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.

–Agreed.

–Can I go first, Johnny?

Brawne watches her lover’s analog bow slightly and make a you-first gesture and then she returns her attention to the energy megalith: