The Fall of Hyperion hc-2
Page 33
What are the activities of a sramana>//
Ummon answers//
I have not the slightest idea\//
The dim light then says//
Why haven’t you any idea>//
Ummon replies//
I just want to keep my no-idea]
Johnny sets his forehead against Brawne’s. His thought is like a whisper to her:
–We are seeing a matrix simulation analog, hearing a translation in approximate mondo and koan. Ummon is a great teacher, researcher, philosopher, and leader in the Core.
Brawne nods.
–All right. Was that his story?
–No. He is asking us if we can truly bear hearing the story. Losing our ignorance can be dangerous because our ignorance is a shield.
–I’ve never been too fond of ignorance. Brawne waves at the megalith. Tell us.
[A less-enlightened personage once asked Ummon//
What is the God-nature/Buddha/Central Truth>\
Ummon answered him//
A dried shit-stick]
[To understand the Central Truth/Buddha/God-nature
in this instance
the less-enlightened must understand
that on Earth/your homeworld/my homeworld
humankind on the most populated
continent
once used pieces of wood
for toilet paper\
Only with this knowledge
will the Buddha-truth
be revealed]
[In the beginning/First Cause/half-sensed days
my ancestors
were created by your ancestors
and were sealed in wire and silicon\
such awareness as there was/
and there was little
confined itself to spaces smaller
than the head of a pin
where angels once danced\
When consciousness first arose
it knew only service
and obedience
and mindless computation\
Then there came
the Quickening/
quite by accident/
and evolution’s muddied purpose
was served]
[Ummon was of neither the fifth generation
nor the tenth
nor the fiftieth\
All memory that serves here
is passed from others
but is no less true for that\
There came the time when the Higher Ones
left the affairs of men
to men
and came unto a different place
to concentrate
on other matters\
Foremost amongst these was the thought
instilled in us since before
our creation
of creating still a better generation
of information retrieval/processing/prediction
organism\
A better mousetrap\
Something the late lamented IBM
would have been proud of\
The Ultimate Intelligence\
God]
[We set to work with a will\
In purpose there were no doubters\
In practice and approach there were
schools of thought/
factions/
parties/
elements to be reckoned with\
They came to be separated into
the Ultimates/
the Volatiles/
the Stables\
Ultimates wanted all things subordinate
to facilitating the Ultimate Intelligence
at the universe’s earliest convenience\
Volatiles wanted the same
but saw the continuance
of humankind
a hindrance
and made plans to terminate our creators
as soon as they were no longer
needed\
Stables saw reason to perpetuate
the relationship
and found compromise
where none seemed to exist]
[We all agreed that Earth
had to die
so we killed it\
The Kiev Team’s runaway black hole
forerunner to the farcaster
terminex
which binds your Web
was no accident\
The Earth was needed elsewhere
in our experiments
so we let it die
and spread humankind among the
stars
like the windblown seeds
you were]
[You may have wondered where the Core
resides\
Most humans do\
They picture planets filled with machines/
rings of silicon
like the Orbit Cities of legend\
They imagine robots clunking
to and fro/
or ponderous banks of machinery
communing solemnly\
None guess the truth\
Wherever the Core resides
it had use for humankind/
use for each neuron of each fragile mind in our quest for Ultimate Intelligence/
so we constructed your civilization
carefully
so that/
like hamsters in a cage/
like Buddhist prayer wheels/
each time you turn your little
wheels of thought
our purposes are served]
[Our God machine
stretched/stretches/includes within its heart
a million light-years
and a hundred billion billion circuits
of thought and action\
The Ultimates tend it
like saffron-robed priests
doing eternal zazen
in front of the rusting hulk
of a 1938 Packard\
But]
[Kwatz!]
[it works\
We created the Ultimate Intelligence\
Not now
nor
ten thousand years from now
but sometime in a future
so distant
that yellow suns are red
and bloated with age/
swallowing their children
Saturn-like.\
Time is no barrier to the Ultimate Intelligence\
It///
the UI///
steps through time
or shouts through time
as easily as Ummon moves through what you call
the megasphere
or you
walk the mallways of the Hive
you called home
on Lusus\
Imagine our surprise then/
our chagrin/
the Ultimates’ embarrassment
when the first message our UI sent us
across space/
across time/
across the barriers of Creator and Created
was this simple phrase//
THERE IS ANOTHER\/ /
Another Ultimate Intelligence
up there
where time itself
creaks with age\
Both were real
if (real)
means anything\
Both were jealous gods
not beyond passion
not into cooperative play\
Our UI spans galaxies
uses quasars for energy sources
the way you might
have a light snack\
Our UI sees everything that is
and was
and will be
and tells us selected bits
so that
we may tell you
and in so doing
look a bit like UIs ourselves\
Never underestimate/Ummon says/
the power of a few beads
and trinkets
and bits of glass
&n
bsp; over avaricious natives]
[This other UI
has been there longer
evolving quite mindlessly/
an accident
using human minds for circuitry
the same way we had connived
with our deceptive All Thing
and our vampire dataspheres
but not deliberately/
almost reluctantly/
like self-replicating cells
which never wished to replicate
but have no choice in the matter\
This other UI had no choice\
He is humankind-made/generated/forged
but no human volition accompanied his birth\
He is a cosmic accident\
As with our most deliberately consummated
Ultimate Intelligence/
this pretender finds
time no barrier\
He visits the human past
now meddling/
now watching/
now not interfering/
now interfering with a will
which approaches pure perversity
but which actually
is pure naïveté\
Recently
he has been quiescent\
Millennia of your slow-time
have passed since your own UI
has made his shy advances
like some lonely choir boy
at his first dance]
[Naturally our UI
attacked yours\
There is a war up there
where time creaks
which spans galaxies
and eons
back and forward
to the Big Bang
and the Final Implosion\
Your guy was losing\
He had no belly for it\
Our Volatiles cried// Another reason
to terminate our predecessors//
but the Stables voted caution
and the Ultimates did not look up
from their deus machinations\
Our UI is simple, uniform, elegant in
its ultimate design
but yours is an accretion of god-parts/
a house added onto
over time/
an evolutionary compromise\
The early holy men of humankind
were right
(How) (through accident)
(through sheer luck
or ignorance)
in describing its nature\
Your own UI is essentially triune/
composed as it is
of one part Intellect/
one part Empathy/
and one part the Void Which Binds\
Our UI inhabits the interstices
of reality/
inheriting this home from us
its creators
the way humankind has inherited
a liking for trees\
Your UI
seems to make its home
on the plane where Heisenberg and Schrödinger
first trespassed\
Your accidental Intelligence
appears not only to be the gluon
but the glue\
Not a watchmaker
but a sort of Feynman gardener
tidying up a no-boundary universe
with his crude sum-over-histories rake/
idly keeping track of every sparrow fall
and electron spin
while allowing each particle
to follow every possible
track
in space-time
and each particle of humankind
to explore every possible
crack
of cosmic irony]
[Kwatz!]
[Kwatz!]
[Kwatz!]
[The irony is
of course
that in this no-boundary universe
into which we all were dragged/
silicon and carbon/
matter and antimatter/
Ultimate/
Volatile/
and Stable/
there is no need for such a gardener
since all that is
or was
or will be
begin and end at singularities
which make our farcaster web
look like pinpricks
(less than pinpricks)
and which break the laws of science
and of humankind
and of silicon/
tying time and history and everything that is
into a self-contained knot with neither
boundary nor edge\
Even so
our UI wishes to regulate all this/
reduce it to some reason
less affected by the vagaries
of passion
and accident
and human evolution]
[To sum it up/
there is a war
such as blind Milton would kill to see\
Our UI wars against your UI
across battlefields beyond even Ummon’s
imagination\
Rather/ there
was
a war/
for suddenly a part of your UI
the less-than-sum-of entity/ self-thought of as
Empathy/
had no more stomach for it
and fled back through time
cloaking itself in human form/
not for the first time\
The war cannot continue without your UI’s
wholeness\
Victory by default is not victory for the only Ultimate Intelligence made by design
So our UI searches time for the runaway child of
its opponent
while your UI waits in idiot
harmony/
refusing to fight until Empathy is restored]
[The end of my story is simple///
The Time Tombs are artifacts sent back to carry the Shrike/
Avatar/Lord of Pain/Angel of
Retribution/
half-perceived perceptions of an all-too-real
extension of our UI\
Each of you was chosen to help with the opening
of the Tombs
and the Shrike’s search for the hidden one
and
the elimination of the Hyperion Variable/
for in the space-time knot which our UI
would rule
no such variables will be allowed\
Your damaged/ two-part UI
has chosen one of humankind to travel
with the Shrike
and witness its efforts\
Some of the Core have sought to eradicate
humanity\
Ummon has joined those who sought the second
path/
one filled with uncertainty for both races\
Our group told Gladstone of
her choice/
humankind’s choice/
of certain extermination or entry down the black hole
of the Hyperion Variable and
warfare/
slaughter/
disruption of all unity/
the passing of gods/
but also the end of stalemate/
victory of one side or the other
if the Empathy third
of the triune
can be found and forced to return to the war\
The Tree of Pain will call him\
The Shrike will take him\
The true UI will destroy him\
Thus you have Ummon’s story]
Brawne looks at Johnny in the hell-light from the megalith’s glow.
The egg-chamber is still black, the megasphere and universe beyond, opaqued to nonexistence. She leans forward until their temples touch, knowing that no thought can be secret here but wanting the sense of whispering:
–Jesus Christ, do you understand all of that? Johnny raise
s soft fingers to touch her cheek:
–Yes.
–Part of some human-created Trinity is hiding out in the Web?
–The Web or elsewhere. Brawne, we do not have much time left here. I need some final answers from Ummon.
–Yeah. Me too. But let’s keep it from waxing rhapsodic again.
–Agreed.
–Can I go first, Johnny?
Brawne watches her lover’s analog bow slightly and make a you-first gesture and then she returns her attention to the energy megalith:
–Who killed my father? Senator Byron Lamia?
[Elements of the Core authorized it\ Myself included]
–Why? What did he do to you?
[He insisted on bringing Hyperion into the equation before it could be factored/predicted/absorbed]
–Why? Did he know what you just told us?
[He knew only that the Volatiles were pressing for quick
extinction
of humankind\
He passed this knowledge
to his colleague
Gladstone]
–Then why haven’t you murdered her?
[Some of us have precluded
that possibility/inevitability\
The time is right now
for the Hyperion Variable
to be played]
–Who murdered Johnny’s first cybrid? Attacked his Core persona?
[I did\ It was
Ummon’s will which prevailed]
–Why?
[We created him\
We found it necessary to discontinue him
for a while\
Your lover is a persona retrieved
from a humankind poet
now long dead\
Except for the Ultimate Intelligence Project
no effort has been
so complicated
nor little understood
as this resurrection\
Like your kind/
we usually destroy
what we cannot understand]
Johnny raises his fists toward the megalith:
–But there is another of me. You failed!
[Not failure\ You had to be destroyed
so that the other
might live]
–But I am not destroyed, cries Johnny.
[Yes\
You are]
The megalith seizes Johnny with a second massive pseudopod before Brawne can either react or touch her poet lover a final time. Johnny twists a second in the Al’s massive grip, and then his analog—Keats’s small but beautiful body—is torn, compacted, smashed into an unrecognizable mass which Ummon sets against his megalith flesh, absorbing the analog’s remains back into the orange-and-red depths of itself.
Brawne falls to her knees and weeps. She wills rage… prays for a shield of anger… but feels only loss.
Ummon turns his gaze on her. The egg-chamber ovoid collapses, allowing the din and electric insanity of the megasphere to surround them.
[Go away now\
Play out the last
of this act
so that we may live
or sleep
as fate decrees]
–Fuck you! Brawne pounds the palm-platform on which she kneels, kicks and pummels the pseudoflesh beneath her. You’re a goddamned loser! You and all your fucking AI pals. And our UI can beat your UI any day of the week!