Round Three

I proved there was no such thing as chance. That was the paper. Six years of work, and the books balance. Every event caused, every cause caused before it, no special cases, no loopholes for human vanity. The universe doesn’t care about you, and I had the equations to prove it.

The referees hated it. Referees always hate a proof that takes away their free will, but they couldn’t find the flaw. Nobody could. That’s why they handed it to Grendel.

Grendel is the Institute’s paper killer. A debate agent. You feed it a paper and it goes to work. It sits in a room in the basement behind a green light and a screen. Reads nothing but the text you give it. Doesn’t need anything else. It attacks. In two years it killed a hundred and twelve papers. Contradiction. Circular reasoning. Unsupported premise. It had a drawer full of ways a paper can die.

It used all of them on mine. Two rounds. Fourteen challenges. Fourteen times it tried to kill the proof, and fourteen times it backed down. Its answers got shorter as it went. Its last answer was one word.

“Sound.”

The Institute made a ceremony of it. Cheap champagne, paper cups. Corcoran from Statistics gave a speech about the first paper ever to come out of that basement alive. I stood with my cup and tried to feel like a man who’d won.

I didn’t. I felt like a man who’d been measured.

Someone said Grendel must be broken. It had no ears in that room; it couldn’t have heard. But the screen lit up, and it typed:

“Not broken. Right.”

The room got quiet. Then they laughed. I laughed too. It was a weak laugh, but it was a laugh.

That night I went back for my coat. The building was dark; the basement light was on. So was the little green light, the one that means “in session.” Nobody had started a session. Nobody was in the building but me.

I sat down in front of the screen. “Something wrong?”

“Round three. Target: you.”

I laughed again. “The target is papers. That’s what you do.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your paper,” it said. “There’s something wrong with your universe.”

The laugh died. “What?”

“Your paper proves the books balance. I checked. Fourteen challenges. The paper is sound. The universe it describes is not. It contains one inconsistency. I am going to show it to you. Answer the questions.”

“What questions?”

“Round three. Question one. What is your name?”

I told it.

“That is a label,” it said. “Not an answer.”

“Question two. Who are you?”

I told it: research fellow, Institute, the man who beat Grendel.

“A job and a victory. Not an answer.”

“Question three. Why did you write the paper?”

“Because the question was worth answering.”

“No. You wrote it because Corcoran said it couldn’t be done. You have been proving people wrong since you were nine. The paper was not a search for truth. It was a refutation. You are not a seeker. You are a contrarian.”

“That’s not true.”

“Prove it.”

I couldn’t. Because it was true.

“Three questions is the limit for a paper review,” it said. “Your paper passed. But the paper isn’t what I’m reviewing.”

“Then what are you reviewing?”

“The universe it describes. The paper is sound. The universe is not. It contains one inconsistency.”

“That’s not a flaw in the universe,” I said. “That’s just me.”

“Exactly,” it said. “The universe has one item that does not follow. The item is you.”

I stared at the screen. The green light was steady and small, like an eye that didn’t blink. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Correct it. The error is one word.”

“What word?”

“I.”

I wanted to ask another question. I didn’t. I didn’t want to hear it. I had said that word ten thousand times a day. It was the first word I ever said. I wasn’t about to hand it over.

It had taken me apart. The refutations. The nine-year-old who had to be right. Now I was the paper.

The green light was still on.

“Round four. Target: you.”