Episode 114

(New York, September 19, 2019)

Alana gave Karkov a blank stare. “You want me to believe that you weren’t trying to kill Rin when you buried her alive? She was a Four, and a pretty standard one at that. You’re claiming that you couldn’t come up with a way to kill her, and instead had to settle for sealing her way? I don’t buy it for a second. Do you want to know what I think?”

Karkov sighed. “Not particularly, but I’m sure you plan to tell me anyway.”

“I think you’re just attempting to reframe your incompetence. Or maybe it’s cowardice. Were you afraid that there would be a revolt if her universally detested husband killed her openly?”

“I wasn’t universally detested. You’re not the universe.”

“Well, I suppose if you count yourself there was one person who didn’t despise you. Maybe your mother too, but that’s probably asking too much of a mother’s love.”

Karkov signaled the waiter and tapped his cup. “Are you done insulting my long-dead mother. If you’re trying to goad me, it won’t work. I’m not goadable.”

“You’re very goadable,” Alana replied. “You are, in fact, the very definition of goadable. But I have no need to goad you into anything. I’m simply pointing out the truth. You were too inept or craven to just kill her like a normal husband would.”

“You have a peculiar view of how marriage works. Normal husbands don’t kill their wives. Not everyone manages their relationships with poison and knives. Only you.”

“You just bury them alive.”

“I see we’re back to that,” Karkov replied as the waiter deposited a new latte in front of him.

“Spare me the malarkey,” Alana snapped back. “You didn’t deliberately avoid killing her. You just failed at it. How do you mess up a such a thing? Even I could manage that much.”

Karkov looked at her with a puzzled expression. “You’re disappointed that I didn’t kill her? How touching. I’m glad she has a friend like you.”

“You know what I mean.”

Karkov smiled. “I do indeed. And I think it’s clear what you would have done, if I hadn’t acted first.”

“So, you did it to spare her from me? That’s a pathetic excuse. You’re assuming a lot, and all wrong.”

“Not so, my dear. Your reaction spoke volumes. I am quite certain I’m not wrong, but it’s a moot point. I felt no need to protect her from you.” Karkov grinned over his crossed hands. “This may come as a surprise to the proud head priestess, but I was barely even aware of you.”

“Your behavior at the time suggested otherwise.”

Karkov gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “That was later, when you had emerged from your self-imposed retirement and were stirring up trouble.” He gingerly sipped his new drink, careful to avoid spilling from the overly filled cup. “Whatever else I may have been, at least I was Rin’s friend.”

“Rin has no friends,” Alana countered. “And I was asking how you could fail, not suggesting that you should have succeeded. An incompetent murderer is still a murderer.”

“You are the expert on murder, incompetent or otherwise.” Karkov smiled and continued before she could object. “As you say, she was a Four. I could not have trapped her otherwise. Now she has at least thirty-two protections, cherry-picked from among the heaven-knows-how-many she was taught by the gods.” There was a note of resignation in the man’s voice.

Alana’s stomach sank. So, it was true. If Rin could rewrite a Four into a Thirty-Two, it left little room for doubt that she could ‘encumber’ immortals using the same principle. There was no way Alana could defeat a Thirty-Two, let alone one with secret knowledge of every aspect of the spheres and who could plot and craft at her leisure.

Sooner or later, Rin would have her way. Alana and Finn would be placed in some horrible perdition. Maybe she would ask Rin to drop her in that black hole instead. Was that why Rin had mentioned it? Alana had a sneaking suspicion that this was part of what the woman was offering. Why else bring it up?

If so, there remained a tiny avenue to survival. Alana just needed to take her up on the offer. Maybe she could even extract a promise and get Rin to formally commit to the thing. Since the idea was utterly implausible, her demise would be deferred indefinitely.

Was that Rin’s goal all along? Perhaps this entire farce was just an elaborate way for her to spare Alana while saving face. But why? The choice was Rin’s anyway. To whom did the woman need to save face? The whole thing seemed silly and pointless, but Alana preferred a silly and pointless reprieve to a silly and pointless damnation.

Maybe Rin actually was beholden to the gods and would have to answer to them if she neglected to destroy any immortals. Alana wondered whether she should plead her own case before the gods. As the head priestess, that would be her prerogative. If Rin truly was acting on their orders, then going over her head could be the sensible thing to do.

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t help. The gods would not look favorably upon Alana’s life and deeds, nor would her general skepticism and neglect of their rites go unnoticed. Even if they were inclined to overlook such impiety in a lay person, it would be unforgivable in a priest — let alone the high priestess herself.

Alana was supposed to have been their most ardent adherent, not … well, certainly not what she was. She could expect little mercy from them. Justice would be no friend to her, and she had a better shot with Rin.

“As I said, I realized the problem soon after becoming immortal,” Karkov continued.

“Problem?” Alana looked up with a distracted expression.

Karkov snapped his fingers in front of her face. “I’m trying to explain why I did what I did. Look, if you’re not interested…”

“I’m interested,” Alana replied, now fully attentive.

“You should be. It affects all of us.” He studied her face for a few seconds before proceeding.

“I’ve long suspected that a sphere’s protections could not conflict with one another. Otherwise, how would the universe know how to deal with such a conflict? Rin recently confirmed this for me. If two protections would conflict, the sphere can’t be formed. Or maybe it just can’t be bound to its recipient. I’m not entirely sure, but it doesn’t matter. The point is that a given sphere cannot contradict itself. However, this says nothing about distinct spheres. What would happen if two spheres conflicted? The universe is constrained not just by one sphere, but by all of them. Every protection on every sphere must simultaneously be satisfied.”

Alana thought for a few moments. “Wouldn’t a new sphere just fail to be created if it conflicted with any existing one?”

“If that were true, Rin would never have been able to create more than a single immortal — or at least a single high-numbered immortal. That’s obvious from the most basic protections. There is a real potential for conflict with anyone over a Four — and even with some Fours.”

“Then, what?”

“The only explanation I came up with is that it’s a matter of timing. The protections on a single sphere are necessarily coincident. They all relate to a single person. As such, any potential for conflict would be apparent at the time of binding. But the universe cannot know, for lack of a better word, whether conflicts would arise between different spheres. Their holders could move through the world without ever coming into contact, let alone conflict. However, there is no obvious mechanism for the universe to ensure this. My conclusion is that there is no safeguard against such conflicts. What if your protections and mine would violate one another? What if there was no way for the universe to accommodate both?”

Alana mentally ran thought her and Finn’s protections. “That seems unlikely. I don’t see how they could.”

“With a little thought, it’s not difficult to come up with scenarios.”

She gave him a sour look. “I guess you’re saying I’m incapable of even a little thought.”

Karkov sighed. “Not everything is about you. It wasn’t a pointed comment. Unless I’m mistaken, you haven’t entertained the possibility of this sort of conflict until now. It would hardly be reasonable to expect you to have considered its ramifications in depth. Besides which, you may have a different view of the nature and origin of the protections than I do. You’re an ex-priestess, so that would hardly be surprising. Nonetheless, I urge you to consider the matter carefully. Even certain Fours could conflict with one another, though I’ve only been able to come up with highly contrived scenarios for that.”

“No doubt, you’ll find a way to make those ‘highly contrived’ scenarios a reality. After all, contriving is what you do.”

Karkov frowned. “I do wish you’d take this seriously. The last thing either of us wants is for those circumstances to become a reality. The real danger lies in conflict between Eights or between an Eight and my own Sixteen — or, with Rin’s Thirty-Two or whatever she is. Do you have any idea what would happen if such a conflict arose?”

Alana shook her head.

“Neither do I, but I can take a pretty good guess. I’m sure you can too. It’s the age-old paradox: what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?”

Alana shrugged. “Two such things cannot coexist.”

Karkov nodded in approval. “Indeed, that is the usual answer. Two such objects cannot coexist in the same universe. However, this is incomplete. The correct answer is that two such objects cannot coexist and come into conflict. If the immovable object never meets the unstoppable force, then there is no paradox. They each live their lives unaffected by the other, and no contradiction arises. The universe has only one realization, so ‘can’ and ‘does’ are empirically the same.”

“Then, there should be no issue. This simply means that conflict will not arise between our protections. If it would have, then they couldn’t have all been created.”

Karkov shook his head. “Optimistically, that is a possibility — but it feels like the easy way out. We can look at it from another standpoint. The only universes in which the immovable object and unstoppable force can coexist are those in which they do not come into conflict. If they do come into conflict, then one of several things can happen.”

Alana grinned. “The unstoppable force can be shown to be stoppable or the immovable object can be shown to be movable or both. Not exactly rocket science.”

“Yes, the universe could somehow pick one protection over the other, thus demonstrating that the protections aren’t absolute. If they are merely soft constraints, then that could indeed work. Unfortunately, that isn’t the only possibility or the most likely. Given their apparent inviolability, the protections probably constitute hard constraints. In that case, even if they could come into conflict, this information may not be apparent at the time of formation. Suppose that being unstoppable or immovable is a hard constraint rather than just something ‘within the system’ — like, say, assigning a huge inertial mass to an object. The problem is that we may not know whether the constraint will be violated until it is. Have you played with computers at all?”

Alana shrugged. “A little. I can find my way around them.”

“Well, it’s the difference between a compile-time error and a run-time error. We’re assuming that the universe is predetermined for all space-time ‘up-front’ — whatever that means, since time is part of the game. If you think of the universe as a computer program, it may not ‘know’ that an error will arise until it does.”

Alana squinted her eyes. “These days, everybody and their brother is spouting trite nonsense about ‘hey, what if the universe is really a computer program?’ That’s hardly original or profound.”

Karkov rolled his eyes. “I’m not trying to be original or profound. And no, I’m not saying anything of the sort. I’m simply drawing an analogy.” His voice resumed its usual didactic tone. “What happens when a computer encounters something it is incapable of dealing with?”

Alana stared at her cup. “It crashes.”

“Bingo. My guess is that the universe won’t ‘crash’ in any way noticeable to those within it. It simply will cease to be, and — to the extent that such a thing has meaning — probably will never have been at all. If a universe must accommodate something and it is impossible to accommodate that something, then logic dictates that such a universe cannot exist.”

“Wouldn’t logic be part of the universe? Who’s to say that it applies?”

“A reasonable thought, but there is a flaw with it. A given logic cannot be used to prove its own consistency, but it can be used to disprove it. Our scenario would be inconsistent within the logic of the universe itself. Therefore, something would have to give. Maybe in this realization of the universe, which is all we have anyway, no conflict will arise. However, that cannot be guaranteed. It wouldn’t be a constraint if it never applied. The same can be said of any scientific inference. We’re at the mercy of the only realization in which we exist.”

Alana quietly sat back. “And you think this means the universe will end if a conflict arises? It feels like that would have happened already if it could. Doesn’t the fact that we’re sitting here mean that it’s exceedingly unlikely?”

Karkov studied the table for a moment. “Not everything that can happen has already happened.”