Rabbits(136)

I was familiar with Michio Kaku’s analogy, but if that’s the case, then the Meechum Radiants were more like a three-hundred-lane fuckmonster speedway.

“So what you’re saying is that human beings are essentially incapable of understanding the Meechum Radiants?”

“Most of us, yes.”

“Most…but not all?”

“Hawk Worricker understood, and he used that understanding to build something incredible.”

“Rabbits.”

Scarpio nodded and continued. “Way back in the 1940s, Alan Turing suggested that a machine shuffling ones and zeros could simulate any process of formal reasoning. Artificial intelligence grew in fits and starts, but as promising as AI was, it never came close to reaching its full potential.”

“Okay, so what does that have to do with the game?”

“What if I told you that Hawk Worricker had developed an advanced cloud-based quantum computing system decades before the rest of the world?”

“You mean it’s not some kind of multiverse repair mechanism?”

“Umm…are you messing with me?”

I shook my head.

“No, I don’t think it’s anything like that.”

“So what is it?”

“What if everything that happened to you had been already been set in motion?” Scarpio continued.

“You’re talking about determinism?”

“In a way, yes.”

“How is Rabbits connected to the question of free will?”

“Let’s take that book, The Horns of Terzos, as an example.”

“What about it?”

“What if that particular clue had been planted decades ago?”

“A fake book was created by the game as a clue that wouldn’t be uncovered until forty years later?”

“No. What if a real book was created by the game because you needed to find it decades later?”

“Shit,” I said.

Scarpio nodded and smiled. “It’s a mindfucker, isn’t it?”

“You’re saying it’s all the Moriarty Factor? That this Rabbits AI did everything? There are no multiple universes?”

“I have no idea if we’re living in a multiverse or not. I was never interested in quantum physics, I’m afraid.”

“What about the discrepancies?”

“You’re talking about the Mandela effect? The Berenstain Bears?”

“I’m talking about the Fremont Troll holding a Mini Cooper instead of a Volkswagen bug, a movie that used to exist but no longer does, a restaurant that closed permanently six years ago suddenly open again for business, a dead artist miraculously alive, writing and recording amazing new songs.”

“Okay, so, based on what you’ve seen and experienced over the past few months, do you believe it’s possible that, given absolutely unlimited financial resources and imagination, a group of people could have been hired to adjust the Fremont Troll sculpture and then put it back as it was? Or to reopen a restaurant? Or to manipulate your devices to avoid delivering search results related to one film? Or even create a new album from a dead artist?”

“I suppose so,” I said.

“But there is another possibility.” He paused for a moment, and appeared uncertain whether he should continue.

“What is it?”

“As you know, the game is extremely complicated. Uncovering sophisticated patterns, reality-questioning discrepancies, and unbelievable coincidences can be exhausting. Often this exhaustion—coupled with the mental and emotional gymnastics required to move forward during gameplay—results in some players experiencing certain…”

“What?”

“Breaks. With reality.”

“You think I imagined the whole thing?”

“Not at all; I’m just describing a phenomenon. The scope and impact of the game is sometimes hard to imagine.”

“Why did you come to visit me at the arcade that night?”

“I was led there, by the game.”

“You were led there? What does that mean?”

“I was simply following the signs.”

“Playing Rabbits?”

He just shrugged and then grabbed something off a nearby counter and handed it to me.

It was my phone.

On the screen was a video taken on the floor of what appeared to be a stock exchange somewhere in Asia.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“This was running for half an hour this morning on the ticker at the Tokyo Stock Exchange.”

It was The Circle.

Eleven Roman numerals and ten names (there was a blank space after VIII) moved along the ticker atop the huge displays that made up the index perched high above the trading floor.

Next to the Roman numeral XI was a one-letter name: K.

“Is this real?” I asked.

Scarpio nodded.

“Are you sure I was alone when you found me?”

He nodded. “Were you with somebody before that?”

“Yeah, a friend of mine named Emily Connors.”

He appeared genuinely surprised.

“Emily Connors?”

I nodded. “You recognize the name?”

“I do,” he said. “A friend of mine named Emily Connors occasionally uses my lake house in Seattle, in exchange for watering the plants.”