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cells were to exchange identities. In effect, each of them could be thought of
as having moved one space-quantum through the matrix."
"A kind of Planck length," Duncan murmured.
Hunt nodded again and went on. "Or, to take another example, if an isolated
cell was communicating at different rates in different directions, it would
move around in such a way as to minimize the traffic-times-distance total
until it balanced all the competing 'pulls.' In other words, if the
information-exchange process plays the part of force-carrying vector
particles, then this optimization rule defines minimum-action paths: natural
geodesics. I've played through simulations of it with ZORAC. The dynamics of
gravitation follows automatically."
Shilohin was staring fixedly at Hunt. "You're postulating a void populated by
particles capable of exerting mutual attraction," she said slowly. "The
conditions of a primordial universe."
"Yes."
"What about repulsions? Is there an analog of charge?" Duncan asked.
Hunt inclined his head in the direction of Danchekker, who was still on his
feet. The life-sciences specialist had not yet given his blessing; but he was
no longer vehemently protesting, either. "Chris has a good point: We shouldn't
get too carried away by analogies," he said. "But I can offer a few
speculations. For example, if everything were allowed to collapse to its
minimum 'energy' state purely on the basis of attraction, it would all end up
as one solid lump, with nowhere left for through traffic. Everything would be
optimally close to everything, but unable to function. The system would have
stifled itself. So one optimization criterion isn't enough. You need to
introduce another that competes with it -- say, one that tries to maximize
free space for traffic. When the two trends interact, maybe the kind of
organization that emerges is a collection of 'clumps,' where similar kinds of
processing with little to say to the outside world can get together, separated
by voids in which other things happen."
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"Fascinating!" Shilohin whispered.
"It gets more interesting," Hunt said. "The cells must have a finite switching
time. So larger aggregates of cells that have accreted together will move more
sluggishly than smaller ones. Hence, we have a resistance to motion,
proportional to the number of cells."
The parallel to mass was too obvious to need spelling out.
Hunt continued. "But once the mass is moving, a plausible way of improving
efficiency would be to change to a pattern-switching algorithm instead of
having to operate on all the constituent cells individually; so the pattern
would be reluctant to slow down again."
Inertia.
"But the propagation rate through the matrix of even a single cell would
ultimately be limited by the switching speed."
Velocities in Hunt's universe had a relativistic limit.
"We are speaking in terms of pure conjecture, I take it?" Danchekker said. His
voice still had something of a rasp, but it had mollified itself noticeably.
Exhibiting another kind of inertia, he was starting to come around in his own
way. "We're not talking about established fact? This isn't
science?"
"Of course not," Hunt agreed. "But we're getting an idea of what to look for,
maybe."
Duncan snorted. "Look where? We can't even find where JEVEX is, let alone look
inside it."
Shilohin looked up, at last digesting the full message of what Hunt was
saying. "Our physical universe evolved from huge numbers of elementary
particles in space, and laws of physics and probability that contained
implicit mechanisms for the self-organization of complex structures," she
said. "And out of it there emerged not only complexity sufficient to manifest
intelligence, but the whole world of impressions and experiences -- all far
removed from the underlying quantum reality -- which intelligence perceives.
So, is it so inconceivable for comparable levels of complexity to have arisen
in this...'matrix universe'? That's what you're saying."
"Why not?" Hunt said. "We're pretty sure that Nixie's world can't exist
anywhere in the universe we know. Yet I'm convinced that it exists somewhere.
And perhaps this sheds some light on how its magical properties could have
arisen. Although there might be some parallels to our own universe in the kind
of way I've suggested, which would at least give us the basis of objects
moving in space as something they share in common, the 'laws' expressing the
physics of the underlying reality will derive not from the quantum rules of
our universe, but from the directive imposed by the system programmers.
Therefore, there's no reason why our notions of normality and causality should
apply there at all. Which fits with all the things that Nixie has been telling
us."
"You're not saying that the programmers intended anything like this to
happen?" Duncan checked.
Hunt shook his head. "And I don't think the Jevlenese ever twigged onto the
fact that it had. The whole thing was an accident: a freak by-product of the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]