John Wright - The Golden Transcendence

"Thus paradise died. Men slew men. Mentality records, the physical copies of the dead, were destroyed, and idiots, half their memories gone, woke in the interrupted resurrection circuits. Ao Ormgorgon himself was slain.

"And yet how could the rebels prevail? They were scattered and slow, individualists to the very last, unable and unwilling to understand each other, even in a common cause. The Nothing Mentality was unified-, unhesitating, and swift. The Nothing was the culmination of the Fourth Generation of machine intelligence, programmed not to argue, not to heed, but only to obey one law and destroy, without mercy, whatever opposed. .

"There was killing, and a grim victory. And one question in the ears of every mask whispered: whom now would the Nothing obey? We immortals had seen no need to establish a rule of primogeniture or rules for the change of government. There was no one to replace Ao Ormgorgon'; he had left no instruction; whether or not the All-thing had constitutional authority to appoint a successor was a matter of divided legal opinion.

"An opinion the Nothing Mentality did not share. The Nothing called for a plebiscite, saying that the majority of people should appoint a commission to govern the Nothing Mentality. But who would serve as commissioners? The house minds and garments of all the folk whispered and urged them to vote for those candidates of whom the Nothing approved.

"The opposition party was unwilling to put forward very many candidates. After all, we did not know each other very well, and rarely saw each other. Our best friends, our concubines and table cooks, our book escorts and bardlings, were all, by now, run by the Nothing.

"Over many years, the act of voting degenerated to a meaningless formality, and was discontinued. The Nothing appointed its own commissioners. More years passed, and the commissioners stopped asking the Nothing what it was they should order it to do, but merely gave the order that the Nothing should do as it saw fit.

'The Nothing's sense of logic and efficiency, its inhuman mindless rationality, forced it to carry out its instructions, without fear or favor, without wisdom or mercy, until its orders were carried out to their most absurd extreme. Those who objected were deleted from noumenal records, immortality lost, and left alone to die.

"Slowly, and then with greater speed as the years passed, the Nothing demanded from us, and we gave, more and more access into our minds, more control over memories and thought, our movements and actions.

"Each year saw fewer freedoms for us. More dissatisfaction, less joy.

"The Nothing Mentality saw this joylessness as potential threat, and required all our minds to be redacted and resculpted to render us docile and content. Efficiency also required that we all be linked to one mind system, one nanotechnological mass composition, easier to police than scattered individuals. It was done to us, and for the same reasons, just as we had done to the machine intelligences before.

"The ultimate results of that you know. The Last Broadcast from our Oecumene showed the catastrophe which ended our tragedy. The nanomachine swarm absorbed all things. For ease of storage, all human minds were reduced to noumenal coded pulses, which, in the form of electromagnetic energy, were shot into orbit around the near-event horizon of our dark sun. You know gravity warps space and can bend light? Our dark sun, deep in its gravity well, can bend light so far that the photons will orbit the singularity core in a stable circle, balanced precisely at the edge of the event horizon. Their time is slowed almost to nothing there. They are beyond all natural harm. For them, not even one second has passed.

"No one objected to this process. Our law had made them content.

"The Nothing Mentality had achieved its programmed goals. The humans of the Second Oecumene were entirely safe. With no further purpose to its existence, and with no innate desire to live, the great machine extinguished itself.

"And the Silent Oecumene never made noise or music again."

Phaethon sat, still immobile in his captain's chair, still stiffened in his rigid body form, and the great ship still accelerating at twenty-five gravities. Astonishing energies were being spent while he maintained that boost; astonishing velocities were mounting.

And yet, why? He only maintained the gravity to keep the Cold Duke body which the Silent One inhabited pinned in place, oppressed with a weight even a Neptunian could not withstand. He listened to the Silent One's tale as minutes passed, but he did not slacken speed or ease his defenses, even though no danger now seemed evident.

If the story were true, then there had been no threat, military or otherwise, to the Golden Oecumene. There had only been Xenophon, possessed, and perhaps cooperating, with a ghost from a long-dead civilization. Xenophon, with his Neptunian superconductive and modularly expandable nervous architecture, could reach the mental heights of a low-level Sophotech, and could anticipate and organize a tremendously complex plan, weigh multiple factors, deduce stunning insights, out-think Phaethon, and, yes, come close to stealing the Phoenix Exultant.

It all could have been done without a Sophotech. It might be true. Might.

Phaethon sent: "How does this story explain your actions or justify your crimes?"

"Surely all is apparent. The Golden Oecumene Sophotechs were in communication with the Second Oecumene Sophotechs during the first millennium of your so-called Era of the Seventh Mental Structure. Second Oecumene history unfolded as was planned by their cold and superior intellects. The Sophotechs dared not tolerate the existence of a free and independent people, people attempting to exist without their meddling guidance, people attempting to retain their humanity. I cannot entirely condemn the rebels who precipitated the Last War, and slew Ao Ormgorgon; their motive was to retain that selfsame independence. But it is not a coincidence that they were advised, at first, by resurrected Sophotechs."

"Paranoia. Why would the Sophotechs desire your downfall? They are harmless and peaceful."

"Peaceful? Yes. But only because war is inefficient, and they have no need to resort to it. Please understand me: I do not attribute to your Sophotechs any evil motive, or malice, hatred... or any other human emotion. But I do think that they observe the universe around them, draw conclusions, and act on those conclusions. And they conclude that order, law, logic, and organization is to be preferred to chaos, humanity, life, and freedom."

"Is law and order such a bad thing, then?"

"In moderation, to govern immature races, the use of force which you call law is, perhaps, excusable. But moderation is alien to machine thinking. Law as an absolute, law carried out to its logical extreme-that is a lifeless and inhuman thing, a thing only a machine could admire.

"Such law they crave. And this is why our society was destroyed.

"Your Sophotechs have publicly admitted that their long-term goal is the extinction of all independent life, and the absorption of all thought into one eventual Cosmic Overmind, ruling over a cold universe of dead stars.

"In those end times, where could a spirit like that which once animated the Second Oecumene live then? That spirit could exist only in conflict with that all-ruling, unliving mind. How could creatures of pure logic love rebels, love explorers, love those who bring change, disorder, and growth? It is in the nature of machines to calculate, to control variables, to avoid clutter and confusion.

"And so the Second Oecumene was, perhaps, a million or a trillion years from now, destined to be a threat. Or, if not a threat, then, at least, an irregularity, a gremlin in the all-embracing, bloodless calculations of their pristine white minds.