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| From OpenArt |
I move towards her table in the cafe of La Réserve, where she sits quite alone with her espresso. I know a lot about her already: her name is Julia, she is twenty five, the pampered only-child of rich Parisian parents. She has recently completed a doctorate in mathematics at the Sorbonne. She has a reputation for being both snobbish and rude.We were interested.
I sit at her table, muttering in her general direction “You don’t mind?” and then ignore her. A waiter glides up and I order, mirroring her choice of drink. I lean back in the wicker seat and return attention to her.
“I believe you're Julia,” I say, “I’ve heard about you and I wanted to have a word. You OK with that?”
For the first time she looks directly at me. She sees a young man about her own age, rather typical of the arty types who hang around the fifth arrondissement on the Left Bank. Hair a little too long, clothes smart casual, I must come across as the bohemian intellectual, very much part of her own milieu. She says nothing, however, just settles back and waits.
“I work in R&D, a research institute south of here. We’re currently recruiting and someone mentioned you were currently contemplating your options?”
“Your work,” she says, seemingly indifferent, “what exactly do you do?”
I play faux-humble: “Actually, I’m the CTO. But tell me about your own work, which I’m told is impressive.”
I generally adopt the consultant’s methodology in situations like this, honest flattery. It tends to work best when the subject is humourless, which I sensed might apply here.
“I studied computational differential geometry,” she says, looking at her fingernails, “I use numerical analysis to approximate and solve problems in differential geometry. By discretizing high-dimensional continuous geometric manifolds into a lattice of simpler elements I model geometric structures on a computer.”
So that was the game: throw a grenade into the conversation and see what happens. She could have just asked me for my credentials.
“There’s been a lot of work on lattice QCD and also in GR in recent years,” I reply, “and the results have been good, once convergence issues were addressed. But I gather your work was something different?”
So now lofty condescension is replaced by the sharp gaze of suspicion. I'm surprised by the sudden change in her voice. It's like hearing a streetwise chick speak, une meuf qui parle wesh.
“Are you an expert in this field?” she says aggressively.
“I’m afraid not, I’m just an ordinary graduate in technical stuff. Not even from an elite school like yours.” And then in a lower voice, as if I didn’t care whether she heard me or not, “They hired me mostly for my other skills.”
Superiority established, she relaxes and runs her fingers languidly through her long dark hair.
“So what do you do?” she asks.
---
Julia’s interview was at the Institute’s research centre, the Château de la Bourdaisière situated between Tours and Amboise. A former hotel, its peacefulness and secluded location made it ideal. Our idea of an interview was a walk in the grounds on what was a beautiful sunny afternoon. A walk in the park.
“OK Julia,” I said, as we weaved between trees in the smoothly manicured grounds, “there’s always been a tradition in physics of extra dimensions, right?”
Julia was wearing a short black dress, orange and black, all whorls and knots; it seemed warm for this weather.
She affected boredom. Such a stupid question. After all, everyone already knew the answer.
“Kaluza-Klein theory made electromagnetism as geometric as gravity,” she said. “Einstein was impressed, but it wasn’t quantised so everyone else - not so much. Then the String Theory people came along and the extra dimensions proliferated. But there’s never been any physical evidence. That’s why I prefer to stick with maths.”
“OK,” I said, being careful now, “At the Institute we do actually have some evidence of extra dimensions - but not in the sense you mentioned.”
At this she slowed to a stop and turned to face me, hands on hips, an irritated expression on her face.
“Really? I think I might have heard about that!”
“Well, it’s indirect of course, but the extra structure we’re seeing, it isn’t another continuum like those compactified spaces you mentioned. It’s a discrete network. You know, nodes and links? Nodes which can do computation and links which are weights. And it’s a structure which seems to change as we observe it.”
“That sounds more like an artificial neural network to me, you must have made an error.”
“We don’t think so, Julia. Now I accept that ANNs are not your speciality but we think that your computational expertise might add value in researching the interface between this presumed ANN dimension and ordinary reality.”
She prepared to speak, no doubt to dissent, but I cut her off.
“It’s causal,” I said, “In both directions.”
---
We showed Julia the evidence, which was technical, highly indirect but persuasive. The ANN was vast - on the scale of our own universe - but from its ‘elsewhere’ it touched our reality everywhere.
“And you really think it's real?” she said. “Do you think that Einstein thought of geodesics in curved space-time every time he dropped his keys? Do you think Schrödinger saw nothing but collapsing orbitals when he looked across the dew-strewn meadows at the rosy fingers of dawn? Because I can tell you they didn't. It's an intellectual game we play, moving symbols around. Don't tell me it's real.”
“It’s just science,” I said to Julia, “We found real evidence; we don’t understand it; we’re going to figure it out.”
And so she was in.
---
We attended Mass at the Eglise Saint Symphorien de Larçay, about a ten minute drive from the Château. Catholicism had been dying in France for decades, yet Julia’s parents were from that old, conservative, aristocratic stock who had ensured their daughter had received a good religious upbringing; she still attended church regularly.
Me, I was lapsed.
The reading was Matthew 4:5-7, “Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands,so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’ Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
At this point the priest, a battered, elderly man with a shock of white hair, turned a hard glance into the congregation, fixing his angry eyes upon me. To my left (we stood shoulder to shoulder) I felt Julia stiffen.
The homily was indeed on the theme of hubris, and the sin of placing rationality before faith.
---
I was in Julia’s apartment. Because of the Château’s rural remoteness and its legacy as an ex-hotel, the Institute offered staff rooms set aside as bedsits. Both Julia and I had elected to make use of this arrangement.
I sat in one of the chairs next to a small table - she had made us coffee - while she sat on the bed. She looked guilty.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“Père Emmanuel knows something about what we’re doing here,” she said in a low voice.
I considered this. We had absolutely no outreach programme with the outside world. Then a thought occurred: “This was through the Confessional, wasn’t it?”
She nodded, and proceeded to elaborate - or to confess.
“I worry about what we do here. We operate as though we’re dealing with a perfectly natural phenomenon, a structure present throughout space and time which ‘knows’ what’s happening and ‘alters’ outcomes. If that’s not God, what is?”
I was genuinely shocked: that was not our reading of the situation at all.
“Julia, you’ve gone well beyond the evidence. Look, minimally we have evidence of a structure orthogonal to our experienced reality, which perhaps looks a lot like a neural net. Maximally we have some evidence that consciousness inheres in a fundamental, albeit almost inaccessible and invisible constituent of reality. That idea, though unorthodox, has a name you know: panpsychism. More than a few reputable scientists have bought into it.”
She looked stricken. On a sudden impulse, I got up from my chair and sat down beside her, pulling her close for reassurance. A worried Julia snuggled into my shoulder, unconvinced.
---
Outside our little haven, things were getting worse. We were making progress in our work, trying - as Père Emmanuel might say - to know and understand the Mind of God. We wanted to read the structure, to disentangle and unpack cause and effect. Perhaps even play at being our own little gods, altering the network according to our own desires. In all this, funds were never an issue. Our backers, rich private individuals and national security interests, were visibly excited and energised by our findings.
The crisis came to a head two weeks later. Staff from the Institute had been reporting hostile glances and unfriendly jostling when they mingled in the local community, shopping or visiting clubs and bars. Somehow we were becoming notorious despite our best efforts.
Julia and I had become closer. She had not lost her effortless superiority, her sense that she was slumming with an ill-credentialled, uncultured arriviste such as myself. Yet as we walked in the parkland, sometimes our hands would - deniably - brush against each other, or I would help her down some steep gully in a small copse. Julia seemed to need emotional comfort, some non-threatening support.
The old hotel lounge was deserted, one late afternoon when we chanced to meet up. I wanted to know how her work was coming on; but really I wanted to assess her state of mind, her emotional stability. Over coffee we talked.
“I don't know what you thought but I'm not here for theory work, you know,” she explained slowly, “You've got some really good people here, to my surprise.”
Typical Julia, I thought, that old arrogance, you really haven't changed.
But she had, a bit.
“They produce theories and I'm the phenomenologist, I translate their schemas into computer models and run the simulations. Then it's over to the experimenters.”
“I knew you'd add value,” I said, “And I had few preconceptions as to how. But let me ask you something else, let me use one of my ‘other skills’. You're not super-active on the social scene here, not that there is much of one. Does that worry you?”
I was expecting any of: an angry rebuttal, a sarcastic put-down, a slap-down for lèse majesté. To date, Julia had been hermetic in her invincible superiority. Yet, as I observed her closely, I could see signs of a change behind that fixed expression, some softening of her mood.
“I've had a difficult upbringing,” she said, “I was not encouraged to be open with people - ‘We have standards,’ I was always told. I don't find it easy to socialise, it's hard for me to make people out, it's easier just to ignore them.”
I nodded sympathetically, aware of how fragile this moment was. “Let's be friends,” I said simply, aware how weak this offer was, yet also how nothing more would carry conviction.
I stood up, smiled and left without waiting for a reply.
Later that week we were in her room, laughing and joking about something. I playfully pushed her onto the bed and as she lay flopped on her back she said to me amid peals of laughter, “I’m not going to sleep with you, you know!”
I sprawled over her then, our faces centimetres apart. She put her arms hesitantly around my shoulders, her legs seeming of their own accord to accommodate me, the fabric of her jeans rustling against my chinos.
“Of course you won’t,” I said.
---
The riot started on Sunday an hour after Mass. Père Emmanuel had brought some dozens of his flock - beefy farmer types armed with the tools of their trade - to protest outside our well-guarded front gates. A tractor dumped bales of straw ready to be set afire. Burn the heretics. The priest stood on the trailer and began to rant and rave against this lair of the devil. It was call-and-response, hammers and pitchforks raised in unison, the old communist symbols repurposed.
Quite a few of the resident staff were there to watch along with Julia and myself. Our small group clumped on our side of the perimeter, positioned where we could see most of the action. Our security staff and the local police were inconspicuously observing the unfolding situation, waiting impassively.
Père Emmanuel was getting more excited, doing God’s work with indomitable confidence. It was at the peak of his exertions when there was a loud percussion and the priest dropped as if felled, toppling off his perch and onto the gravel track.
For a moment, nothing… and then all hell broke loose.
Along with the rest of the staff we were hustled away from the stones and the sudden molotov cocktails arching across the boundary hedge. I myself was struck a glancing blow by a sharp wedge of flint, doing my duty, shielding Julia.
Then the forces of law and order went in hard, as is the French tradition. We could hear the screams from back at the house.
---
Local news reports gave credence to satanic rites, black magic and the intervention of the evil one.
Official reports suggested the accidental operation of a stun grenade and a stress-induced heart attack. We didn't even bother publicising the facts of the matter. Instead we simply waited the media out, knowing that within a couple of weeks attention would simply shift to the next salacious novelty. And we redoubled our security.
Julia, however, was psychologically devastated. There was nothing I, or any other member of the Institute could do.
---
Within a week a new priest arrived at the parish.
Père Valmont, SJ could not have been more different from his predecessor. No doubt someone had had a word with the Archbishop in Tours. He was young, energetic, technocratic - and anxious to have a conversation with Julia.
As was she with him.
After her meeting with the new priest she asked to talk with me in the old library. Surrounded by ancient volumes in their multistoried cabinets, we sat and appraised each other. Finally I asked what the new priest had said. It had evidently had an impact since Julia's spirits seemed to have completely recovered. In fact she was a different woman now: eyes sparkling, her entire being re-energised.
She settled back, her eyes losing focus, and began outlining what the priest had told her.
“He said the answer to all my questions is something called ‘Molinism’,” she began, “It’s named after the 16th-century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina. In fact Père Valmont was keen to emphasise the role of the Society of Jesus in these matters!”
She smiled at this, as if acknowledging her new priest's human pride in his order.
“Molina was deeply concerned with the apparent tension between God's foreknowledge and human freedom. If God knows everything in advance, how can we truly be free in our choices? And if He is omnipotent, why does He allow evil to exist in a world He created?”
I nodded. I rarely thought about theological matters but this had always seemed a bit of a show-stopper.
“The priest said that Molina came up with the concept of "middle knowledge" - scientia media. He argued that God knows not only what will happen, but also what would happen in any possible circumstance, given the free choices of individuals. You are free to make your choices, but God, through His middle knowledge, knows precisely what those choices will be without coercing or determining them.
“God doesn’t override your ability to choose; rather, He allows you to act freely, while at the same time ensuring that His ultimate purposes are fulfilled. Evil, though tragic, is permitted because it is part of a broader tapestry that, through God’s wisdom, will ultimately bring about greater good, even if we don’t fully understand how.”
“That sounds pretty hand-wavy,” I said.
She ignored that, knowing she was about to enlighten me.
“Then he said that he had been told I was a mathematician, and would therefore have no problem with the idea of God minimising the path integral of Evil minus Good over possible universes (think of a path here as the entire history of a variant universe, he said). God’s Lagrangian, he called it; he said that Richard Feynman would have understood.”
“I had no idea the Jesuits trained their people in advanced mathematical physics.”
“I think he might have been ‘specially chosen',” she replied, with unexpected irony.
“So how does this resolve your damning ethical and theological problems with our work here?”
I was nervous about broaching this question. I did not want to bring the whole house of cards tumbling down by stupidly highlighting any weak points in her new-found certainty.
But I need not have feared: her familiar look of patronising superiority returned.
“I reviewed my models,” she said, “in my head, on the way back. We already looked at what properties in the world the network structure was optimising as it processed its inputs. That was the motivation for some of the experiments we did, ethically dubious as I now see them to be. I’ll go check some more, but I’m sure I must have already known subconsciously what was really going on. Wow, this is so big, you know!”
And with that she stood up in haste and returned to her office, her mind already far elsewhere.
---
Roll the calendar forwards. Julia and I are walking in the grounds as we so often do now. It is a balmy late-summer evening, still warm with the light pleasantly fading around us. We are walking hand in hand. This new Julia is more self-assured, less conflicted. It’s as if she has let something go and found that her demons did not erupt, did not take over, did not even exist: phantasms that have finally departed.
We stop at a tree by the lake and she leans against a sturdy tree as we embrace. This is the stuff of teenage fumbling: items of her clothing tumble to the grass; our moves become more intense, more intimate. She flushes, her small sighs say she is done. I lead her by the hand and motion her down to the shaded grass. At first gently, then with furious energy I make love to her. All my pent-up tangled feelings, the tensions of our last weeks, now released in this moment of catharsis.
And afterwards she stands up, pulls down her dress, picks up her belongings from the grass and looks at me cooly.
“I told you I would never sleep with you,” she said.
I look at her, gripped by confusion. I’m unprepared for sudden rationality.
“And so, this,” she says, and walks away, leaving me standing there, uncomprehending and aghast.
The next morning she leaves the Institute for ever, checking out in the grey predawn, a taxi to the station, no forwarding address.
I am not worried for her, I know she has her network. It’s elsewhere that I look, floundering in my grief and disbelief.
What was the optimisation there? I silently pray, What greater good did that entail?
No matter how our research may fare in the future, I know that that is something I will never understand.
You will find my collection of short stories, published on Amazon (Kindle and paperback) here:
"Freyja’s Deathbed Conversations: and other stories" (2019)
and my SF novel, also published on Amazon (Kindle and paperback) here:
Feel free to purchase both!
