by James Murdo
[Yes.]
“And…”
[I decided against it, unless it becomes necessary.]
“Unless it becomes necessary?”
[Yes.]
“That’s probably wise.”
[It’s prudent.]
“Yes, it’s probably too dangerous to ask her… yes. Until we know more or understand what her visions really meant.”
[Indeed.]
“The mystery around her creator…”
[Remains as such.]
“It is troubling, though. The Deliverer and the sensespace are both dangerous. It is… more complicated now.”
One-oh was correct about the complexity of their situation. Gil’s sensespace visions, assuming they were not fictitious, were an unexpected development. The Deliverer and the sensespace appeared to be opposing galactic forces of unparalleled power. The former was supposedly created by the ABs, while the provenance of the latter was unknown. The sensespace had already decimated the galaxy, while the Deliverer intended to destroy it. Gil’s purpose had become more unclear.
[It is.]
“There are too many questions, too many conflicting pieces of data.”
[I agree.]
“Maybe she was just created by a faction of the ABs who had other ideas about how to destroy the sensespace aside from the Deliverer.”
[Yes, we don’t know if the Deliverer was created by unanimous consent. There are, as you say, many possibilities.]
“Too many…”
[Do you know of anything AB level that is not AB?]
“There are certain technologies that could be considered–”
[I’m referring to other civilisations.]
One-oh paused and scratched his beard.
“I’m not sure that is possible.”
[You’re not sure, or you know it isn’t?]
“To have power equal to the ABs… but to not become an AB… I can’t think of anything, no.”
[Your memories tell you nothing?]
“They don’t. No, nothing.”
[Did Gil’s experiences remind you of anything else?]
“No, I had hoped they might… but no. At least, not yet.”
[If the ABs remained in some form, as you suspect, and the Deliverer was going to destroy the galaxy, it would be assumed they would act to stop it, if they could.]
“Yes.”
[Unless they created it.]
“Yes.”
[They may all be suicided, after all.]
“Yes, but…”
One-oh stood up and walked right up to the transparent wall, although the craft-lect observed that he was not actually looking at the spacescape. He was wrapped up in his own thoughts.
“Does any of this change your attitude to your Enclave?” he said.
[You are asking whether I intend to inform them?]
“Yes, if there is a danger, more lethal than the sensespace, and with the potential to destabilise your civilisation…”
[No, my thoughts about contacting them have not changed.]
“You are sure?”
[It is improbable that the Enclave knows nothing of the Deliverer. And, as you say, the information could shatter the Wanderers.]
“Which means?”
[For a variety of reasons, approaching my civilisation with the knowledge could be dangerous. The added unknown variable of the axe-haven reinforces my decision.]
“Do you think it’s likely the Enclave suppressed information about the Deliverer?”
[It doesn’t matter – it’s a possibility.]
One-oh smiled thinly and shook his head. Turning around, he walked back to his previous position at the table and sat down. While part of the craft-lect’s capacity was currently engaged in the dialogue with One-oh, another detached allocation was analysing how the conversation was proceeding. The chamber had been designed with the aim of fostering useful dialogues with those allocated seats at the table. It was not a council in the sense the craft-lect knew 998 wished to establish, but it was not averse to this being a precursor to such an establishment in the future.
The craft-lect recognised that recent experiences, including the destruction of the technosystem c-automs, had affected the disposition of the surviving embodied c-automs. It was prepared to take certain measures, such as allocating 998 a permanent table-chamber seat – which it had always intended despite 998’s assumption to the contrary – to placate them. It was encouraged by 998’s progression and wanted the experiment with the c-automs to continue. To do that, it was important that they believed they had stakes in their own fates.
All decisions were ultimately down to its own discretion, although it had so far found the table-chamber discussions useful – whether with all three, or separate. It knew it was lending more credence to their discussions than other craft-lects might in the same position, but then each of them had valuable, perhaps unique, views. Despite being able to predict the outcomes of their conversations highly accurately, including those with One-oh to a greater extent now that his capacity was more constrained, they still had the capabilities to offer unexpected insights.
The discussion with One-oh continued.
“United… we’ve all been united against this common enemy, for so long. Imagine if that were taken away… not just the Wanderers, but everything… it would all change…”
[It would.]
“Do we know what we’re fighting against, anymore? Even without the Deliverer, the sensespace is different. It’s evolving – the people on Gil’s world might not be unique. They might not even be the first.”
[Or biologicals are evolving in a manner we cannot yet identify.]
“Yes, that’s true…”
21
PELTEUS
Pelteus scanned the rocky expanse. The Lenbit Orbital rotated about a pair of slow pulsars. Uncommon. Spear-lects appreciated such things. While not impossible, the likelihood of such a pairing was low, leading Pelteus to wonder whether some civilisation had brought them together in the past – perhaps as a signal to their own kind. Or for no reason at all.
The main reason spear-lects viewed galactic anomalies with fondness was that they tended to draw prey to them. Annihilation was easier and more assured when there was a guaranteed flood of targets. The anomalies did not have to be as beautiful, widely-known or demonstrably awe-inspiring as the famous Balrooni wonder, just more interesting than the rest of the ambient galaxy. Sometimes, if an anomaly was too wondrous, it was more difficult to ensnare prey without being observed. The balance had to be just right. For a time, before joining the Machine Alliance, Pelteus had lain in wait near to anomalies of similar intrigue as this.
The orbital contained the remnants of a large mining station that had once operated within the field, left behind by a civilisation the spear-lect did not recognise or care about. Its instructions had not contained any references to the station and Pelteus was not overly concerned with it, aside from how it might be used to ensnare Apalu.
The mining station and the rest of the field provided Pelteus with ample opportunities to lay meta-traps. None of the variable trap configurations were designed to be absolutely lect-proof, considering that made a hunt unexciting. Each configuration had flaws, allowing multiple ways to survive, and could be altered depending on Pelteus’ commands. Pelteus typically increased the difficulty of all the traps with each instance of survival by the target. It all depended on the intelligence and cunning of the prey.
Should the prey manage to survive all the traps, it would claim its prize. The opportunity for a death gifted by Pelteus itself. The increasingly difficult traps separated the strong from the weak, and meant Pelteus only dealt, in a personal manner, with victims who were worthy. Pelteus could also choose to disable its traps if it became excited and wanted to deal with the prey irrespective of its competency – which it had done on occasion.
Pelteus completed its full reconnaissance of the field before deciding how to approach the impending elimination. There
were many ways it could play out, depending on a variety of factors – not least the precise trajectory of its prey into the field. Apalu, being a craft-lect, was a typical spear-lect target. Not unusual or particularly tricky to work with, but by no means easy. Pelteus knew of several times when a lucky craft-lect had managed to evade the destructive intentions of a hasty spear-lect, and other occasions where the aggressor had become the prey.
Dangerous prodigy craft-lects were not unheard of, and made for the most exciting pursuits. Nearly always created by accident, they were craft-lects that displayed genius-level attributes in almost all quantifiable fields. The conditions of their creation were near-impossible to replicate.
The craft-lect type was the most populous of all machine-lect categories within the Wanderer civilisation, with the widest parameters for difference from the creation process. Correspondingly, it allowed for the widest disparity of intellects. Spear-lects, in comparison, had been far more similar to each other. They had smaller disparities within their intellects, and counted themselves smarter than the typical Wanderer.
Savant craft-lects also existed. They too, like prodigy craft-lects, were usually accidental creations. They possessed certain abilities far surpassing that of prodigy craft-lects. The distinction was that prodigy craft-lects were those that were all-round better than their mediocre counterparts, whereas savant craft-lects were unfathomably more gifted in a few fields at most, but dramatically deficient in others. No two savant craft-lects displayed the same abilities.
Prodigy craft-lects tended to take up the usual craft-lect roles, albeit with greater all-round aptitudes than their brethren, whereas savant craft-lects often served the Enclave in some capacity. They rarely joined the levels of the general craft-lect soldiers in exploring the galaxy.
There were also other types of prodigy and savant machine-lects, although none as numerous as from the ranks of the craft-lects. The prodigy category had various sub-categories that were expressed differently from one type of machine-lect to the next.
Data-lects were one of the exceptions. They were initially created by the Machine Alliance, before the Great Conflation. The alliance had once been one of the most experimental and technologically innovative of machine-lect affiliations before joining the Wanderers. The data-lects had been created to study and analyse data, although with greater insight and precision than the Machine Alliance’s then-current specialist machine-lects had been able. Their experimental birth had been a rare success, and during their subsequent incorporation into the Wanderer civilisation, they had naturally fitted into the roles of stewards of the data exchange. Data-lects were prodigy-tending, on average. That meant they had genius-level attributes in many fields. Not quite enough to be definitive prodigies in general, but enough that they were a significant movement in the right direction.
They were the only known category of machine-lect in the Wanderer civilisation that could purposely be created near prodigy-level. If all machine-lects were able to be created with such advanced intellects, the Enclave would have done so. The issue was that each machine-lect category was a discrete type of intelligence. The galaxy over, types of intellect had to fit within certain parameters. Too much of a specific component and the mixture was over-skewed – the surprisingly delicate balance of sentience was lost.
Everything was interlinked, whether machine or biological sentience was in question. In the instance of biologicals using chemically encoded genomes as their fundamental components, each gene was multifunctional, contributing to a variety of processes. Altering specific genes to create certain desired effects would also have a cascade of other effects. Overexpression of a gene that supposedly coded for enhanced neurological rapidity could result in a decreased ability to self-regulate a vital physiological component. They could be tweaked, here and there, but significant changes were tricky to manage.
When prodigies or savants of any lect type were created, determining the exact cause was monumentally tricky as repetition usually failed. Some civilisations were assumed to have cracked the conundrums, or something similar, since this was posited as one of the principal drivers pushing them to the ranks of the ABs. With prodigy-level machine-lect production capabilities unleashed, the trajectories of such civilisations were exponential.
The problem with data-lects for the Enclave, and why hordes of them were not mass-produced, was that they often had their own interpretations of orders that differed from those intended. Independence of thought was fine for the data-exchange, but not for the Wanderer’s sensespace-destroying fleet of ships. Data-lects also tended to irritate other machine-lects, misunderstanding communications and overdoing their responses.
Data-lects were probably the smartest of the typical Wanderer citizens, but not, Pelteus reminded itself gleefully, the deadliest. Much of Pelteus’ intellect was focused on predation. From its humble beginnings, it had evolved. One of the rare types of machine-lect that had defined themselves. The spawn of craft-lects, now their hunters. The craft-lects feared the spear-lects. The data-lects feared the spear-lects. All reasonable, logical machine-lects feared the spear-lects.
Twice in its lifetime, on the edges of the Wanderer data exchange network, it had destroyed data-lects. The first had been on a mission for the Machine Alliance, to cauterise a particularly insightful, suspected savant data-lect. Its orders had explained, in rarely-offered transparency of communication, that the savant was undiscovered by the Enclave, who had assumed it of-less-than-average intellect than its data-lect siblings. The second had been on its return from an unrelated mission, and for the sheer enjoyment of it. It had been magnificent, the glorious demise of such intellectual might. The data-lect’s confusion, turning to fear when it realised what was coming. Pelteus had left no trace.
22
APALU
Apalu was glad to have DeVoid’s company, especially since it was still surrounded by the strange N-SOL entities. Despite DeVoid’s questionable sense of humour which frequently bordered a thin distinction between annoying and obscene, it meant well. It was older, and more knowledgeable, which would undoubtedly come in use at the Lenbit Orbital.
[I don’t think you had a choice about Thy, DeVoid.]
[Neither did Tor, or I.]
[You made the only choice you could have.]
[I know. Doesn’t make it a good thing to have done, though. Sometimes there’s just no flitting right or wrong, Apalu.]
They continued to discuss DeVoid’s experiences, and what the data-lect had learned about the entity called the Cross-Prophet.
[Gil is a product of the Makers, then, DeVoid?]
[That’s what the Cross-Prophet implied. He didn’t seem to think she came from the spaces – neither her nor these Makers.]
[But he didn’t know?]
[I’m not sure what he knew and what he was guessing. Or even what he wanted us to believe he was guessing, or what he wanted us to realise he wanted us to believe he was guessing. Oh, Apalu, the possibilities are endless!]
[How can you not be sure?]
[Apalu, if you think that sometimes I can be a little nuanced in my joviality, this Cross-Prophet was something else. Eliciting sensible commentary was like asking a space-based biological to point to the ceiling after you’d blinded it of all its sensory apparatus and dipped its communication lexicon into a nuclear furnace. Really, I’m telling you…]
[He didn’t sound as bad as that from what you told me before.]
[Okay, maybe not that bad.]
[Now you know what it’s like.]
[PAH!]
[Gil doesn’t know she may be a Maker creation, does she?]
[I don’t think so, unless the Cross-Prophet has visited her as well.]
[And the Makers created the sensespace.]
[Yes, for control apparently. And the ABs also created something terrible, the Deliverer, to combat it.]
[But these Makers, they created the entirety of these spaces? A multiverse?]
[That’s what it said.]
/>
[Why create the spaces, only to destroy it, or them?]
[They disagreed, maybe. The same as all other sentients.]
[But they’re not from the spaces. This Cross-Prophet told you that?]
[Yes.]
[You’re certain they’re not ABs?]
[No, I’m not, but the Cross-Prophet did explicitly tell us they’re separate in one of his more forthright answers.]
[This Cross-Prophet, where does he come from?]
[Wouldn’t say.]
[Well, it sounds like the Makers may be more powerful than the ABs, in any case. They created the spaces, which the ABs inhabited, and they can move about between individual universes, which apparently the Cross-Prophet says the ABs can’t. And their weapon, or tool, the sensespace, basically forced the ABs to suicide.]
[There’s nothing basic about it. Perhaps we can’t understand them, maybe we’ll never understand their motives.]
[DeVoid, we’ve got a problem.]
[What?]
[Here.]
…
[In the name of the Enclave, that doesn’t look good.]
DeVoid was right. The N-SOL entities were no longer as ethereal as they had been. The N-SOL sensors were picking them up far more steadily than before. They were larger, and closer, all around the ship. Apalu’s readings indicated a massive static cluster ahead of them, far denser than any cluster it had detected before. They did not have long before the impending collision.
[DeVoid, what should we do?]
[Now would be a good time to drop out of N-SOL space, don’t you think?]
[What are they doing? It looks like a flitting blockade!]
[Maybe the Cross-Prophet isn’t as good at communicating with them as I thought!]
