The Vindicators met in the old darkroom because it lacked electronics, and because no one gave a shit about developing film anymore. Kenny had scoped it out as a true dead spot, but how long would could they all be off-line before the Game noticed? Everyone was there except Alex, whom no one could find. Charlie looked horrible, his head buried in his arms in the dim light. He looked like someone had just kicked the shit out of him, but he wouldn’t say why.
Kenny looked over his friends. Would they listen to him? Would they laugh him out of the room? They were the hard scientists, the coders. He was the fuzzy philosopher, just a half click away from his devout parents. But that’s why his idea might work, he thought, because the Game was bred on theology. That was its base reality. If it meant saving his friends—even having a chance at saving his friends—it was worth risking their ridicule.
Kenny put a hand on the books in front of him—Summa Theologica, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis—and took a breath. “After the car hit me, I was unconscious. I don’t know how long. When I woke up, I had this idea. Almost like a vision,” he added sheepishly. “All these things I’d been thinking about for years just kind of came together and made sense. When I was a kid, at church, I used to love this line from the Bible. John 14:2. ‘In my Father’s house are many houses.’ I get it now, it’s a metaphor. But when I was little, I took it literally. A house filled with other houses, like something out of Alice in Wonderland? Only God could do that.”
Kenny’s hands were shaking a bit. Vanhi put a hand on his, steadying him.
“I always loved things like that. Trying to imagine the impossible. Like what’s bigger than the universe? Or what does a four-dimensional cube look like? There’s this book, I Am a Strange Loop. I gave it to Charlie once. It’s my favorite. Hofstadter wants to know, How does our brain create consciousness? How do these unthinking neurons—these little on/off switches—suddenly add up to something aware? He thinks it’s like putting two mirrors facing each other. Suddenly a simple, flat picture looks like it goes on forever.”
Kenny’s eyes were wide in the dim light.
“But that’s not the whole story. Hofstadter says consciousness needs one more ingredient. It’s not just a loop, but a strange loop. It has to twist back on itself like an M. C. Escher drawing. A staircase that leads up, up, up, until all of a sudden you’re at the bottom. Two hands drawing each other. See?”
Vanhi nodded gently. “I understand completely. You have a concussion.”
Kenny shook his head and began again. “There’s a riddle in Hofstadter’s book. ‘The barber is the one who shaves all those, and those only, who do not shave themselves.’ So does the barber shave himself?”
Peter smiled. He loved logic puzzles. “If he shaves himself, he can’t be the barber, because the barber only shaves those who don’t shave themselves.”
Kenny nodded.
“But if he doesn’t shave himself,” Vanhi chimed in, “then he’d have to be shaved by the barber, because the barber shaves all those who don’t shave themselves. But that won’t work, because he’s the barber.”
“Right,” Kenny said.
“Maybe that’s why God always has such a long beard,” Peter said, grinning.
“Do you see where I’m going?”
“No,” they all said at once.
“It’s the set that contains all sets. Does it contain itself? Remember those spheres you programmed, Vanhi?”
“Yeah?” she said, more of a question than an answer.
“That was amazing. You programmed them out of thin air. C++, right?”
“Right.”
“That blew me away. Perfect giant, rotating spheres.”
“It was just triangles. You can build the whole thing out of very small triangles.”
“I know that, in theory. But I don’t know how to do it. I need you to do it.”
“Do what?”
“I want you to make a bigger, heavier sphere.”
“How big?”
“Well, that’s the thing. Imagine you have a code that’s self-aware. It has attributes. It believes certain things about itself, even if they aren’t true. Even if they can’t be true.”
“That’s sounds like every person I know.”
“True. This is computer code, not genetic code. But same difference. It thinks it’s God. That’s what it’s been told. That’s wired into its deepest DNA. It can’t be omnipotent—right?—because it exists in a simulation inside a physical medium. Fiber. Copper. Silicon. It has to follow the rules of physics. But it thinks it’s omnipotent. It believes in itself.”
“That’s hackable,” Vanhi said.
“I think so,” Kenny agreed. “If you gave it a task that required all its resources, approaching infinity. Something it knows it should be able to do. Something that would appeal to its own sense of greatness.”
She was starting to see.
“You need a paradox. The barber who shaves himself and doesn’t shave himself. The house that contains all houses.”
Kenny nodded. “Have you heard of the omnipotence paradox?”
“No,” Vanhi answered.
“Saint Thomas Aquinas asked whether God was so powerful he could make a rock that he couldn’t lift.” Kenny tapped on Summa Theologica. “C. S. Lewis wrestled with it. So did Descartes. If you take God seriously, it’s a real problem.”
Vanhi smiled. “You want us to program a sphere big enough to contain all spheres.”
“Yes.” Kenny grinned back. “I want us to trick God into lifting a really big rock.”
Alex was putting the finishing touches on his device. It was larger than he expected. He was in a zone now, assembling, following the directions shining into his eyes. He had moved everything into the boiler room, the Game keeping him clear of his friends. He felt like a god himself, the way the Game let him move invisibly.
There was a last touch, which he fully endorsed. His father hated being called at work unless it was an emergency because the manager never let him live it down when he was caught off the sales floor. The Game had shown Alex a video of his dad groveling at work, to a boss half his age, and his father had the audacity to come home and beat him? Well, Alex was going to teach him a lesson in strength and power. Alex would never be pathetic like his father. Alex would never let his dad touch him again. Alex would destroy his father with righteous fire. His dad was the Lamb, not him.
When Alex spoke through the phone, the Game made his voice sound like that of Mrs. Fleck, the school counselor, and he read his script as it appeared in front of him. “Yes, we need to discuss Alex. He’s really struggling. How about tomorrow at two P.M.?… I understand it’s hard to miss work, Mr. Dinh, but this is very important.… Yes, yes, thank you for accommodating. We’ll see you tomorrow.”