No need even to be scanned; the very same data surely existed, scattered about the universe, whether or not it was ever plucked from her brain and assembled in what she thought of as one place.

In fact, if Durham was right -- if the events he believed would take place in his TVC universe could find themselves in the dust -- then those events would happen, regardless. It could make no difference what anyone did in this world. The whole Garden-of-Eden project was superfluous. Every permutation of the dust which was capable of perceiving itself, making sense of itself, would do just that. And all she would have achieved by refusing to be scanned would have been to deny the Maria of that permutation a history which seemed to overlap with her own particular life. While a third woman -- in another world, another permutation -- would have taken her place in that role.

Maria opened her eyes. She'd just recalled the first thing she'd meant to do on waking. Every scanner was programmed to recognize -- in real time, before all the arduous data processing that followed -- the magnetic resonance spectrum of four or five special dyes, which could be used for alignment and identification. The scanning technician had obligingly loaned her a "number three" marker pen -- and instructed the scanner to blind itself to that particular dye.

She pulled her hands out from under the sheets. Her left palm still read: you are not the copy.

She licked her fingers and started rubbing the unnecessary words away.

+ + +

Maria arrived at the north Sydney flat around half past twelve. Two terminals were set up side by side on Durham's kitchen table; other than that, the place was as bare as it had been the last time she'd called.

Although it wasn't, technically, necessary, Maria had insisted that she and Durham be in the same physical location throughout what he called the "launch" -- the running of the first moments of the TVC universe as software on a real computer, the act which would supposedly seed an independent, self-sustaining universe, taking up where the version relying on real-world hardware left off. At least this way she could monitor the keys he pressed and the words he spoke, without having to wonder if she was being shown what was really going on at that level. She had no idea what she was guarding against -- but Durham was a highly intelligent man with some very strange beliefs, and she had no reason to feel confident that he'd revealed the full extent of his delusions. His clients had confirmed part of his story -- and they would have had the resources to check much more of it than she had -- but Durham might still have lied to them about what was going on inside his head.

She wanted to trust him, she wanted to believe that she'd finally reached the truth -- but it was hard to put any limits on how wrong she might yet be. She felt she'd known him too long to seriously fear for her physical safety -- but the possibility remained that everything she thought she'd understood about the man would turn out, once again, to have been utterly misconceived. If he came away from the kitchen sink brandishing a carving knife, calmly announcing his intention to sacrifice her to the Spirit of the New Moon, she'd have no right to feel betrayed, or surprised. She couldn't expect to live off the proceeds of insanity, and also take for granted the usual parameters of civilized behavior.

The flesh-and-blood Durham was only half the problem. Once the program simulating a TVC cellular automaton was started, the plan was that neither she nor Durham would intervene at all. Any external tinkering would violate the automaton's rules -- the fundamental laws of the new universe -- making a mockery of the whole endeavor. Only Durham's Copy, being run on the simulated TVC computers, could act in harmony with those laws. They would always have the option of aborting the project, pulling the plug -- but in every other respect, the Copy would be in control.

(Of course, aborting the simulation if something went wrong would not -- in Durham's eyes -- prevent the spawning of an independent universe beyond their control . . . but it might leave them with enough unspent computer time for a second attempt.)

With her hands tied once the universe was running, her only way to influence what did or didn't happen was through the Garden-of-Eden configuration -- which included all the programs the TVC lattice would initially run. Maria had written part of this internal launch software herself; Durham had written, or commissioned, the rest, but she'd checked it all personally. And she'd built in a safeguard: all the Copies but Durham's would be blocked from running until the TVC processors had solved a suitably intractable mathematical equation. Maria had estimated that the world's combined computing resources couldn't have cracked the problem in under a decade; thirty million dollars' worth, minus overheads, wouldn't come close. That was no obstacle in the eyes of Durham and his followers; the ever-growing resources of the burgeoning TVC universe would make light work of it, solving the equation within a week or two of the launch. But short of any such universe coming into existence -- and so long as the test wasn't circumvented -- there was no chance of a second Maria Deluca, or anyone else, waking. It was her guarantee that there'd be no virtual Jonestown. Just one lone prophet flickering in and out of existence.

Durham made instant coffee. Maria surveyed the spartan room. She said, "This isn't good enough, you know. We should have two hundred people wearing headsets, and a giant screen taking up an entire wall. Like one of the old NASA missions."

Durham spoke over the sound of boiling water. "Don't worry; we'll be using more computing power per second than NASA used for the entire Apollo program."

Computing power. One more thing to worry about. Maria logged on to the QIPS exchange; the rate was up slightly since she'd last checked, but so far there was no sign of what she dreaded. In the event that Operation Butterfly entered the market again, today of all days, the Garden of Eden would be frozen out, postponed until the QIPS rate returned to normal levels. That wouldn't make the slightest difference to Durham or his followers -- even if the launch program was thrown off the network halfway through, and only completed days, or weeks, later. Real time was irrelevant. Maria could appreciate the logic of that -- but the thought of a delay, or an unexpected slowdown, still made her sick with anxiety. Every legal opinion she'd obtained had made it clear that neither she nor Durham were likely to face prosecution -- and if charges were brought against them, a conviction was highly improbable . . . and even if that happened, an appeal would almost certainly succeed. Nonetheless, every day she'd spent working with Durham as a knowing "accomplice" had made her feel more vulnerable to the whims of the authorities. Hayden had treated her icily when she'd confessed to having abandoned her laughable "undercover" role. The risk of harassment would hardly vanish the moment the project was completed -- but the relief would still be considerable.

She was beginning to regret having honored her promise not to try to record Durham's clients' statements assuring her that they were fully informed participants in the scheme. The authenticated messages she'd viewed -- on public terminals -- might not have been the equivalent of human testimony, but having them stored away on a chip somewhere would have made her feel a lot more secure. Regardless of the legal status of the Copies, she couldn't imagine being prosecuted for fraud if she could show that the de facto "victims of the crime" knew exactly what they were paying for.