Brasyl

“Mr. Teixeira, if you don’t mind, I’d rather exercise my talents for myself.” In thirty minutes down from the landing strip Edson had seen enough of Oceanus to know it was a ship of death. Death to Edson, to all he hoped to be. A kept boy, he would grow lazy and fat and doped and boozed and sun-soaked and dissolve into nothing. Dead.

Alcides Teixeira balked momentarily, not a man accustomed to refusal; then he gri

“Of course of course, I’d say that myself. Paulistanos always had a great work ethic.”

Edson rides rhe moveway along the central spine of the great ship. The perspectives of the central strip awe: they’re designed to. A straight kay and half; fifty meters vertical. The walls are lined with baroque balcony walks and cupolas, restaurants hang like weaver bird nests from the roof. Airbridges, elevator shafts, escalator runs crisscross the airspace. Kinetic fabric sculptures flex and bow in the air-conditioning. The air is fresh with ozone and saltiness. Main Street opens up into the central atrium of Jungle! Jungle! the forested heart of Oceanus; the vast cathedral-windows of Dawn and Sunset on opposite sides of the ship flood the chirping, chittering, dripping, reeking mass of verdure with true photosynthesizable light. Macaws whoop, toucans swoop, and birds of paradise flutter. Stores are tiny jeweled nests set among the foliage. Behind the storefronts are labels Edson and Efrim alike would kill for, but his back would blister at the touch of unearned silk. But Efrim lately is a stranger, a woman with whom he once had a fine, elegant affair. Even Edson is numb among the retail opportunities.

It’s a hell of a walk home from the beach, through the twilight ecologies of Oceanus , but Edson knows this world is killing Fia. He doesn’t pretend to understand what she’s doing up in the R D levels — not even Mr. Peach could explain it, he suspects — but he knows what he sees dragging back from the office, piling into the sofa to sit curled up against the armrest silently sullenly flickering her eyes over A World Somewhere on her I-shades, fridge-feeding, putting on weight. And sex is completely out the window.

So Edson has this thing he does, because a man has to.

The security jockey on the desk at the residential level is a Maceio boy watching Bang!Bang on his transparent desktop. He despises Edson but must respect the Teixeira authority on his I-shades. Most of Oceanus’s labor has been shipped in from the northeast. Is this what we aspire to? Edson thinks. Cheap offshore meat exports. Brasil, the nation of the future, and always will be.

The apartment has luxuries Edson could never dream even for his fantasy Ilhabela beach house: an I-wall, a spa bath, massage chairs, a free-flow bed that learns its occupants’ sleep patterns and molds itself to them. Edson has taken to the fold-down in the living room. She’s the worker, she needs the quality sleep , he tells himself. The sun beaming through the glass wall wakes him every morning. He brings Fia morning coffee and takes his out onto the balcony to watch the light out of the sea. Not even a kiss. This is it, Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas , he tells himself as he sits at the deck table and feels the warmth on his face. The one thing you wanted.

“Hey.”

The apartment is in darkness, but there is a moon and light from the sea: Oceanus is pushing through a huge current of phosphorescence. Edson lifts his hand to the lights.

A sigh.

“Leave it.”

Fia is on the balcony, curled up on the decking against the partition wall in panties and vest-top. By ocean-light Edson can see she’s been crying again. He knows her enduring fear: she’s a postdoc researcher into quantum economic modeling who stumbled from one universe to another by luck and dessperation, and she is expected to direct the sharpest theoreticians Teixeira money can hire. She fears they know that, that one day one of them will casually ask, Who told you you could do this? Edson has spent his life staying one answer ahead of that question.

“Are you all right?”

“No. Do you want to know, Ed?” She has taken to this nickname. Edson doesn’t like it. It’s not a self he’s made. But he kicks off his shoes, slides out of his jacket. The air is soft and skin-warm, tanged with salt. He never imaggined the sea would smell so strange: like it hates the land and all who come from it.

“Want to know what?”

“Do you want to know what the Order is keeping secret? We’ve found it. It’s a doozy, Edson. Tell me this, why are we alone? Why are humans the only intelligence in the universe?”

“I know this argument. Mr. Peach used to talk abour this; he had a name for it. Something’s paradox.”

“Fermi’s paradox, that’s what you’re looking for. Keep that in your head while I ask you question two: why is mathematics so good at explaining physical reality? What is it about numbers and logic?”

“Well, that’s the universal quantum computing thing.…”

“And Mr. Peach told you that too.”

“Don’t laugh at him. I told you before. Don’t laugh at him.”

Fia starts at the sure ferocity in Edson’s voice.

’’I’m sorry. Okay, let’s just leave that as something I will never get. But why should computation be the root of reality? Why should reality be one huge system of rendering — no different from a very big, very complicated computer game? Why should it all look like a fake? Unless it is a fake. Or a repeat. Maybe there are no alien intelligences out there because what we think of as our universe is a massive quantum computation simulation. A rerun. All of them, reruns.”

Edson slips his arm behind her back.

“Come on. You need to get to bed, you’re tired.”

“No Edson, listen. Before we killed the Amazon, in my world, there was a legend. In it the jaguar made the world, but not very well; and it ended on the third day and we — the world, everything we think is real — are just the dreams of the third night. It’s true Edson, it’s true. We’re the dreams. We’re all ghosts. Think about it: if a universal quantum computer could simulate reality exactly, any numbers of times, what are the odds of us being in the very first, original one, as opposed to any other? Do you want those numbers? I can give you those numbers. We’ve worked them out. They are so so so so small… The real universe died long ago, and we’re just ghosts, at the end of time, in the cold, the final cold. It’s ru

“Fia, come on, you’re not well, come on, I’ll help you.” He doesn’t want her calking about the Order, their Sesmarias and killers. Edson fetches water from the kitchen zone. The water on this boat tastes sick; like sea that has been through too many bladders. He’s added a couple of additions from the farmacia to it. She’s been working too hard. Rantings, mad stuff. “Come on, sleep.”

She’s a solid girl, growing more massy on junk food, no exercise, and homesickness. Edson helps her to the bed.

“Ed, I’m scared.”

“Ssh, sleep, you’ll be all right.” Her eyes close. She is out. Edson arranges the pillow under her head. He looks long at Fia swashing down into sleep like a coin through water. Then Edson pulls on his polished shoes and straightens his hip-ruffled shirt and goes out to meet his coconut boy. Fake it may be, lies and deceptions, but this is the world in which we find ourselves, and here we must make our little lives.

Coco-boy meets Edson at the back of the double-deck driving range stand. The nets are floodlit; stray light glints from the steel sea far below. A whistle.