“I went for a walk and found you just off the road in the middle of the driveway. I carried you up to the house.”
“How did you get here?”
“I arrived a couple of hours before I found you. But I actually rented this place about six months ago, after I received this postcard in the mail.”
Scarpio handed me a postcard. On the front was a familiar photograph. It was the willow tree that I’d last seen hanging upside down on the wall in the reception area in Crow’s penthouse. On the back was a typed message with the address of this house and what I assumed was today’s date.
“You received that postcard six months ago?”
Scarpio nodded and smiled. “Yep,” he said.
I sat down on one of three high wooden stools positioned along the kitchen counter.
“How did you end up out there on the road, if you don’t mind my asking?” Scarpio asked.
I gave him a quick summary of everything that had happened from the moment we’d discovered the map in The Horns of Terzos until I woke up there in that house.
“Wow,” he said. “That’s one hell of a series of events.”
I nodded. “Yeah, it sure was. Where have you been?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You were missing.”
He nodded. “Over the next little while, you’re probably going to notice a number of discrepancies between what you remember about the game and what others experienced while you were playing. I’d suggest saying as little as possible to anyone until you have a firm grasp of their understanding of events, but that’s up to you.”
“So you were never really missing?”
“Let’s just say that I was working on something off-grid, something I needed to keep…to myself.”
“Something you kept from your entire company?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Were you playing Rabbits? Is Rabbits connected to the multiverse?”
“You sure you don’t want to start with French toast?” He smiled. “You must be hungry.”
“Do you mind if we talk a bit first?”
He smiled and nodded. “Sure.”
“Is Rabbits real?”
“Of course,” he said.
“What about the Meechum Radiants?”
“I’m pretty sure they exist, but I suppose it depends on who you ask.”
“So, what are they?”
“Are you familiar with theoretical physicist Michio Kaku?”
“A little,” I said.
“Kaku, using an analogy to discuss alien intelligence, referenced an anthill sitting next to a ten-lane superhighway. His question was: Would those ants be capable of understanding what a ten-lane superhighway was?”
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?”