Engineering Infinity by Jonathan Strahan

Author:Jonathan Strahan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: High Tech, Anthologies (multiple authors), General, Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories
ISBN: 9781907519529
Publisher: Solaris
Published: 2010-12-28T10:00:00+00:00

I warmed up some refried beans, which I suppose made them re-refried, and googled quantum theory, grinding my teeth from time to time. It was the sort of thing I'd have expected Carl Jung to get excited about, and of course he had been involved in a sterile collaboration with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli before Pauli came to his senses and decided synchronicity was a lot of hogwash. Bohr thought nothing was until it was observed, which might not have appealed to Freud, who thought all sort of unobserved items got up to no end of mischief. Granted, the way to eradicate and heal the mischief was to haul out the unobserved into the open, but then Bohr and Heisenberg (it said on my screen) insisted that you couldn't really get away with that, or only a bit at a time. I gave up, washed my plate, made some coffee, and called Mandy. That meant dealing with her mother first, but somehow I got through that ordeal and onto my sweet daughter.

"What do you want?"

"Don't you mean, 'What the fuck do you want, Daddy dearest?' Don't answer that. Can't a man call his own -"

"I'm hanging up."

"Mandy, did you or one of your friends make that video of me? And the Toshtenov boys?"

In the background I heard someone incredibly famous and fatuous, someone observed at every moment of the day and night by hundreds of millions if not billions, of whom I knew nothing beyond their unlikely names. Beyoncé, or Lady Gaga, or Rihanna, or Bran'Nu. (I try. It makes my brain itch, but I do try. Fourteen year olds are feral.) Talk about quantum observers and ontological status. If anyone existed on the planet because of being observed, they were it. Talk about the evil of banality. After a long moment, my daughter said: "What?" Another silence. I waited. Then, with acid adolescent contempt: "Who would make a vid of you?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out, my good-natured offspring. Okay, look, I'll send you a tinyurl. The orphan's short."

"What?"

"Just let me know what you think. Okay? This is really important to me, Mandy."

"Whatever." She clicked off.

I fiddled about with my notes for the next day's lecture, thoughts skittering everywhere, and finally abandoned that as a really pointless exercise. Manfully, I kept away from the Jack Daniels. My daughter didn't call back or email me or text me or instant message me or tweet me, hardly to my surprise, but it was a bit disheartening. My Tivo was showing me a light, so I watched the ep of Californication it had grabbed while I wasn't paying attention ("Mr Bad Example," which seemed somehow oracular), then had a shower, took a sleeping pill, and went to bed. At five in the morning I woke up with a headache and a woman standing in my dark bedroom. She said something.

"Hmngh?"

"She put it on the web."

I climbed out of bed naked, clawing for my trousers. The woman didn't shift her gaze from my face.

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