Chapter 14

Intrepid - 3754 C.E.

Ever since he'd got married to Beatrice, Paul had tried to resist the temptation to visit Nudeworld. It no longer had quite the same attraction as before. It wasn't that Paul didn't visit cyberspace any more. He still enjoyed going to places and meeting people that could only ever be encountered in virtual reality, but he mostly avoided sexual encounters. He preferred to be free from even virtual guilt when he and Beatrice made love. But the truth was that he was more often alone these days rather than in Beatrice's company.

Paul's wife was very much the social animal. She'd made many new friends amongst the scientists, the crew and even the soldiers. Paul wasn't especially drawn to the busy social whirl, but he had no cause to be jealous. He knew that Beatrice loved her. Barely a day went by when they didn't make love, so Paul had no reason to doubt this. He never probed her about any extramarital activity and Beatrice never said anything that might arouse his suspicions. He was a lucky man to have such a beautiful and sensual wife. If anything, Paul felt guilty that he wasn't equal to her prodigious sexual demands.

Even though Beatrice was sometimes out until quite late into the evening, Paul had little cause for concern about her whereabouts. After all, his wife had taken considerable trouble to introduce him to some of her new friends, but this still didn't incline Paul to spend much time in their company. There was Chico, a tall Neptunian, whose greatest passion was the study of nanobes. There was Corporal Mazuki and her husband from Mercury who were both tall and thin with green hair and bright yellow skin and both enjoyed asteroid surfing. There was Professor Dillinger from the Moon who was proud to have been celibate for nearly a century and whose conversation on exotic, dark and non-baryonic matter fascinated Beatrice but bored Paul.

He was sure there were many more such friends, judging by the familiar greetings that Beatrice received when she and Paul ventured out together. This was usually to the various social gatherings organised on the ship; such as the tiresome game of rugby where Colonel Vashti was such a star and the stage shows in Russian (with simultaneous translation for monolinguists like Paul) that the Saturnians were so keen on. The truth was that Paul didn't really enjoy such social occasions. He'd much rather stay in his pleasant villa on the outermost level where he could research into the Anomaly's ancient history if he ever felt so inclined.

However, his research would have been more compelling if he could somehow dig up some more interesting discoveries from his computer disks and tapes, but there was no such fresh breakthrough. The encrypted data that his software had so easily cracked wasn't hiding anything more fascinating than what he'd already found.

The scientists of the early centuries of the third millennium had no better idea of what the Anomaly might be than those in the thirty-eighth. In the twenty-fourth century, the longest and most heated discussion on the subject was whether funding for research should even continue now that the Anomaly had faded away. None of the space probes launched towards the Anomaly had sent back any useful information. The peculiar apparitions associated with it were dismissed as software malfunctions. Although the funding for research rapidly declined when there was no longer anything to study, the records betrayed a palpable sense of relief that such an uncomfortably inexplicable phenomenon could now be filed away on computer archives where nobody would ever think of looking—that is, until Paul stumbled across them.

When Paul next visited Nudeworld, it was as if he'd never left. The intervening years seemed to have never happened. Blanche greeted him as if he'd not been away for more than a single day. Paul wondered how sophisticated her artificial intelligence might be. Had she really been doing nothing but sit motionless for all those years while he sped across the Solar System? Was there really nobody else whose company she could have enjoyed in all that time? But their lovemaking was familiar and reassuring. For Blanche, at least, there had been no separation at all. She loved him with the same unquestioning passion. As always, she served only to satisfy his animal lust and his every mundane desire. She expressed exactly the same familiar passion as when Paul last fucked her. There was no evidence that Blanche had noticed any improvement in his lovemaking skill, although Paul was sure he was a better lover now. Beatrice had taught him so much more than a virtual construct could ever do. Blanche was as receptive to the more considerate practised lover who now pleasured her as she'd been with the decidedly inexpert one she'd last known.

Paul felt a sharp spasm of guilt as he watched Blanche wipe his semen off her chin and forehead. It wasn't as if his wife didn't give him pleasure. He resolved not to tell Beatrice of his sexual exploits in this other world, but the very fact he kept such secrets from her caused him anxiety. What would she think if she knew? Paul was sure she'd understand and tell him not to worry about it, but this consideration didn't absolve him of guilt. He still lusted after other women and this was something he couldn't control.

Nudeworld was relatively tame compared to the strange places Paul had visited on his journey through the Solar System. A world whose main distinguishing feature was that no one wore a vestige of clothing now seemed wholly innocent and unthreatening. There were people he'd met in real life, just as desirable as those on Nudeworld, who also never wore clothes. The entire exercise now seemed rather pointless and not even especially erotic. Nevertheless, it was strangely comforting to walk out of the house he shared with Blanche and stroll along those long-familiar streets, after his virtual partner had crumpled up and thrown away the semen-soaked tissues. Paul and Blanche climbed to the top of a grassy hillside from which they could gaze down on the small town where they lived.

"It's a beautiful view, isn't it?" remarked a familiar voice that was most certainly not Blanche's.

Paul turned his head, while still keeping a hand in his virtual partner's. As he guessed the voice belonged to Virgil.

"Ah!" said Paul with the boldness that he could only express in virtual space. "This proves you're not an avatar. You must be a virtual construct."

"Why's that?" Virgil asked as he sat cross-legged next to Paul and on the other side of him to Blanche.

"If you were an avatar of a real person in the Solar System," said Paul, "you couldn't possibly be present in real time so far from the ecliptic plane. The best I might expect would be a time-delayed response between the time I said something and when you responded. In real life, I'm over two light weeks from the nearest colony or natural satellite. If you were the avatar of a real person, you couldn't possibly be so responsive."

The Intrepid was already at least as far from the sun as the outermost perimeter of the Kuiper Belt but it was at such an angle to the ecliptic plane that there was virtually nothing to trouble its flight. For instance, it was totally impossible to have a normal conversation with his parents or friends from Godwin as any transmission to the colony would take nearly a month. The best he could offer were rambling monologues compromised by the fact there wasn't much he could say that wasn't classified information. Furthermore, the reply to his monologues could never be especially satisfactory as he'd forgotten, in the intervening weeks, what he'd originally said.

Virgil smiled.

"Well analysed," he said. "However, it is interesting that you make such a big distinction between the people you meet in virtual space and those in the real world. Can someone in virtual space ever be real?"

"Only in an abstract sense," said Paul.

"I suppose so," said the gentleman, but he didn't choose to pursue this line of conversation. "It's a while now since you last visited Nudeworld. Is the real world really that much more interesting?"

"It has been."

"And now: not as much so?"

"I wouldn't say that," said Paul. "I've seen more of the Solar System than I'd ever imagined possible and it's a more bizarre place than this world could ever be."

"Well, Nudeworld is limited by the parameters set by its designers," Virgil admitted. "That's the problem with virtual worlds. None of them can quite exceed their original design. But isn't that also true of the real world. It may not have been designed as such, but you're always constrained by the laws of physics. No travel faster than light. No teleportation. No ability to change shape, walk through buildings or withstand nuclear explosions. And yet in so many virtual worlds these laws are routinely broken."

"That's only because of the license of their designers' imagination," said Paul. "The laws of physics can be broken, but only because there isn't a requirement to be entirely consistent."

"And if they were absolutely consistent in every detail," Virgil wondered. "What then?"

"I imagine that what is possible within the limitations of design would be as constrained as they are in the real world."

"And is it ever possible that in the real world there might be circumstances in which the original design is compromised in some way?" Virgil pursued. "Are there circumstances in which, for instance, a massive object might travel faster than light?"

"That's impossible," said Paul. "If that were to happen then the whole fabric of space and time just couldn't hold together. Everything has to be consistent."

"And if something inconsistent did exist, how would you explain it?"

"Then it can't be of the same universe as everything else," Paul concluded.

"In the same way as Nudeworld is not in the same universe?" Virgil remarked. "And yet you're able to enter virtual universes where the laws of physics are routinely broken. In Nudeworld, for instance, you can be in the same apparent space now as you were when you lived in Godwin and your delightful partner has no conception that your body is in a physical location that is any different to before. But these virtual worlds are still part of the same universe as the one you come from."