Hominids

“Why don’t we have the same single theory, then?” asked Mary, munching on a particularly large chip.

“Partly because there’s a lot of math that seems irreconcilable between the two interpretations,” said Louise. “And, of course, there’s that old problem of politics in science: those physicists who favor the Copenhagen interpretation have devoted their careers to proving that it’s right; same thing for the guys on Everett’s side. For them all to sit down and say, ‘Maybe we’re both partly right—and both partly wrong’ just isn’t going to happen.”

“Ah,” said Mary. “It’s like the Regional Continuity versus Replacement debate in anthropology.”

Louise nodded. “If you say so. But suppose the Neanderthal synthesis of quantum physics is actually correct. It implies that consciousness—human volition—has the power to spin off new universes. Well, that raises a significant question. Presumably in the begi

“I thought Ponter didn’t believe in the big bang?” said Mary.

“Yes, apparently Neanderthal scientists think the universe has always existed. They believe that on large scales, redshifts—which are our principal evidence for an expanding universe—are proportional to age, rather than distance; that is, that mass varies over time. And they think the gross structure of galaxies and galactic clusters are caused by monopoles and plasma-pinching magnetic vortex filaments. Ponter says the cosmic microwave background—which we take as the residue of the big-bang fireball—is really the result of electrons trapped in these strong magnetic fields absorbing and emitting microwaves. Repeated absorption and emission by billions of galaxies smoothed out the effect, he says, producing the uniform background we detect now.”

“Does that seem possible to you?” asked Mary.

Louise shrugged. “I’m going to have to look into it.” She took another sip of coffee. “But, you know, after telling me all that, Ponter said the most astonishing thing.”

“What?” asked Mary.

“I guess you showed him a church service, right?”

“Yes. On TV.”

Louise took a seat on one of the other vinyl-covered chairs. “Well,” she said, “apparently he spent some time that night watching Vision TV, soaking up more religious thought. He said our story of the universe having an origin is just a creation myth, like from the Bible. ‘In the begi

Mary sat down properly as well. “You know … I mean, physics is your field, not mine, but maybe he’s right. I mentioned Regional Continuity versus Replacement a moment ago; sometimes that’s called Multiregionalism versus Out-of-Africa. Anyway, there are those who’ve observed that Replacement, which is what I and other geneticists favor, is also basically a biblical position: humanity came full-blown out of Africa, ejected from a garden, and there’s a hard-and-fast line between us and everything else in the animal kingdom, including even other contemporaneous members of the genus Homo.”

“It’s an interesting point of view,” said Louise.

“And you can argue that the other side is fighting for a biblical interpretation, too: the parallels between Multi-regionalism and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel are pretty blatant. Beyond that, there’s the whole ‘mitochondrial Eve’ hypothesis—that all modern humans trace their origin to one woman who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago. Even the theory’s name—Eve!—screams that it’s being pushed more because of biblical resonances than because it’s good science.” Mary paused. “Anyway, sorry, you were talking about the Neanderthal version of quantum physics …”

“Right, right,” said Louise. “Well, my thought was, suppose they are correct about how parallel universes are spun off, but wrong about this universe having existed forever. If the universe did have a begi

Mary frowned. “Well, umm, I don’t know. I guess the first time somebody made a decision.”

“Exactly! I think that’s exactly right! And when was the first decision made?” Louise paused. “You know, it is interesting what Ponter says about how our scientific worldview is always, down deep, trying to say the same things our creation myths say—the big bang and your model of hominid evolution both being modern retellings of Genesis. Well, maybe I’m being guilty of the same kind of thinking here. After all, in the Bible, the first decision made by anyone other than God is when Eve decided to take the apple—the original sin—and, well, one could think of that as having split the universe. In one timeline, the one we’re supposedly in, humanity was cast out of paradise. In another, we weren’t. In fact, it’s even a bit like Ponter’s own case, with a being crossing over from one version of reality to the other.”

Mary was completely lost. “How do you mean?”

“I’m talking about Mary—not you, Professor Vaughan; Mary, the mother of Jesus. You’re a Catholic, aren’t you?”

Mary nodded.

“I noticed your crucifix.” Mary looked down, self-conscious. “I’m Catholic, too,” continued Louise. “Anyway, as a Catholic, you probably don’t make the same mistake lots of other people do. The doctrine of the immaculate conception—a lot of people think that’s a fancy term for Christ’s virgin birth, but it isn’t, is it?”

“No,” said Mary. “No, it refers to the conception of Mary herself. The reason she was able to give birth to the son of God was that she herself was conceived devoid of original sin—it was her conception that was immaculate.”

“Exactly. Well, how do you get a person without original sin in a world in which everyone is descended from Adam and Eve?”

“I have no idea,” said Mary, truthfully.

“Don’t you see?” said Louise. “It’s as if Mary was shifted into this universe from the other timeline, from the one in which Eve never took the apple, the one in which Man never fell, the one in which people live without the taint of original sin.”

Mary nodded dubiously. “One could argue that.”

Louise smiled. “Well, you’ll see the parallel between Ponter and the Virgin Mary in a second. Let me get back to my earlier question: I said if he’s right, and the universe does split every time a decision is made, when did the universe first split? And you said the first time someone made a decision. But when was that? Not in the Bible, but, well, in reality …?”

Mary fished out another potato chip. “Gee, I don’t know. The first time a trilobite decided to go left instead of right?”

Louise put her cardboard coffee cup down on a little table. “No, I don’t think so. Trilobites have no volition; they, and all other primitive forms of life, are just chemical machines. Stephen Jay Gould keeps talking about rewinding the tape of life in his books and getting a different outcome, and when he says that, he thinks he’s making an allusion to chaos theory. But he’s wrong. No matter how many times you placed a trilobite at the same fork in the road, it will go the same way. A trilobite doesn’t think; it doesn’t have consciousness. It just processes the inputs of its senses and does what they dictate. No choice is made. Gould is right—sort of—that if the initial conditions were changed, the outcome could be radically different, but rewinding the tape of life and playing it again no more gives a different outcome than rewinding a tape of Gone with the Wind and playing it again results in an ending in which Rhett and Scarlett stay together. I don’t think real decisions—real choices, real consciousness–emerged until much, much later. I think we–Homo sapiens–were the first conscious beings on this planet.”

“There was lots of sophisticated behavior by earlier forms of humans,” said Mary. “Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, even the Australopithecines and Kenyanthropus.”