Calculating God

7

I remember coming home last October after getting the initial diagnosis from Dr. Noguchi. I’d pulled my hatchback into the driveway. Susan was already home; on those rare days when I took my car to work, whichever of us got home first turned on the porch light so that the other could tell that there was already a vehicle in the garage. I, of course, had taken my car so I could get to Noguchi’s office, over at Finch and Bayview, for my appointment.

I got out of the car. Dead leaves were blowing across our driveway, across our lawn. I went up to the front door, letting myself in. I could hear Faith Hill’s “The Kiss” coming from the stereo. I was later than usual getting home, and Susan was busy in the kitchen — I could hear the sounds of pots and pans banging together. I walked through the hardwood-tiled entryway and up the half-flight of steps to the living room; I normally stopped in the den to look at my mail — if Susan got home first, she put my mail on top of the low bookcase just inside the den door — but today I had too much on my mind.

Susan came out of the kitchen and gave me a kiss.

But she knew me well — after all these years, how could she not?

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Where’s Ricky?” I asked. I’d have to tell him, too, but it would be easier to first tell Susan.

“At the Nguyens’.” The Nguyens lived two doors down; their son Bobby was the same age as Ricky. “What’s wrong?”

I was holding the banister at the top of the stairs, still shell-shocked from the diagnosis. I motioned for her to join me on the couch. “Sue,” I said once I’d sat down, “I went to see Dr. Noguchi today.”

She was looking into my eyes, trying to read messages in them. “Why?”

“That cough of mine. I’d gone last week, and he’d done some tests. He asked me to come in today to discuss the results.” I moved closer to her on the couch. “I didn’t say anything; it had seemed routine — hardly worth mentioning.”

She lifted her eyebrows, her face all concern. “And?”

I sought her hand with my own, took it. Her hand was trembling. I drew in breath, filling my damaged lungs. “I have cancer,” I said. “Lung cancer.”

Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God,” she said, shaken. “What . . . what happens now?” she asked.

I shrugged a little. “More tests. The diagnosis was made based on material in my sputum, but they’ll want to do biopsies and other tests to determine . . . determine how far it’s spread.”

“How?” she said, the syllable quavering.

“How did I get it?” I shrugged. “Noguchi figures it was all the mineral dust I’ve inhaled over the years.”

“God,” said Susan, trembling. “My God.”

Donald Chen had been with the McLaughlin Planetarium for ten years before it was shut down, but unlike his colleagues, he was still employed. He was transferred internally to the ROM’s education-programs department, but the ROM had no permanent facilities devoted to astronomy, so Don had little to do — although the CBC did put his smiling face on the tube every year for the Perseids.

Everybody on staff referred to Chen as “the walking dead.” He already had an awfully pale complexion — occupational hazard for an astronomer — and it seemed only a matter of time before he would be given the boot from the ROM, as well.

Of course, the entire staff of the museum was intrigued by the presence of Hollus, but Donald Chen had a particular interest. Indeed, he was clearly miffed that the alien had come looking for a paleontologist rather than an astronomer. Chen’s original office had been over in the planetarium; his new office, here in the Curatorial Centre, was little more than an upright coffin — but he made frequent excuses to come visit me and Hollus, and I was getting used to his knocks on my door.

Hollus opened the door for me this time. He was now quite good with doors and managed to manipulate the knob with one of his feet, instead of having to turn around to use a hand. Sitting on a chair just outside the door was Bruiser — that’s the nickname for Al Brewster, a hulking ROM security guard who was assigned full-time now to the paleobiology department, because of Hollus’s visits. And standing next to Bruiser was Donald Chen.

“Ni hao ma?”said Hollus to Chen; I’d been lucky enough to be part of the Canada-China Dinosaur Project two decades ago, and had learned passably good Mandarin, so I didn’t mind.

“Hao,”said Chen. He slipped into my office and closed the door behind him, with a nod to Bruiser. Switching to English, he said, “Hey, Slayer.”

“Slayer?” said Hollus, looking first at Chen, then at me.

I coughed. “It’s, ah, a nickname.”

Chen turned to Hollus. “Tom has been leading the fight against the current museum administration. The Toronto Star dubbed him the vampire slayer.”

“The potential vampire slayer,” I corrected. “Dorati is still getting her way most of the time.” Chen was carrying an ancient book, written in Chinese judging by the characters on the gold cover; although I could speak the language, reading it at any sophisticated level was beyond me. “What’s that?” I said.

“Chinese history,” said Chen. “I’ve been bugging Kung.” Kung held the Louise Hawley Stone chair in the Near Eastern and Asian civilizations department, another post-Harris-cutback amalgam. “That’s why I wanted to see Hollus.”

The Forhilnor tipped his eyestalks, ready to help.

Chen set the heavy book on my desk. “In 1998, a group of astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany announced the discovery of a supernova remnant — what’s left behind after a giant star explodes.”

“I know about supernovas,” said Hollus. “In fact, Dr. Jericho and I were talking about them recently.”

“Okay, good,” said Chen. “Well, the remnant those guys discovered is very close, maybe 650 light-years away, in the constellation of Vela. They call it RX J0852.0-4622.”

“Catchy,” said Hollus.

Chen had little sense of humor. He continued on. “The supernova that formed the remnant should have been visible in our skies about the year 1320 A.D.Indeed, it should have outshone the full moon and been visible even during the day.” He paused, waiting to see if either of us would dispute this. We didn’t, and he went on. “But there is no historical record of it whatsoever; no mention of it has ever been found.”

Hollus’s eyestalks weaved. “You said it is in Vela? That is a southern constellation, both in the skies of your world and mine. But your world has little population in its southern hemisphere.”

“True,” said Chen. “In fact, the only terrestrial evidence we’ve found at all for this supernova is a nitrate spike in Antarctic snow that might be associated with it; similar spikes correlate with other supernovae. But Vela is visible from the land of my ancestors; you can see it clearly from southern China. I’d thought if anybody had recorded it, it would be the Chinese.” He held up the book. “But there’s nothing. Of course, 1320 A.D.was in the middle of the Yuan dynasty.”

“Ah,” I said sagely. “The Yuan.”

Chen looked at me as though I were a Philistine. “The Yuan was founded by Kubla Khan in Beijing,” he said. “Chinese governments were normally generous in their support of astronomical research, but during that time, science was cut back while the Mongols overrode everything.” He paused. “Not unlike what’s happening in Ontario right now.”

“Not bitter, are we?” I said.

Chen shrugged a little. “That’s the only explanation I could think of for why my people didn’t record the supernova.” He turned to Hollus. “The supernova should have been just as visible from Beta Hydri was it was from here. Do your people have any record of having observed it?”

“I will check,” said Hollus. The simulacrum stopped moving; even the torso stopped expanding and contracting. We waited about a minute, and then the giant spider came to life again, Hollus reinhabiting his avatar. “No,” he said.

“No record of a supernova 650 years ago?”

“Not in Vela.”

“Those are Earth years, of course.”

Hollus sounded offended at the suggestion that he might have screwed up. “Of course. The most recent naked-eye supernova observed by either the Forhilnors or the Wreeds was the one in the Large Magellanic Cloud about fifteen years ago. Before that, both races saw one in the constellation you call Serpens, in what would have been very early in your seventeenth century.”

Chen nodded. “Kepler’s supernova.” He looked at me. “It was visible here starting in 1604. It got to be brighter than Jupiter, but you could barely see it during the day.” He pursed his lips, thinking. “That’s fascinating. Kepler’s supernova was nowhere near Earth, or Beta Hydri, or Delta Pavonis, and yet all three worlds saw it and recorded it. Supernova 1987A, of course, wasn’t even in this galaxy, and we all recorded it. But the Vela event of circa 1320 was quite nearby. I’d have thought someone would have seen it.”

“Perhaps a dust cloud intervened?” said Hollus.

“There’s no dust cloud in the way now,” said Chen, “and it would take a cloud either awfully close to the star that blew up or awfully big to obscure the view from Earth and Beta Hydri and Delta Pavonis. Somebody should have seen this thing.”

“Quite a puzzle,” said Hollus.

Chen nodded. “Isn’t it, though?”

“I would be glad to provide you with what information my kind have gathered about supernovas,” said Hollus. “Perhaps it will shed some light on the issue.”

I wondered if Hollus was deliberately making a pun.

“That would be great,” said Chen.

“I will have some material sent down from the mothership,” said Hollus, eyestalks waving.

When I was fourteen, the museum had had a contest for children interested in dinosaurs. The winner would get all sorts of paleontology-related prizes.

If it had been a dinosaur trivia contest, or a test of common knowledge about dinosaurs, or if it had required kids to identify fossils, I would have won, I’m sure.

But it wasn’t. It was a contest to make the best dinosaur marionette.

I knew which dinosaur it had to be: Parasaurolophus, the ROM’s signature mount.

I tried building one out of Plasticine and Styrofoam and wooden dowels.

It was a disaster. The head, with its long crest, kept falling off. I never got it finished. Some fat kid won the contest; I was at the ceremony where he received his prizes, one of which was a sauropod model. He said, “Neat! Brontosaurus!” I was disgusted: even in 1960, no one who knew anything about dinosaurs called Apatosaurus that.

I did learn one valuable lesson, though.

I learned that you can’t choose the ways in which you’ll be tested.

Donald Chen and Hollus might have been fascinated by supernovae, but I was more interested in what Hollus and I had been talking about before. Once Don left, I said, “So, Hollus, you guys seem to know an awful lot about DNA.”

“I suppose that is true,” the alien said.

“What—” My voice had broken a bit; I swallowed and tried again. “What do you know about problems with DNA, about errors in its replication?”

“That is not my field, of course,” said Hollus, “but our ship’s doctor, Lablok, is reasonably expert in that area.”

“And does this Lablok . . . ” I swallowed “. . . does this Lablok know anything about, say, cancer?”

“The treatment of cancer is a specialized discipline on our world,” said Hollus. “Lablok knows something about it, of course, but—”

“Can you cure cancer?”

“We treat it with radiation and chemicals,” said Hollus. “Sometimes these are effective, but often they are not.” He sounded rather sad.

“Ah,” I said. “The same is true here on Earth.” I was quiet for a time; of course, I’d been hoping for a different answer. Oh, well. “Speaking of DNA,” I said, at last, “I — I wonder if I might have a sample of yours. If that’s not too personal, that is. I’d like to have some studies done on it.”

Hollus stretched out an arm. “Help yourself.”

I almost fell for it. “You aren’t really here. You’re just a projection.”

Hollus lowered his arm, and his eyestalks did their S-ripple. “Forgive my sense of humor. But, certainly, if you would like some DNA, you are welcome to it. I will have the shuttle come down with some samples.”

“Thanks.”

“I can tell you what you will find, though. You will find that my existence is just as unlikely as yours. The degree of complexity in an advanced lifeform simply could not have arisen by chance.”

I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to argue with the alien, but, dammitall, he was a scientist. He should know better. I swiveled in my chair, turning to face the computer mounted on what had, when I’d started working here, been the return for a typewriter. I’ve got one of those nifty Microsoft split keyboards; the museum had to provide them to anyone who asked after the staff association started making complaints about liability for carpal-tunnel syndrome.

My computer was a Windows NT system, but I opened a DOS session on it, and typed a command at the prompt. An application began, and it drew a chessboard on the screen.

“That’s a standard human game board,” I said. “We play two games of strategy on it: chess and checkers.”

Hollus touched his eyes together. “I have heard of the former; I understand you used to consider its mastery one of humanity’s greatest intellectual achievements — until a computer was able to beat the most-skilled human. You humans do have a tendency to make the definition of intelligence quite elusive.”

“I guess,” I said. “But, anyway, it’s actually something more like checkers I want to talk about.” I touched a key. “Here’s a random deployment of playing pieces.” About a third of the sixty-four squares sprouted circular occupants. “Now, look: each occupied square has eight neighboring squares, including the diagonal corners, right?”

Hollus clinked his eyes together again.

“Now, consider three simple rules: a given square will remain unchanged — either occupied or vacant — if precisely two of the neighboring squares are occupied. And if an occupied square has three occupied neighbors, it remains occupied. In all other cases, the square becomes empty if it isn’t already, and if it is empty, it remains empty. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Now, let’s expand the board. Instead of an 8-by-8 matrix, let’s use 400 by 300; on this monitor, that lets every square be represented by a two-by-two pixel cell. We’ll show occupied squares by white cells and unoccupied ones by black cells.”

I tapped a key, and the checkerboard apparently receded into the distance while at the same time extending to the four corners of the screen. The grid of the board disappeared at this resolution, but the random pattern of lighted and unlighted cells was obvious.

“Now,” I said, “let’s apply our three rules.” I tapped the space bar, and the pattern of dots shifted. “Again,” I said, tapping the space bar, and again the pattern shifted. “And once more.” Another tap; another reconfiguring of the dots on the screen.

Hollus looked at the monitor and then at me. “So?”

“So this,” I said. I tapped another key, and the process began repeating itself automatically: apply the three rules to every piece on the board, redisplay the new configuration, apply the rules again, redisplay the revised configuration, and so on.

It only took a few seconds for the first glider to appear. “See that group of five cells?” I said. “We call that a ‘glider,’ and — ah, there’s another one.” I touched the screen, pointing it out. “And another. Watch them move.”

And, indeed, they did seem to move, staying a cohesive group as they shifted from position to position across the monitor.

“If you run this simulation long enough,” I said, “you’ll see all sorts of lifelike patterns; in fact, this game is called Life. It was invented in 1970 by a mathematician named John Conway; I used to use it when I taught evolution at U of T. Conway was astonished by what those three simple rules generated. After enough iterations, something called a ‘glider gun’ will appear — a structure that shoots out new gliders at regular intervals. And, indeed, glider guns can be created by collisions of thirteen or more gliders, so, in a way, the gliders reproduce themselves. You also get ‘eaters,’ which can break up passing objects; in the process, the eater gets damaged, but after a few more turns, it repairs itself. The game produces movement, reproduction, eating, growth, the healing of injuries, and more, all from applying those three simple rules to an initially random selection of pieces.”

“I do not see the point you are trying to make,” said Hollus.

“The point is that life — the apparent complexity of it all — can be generated by very simple rules.”

“And these rules you keep iterating represent precisely what?”

“Well, the laws of physics, say . . .”

“No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules? For the universe you are showing me, you mentioned a name—”

“John Conway.”

“Yes. Well, John Conway is the god of that universe, and all his simulation proves is that any universe requires a god. Conway was the programmer. God was also a programmer; the laws of physics and physical constants he devised are our universe’s source code. The presumed difference between your Mr. Conway and our God is that, as you said, Conway did not know what his source code would produce until he compiled and executed it, and he was therefore astounded by the results. Our creator, one presumes, did have a specific result in mind and wrote code to produce that result. Granted, things have apparently not gone precisely as planned — the mass extinctions seem to suggest that. But, nonetheless, it seems clear that God deliberately designed the universe.”

“You really believe that?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Hollus, as he watched more gliders dance across my computer screen. “I really do.”