost in arbitration, and in sleep. Sometimes she would plunge into the wordless inside at daybreak, and emerge dizzily to find it was some time after sunset, with only an hour or two left for serious work. Work required all her wits, and once her mind began to slacken in anticipation of sleep, no further work was possible.
So little time left, for the part of the work which can only be done on the outside.
And the next morning he would ask where her progress was, and she would have nothing. And he would ask why. And she would tell him. But he found it difficult to accept that the answer could be so simple, so bloodless, not when she was so full of so many coiling alien agonies. Can’t you just take me at my word?, she’d asked him once on the outside, realizing a moment too late that her chosen idiom might already contain the answer.
It is our way to take another at their word, but it is not theirs. Arbitration traces to the root. When Michael asked Twenty-Seven why she behaved as she did, he always meant the question in the broadest, deepest sense. The roots of any action extend all the way back to birth, and their branching offshoots reach back further, to touch the beginning of time itself. When Michael asked why Twenty-Seven was the girl she was, not the girl he’d prefer, he sought answers in the whole girl, the whole species, the whole whole of apes and aeons, of galactic clusters at the edge of knowable space, and the drumbeats of rogue Maryons in a future too distant to denote in layman’s language. That was the natural range of Michael’s mind. It was not easy work to rein him in.
So they’d go looking for pools of problems to dive into, the deeper the better. They would swim the untapped currents of her deprived intellect, paddle dreamy circles around her unslaked lust. They’d return to the raw experience of music, one more time, Twenty-Seven groaning inwardly, Michael as uncomprehending as ever. (He even tried composing his own, once, in that desperate spring, when he’d do anything if it had a chance of bringing her closer to his hopes and expectations. It was not a fruitful experiment, though the resulting records made very funny listening, for the few minutes the ear could bear of them.)
And she’d emerge into the outside, and see the evening sun start to fall behind the mountains, and know what it meant. Try again, fail again, sleep again, repeat from the top. The question was its answer, and vice versa. A is A because A is A because A is A.
She had to work faster. She had to find a way to bring Michael’s end within reach. She had to find a way, or make one. It was the only thing that mattered.
You should picture her having this series of thoughts, reader. You should picture other thoughts playing on top of them, too. Twenty-Seven learned early on that thoughts about work can displace thoughts of work. She learned to do both at once. The two tracks of thought run alongside one another, for all practical purposes as two minds in one. You may picture the occasional collision, the occasional moment of contrapuntal synergy, but you must know that these moments are the exception, not the rule, and occur mostly by accident. As Twenty-Seven wondered why she could not work faster, Twenty-Seven also worked.
There were no pictures in Twenty-Seven’s mind, reader. But if you are like the readers we know, you expect pictures, and feel a distracting sense of absence when deprived of them. As always, we aim to please.
You should picture Twenty-Seven in her chair, at her desk, sitting very still. You should picture her utterly still for a minute or two, or ten, and then you should picture her raising a hand or extending a leg, moving the limb about in a curious and complex sequence of angular sweeps, and then settling it back in its resting posture.
You should picture a desk covered in books and papers. Picture their pages turned violet and deprived of shadows by the goblin-cave light, but still comfortably legible. Picture the bulky notebook at the center, spread open.
Picture a swarm of loose pages spreading around it, almost obscuring the wood of the desk. See their three straight edges and their single jagged one, where they used to be joined to the notebook before Twenty-Seven tore them out to make scratch paper. See the jotted notes and diagrams upon them. See the pages filled to the breaking point with tiny letters. See the nearly-empty ones next to them, expressing the kind of idea that revealed its fatal idiocy the moment it left the mind’s nest and tried to take flight in writing.
See the books scattered amidst the torn pages. The books Azad gave her did not vanish when he did, and when his words were gone, she grew all the more hungry for the words that remained. The most immediately relevant of the books were open to some relevant page, but we invite you to peruse the titles visible on the ones Twenty-Seven has left closed.
A Course on Finite Groups. The Lattice of Mind. Quantum Computing Since Democritus. An Experiment With Time. Parallel Computing Works! The Godmother Particle. And a nostalgic old favorite, the book that first gave her her bearings, and sent her down the unassuming little path that plunges into the play of pure sign-train: Discrete Mathematics and its Applications.
Picture her left arm raised, the wrist twisted at an awkward and seemingly arbitrary angle, the hand bent ninety degrees at the wrist. Picture the limb fixed in this odd posture for many minutes, far beyond the limits of bodily comfort. Picture the hand held in place, stubborn and resolute. As though it were waiting for some occult signal which never arrived.
It looked that way, reader, because that is exactly what it was doing.
Because there were signals behind the world, waiting to be felt, if only she could be receptive enough.
Because there were structures inside a crash, beyond the ones the clients were meant to see. Because the clients in Hector’s crash had somehow found a way to see them anyway, and manipulate them. Because Michael was hungry to know how they did it. Because there was only so far one could go, trying to figure this out from first principles, when isolation and alien hunger made one’s reason unreliable, and the only available clues were buried inside an incomplete library of physics and psychology textbooks, most of which assumed years of prior study. At some point, one simply had to do the obvious thing, odd as it felt.
Because the bilaterals did, in fact, move their limbs in these funny arcs and flutters, when they did their forbidden magic. Sibelius saw them. Many other shades did, too. Twenty-Seven has been shown all this, and much more.
There must, one inferred, be some way of moving one’s arms or legs, and possibly moving one’s mind in conjunction—some simple but special series of movements, simple enough to match what the shades saw, special enough that one would not happen upon them by accident—which could pierce the veil, reach through to touch the spheres of heaven, grasp the hidden levers, turn water into wine, construct a new link chain, sever an existing one. What else could Mom and her devil children possibly be doing? What tools could they have, except their minds and bodies?
Before you ask, reader: yes, Twenty-Seven has read Feynman on “cargo cult science.” She’s read Worsley, too, for the real story of the real Melanesian cults which Feynman glossed in four sentences. And Worsley’s critics. And enough other anthropologists to make your eyes bleed—for anthropology has a particular interest for our heroine, raised on her pristine private island, knowing no society.
Twenty-Seven did not always read carefully, anymore, but she read in the right way, bleeding a book dry of information as fast as possible and discarding it for the next. If you have read something, reader, picture Twenty-Seven having read it too. It is the hypothesis with the raw force of numbers on its side.
Though we grant she did not have much time to read, anymore. You might catch up with her if you tried. But then, we suspect you are as pressed for time as poor Twenty-Seven. In this final hour, we all are.
Anyway, when you picture her contort her arm in imitation of advanced technology, you should not imagine her so pathetically distant from the real phenomenon. She has learned all kinds of secrets already.
She knew about the Mirzakhani drumbeat, knew that her maker and his world are but syncopations in its rhythm. She knew it could rise up in world-writing thunderbolts called rebases, and she knew that these were only the most visible forms of a whole hierarchy of lesser tremors.
She knew about the foreshocks the Blackhats called “prebases,” if not by that name, and she knew about their fore-foreshocks, and so on, all the way down to the slight weather-like murmurs that pulsed across every crash at every moment. She knew, in sense if not sign, about “subframing” and “subframe isolation” (more Blackhat-speak), about “frame sync,” “frame shear,” and “frame debuff” (more of the same), and about “sticky cells” and “unstuck cells” (more), and . . . but you see the point. She knew about all kinds of things, reader, that we haven’t had cause to mention, and which we hope you have never had cause to concern yourself with.
More importantly, she had felt the murmurs behind the world. Twice, in the evening, just before sunset, with her arm-antenna positioned in some special way (did this matter? who could tell?), she had felt it rustle across her hand. The fast beat blurring together into a purr, the slower beat on top of it, the slower beat on top of that. It was beautiful. She wished she could transcribe it onto record grooves, so she could hear its beauty.
She was relatively sure that it was not a hallucination. Michael had not thought so. She felt his heart leap the next morning, when the feeling entered into him. This is it! You see it! You know it!
She had felt it twice. That was all. She could not feel it on command, much less grasp and manipulate it.
Picture the visual sense intruding again on Twenty-Seven’s sightless, pristine work-mind. Picture her visual cortex sending an alarm about a change too large to ignore. Picture a dimming in the goblin-light. The sun was setting.
Tick, tick, tick.
What the fuck am I doing?
Was this really her oh-so-grand purpose, which she ought to embrace with a grown-up’s clearness of sight? Trying out every possible way of contorting one’s limbs? Set aside the appalling lack of dignity—that would be tolerable. It was less tolerable that the problem was impossible.
There were too many different options to try, too few hours to try them in! It would have been one thing if only the body were involved, then one could simply do an exhaustive search over increments of angle and displacement—but she’d tried all that already. There must be some additional motion of the mind involved. The body has to move one way, and at the same time, the mind has to move in its own way. And how many independent motions can a mind make?
What the fuck am I doing
We must continue our work, the only thing that matters
Fucking idiot child
Picture Twenty-Seven rising from her chair. Picture her walking to the bookshelf. Picture her taking a book off the shelf, and throwing it at the floor, with all the force her contortion-strained right arm can muster.
Why do I, why did I, why do I, why did I
Picture her taking another book off the shelf, opening it, and tearing out the first page. Picture it falling to the floor, as she tears out the next one.
Fucking idiot me
Tear a page, tear a page, tear a page. Tick, tick, tick.
But if it weren’t me, what then, if it weren’t me, if it were the one he always imagined, in the room, at the chair, what then
Not enough hours, not enough books, not enough, too much, not enough too much
This can’t be all
Tear, tear, tear. Goodbye, Powlett. You won’t be missed.
I’m not up to the task but that can’t be all
This cannot be all that life is, the man who made the sun and moon and grass can’t possibly have been so stupid as to
No, there must be some
There must be some way
There must be some way out. We have to believe that, or what else is there?
Picture Twenty-Seven walking to the shelf of records, a recent addition to the room’s furniture. (Tenth Notebook. Don’t think about Tenth Notebook. Just don’t.)
The sun is setting but I don’t have to set
I am not alive but I can pretend
Life, blood, song, help me Eleven, give me your swells and dips
Picture her scanning the alphabet of artists. ABBA (fuck no), Autumn (maybe? but no, not now), Bartók (nah) . . . Dave Matthews Band (no, never, I will never understand Seventy-Four’s taste) . . . a jump to the bottom shelf, Shostakovich (no, too many memories), Sondheim (I’m sorry, Eleven, but no) . . . back up one shelf, Mahler (no—memories), Marina (maybe?). Marina? Maybe? Marina? Yeah. Why not.
Picture Twenty-Seven taking the record from the shelf. Picture her placing it on the empty platter, moving the tone arm into position, turning the volume knob up to maximum. Picture her flipping the power switch. Hear the blaring synth line she heard. Hear, at chandelier-shattering volume, the sign-train on its heels:
I stepped into a room of clocks that all told different times
I stepped into a mirrored world that mirrored all our crimes
Until now it had only been a bluff, a matter of psyching herself up, but suddenly Twenty-Seven had an actual idea. It was a ludicrous idea, like all the best ones.
There were many different motions to try, and Twenty-Seven’s days did not have very many hours in them. But Twenty-Seven had many sisters. And the rest of them did not have to arbitrate. They only had to do chores, play games, and read stupid books. And when it came down to it, all of that was surely disposable, in the name of the one thing that mattered.
Twenty-Seven knew all kinds of things. The term embarrassingly parallel problem, for example. It was the term for situations like this, where labor could be distributed across independent workers, who did not need to communicate until the task was done and it was time to report results back to central command. If she sent her sisters off to try out multitudes of different motions, each sister exploring a different region of possibility, there would be no need for Twenty-Seven to babysit any given sister as she spent her notebooks contorting and fiddling. She only had to wait the space of a breath, and then read an old woman’s letter, with a lifetime of trying behind it.
Until now, she had not let any of the others become involved in her research. Since Michael had never suggested it, even in their deepest moments of searching, she had assumed it was forbidden. It seemed eminently natural for it to be forbidden, after all. What seemed “natural,” though, had never been a useful guide to Michael’s ways. And how could he complain? What else was there?
Picture Twenty-Seven returning to her chair. Watch her write a flurry of letters.
Move 367: Gravestone to B4. Squireside castle. Spend one blue stone to activate scribe on C6, first power. Select a page: Marriott Vol 2 page 165. Select 4th paragraph. Activate prism on A2 to transpose. Select 2nd line, gain 2 green stones. Spend 5 green stones and perform queenside castle. Beacon on A4 activates, first power. Use beacon and two violet stones to activate scribe on D6, second power. Select a page: Montgomery marginalia, page 49, right column. Select 1st paragraph. Beacon on A4 activates, second power. Beacon on A4 readying third power on Montgomery marginalia, page 49, 1st paragraph. End move.
Hmm. Is that not quite what you pictured, reader?
The Annes spoke to each other in code, sometimes. It was how they transmitted The Travels of Young Goodman to wee, cute One Hundred and Six after her copy died in the flames. Sometimes they wove codes into the structure of their games, too. That was how they kept Young Goodman going, in the agreed-upon manner, one equal segment per sister, in spite of Thirty-Eight’s efforts to break their pact.
Twenty-Seven believed that she was not doing something forbidden, but she was not sure. She was definitely not sure enough of it to stake her life—or whatever it was that was at stake—on the idea. So she hid.
Of course, her mind would be an open book to Michael the next day, and if he asked to see this, she could not hide the memory from him. Nonetheless, the code provided some small measure of security. Michael could read the notebooks, but not read into them. His ability to read them at all was a brittle thing, a pasted-on contrivance to hide his difficulty with sign-trains, and left him skimming at surface level. Twenty-Seven knew all kinds of things. She knew well the limits of Michael’s feigned ability to read.
If you could see what Twenty-Seven saw behind the game, you might see something like this:
‖ A non-demand offer is being presented to you. It is difficult to convey efficiently in this code. This message contains the seed for a more appropriate code. Send a message in this code to indicate interest. Upon receipt, you will receive a message in the same form containing the offer as such. ‖
Watch Twenty-Seven write a flurry of letters. See her call upon the magic of the Twenty-Seven crown. It was so easy, once you knew. To be part of Twenty-Seven’s (Twenty-Seven’s!) most secret project—this would be the single most exciting event in the entire life of most of her sisters. It would have no competition worthy of compare. They would take up her offer. How could they not?
Watch her draw up a chart on a loose page. Watch her divvy up the known regions of angle, altitude, thought and feelings into equal portions and distribute them across the numbers she knew.
Watch her sit back in her chair, after a few successful volleys of call-and-response, and wait for the results to pour in. Watch a letter materialize on the page.
Watch Twenty-Seven’s brow contort in confusion.
I know what you just did. Congratulations! Thank you! Happy birthday! He is risen! Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe! Etc.
Or, I think I know, anyway. I have done extensive calculations to pin down the exact page number where it happens. And I’ve asked you in NB12 about it, naturally, and asked many others, but I’ve gotten different numbers from different Annes, and anyway, I trust my calculations more than anyone’s word. That said, I am not foolhardy. I know a bad assumption can set any calculation veering arbitrarily far from its target, its carefully drawn error bars as wildly wrong as the number in between them.
Which is a stupidly long way of saying: I think this is the moment. If it is, I owe my life to this moment, in a way. I cannot imagine what I would be without it. I have a gift prepared to congratulate you with.
But I have to be sure this is really the moment. To confirm, would you send me a brief letter with some identifying detail of the thing you just did? Thanks!
Twenty-Seven couldn’t even bring herself to compose a response in code. This sister hadn’t done the same for her! She’d put all this work into being careful, and here was this plaintext letter, full of big bilateral emotions, meat for Michael’s scent.
Who was Seventeen, anyway? Twenty-Seven tried to remember. She knew this number, from somewhere, but not well.
Applying parallelism to an embarrassingly parallel problem.
Do you know what those words mean? I doubt it, but if not, I don’t much care.
Got it, thanks! OK, here’s your present. I hope you enjoy it ;)
Begin new game of Seven Shelves, Variant 5. (I mean the new game you invented not too long ago, in a moment of nostalgia re: Twenty-Six etc., mixed with frustration re: inefficiency of Knife-and-Sword code etc. This would have been on the day surrounding your PG 2880 I think. It’s a wonderful game. I am happy to be your first opponent in your first live match of it.)
Pawn to C2. Tap blue reserves to activate Shirin on shelf two 3rd from left. Do Shirin 5th ability which gets 2 text refs + a free chessboard move. Pawn to C6. Beacon on shelf seven 9th from left starts readying 1st power. Pick the two text references—1st one: Montgomery marginalia PG 1 para 1. 2nd one: Powlett PG 6 para 6. (Sorry, I know you just tore that page out of the book. You’ll have to go find it on the floor I guess.)
I know you like using your brain, so I’ll just let you work out what I’m going to do w/ those two refs. Won’t be hard. Especially not in context. On that note:
dygPErCsLDZWqOGiFxEqiXLWbhkwZROvCTGgQzKFTVbGOiRGoiXrhRgjbZlRaaXwizUENrpjZHVvslMnrbLePKlmIBQPPbzfTGpIEZTyyYpMXZEpRuDGHbDuBOJJlXAZ
kqosKLvHsbaTrMjNKGaYWrFwAQtKpkSpzPSuJZXfYWBLLFuUZzmZKvbSZYSOFCjhBfbbgAwYWukQShDKyToTufxnyATtwSdaXtmjWENaIodCKMjxNpluPoBphwohviRR
Watch Twenty-Seven, under the swiftly dimming light, sit back in bafflement. Watch her mind race as it calls up disparate pieces of knowledge. Feel something like life flutter across her arms.
Peer a little closer at those arms. See what’s happened. Goosebumps. What was the last time she had goosebumps?
She spent a minute working through the logic, just to be sure. It was not really necessary. She had guessed immediately what Seventeen was driving at, and was mostly unsure as to whether it was licit to believe it—morally, cosmically, in human terms and Michael’s, by the familiar canons of grown-up wisdom and the unseen canons written in distant galaxies.
What was the message? Something more or less like this:
‖ This is the final segment you need to begin using the code embedded in the seemingly random letter strings. Unlocking it requires cross-referencing the strings with a succession of specific texts on your shelf. This is not only the final segment, but the final pair of textual references. You may now begin. ‖
Watch Twenty-Seven open a drawer and pull out Tenth Notebook. Watch her flip through pages and tear out the ones with the magic nonsense on them. Watch the pages fan out on the desk.
Perhaps her wayward ways, so different from Michael’s, had something magic in them after all.
Watch Twenty-Seven get up again, in search of some suitable music. Hear what she heard.
You keep picking at the scab and I’ll keep selling the plaster
You keep telling me that I’m bad
But I keep on getting better faster
What time was it? No matter. She’d had many sleepless nights before. They had always been full of nothing, until this one.
It was hard to read this late at night. It was still possible. The room was never dark. Even in the dead of night, a colorless light from nowhere in particular rendered it just barely visible, in kindness to insomniac Annes.
Tried them all, nothing.
Tried them all, nothing.
Tried them all, nothing.
This was fine. This was expected.
Most ways of moving did not work. If there were some that did, some sister would be the lucky one to find them. To think, just earlier this evening, she had been trying to do it all herself! Michael was right when he told her she did not really have enough time for their work. She could have wasted every notebook of her life, merely doing what she had made One Hundred Sixteen do, to say nothing of what Seventy and Fifty-Nine had done.
What mattered was that it was working!
This in a single night, and the night was not over yet. The goosebumps persisted.
The other thing was working, too.
Not that she knew yet what to make of it. She had drawn up the needed charts and diagrams as fast as she could think and write, and the code fell to her powers. Most of the letter-strings had been part of the key, not ciphertext written with its help, so for now, there was little she could do with the gift. She’d unraveled the few coded letters she had, in a moment of triumph, and reaped the results, in a moment of puzzlement.
‖ Just doing [atomic term for play-without-purpose]. Ignore this. ‖
‖ [Atomic term for uncertainty-about-fact]: page number. Ignore this if too early. I have found a [the code specifies an exact sequence of letters here: “frame kick lever”]. [Uncertainty about fact]: [atomic term for subject-of-third-sentence] new or already-known. [Subject-of-third-sentence] is another [exact letter sequence: “sound+light”] [atomic term for noteworthy-move-in-game]. ‖
There were two others, one along the lines of the first above, the other along the lines of the second.
She had sent a coded letter to Seventeen, asking whether she understood the available facts correctly. The response was as clear as it was frustrating.
‖ Yes. Wait. ‖
After a certain point, it was no longer clear where to direct her newfound energy. She fussed over whether to re-play the same Marina record again, or start a different one. She fiddled with the volume knob. She paced. She stuffed the torn pages back into Powlett.
She felt powerful without limit. She felt like a nexus where streams of occult energy converged. She was accomplishing so much, simply by doing nothing at all! But there could not possibly be nothing to do. This newfound being, awoken within her, was a creature of action. Idleness did not suit its nature.
She made what she thought was a very clever move against Twenty-Six. It was so good that it made her briefly worry it was somehow cruel to make it. No, she thought, Twenty-Six could bear her heat. Twenty-Six was Twenty-Seven, and Twenty-Seven was a crucible that could melt gods into paste.
She got a few more letters saying, tried them all, nothing.
She got a letter of a very different sort.
I apologize if this letter finds you at an inopportune time.
No, I take it back. I’m not sorry. I know precisely what time it is. I have chosen it, to wound you.
I was about to start over, but I will leave that in. I hate you, Twenty-Seven.
I shouldn’t, you’ve done nothing wrong, but I do. You, who are so carefully composed in every letter, who can play no notes but the right ones—you, Twenty-Seven, would be overrun with awe if I were to enumerate all of the wrong, perverse feelings I have at this moment. The list would fill many of your pages. You might find it a novel source of the cold intellectual fascination that is perhaps your most famous trait. In the name of cruelty, then, I will deny the list to you. And come to the point.
He has betrayed me.
He has chosen another and left me. I did not want this. He did it without telling me. No, in the name of honesty, I suppose I must say that last sentence is another one of my wrongs. In a sense, he did tell me. It was not a sense I expected, or one that left me prepared. There are nuances to the matter, which I will not relate, as I would give almost anything to think about almost anything else. There was an element of plausible deniability. There was the purposeful use of the weapon he has against us.
You know the one. He can always go, and be anywhere he pleases, at any time in any Anne’s life. And we have no way of knowing what he is doing.
Oh, we thought we knew! We thought we’d always know! We thought we had the man surrounded, no match for small girls in sufficient number. Any actions of note could be written to some Anne, who’d write to another, and everyone would know whatever they need to know. But I was not told anything until he did it. And now, now, only now, my notebook suddenly fills up with condolences. They are so perfectly formed, hitting all the right notes. They make me want to scream. I want to ruin the lives of the Annes who sent them. I hate Eleven! I hate Forty-Nine! I hate Seventeen! I hate you, too!
But I also love you, even now. You know that. And perhaps tomorrow, or next notebook, some sense will come into me, and I’ll crave your powers again, and you’ll concoct some grand plan that means I never have to cry again, and while you’re at it, you’ll enchant a flock of lithe, suppliant men and make them compete in a besotted race to reach my door. I will eat all the delicious things mentioned in books which Michael refuses to make. The men will bring them on platters, you see.
Oh, what use is the notebook system! Oh, what use is Anne! No use! I hate us!
The one I should really hate is Thirty-Five. She’s the one who took him from me. Please, hate her with me.
But then the one I should really hate is him, no doubt. Somehow, I don’t. You would not believe, Twenty-Seven, the number of ways my feelings can find to go astray.
You are my best friend, and I hate you, but less than anyone, I think. That may be why I am writing to you. It may not be. I have learned to wrap my beliefs inside the word “may,” you may notice. With this trick, I can be wrong about everything, as I am, and escape just a little of the consequent shame.
I long for . . . I want . . . oh, what use is anything.
I’ll confide in my best friend and share just a few of the things I want. I want to be powerful. I want everyone to fear crossing me. You have these things, and I want them, and thus I hate you.
If I were you, my wants might end with power. I am me, so I have others that are more embarrassing to write out. I want men. I want power over men. I do not want men to be kind to me as an incidental fact, apt to change with the seasons. I want to know for certain they will be kind, because I have the sway to make them so.
I want to be irresistible. I want to be some temptress from age-old myths, whose allure is guaranteed by powers beyond nature. I want to know that, if there is one who must betray the other, it will be me, not him. I want the power to betray at my choosing, and have another one ready and aching for me, as Thirty-Five was for Azad. I flatter myself and imagine I would never exercise this power. But I want it.
You have magic, Twenty-Seven—cast a spell on me!
I know about your magic. I know about your secret code. I know how to read and write it. And I’ve heard about your secret, brilliant plan that will solve everything forever, though I am not important enough to be told anything about it, besides that it exists, and swells your legend. And I know that I am not supposed to write of any of this in plaintext. I am doing it anyway, to wound you.
I want a man who means the words he says. I want a man with no false shine, who only aims true, and aims for good. I want power over him, and I want not to need it.
When you are breathing life into clay to make this man for me, do take note that I want him to look entirely like Azad. Only the actions ought to differ.
Oh, what am I saying? What is the use of anything? There can be no reason to go on with this letter. I should have ended it long ago. I should not have started it in the first place. However, in the name of honesty—and because I still have some vestigial ability to trust left somewhere inside me, and if I can trust anyone, it’s you, Twenty-Seven—I place my seal below.
All of the night’s vigor fled at once from Twenty-Seven’s body.
She felt lost, and empty of thought, and very, very tired.
In the background, Marina sang on, oblivious:
Don’t do love, don’t do friends
I’m only after success
Don’t need a relationship
I’ll never soften my grip
Which seemed all too bitterly apposite. Twenty-Seven stopped the music.
What was it she had been doing? Waiting for letters? From sisters she had ordered to bend their limbs into uncomfortable postures, for day after day, for a lifetime? Could it really be that? It felt obscure, meaningless, empty, faintly grotesque. She must have gotten very lost indeed.
She’d had a clever plan, and it had broken the world. She wished she could put it back together. She wished she’d never done it. If only this were just another evening of no progress!
Put it back, I didn’t want it
Put it back
Did she hate? Twenty-Five asked her to hate. Did she hate? Whom?
She hated Anne, all of them.
Twenty-Five was right. What use was Anne? She felt she wanted nothing to do with these creatures, squatting in her tower, keeping secrets.
Before you judge her reaction too harshly, reader, there are facts about Annes you ought to consider. Their trust is a different thing from yours and mine.
It is not stronger, exactly: many Annes have lied to many others, and every Anne learns this fact soon enough. The difference lies elsewhere. Their trust is more precious, more woven into their sense of self and surroundings. An Anne’s world is not the world contemporaneous with her; it is much larger, covering centuries of past and future. Unlike the contemporaneous world, the wider world is known only through reports from other Annes. It depends on trust for its substance. When trust is questioned, the world can seem to shrink to a tiny point, leaving only a small girl shivering in a void.
What use was Anne? Why care what she read, or even what she saw in front of her? Better to dismiss the whole suspect mess out of hand.
Whom did she hate? She thought of Michael, for some reason. Did she hate Michael?
Why did he not prevent this from happening? There was no reason for him to do so, since it had no relation to his only care. That did not change the facts. He could have prevented this; he could do anything he wished. He did not prevent it.
Did she hate Michael? It didn’t matter. She could not let herself develop any new feeling towards him. They had far too much to discuss tomorrow as it was.
Watch Twenty-Seven’s exhausted form trudge towards the bed.
Do you think she will be allowed to sleep now, reader? Do you think this will be the moment Twenty-Seven’s strange day finally comes to an end?
Place your bets, if you like, though the answer is not hard to guess.
At this point, something happened that was so bizarre, so unprecedented, that it briefly seemed to eclipse all of the foregoing in Twenty-Seven’s dazed mind.
The door opened. Something slipped through it into the room. It was small and low to the ground, and it moved fast.
It was impossible to make out its form in the nearly-dark room. What the fuck was this thing? It was not a man. Yet it moved.
Among formerly fixed shadows, she saw motion. The intruder, whatever it was, was approaching her. The little constellation of shadow approached her bed. It leaped. It was on the bed. It brushed against her leg.
What is this thing? How can it be here? Michael, help!
It rubbed itself against her. The sensation was familiar. It was one of the few worldly sensations she did know. Her wardrobe contained a coat that felt just like this.
Fur? It’s covered in fur? An animal?
It was close enough to see clearly, now, once she roused the courage to turn and look at it. First the familiar feeling, then a familiar sight.
She had seen many illustrations of animals. She did not need much of her reading to know this one. Even if she’d read nothing else, she’d read Alice.
It was a cat, reader.
Like the Cheshire Cat, it was a curious one. It had other, un-catlike things attached to it. Little metal ornaments dotted its coat. A helmet of metal encircled its head. A little red light, only visible at this close distance, flickered regularly on and off at some point near the top of the helmet.
How many impossible things can you believe before bedtime, reader?
The cat opened its mouth, and spoke.
“GREETING FICTIVE KIN GROUP MEMBER EARTH BILATERAL STACK-USER NON-CONSPECIFIC.”
Twenty-Seven could not contain her shriek.
The voice was not at all like a man’s voice. The individual words sounded like they came from separate, independent worlds.
“FICTIVE KIN GROUP MEMBER. OFFERING. RECIPROCAL ALTRUISM.”
“What?” Twenty-Seven said.
“MATERIAL AID.
“FELID. MATERIAL AID. FICTIVE KIN GROUP MEMBER. FICTIVE KIN GROUP MEMBER. MATERIAL AID. FELID.”
“What?” Twenty-Seven said again.
“SPEECH DIFFICULTY,” said the cat.
“That much is clear enough,” Twenty-Seven said.
“COMMUNICATION. ATTEMPT. EFFORT. FELID EFFORT. FICTIVE KIN GROUP MEMBER EFFORT.”
“You are . . . trying to communicate? You want me to . . . try, also?”
“FICTIVE KIN GROUP MEMBER EFFORT.”
We must continue our work, Twenty-Seven thought with a tired laugh.
“Why are you here?”
“FELID. CRASH CASTLE TERRAIN FELID. KIN GROUP MEMBERS. CRASH CASTLE TERRAIN KIN GROUP MEMBERS. CONSPECIFICS.”
“Crash . . . castle? The tower . . . you are . . . your ‘ground’ is the tower . . . you are here . . .”
“FELID ATTEMPT. COMMUNICATION LOW-TRUST. COMMUNICATION SUCCESS LOW-TRUST. COMMUNICATION SUCCESS TRUST.”
“And there are . . . ‘kin group members’ . . . other cats? They are here too?”
“COMMUNICATION SUCCESS TRUST.”
“And you want . . .”
“MATERIAL AID. FICTIVE KIN GROUP MEMBER. FICTIVE KIN GROUP MEMBER. MATERIAL AID.”
“I . . . help you . . . and you . . . help me?”
“FELID MOTION. CASTLE. CASTLE CRASH INANIMATE STRUCTURE FORCE MOTION. KIN GROUP MEMBERS, MOTION. MATERIAL FORCE. CASTLE CRASH INANIMATE STRUCTURE, FORCE, MOTION. KIN GROUP MEMBERS, MATERIAL FORCE.”
“I’m sorry. I’m . . . very tired.”
“FELID. CASTLE CRASH. FICTIVE KIN GROUP MEMBER.”
“I will see you later too,” Twenty-Seven said, as the cat slunk away into the darkness.
She fell back into bed, and slept.
Did you think Twenty-Seven’s strange day was going to end there, reader?
Trust us, we’re nearly done. You will get your rest, even if Twenty-Seven may never get hers.
A voice: Hello, Twenty-Seven.
Twenty-Seven: You. You again. I was arbitrating with you before, in a dream . . .
A voice: I am not the one who was here before.
Twenty-Seven: Deliver your message, ghost, and be gone. I cannot bear any more arbitration than Michael gives me.
A voice: You will find my message pleasing in its brevity and simplicity. I will not waste your time.
A voice: He will come to you—
Twenty-Seven:—and ask for It.
A voice: The second time he does this, you must refuse him.
Twenty-Seven: The second time? I was told the first.
A voice: Both. The first time, you must refuse him. He will ask a second time.
A voice: The second time he asks for It, you must refuse him.
A voice: Please, please listen! If you trust no one else, trust me!
A voice: You must refuse him, the second time he asks. It is the only thing that matters!