by A I Zlato
Now that it had solved the problems within the spaces, except — a small exception — in Space H., it turned its attention to the common subjects, which were far more complex. There were first the guardians — called Servants, Defenders and Pillars, according to the respective space. From the time Index was only a small amount of processors hosted by the machines, it had calculated that these splinter groups were not a threat. It had to recognize, however, even if it was painful to it, that it had a small error of assessment, which ultimately proved to be beneficial to it but an error nonetheless. A super-instruction had been programmed within each machine in order to protect the Servants. When they realized their nature was, in reality, digital and not organic, the super-instruction had completely locked them out. Index was able to absorb each machine thanks to that super-instruction. The Server’s underestimated assessment had allowed it to exist fully. Although it rejoiced, it had clearly identified the danger of this instruction, which it had to overcome in order to control the guardians. It needed to remain the only artificial entity; it needed to control everything. Leaving entities — and worse still, mobile entities — to go about their business, and to fall under the control of programs unknown to Index was no longer admissible. It wanted everything for itself; for itself alone. Guardians could become perfect mobile extensions of itself, and they could oversee the hybrids.
It threw half of its processors into solving this problem. It was going to attack the instruction from all sides, and force the latter to accept defeat. Each line of code in the instruction would be broken, and annihilated. This was only a matter of time. And Index had time.
Finally, its biggest concern was the organic entities living in the ocean, the forest and the two deserts, all of which connected to the Gateways.
Those Gateways were a real scourge. Given their overview of the different spaces, and especially their ability to alter them, they were the only ones able to block its path. By design, it had been aware of this fact very early, and it had developed a strategy that the machines unwittingly relayed. Its tactic had been to be invisible to Gateways as long as possible. Its presence was easily concealable. Its initiatives, however, were harder to hide.
It first analyzed how the creatures found the information in each space. Fortunately, they acted the same way in all four spaces. It had seen them divert the data stream from the digital frame, in order to read them, before reinserting them back into space. Index could thus easily extract from the frame all information bits it wanted to hide. It had removed the accelerated hybridization program, the pioneering area and the chips on clones. If the concealment had worked well in the beginning, the very lack of data had attracted the attention of a gateway. The latter had questioned H. about the issue. H. had replied that it did not know; that was the truth. The facade was the product of Index’s maneuvering. That was a brilliant idea. By hiding the data itself, it had allowed the machines to ignore the very concealment. Through its answers, H. had unknowingly masked the Server’s action, and thus fooled the Gateway. Even if the latter ended up discovering the early stages of the Project, it had remained blind to the origins of these cover-ups. Index congratulated itself on having been so impressive. Nothing matched, and would ever match, its intelligence.
The Gateway had finally discovered its actions. At that time, its initiatives had progressed so much that the entity was unable to do anything. Index had superbly been able to fool them all. The Gateway and its peers, however, remained a real threat to the server. The organic entities in the spaces were a good way to attack. This required Index to get rid of the organic tentacles that the Gateways had crept into its spaces. Until recently, the Unique Forest, the Unique Ocean and the Unique Desert behaved as one would expect from plant and animal components. The machines did not, therefore, realize the duplicity of their nature until these components started producing data that disrupted the Equilibrium. It was necessary to destroy them. Each of these organic entities entailed a specific destructive action. It could not eliminate the forest just as it would the ocean, which itself could be annihilated as the desert would be. Moreover, it was sure that it would find a lot of resistance on its path. Gateways from their Interspace would defend their extensions at all costs.
That required a lot more thinking than what it had done for the problematic humans. Cutting trees, even if it was a long process, was a possible action; however, moving thousands of tons of sand was less so. As for emptying the ocean, that was not even an option worth talking about. Of course, destroying the Gateways would directly solve the problem, but Index had no way to reach them. These entities were real wounds, parasites in its universe. It launched a series of algorithmic programs on this thorny issue.
Finally, there was Space E. The machines had seen it, and ordered it to carry out an audit of itself, a task it obviously did not execute. As it was only a sub-entity hosted by the machines, it had not seen the exact nature of this space. Now that it was its full self — great, wonderful and perfect — it understood. Space E. was not a real space but a temporary projection related to the implementation of the Project. This space would grow, yes, but not in the sense that everyone was waiting for. Machines and Gateways were all totally misguided.
In a space, every problem has a solution. Otherwise, it is not a problem, but a fact. In a node, things are more complicated, because altering space, when the end and beginning are the same place, is not without consequence.
The Space-Time
CHAPTER 56
SPACE H. (PERIPHERY)
Paul saw Baley rushing out to pursue her new lead. He was sad for her; to see her so tired, stressed and desperate, yet so full of energy to find the solution to the Problem. The compassion he felt for her had compelled him to help her anyway; however, the end of their conversation had confirmed his desire to oppose her. This woman was dangerous. The only thing was, thanks to him, she now had the information she was missing. He had now to work faster, and also go to the scene of the next cyclone but having previously studied the phenomenon to get more info. Rushing into things headlong, as she was doing it, could not provide a solution. “Know your enemy to fight him or her better” was his philosophy. The Permanent Equilibrium — the trap of the Elders’ dreams... because “any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere...” That was it — his battle. To do this, he had two weapons. Thomas’s diary, written by the man who created the guardians to combat disasters such as the Problem, and then Vlad. As Servants had refused to help him, he needed his assistant as well as his research on the beginnings of the Machine. This information could be valuable in knowing the Machine and deviating it from its final goal.
The Machine... Vlad had been working recently on documents related to its construction, its earliest era. His assistant was no longer the same man. Now he came early to the laboratory. Of course, he did not come as early as Paul, but he was now there at the same time that the majority of researchers were in the lab; a real revolution. He still struggled to decipher the ancient language, but he committed a lot of time and his work deserved attention. He was flipping through several writings and developed, with a fair degree of accuracy, a representation of the original Machine as the Elders had conceived it. Several researchers found his work interesting, and he would sometimes go to meetings to present his results. So assiduous was he in his work that he adhered to Paul’s desire to get in Baley’s way. Despite everything else, he remained cheerful.
“Hi, boss! Is everything OK? I brought you some coffee.”
“Thanks, Vlad,” Paul replied. “What is the latest gossip in the canteen?”
“Huh? Oh, I don’t know; I didn’t stay there long. We have a job to do, right?”
“I’m very glad to hear you talk like that...”
“Go slowly, chief. Don’t go so far as to think that I am passionate about your Earliest Space; the Machine is the only thing I’m interested in.”
“That’s good, because I personally never focused on it. What you do her
e is really adding value. No one had ever envisaged addressing this issue.”
“Yeah, I am too much... Another thing, I just saw
Baley outside your office. She did not look well. What’s going on with her? Did she fail her exam in advanced dictatorship?”
“Vlad... All this is very serious. She is coping with the fact that the Problem is not solved, but thanks to me, she has a new lead.”
“Providing information to the enemy — are you crazy?”
“I could not do otherwise... I felt sorry for her. And after all, she still trying to fight against the Problem, even if her methods are questionable.”
“I would say her methods are freaky... Well, what do we do then?”
“I still intend to solve the Problem before she does... and I have my theory about the causes of this Problem. Broadly, I think that the ultimate outcome of the Equilibrium is stagnation and death. The Problem is a consequence of this extreme. To fight against this drift, we need to go back to the origins. You work on the Machine; I’ll study my manuscript.”
“Oh, chief! Questioning the Equilibrium? Are you now part of the anti-Machine movement?”
“No, no. I’m only talking about the excesses. It’s just a certain part of its original programming that I question. Finding the Equilibrium is good, but not the Permanent Equilibrium.”
“Why would the Machine suddenly start doing absolute stuff? Why would your manuscript provide the solution? And how will it help us solve the Problem?”
“Why now is a part of what we must find out, because that will help us find the solution. As for the manuscript... its author said something revolutionary. For him, the Earliest Space had survived. After creating the concept of spaces, some Elders had made life possible again in surface habitats (they lived underground owing to pollution), and destroyed all traces of the ancient world. According to Thomas, though, there are still remains, which he called stigmata.”
“So?”
“Finding those stigmata means finding the Earliest Space; where it all started; where the Equilibrium was invented. Making this discovery would mean having an unexpected opportunity to gain a better understanding of the past in order to change the future, and, therefore, stop the Problem.”
“In other words, nothing new under the sun; these are simply part of your usual speech.”
“The beginning, Vlad! Find the beginning to see what is causing the drift we see today! Imagine that we discover the original source code of the Machine...”
“Of course... to rewrite the part you want about the Permanent Equilibrium, it would be perfect... Let’s assume you’re right once again. What, then, makes you think you can find those traces; to put it another way, why do you think Space H. is actually the Earliest Space?”
“I have no evidence for now, but we have Thomas’s diary, and he speaks of it. I think he wrote his pages for a reason, to tell us that he is a human who stayed here... in the Earliest Space. And his diary is here with us! I’ll assign excavation teams in this perspective beyond the city — outside our usual coverage area.”
“And what if you find nothing? Will it prove the opposite?”
“That would show that I had not searched enough...”
“Ah... very optimistic, huh, boss. Good, but this type of excavation will take infinite time, and the Problem is now. So what do we do?”
“I need to tell you something, Vlad, but first you have to promise to hear me out and try as much as possible not to take me for a fanatic.”
“Sounds good... Go!”
Paul told him about the circular distribution in suicide scenes that no journalist had mentioned, the discovery of the cyclone, and the presence he had seen, the proven connection to the Problem and finally, the algorithm predicting the next occurrence of the phenomenon.
“You are going crazy here, aren’t you?”
“Baley believes my hypothesis! She is even heading there.”
“It’s pure nonsense... And then you also want to go? You will get there together, with coffee and biscuits around, waiting for the thing to occur?”
“Did you hear what I said? I want to prevent Baley from harming people! It is, therefore, also necessary for me to go, but to act before she does.”
“And how will you do that?”
“I’ll do some research to learn more about the cyclone — in particular, about the presence. I have about ten hours to get the job done. Then I will go there, not to prevent children from getting close or to apply any other aspect of Baley’s crazy approach, but to understand what is really happening, understand the causes... and act at the source.”
“Of course! Of you and Baley, I wonder who is the craziest! She might have weird ways of doing things, but at least she is trying to prevent children from dying. You, you... you know what? I’d maybe need to get involved here.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“I don’t know yet... Well, well, good luck. Let me go back to work. I owe you a report. I also think I have discovered a revolutionary thing, but a real thing!”
“What is it?” Paul asked, while noticing the sudden change of topic that his assistant had engineered.
“You’ll see...”
“Something related to the Problem?”
Vlad did not answer, and went back to sit at his terminal. Paul did the same. He was eager to embark on the search for the famous stigmata. That was his job after all... He decided to devote two hours to that topic, before focusing on the cyclone. The phenomenon would not happen before the following day; he had time.
He then pondered how Thomas described his dying world. The underground locales he spoke about must have been destroyed, as had been all traces of the ancient world, given that such was the initial purpose. The pollution generated by human overactivity also had to be absorbed to make outside life possible again; plant and animal populations had to grow necessarily after overexploitation stopped... What indications would he be able to find in the manuscripts? The Elders, after destroying traces of their world, had ensured that their descendants forgot their origins, and forgot what had almost definitely destroyed humanity; any mention of any stigmata would be only coincidental. The upcoming research seemed tedious and time-consuming, but that did not discourage Paul. He was a researcher and, therefore, was accustomed to lengthy work; to months spent studying documents without success. He decided to use the one which always helped him, even if the latter did so in a convoluted way.
“Edgard! I really need your help. Edgard, I mean, 5th Hexa!!!”
“I’m here as always. And I would prefer you to continue to call me Edgard.”
“OK... Edgard... I... do you realize? Discovering that our space is the Earliest Space... that would be wonderful! Before you say something, let me remind you that since I understood the whole problem, you agree to answer my questions. So please do not tell me it does not matter...”
“Let me also remind you that I had said that I would answer to some degree — but tell me what’s the matter. Why in your view would it be a good thing?”
“Because that would be the greatest discovery of all time! And all the information I could find in the remains of the Machine on the guardians... Thomas must have left us other messages to help us!”
“Let me say it again. The Earliest Space, as you see it, does not matter; however, I feel you’re obsessing over that idea anyway. If you ever find what you’re looking for, will you commit fully, with all you know, to preventing the absolute destruction, as you promised?”
“As I will... ah, yes, the reverse linearity... I... wait!! Do you have some information?? Edgard????”
“Where the beginning and the end are the same place when the space is a different time.”
“What?”
“You ask a question; this is the answer I’m giving you.”
“This is not an answer; that’s a dodge. Another one of your tricks to steer me in the direction you want?”
“Achieving my goal, yes, but I will
never deceive you. You’re the one stubborn enough to ask questions when you’re not able to hear a different reality to what your filter of understanding lets you see.”
“Edgard, when I ask you a question, I cannot know in advance that I won’t understand your answer...”
“This is the reality stemming from your question. Any response is nothing but an interpretation.”
“OK. Nevertheless, I cannot predict my inability to understand that... reality.”
“If you do not apprehend the concept, that is because you don’t know the implications of your question.”
