by Dan Simmons
The megasphere, Brawne sees, is as alive and interactive as the biosphere of any Class Five world: forests of green-gray data trees grow and prosper, sending out new roots and branches and shoots even as she watches; beneath the forest proper, entire microecologies of dataflow and subroutine AIs flourish, flower, and die as their usefulness ends; beneath the shifting ocean-fluid soil of the matrix proper, a busy subterranean life of data moles, commlink worms, reprograming bacteria, data tree roots, and Strange Loop seeds works away, while above, in and through and beneath the intertwining forest of fact and interaction, analogs of predators and prey carry out their cryptic duties, swooping and running, climbing and pouncing, some soaring free through the great spaces between branch synapses and neuron leaves.
As quickly as the metaphor gives meaning to what Brawne is seeing, the image flees, leaving behind only the overwhelming analog reality of the megasphere—a vast internal ocean of light and sound and branching connections, intershot with the spinning whirlpools of AI consciousness and the ominous black holes of farcaster connections. Brawne feels vertigo claim her, and she clings to Johnny’s hand as tightly as a drowning woman would cling to a life ring.
—It’s all right, sends Johnny. I won’t let go. Stay with me.
—Where are we going?
—To find someone I’d forgotten.
—??????
—My … father …
Brawne holds fast as she and Johnny seem to glide deeper into the amorphous depths. They enter a flowing, crimson avenue of sealed datacarriers, and she imagines that this is what a red corpuscle sees in its trip through some crowded blood vessel.
Johnny seems to know the way; twice they exit the main thoroughfare to follow some smaller branch, and many times Johnny must choose between bifurcating avenues. He does so easily, moving their body analogs between platelet carriers the size of small spacecraft. Brawne tries to see the biosphere metaphor again, but here, inside the many-routed branches, she can’t see the forest for the trees.
They are swept through an area where AIs communicate above them … around them … like great, gray eminences looming over a busy ant farm. Brawne remembers her mother’s homeworld of Freeholm, the billiard-table smoothness of the Great Steppe, where the family estate sat alone on ten million acres of short grass … Brawne remembers the terrible autumn storms there, when she had stood at the edge of the estate grounds, just beyond the protective containment held bubble, and watched dark stratocumulus pile twenty kilometers high in a blood-red sky, violence accumulating with a power that had made the hair on her forearms stand out in anticipation of lightning bolts the size of cities, tornadoes writhing and dropping down like the Medusa locks they were named after, and behind the twisters, walls of black wind which would obliterate everything in their path.
The AIs are worse. Brawne feels less than insignificant in their shadow: insignifigance might offer invisibility; she feels all too visible, all too much a part of these shapeless giants’ terrible perceptions…
Johnny squeezes her hand, and they are past, twisting left and downward along a busier branch, then switching directions again, and again, two all-too-conscious photons lost in a tangle of fiberoptic cables.
But Johnny is not lost. He presses her hand, takes a final turn into a deep blue cavern free of traffic except for the two of them, and pulls her closer as their speed increases, synaptic junctions flashing past until they blur, only the absence of wind rush destroying the illusion of traveling some mad highway at supersonic speeds.
Suddenly there comes a sound like waterfalls converging, like levitating trains losing their lift and screeching down railways at obscene speeds. Brawne thinks of the Freeholm tornadoes again, of listening to the Medusa locks roaring and tearing their way across the flat landscape toward her, and then she and Johnny are in a whirlpool of light and noise and sensation, two insects twisting away into oblivion toward a black vortex below.
Brawne tries to scream her thoughts—does scream her thoughts—but no communication is possible above the end-of-the-universe mental din, so she holds tight to Johnny’s hand and trusts him, even as they fall forever into that black cyclone, even as her body analog twists and deforms from nightmare pressures, shredding like lace before a scythe, until all that is left are her thoughts, her sense of self, and the contact with Johnny.
Then they are through, floating quietly along a wide and azure data stream, both of them re-forming and huddling together with that pulse-pounding sense of deliverance known by canoeists who have survived the rapids and the waterfall, and when Brawne finally lifts her attention, she sees the impossible size of their new surroundings, the light-year-spanning reach of things, the complexity which makes her previous glimpses of the megasphere seem like the ravings of a provincial who has mistaken the cloakroom for the cathedral, and she thinks—This is the central megasphere!
—No, Brawne, it’s one of the periphery nodes. No closer to the Core than the perimeter we tested with BB Surbringer. You’re merely seeing more dimensions of it. An AI’s view, if you will.
Brawne looks at Johnny, realizing that she is seeing in infrared now as the heat-lamp light from distant furnaces of data suns bathes them both. He is still handsome.
—Is it much farther, Johnny?
—No, not much farther now.
They approach another black vortex. Brawne clings to her only love and closes her eyes.
They are in an … enclosure … a bubble of black energy larger than most worlds. The bubble is translucent; the organic mayhem of the megasphere growing and changing and carrying out its arcane business beyond the dark curve of the ovoid’s wall.
But Brawne has no interest in the outside. Her analog gaze and her total attention are focused on the megalith of energy and intelligence and sheer mass which floats in front of them: in front, above, and below, actually, for the mountain of pulsing light and power holds Johnny and her in its grip, lifting them two hundred meters above the floor of the egg-chamber to where they rest on the “palm” of a vaguely handlike pseudopod.
The megalith studies them. It has no eyes in the organic sense, but Brawne feels the intensity of its gaze. It reminds her of the time she visited Meina Gladstone in Government House and the CEO had turned the full force of her appraising gaze on Brawne.
Brawne has the sudden impulse to giggle as she imagines Johnny and herself as tiny Gullivers visiting this Brobdingnagian CEO for tea. She does not giggle because she can feel the hysteria lying just under the surface, waiting to blend with sobs if she allows her emotions to destroy what little sense of reality she is imposing on this madness.
[You found your way hereI was not sure you would/could/should choose to do so]
The megalith’s “voice” is more a basso profundo bone conduction from some great vibration than a true voice in Brawne’s mind. It is like listening to the mountain-grinding noise of an earthquake and then belatedly realizing that the sounds are forming words.
Johnny’s voice is the same as always—soft, infinitely well modulated, lifted by a slight lilt which Brawne now realizes is Old Earth British Isles English, and firmed by conviction:
—I did not know if I could find the way, Ummon.
[You remember/invent/hold to your heart my name]
—Not until I spoke it did I remember it.
[Your slow-time body is no more]
—I have died twice since you sent me to my birth.
[And have you learned/taken to your spirit/unlearned anything from this]
Brawne grips Johnny’s hand with her right hand, his wrist with her left. She must be gripping too hard, even for their analog states, for he turns with a smile, disengages her left hand from his wrist, and holds the other in his palm.
—It is hard to die. Harder to live.
[Kwatz!]
With that explosive epithet the megalith before them shifts colors, internal energies building from blues to violets to bold reds, the thing’s corona crackling through the yellows to
forged steel blue-white. The “palm” on which they rest quivers, drops five meters, almost tumbles them into space, and quivers again. There comes the rumble of tall buildings collapsing, of mountainsides sliding away into avalanche.
Brawne has the distinct impression that Ummon is laughing.
Johnny communicates loudly over the chaos:
—We need to understand some things. We need answers, Ummon.
Brawne feels the creature’s intense “gaze” fall on her.
[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 Shrikes 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 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 if
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 humankin
d 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
