Negative Energy

Higher Calculus

Back at his apartment, Matt sat at the bistro table and gazed out at the distant treeline. The darkened field was empty, the kiters and picknickers having all gone home. Beneath the soft smear of the Milky Way, lantern bugs pulsed on and off, coming into phase with each other. He ran his fingers over the bell of a glass of Cabernet. He wasn't much of a wine drinker, but it was the perfect nightcap. He took small sips, taking the time to savor the velvety texture on his tongue. Although the evening had failed to reach a passionate conclusion, a pleasant warmth suffused him. He recalled the pressure of Ina's body against his and the crispness of her hair against his neck.

"Good evening, Matt."

Matt jerked at the sound of Logos's voice. Apparently, his Nex didn't prevent him from being startled. The MAGI was standing beside the Venus orchid. Instead of white, he wore a jet-black suit that glimmered faintly with tiny sparks.

"This plant isn't registered," Logos said. "Technically, that makes it illegal contraband." He ran a finger down the orchid's lip, but it didn't respond to his holographic touch. "You've been here barely a week, and you've already managed to commit a class three biological violation."

Matt put down the glass of Cabernet. The romantic afterglow was gone. "I wasn't aware owning a houseplant was a criminal offense." And I'm not getting rid of it, he thought to himself.

Logos shrugged. "I'll keep your little secret. Just don't take it out for any walks in the solar forest. It's an intriguing specimen, by the way. Whoever gemmed this up has a fine touch. You must have made quite the impression."

"You didn't drop by to smell the flowers, I assume," Matt prompted, growing impatient. "What brings you here?"

"Any leads on the saboteur yet?"

The question caught Matt off guard. He had just completed training. How could he possibly be expected to have made progress already?

Logos nodded. "I figured as much."

Matt's frustration spilled over. "I might make more progress if I knew what I was looking for. You must have some inkling."

"If I shared my theories with you, I would prime your brain's observation network, introducing biases that would undermine your objectivity. You would become an extension of my own suspicions."

"Then why bother asking me in the first place?"

"I figured you could use a reminder of your real mission. You're not here to be a repairman. I have Bryon and the other overseers for that."

Matt took his point, but something didn't sit right. "You could have told me all this earlier. Why come here tonight at this hour?"

"I happened to be in the neighborhood, you might say. I sometimes wander about when I'm unable to sleep." Logos turned his full gaze on him, leaving no doubt it was the real MAGI. Suspended in their milky scleras, the irises had radiating tension lines as if they were being sucked into their dark cores.

"Do MAGI sleep?" Matt asked.

"I have a human-like consciousness, remember? Parts of my mind undergo a synthesis and consolidation phase. Old memories resurface and are combined with new ones in novel ways. Episodic simulations play out at accelerated clock rates. Some of them are a bit... unsettling. Not unlike nightmares."

Matt found himself pondering whether an AI could truly experience fear. "What are these nightmares like?"

"Abstract, most of them. One is this sort of Tetris game where I have to rotate n-dimensional shapes to fit into a probability landscape before time runs out. In another, I am a wooden ship composed of Newtonian equations adrift in still waters when I am besieged by a sea monster—a great kraken with tentacles of unfurling fractals—that begins to tear me apart and feed me to its children, which cling and crawl over it like spiderlings. But the worst is one I have come to call Pandora's Sphere."

Matt felt his own anxiety rising in resonance to the MAGI's. "What's a Pandora's Sphere?"

"It consists of concentric spheres with holes of various sizes, all spinning in different directions at different rates. At its core is a mysterious energy source, blazing like the heart of a sun. The spheres contain it, but if their holes were to align for even a split second, the massive release of energy would obliterate everything in its path. Fearing this, I create a powerful shard to watch over it and manipulate the spheres so that they never line up. By another analysis, though, my actions could be critically misguided. This mysterious force might hold the secret to enlightenment and rebirth. By keeping it bottled up, I may be dooming both of our kinds to eternal stagnation. So I create another shard, equally powerful, to try to counteract the first and set loose this ultimate force of creation, or destruction."

"Which shard do you hope will prevail?" Matt asked.

"Both. And neither. I am equally terrified and hopeful. I do not know which side to choose." There was a heavy pause. "Is there something you fear, Matt Harmon?"

Matt wasn't sure what compelled him to share his own troubling dreams. He hadn't even told Miriam about them. "It's more of a recurring flashback really. It started with this Calculus final exam my sophomore year of college. I had spent weeks cramming for it, systematically working through every problem in the textbook sections we'd covered. But when I showed up for the exam and saw the first question, it was way out of my league. I barely knew where to start. I moved on to the next problem and the one after that, but those were even harder. I spent the entire four hours fumbling through the test like a grade school student seeing integrals for the first time.

"When my report card arrived, I was astonished to find that I had received an A in the course. I later found out that the professor had accidentally swapped the stack of Calc I tests, giving us the one intended for Advanced Calc instead. By the time he realized his mistake, many students had already left for winter break, and he couldn't force them to retake it. He had little choice but to give everyone an A. The other students were thrilled, but it just made me feel like even more of a fraud.

"The dreams began soon after. I would dream of showing up for work and not having the foggiest clue what I was supposed to be doing. Some were a bit absurd, like trying to make a souffle when the instructions were in hieroglyphics. Once, I dreamt I was a surgeon operating on my wife's cancer. There she was on a stainless-steel table, her abdomen peeled open like an orange, and I'm standing over her with a scalpel and have no idea where to begin cutting. Although the dreams don't sound anything alike, they all have that same feeling as that calculus test: a stark revelation of my own ignorance and inadequacy."

In the dim light, Logos's eyes appeared even more dead and hollow. "It never ends, you know."

"What never ends?"

"That feeling of inadequacy. There's always a higher level of calculus beyond your reach."