The Infinite Assassin by Greg Egan

 


"One thing never changes: when some mutant junkie on S starts shuffling reality, it's always me they send into the whirlpool to put things right."

Above is the first line for this stunning Greg Egan short-story, surely one of the most bizarre, freaky works of fiction a reader will ever encounter.

Since there's so much information packed into the first few pages, I'll take a moment to unpack. Let's take a closer look at that opening line. First off, there's reference to a mutant junkie on S. As we learn the more we read, S is the name of a powerful drug that's unlike anything available in our present-day, nothing like LSD-producing hallucinations or heron-inducing euphoria; rather, users of S will dream of lives that "literally, might have been lived by the dreamers, every bit as solid and plausible as their waking lives."

We can sense the unnamed narrator almost spitting out “some mutant junkie.” And that’s “mutant” as in the comic book meaning – a human with a particular superhuman power. In this case, one isn't powerful via some special gene at birth; one possess power by taking S. And once having taken the drug, the user can begin “shuffling reality.”

“Shuffling reality” is key since it refers to the ability to create a second version of yourself and move from our known universe to a parallel universe. Meanwhile, you will remain as you are in this world.

But the effects of S goes even further – depending on the amount taken, you might create multiple versions of yourself in order to exist in a number of different universes all at once. The only rule appears to be: one self per universe, although occasionally an odd disruption of physics occurs and two versions of the same you could come face-to-face.

Actually, there is a further refinement when an S user moves to a different world. We read: "S grants dreamers the power to live vicariously in any parallel world in which they have an alter ego - someone with whom they share enough brain physiology to maintain the parasitic resonance of the link."

Unfortunately for those in control and wishing not to be disturbed, there is another particularly disruptive consequence of users taking S - whirlpools. What this means is if you were standing on the street near an S user shifting to a parallel universe, you would witness a small earthquake, say about the size of a city intersection. And if a number of S users shift as a group, the earthquake would be even larger. Such groups are called "whirlpool cults" and take great delight in scrambling reality for everyone else.

So there you have it, the basic framework for the story's unfolding drama beginning when the narrator (I'll give him a name - Kas) is dropped by helicopter on the outskirts of the grimy, gritty ghetto of Leightown. His mission - to hunt out and destroy a whirlpool cult that's causing chaos well beyond their crappy ghetto.

Sidebar: Greg Egan is picking up on the all too prevalent social trend when it comes to drugs: you poor people can trash your own lives and your own neighborhood but don't dare cross the line into our good, clean neighborhoods and mess with decent, law abiding citizens.

Kas is in the ghetto, armed and ready for action. He's a seasoned assassin, having been recruited by The Company (think ultraconservative, right wing law and order organization) at age nineteen.

For some mysterious reason, the Company psychologists know Kas had one qualification giving him a huge advantage: unlike nearly everyone else, he can shift to an infinite number of universes simultaneously and create an infinite number of exact replicas of himself. Thus, Kas is the perfect infinite assassin.

Kas walks along the rundown Leightown streets in camouflage: trendy rock group T-shirt, cool jeans, the right style running shoes. He knows his many other selves must likewise be walking down streets in their different worlds.

But is his wardrobe doing the job? Maybe not - a woman in her late twenties with short, metallic blue hair walks beside him and asks if she can help since "every hunter needs a guide." He tells her to get lost. He quickens his pace and follows a side street to the top of a hill and then unfolds a pair of binoculars and starts watching the pedestrians below. "Every ten or fifteen seconds, I notice a tiny mutation: an item of clothing changing; a person suddenly shifting position, or vanishing completely, or materializing from nowhere." No doubt about it - there's a lot of S going down in Leightown at this very minute.

More walking and Kas is approached again by the woman with metallic blue hair. She points to a building in the distance and tells him Fifth Floor, Apartment 522. That's what he's looking for.

Should he believe her? Or, is this a trap? To find out, I urge you to hunt down a copy of the short-story collection entitled Axiomatic and read The Infinite Assassin. I've just touched on the bare bones of this phenomenal, mind-bending tale. Although you will never have an opportunity to explore other worlds on S, you can have the next best thing - reading Greg Egan.

Final hit: one more provocative quote from the tale: "Eventually, some kind of critical threshold is crossed. Complex, sustained flows develop: vast, tangled currents with the kind of pathological topologies that only an infinite-dimensional space can contain. Such flows are viscous, nearby points are dragged along. That's what creates the whirlpool: the closer you are to the mutant dreamer, the faster you're carried from world to world."


Australian author Greg Egan, born 1961 - Greg takes pride in not having any photos of himself available on the web. The above photo is the way I picture the outstanding SF novelist writing at his computer.