by Dan Simmons
[Your slow-time body is pregnant Would you risk a miscarriage/ nonextension of your DNA/biological malfunction by traveling here]
Johnny starts to answer, but she touches his forearm, raises her face toward the upper levels of the great mass before her, and tries to phrase her own answer:
—I had no choice. The Shrike chose me, touched me, and sent me into the megasphere with Johnny … Are you an AI? A member of the Core?
[Kwatz!]
There is no sense of laughter this time, but thunder rumbles throughout the egg-chamber.
[Are you/ Brawne Lamia/ the layers of self-replicating/ self-deprecating/ self-amusing proteins between the layers of clay]
She has nothing to say and for once says nothing.
[Yes/I am Ummon of the Core/AI Your fellow slow-time creature here knows/ remembers/takes unto his heart this Time is short One of you must die here now One of you must learn here now Ask your questions]
Johnny releases her hand. He stands on that quaking, unstable platform of their interlocutor’s palm.
—What is happening to the Web?
[It is being destroyed]
—Must that happen?
[Yes]
—Is there any way to save humankind?
[Yes By the process you see]
—By destroying the Web? By the Shrike’s terror?
[Yes]
—Why was I murdered? Why was my cybrid destroyed, my Core persona attacked?
[When you meet a swordsman/ meet him with a sword Do not offer a poem to anyone but a poet]
Brawne stares at Johnny. Without volition, she sends her thoughts his way:
—Jesus, Johnny, we didn’t come all this way to listen to a fucking Delphic oracle. We can get double-talk by accessing human politicians via the All Thing.
[Kwatz!]
The universe of their megalith shakes with laughter-spasms again.
—Was I a swordsman then? sends Johnny. Or a poet?
[Yes There is never one without the other]
—Did they kill me because of what I knew?
[Because of what you might become/inherit/submit to]
—Was I a threat to some element of the Core?
[Yes]
—Am I a threat now?
[No]
—Then I no longer have to die?
[You must/will/shall]
Brawne can see Johnny stiffen. She touches him with both hands. Blinks in the direction of the megalith AI.
—Can you tell us who wants to murder him?
[Of course It is the same source who arranged for your father’s murder Who sent forth the scourge you call the Shrike Who even now murders the Hegemony of Man Do you wish to listen/learn/ release against your heart these things]
Johnny and Brawne answer at the same instant:
—Yes!
Ummon’s bulk seems to shift. The black egg expands, then contracts, then grows darker until the megasphere beyond is no more. Terrible energies glow deep in the AI.
[A lesser light asks Ummon
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 analogy 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
Satum-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
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 raises 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.
