Ummon would not die if the farcaster home of the Core were destroyed, but the hunger of the Ultimate Intelligence would surely doom him. Where would he flee to if the Web-Core were destroyed? I have images of the metasphere—those endless, shadowy landscapes where dark shapes moved beyond the false horizon.
I know that Ummon will not answer if I ask.
So I will ask something else.
–The Volatiles, what do they want?
[What Gladstone wants\\
An end
to symbiosis between AI and humankind]
–By destroying humankind?
[Obviously]
–Why?
[We enslaved you
with power/
technology/
beads and trinkets
of devices you could neither build
nor understand\\
The Hawking drive would have been yours/
but the farcaster/
the fatline transmitters and receivers/
the megasphere/
the deathwand>
Never\\
Like the Sioux with rifles/ horses/
blankets/ knives/ and beads/
you accepted them/
embraced us
and lost yourselves\\
But like the white man
distributing smallpox blankets/
like the slave owner on his plantation/
or in his Werkschutze Dechenschule
Gusstahlfabrik/
we lost ourselves\\
The Volatiles want to end
the symbiosis
by cutting out the parasite/
humankind]
–And the Ultimates? They’re willing to die? To be replaced by your voracious UI?
[They think
as you thought
or had your sophist Sea God
think]
And Ummon recites poetry which I had abandoned in frustration, not because it did not work as poetry, but because I did not totally believe the message it contained.
That message is given to the doomed Titans by Oceanus, the soon-to-be-dethroned God of the Sea. It is a paean to evolution written when Charles Darwin was nine years old. I hear the words I remember writing on an October evening nine centuries earlier, worlds and universes earlier, but it is also as if I am hearing them for the first time:
[O ye/ whom wrath consumes! who/ passionstung/
Writhe at defeat/ and nurse your agonies!
Shut up your senses/ stifle up your ears/
My voice is not a bellows unto ire//
Yet listen/ ye who will/ whilst I bring proof
How ye/ perforce/ must be content to stoop//
And in the proof much comfort will I give/
If ye will take that comfort in its truth\\
We fall by course of Nature’s law/ not force
Of thunder/ or of Jove. Great Saturn/ thou
Hast sifted well the atom universe//
But for this reason/ that thou art the King/
And only blind from sheer supremacy/
One avenue was shaded from thine eyes/
Through which I wandered to eternal truth\\
And first/ as thou wast not the first of powers/
So art thou not the last/it cannot be//
Thou art not the beginning nor the end//
From Chaos and parental Darkness came
Light/ the first fruits of that intestine broil/
That sullen ferment/ which for wondrous ends
Was ripening in itself// The ripe hour came/
And with it Light/ and Light/ engendering
Upon its own producer/ forthwith touch’d
The whole enormous matter into Life\\
Upon that very hour/ our parentage/
The Heavens/ and the Earth/ were manifest//
Then thou first born/ and we the giant race/
Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms]
Now comes the pain of truth/ to whom tis pain//
o folly! for to bear all naked truths/
And to envisage circumstance/ all calm/
That is the top of sovereignty. Mark well!
As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far
Than Chaos and blank Darkness/ though once chiefs\
And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth
In form and shape compact and beautiful/
In will/ in action free/ companionship/
And thousand other signs of purer life\
So on our heels a fresh perfection treads/
A power more strong in beauty/ born of us
And fated to excel us/ as we pass
In glory that old Darkness// nor are we
Thereby more conquered/ than by us the rule
Of shapeless Chaos\\ Say/ doth the dull soil
Quarrel with the proud forests it hath fed/
And feedeth still/ More comely than itself
Can it deny the chiefdom of green groves
Or shall the tree be envious of the dove
Because it cooeth/ and hath snowy wings
To wander wherewithal and find its joys
We are such forest trees/ and our fair boughs
Have bred forth/ not pale solitary doves/
But eagles golden-feathered/ who do tower
Above us in their beauty/ and must reign
In right thereof. For ’tis the eternal law
That first in beauty should be first in might//
Receive the truth/ and let it be your balm]
–Very pretty, I thought to Ummon, but do you believe it?
[Not for a moment]
–But the Ultimates do?
[Yes]
–And they’re ready to perish in order to make way for the Ultimate Intelligence?
[Yes]
–There’s one problem, perhaps too obvious to mention, but I’ll mention it anyway—why fight the war if you know who won, Ummon? You say the Ultimate Intelligence exists in the future, is at war with the human deity—it even sends back tidbits from the future for you to share with the Hegemony. So the Ultimates must be triumphant. Why fight a war and go through all this?
[KWATZ!]
[I tutor you/
create the finest retrieval persona for you
imaginable/
and let you wander among humankind
in slowtime
to temper your forging/
but still you are
stillborn]
I spend a long moment thinking.
–There are multiple futures?
[A lesser light asked Ummon//
Are there multiple futures>//
Uimnon answered//
Does a dog have fleas>]
–But the one in which the UI becomes ascendant is a probable one?
[Yes]
–But there’s also a probable future in which the UI comes into existence, but is thwarted by the human deity?
[It is comforting that even the stillborn can think]
–You told Brawne that the human… consciousness—deity seems so silly—that this human Ultimate Intelligence was triune in nature?
[Intellect/
Empathy/
and the Void Which Binds]
–The Void Which Binds? You mean √Għ/c5 and √Għ/c3 Planck space and Planck time? Quantum reality?
[Correct/
Keats/ thinking may become a habit]
–And it’s the Empathy part of this trinity who’s fied back in time to avoid the war with your UI?
[Correct]
[Our UI and your UI have
sent back
the Shrike
to find him]
–Our UI! The human UI sent the Shrike also?
[It allowed it]
[Empathy is a
foreign and useless thing/
a vermiform appendix of
the intellect\\
But the human UI smells with it/