THIRTY-THREE

The datumplane analog of Brawne Lamia and her retrieval persona lover strike the surface of the megasphere like two cliff divers striking the surface of a turbulent sea. There is a quasi-electrical shock, a sense of having passed through a resisting membrane, and they are inside, the stars are gone, and Brawne’s eyes widen as she stares at an information environment infinitely more complex than any datasphere.

The dataspheres traveled by human operators are often compared to complex cities of information: towers of corporate and government data, highways of process flow, broad avenues of datumplane interaction, subways of restricted travel, high walls of security ice with microphage guards on prowl, and the visible analog of every microwave flow and counterflow a city lives by.

This is more. Much more.

The usual datasphere city analogs are there, but small, so very small, as dwarfed by the scope of the megasphere as true cities would be on a world seen from orbit.

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 field 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 leamed/takee 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 Shrike’s 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 analogy 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 it

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 humankind 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

Satum-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

was this simple phrase

THERE IS ANOTHER

Another Ultimate Intelligence

up there

where time itself

creaks with age

Both were real

if (real)

means anything

Both were jealous gods

not beyond passion\

not into cooperative play

Our UI spans galaxies

uses quasars for energy sources

the way you might

have a light snack

Our UI sees everything that is

and was

and will be

and tells us selected bits

so that

we may tell you

and in so doing

look a bit like UIs ourselves

Never underestimate/Ummon says/

the power of a few beads

and trinkets

and bits of glass

over avaricious natives]

[This other UI

has been there longer

evolving quite mindlessly/

an accident

using human minds for circuitry

the same way we had connived

with our deceptive All Thing

and our vampire dataspheres

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:

—Who killed my father? Senator Byron Lamia?

[Elements of the Core authorized it Myself included]

—Why? What did he do to you?

[He insisted on bringing Hyperion into the equation before it could be tactored/predicted/absorbed]

—Why? Did he know what you just told us?

[He knew only that the Volatiles were pressing for quick

extinction

of humankind

He passed this knowledge

to his colleague

Gladstone]

—Then why haven’t you murdered her?

[Some of us have precluded

that possibility/inevitability

The time is right now

for the Hyperion Variable

to be played]

—Who murdered Johnny’s first cybrid? Attacked his Core persona?

[I did\ It was

Ummon’s will which prevailed]

—Why?

[We created him

We found it necessary to discontinue him

for a while

Your lover is a persona retrieved

from a humankind poet

now long dead

Except for the Ultimate Intelligence Project

no effort has been

so complicated

nor little understood

as this resurrection

Like your kind/

we usually destroy

what we cannot understand]

Johnny raises his fists toward the megalith:

—But there is another of me. You failed!

[Not failure You had to be destroyed

so that the other

might live]

—But I am not destroyed! cries Johnny.

[Yes

You are]

The megalith seizes Johnny with a second massive pseudopod before Brawne can either react or touch her poet lover a final time. Johnny twists a second in the AI’s massive grip, and then his analog—Keats’s small but beautiful body—-is torn, compacted, smashed into an unrecognizable mass which Ummon sets against his megalith flesh, absorbing the analog’s remains back into the orange-and-red depths of itself.

Brawne falls to her knees and weeps. She wills rage … prays for a shield of anger … but feels only loss.

Ummon turns his gaze on her. The egg-chamber ovoid collapses, allowing the din and electric insanity of the megasphere to surround them.

[Go away now

Play out the last

of this act

so that we may live

or sleep

as fate decrees]

—Fuck you! Brawne pounds the palm-platform on which she kneels, kicks and pummels the pseudoflesh beneath her. You’re a goddamned loser! You and all your fucking AI pals. And our UI can beat your UI any day of the week!

[That is
doubtful]

—We built you, Buster. And well find your Core. And when we do we’ll tear your silicon guts out!

[I have no silicon guts/organs/internal components]

—And another thing, screams Brawne, still slashing at the megalith with her hands and nails. You’re a piss-poor storyteller. Not a tenth the poet that Johnny is! You couldn’t tell a straightforward tale if your stupid Al ass depended—

[Go away]

Ummon the AI megalith drops her, sending her analog tumbling and falling into the upless and downless crackling immensity of the megasphere.

Brawne is buffeted by data traffic, almost trod upon by AIs the size of Old Earth’s moon, but even as she tumbles and blows with the winds of dataflow, she senses a light in the distance, cold but beckoning, and knows that neither life nor the Shrike is finished with her.

And she is not finished with them.

Following the cold glow, Brawne Lamia heads home.