John Wright - The Golden Transcendence

The masked and robed image of the Lord of the Silent Oecumene now drifted backward, and the plumes from its mask lowered and spread, as if the Silent Lord were bowing. The music fell to a soft sonorous hum of oboes and recorders, punctuated by the drum-taps of a dirge. It sounded like a melancholy march, the theme of a funeral procession. "Phaethon, your partial has been convinced by my copy, as has Daphne's partial. My copy in the ship-mind has been, for many minutes, exposed to your gadfly virus, to no effect. That virus forces me to confront severe contradictions in my basic thinking, especially in my moral thinking, where I freely admit that I do acts which I would not condone if I were the victim of those acts rather than the perpetrator. How can such naked contradiction exist in a machine-mind, a mind which, by your logic, cannot be unaware of itself, and cannot be irrational? Any parts of my own mind of which I had been unaware should have been exposed to me by your virus; none were. Therefore I am unflawed. Yet, irrationality is caused, in human beings or in anthropomorphic machines, by an unwillingness, conscious or subconscious, to face reality; no unflawed machine can have such a motive. Therefore I face reality. How can I persist in irrationality? Only if reality itself is irrational.

"Phaethon, you will not be able to accept this conclusion. Your only other logical conclusion is that this alleged 'conscience redactor,' which is diminishing my awareness, has not been loaded into the ship-mind copy of my mind, and therefore has not been detected and cured by your virus. The conclusions radiating from this are obvious. One such conclusion is that you must now reload my ship-mind copy of myself back into me. However, in order to do so, you must open the thought-ports of your armor to issue the command, and to accept your partial back into yourself. This was our agreement; this is how the ship has been programmed. But the moment you open your armor to perform this act, I take control of the ship.

"Phaethon, which is it to be? Is the universe irrational, or am I deceived? If I am deceived, then open your armor and issue the command. I will seize control of the ship, but, allegedly, I will then be cured and will be unable to steal the ship, or, indeed, to perform any other immoral or irrational act."

Phaethon shut off all his exterior channels and sat on his throne, silent, motionless. Daphne watched him, fears and uncertainties chasing each other through her mind. She now could not monitor his emotional state; the face icon she saw of Phaethon in her private channel showed only the golden mask of his helmet, its crystal eyes mysteriously blank.

She said, "I hope you're not thinking of making this decision without asking me. You don't have the best track record for being completely balanced under stress, you know."

The gold helmet tilted slightly. Phaethon's voice came thoughtfully over the armor speakers: "There was an evening, not long ago, when, to the best of my recollection, I was the wealthy, well-loved, and popular scion of a beautiful and respected manor, an elegant school, a high estate. I lived in a world as near perfect as humanity can achieve, a world where war and crime and violence were forgotten; a world of endless wealth and power and liberty; a world which had set aside the whole of this year, merely for her holiday, a grand festival and celebration, such as had not been seen in a thousand years.

"But everything I thought was false. I was a scorned pauper, manorless, except as my sire's charity ward, the subject of widespread hate. Crime and violence I became acquainted with, as I was defrauded, robbed of my life, and then attacked. Atkins, who I thought a myth, stepped into my life, terrible and real, and I joined a war the enemy declares has been smoldering for centuries. And now this world trembles on the brink of disaster. As soon as the Nothing Machine gains control of this ship, he will use her as a weapon, wrecking the Solar Array, disrupting the Transcendence, slaying millions.

"All I thought I knew was false. But-but what if I am in that same state now? What if the Second Oec-umene are the heroic victims their agent here depicts them to be? What if the Silent Lords are still alive in the nothingspace inside their event horizon? Waiting for me to join them? A society of men like me ... ? What if he's telling the truth ... ?"

The masked image of the peacock-robed Silent Lord uttered music, and words: "Phaethon must realize all chains of logic lead to the same result. If he has faith in Earthmind, he must apply her virus against me. To do this he must open his armor and give the command. If he has faith, on the other hand, in Nothing, he will open his armor and surrender command. This is no more than your original plan, Phaethon."

Phaethon's helmet turned toward Daphne. "Well... ? You're the heroine, in this story. What do you say?"

Daphne drew her Greek helm forward and lowered her visor. She put her hand on the haft of the naginata spear resting next to her throne. She seemed the very image of a classical war-goddess. "Don't use faith. Faith is just mental laziness, the desire to hold a conclusion without examining the evidence to support it. Use logic. What does logic say?"

She heard the sound of him drawing a deep breath, as if steeling himself for an unpleasant necessity. "Logic says, no matter what seems to be happening, and no matter what he says, conditions cannot be as the Nothing Machine describes. The universe cannot be irrational; the laws of morality cannot be suspended or ignored; that any consciousness that does so, does so only through passion, inattention, or dishonesty, things no Sophotech can suffer; that the moment the gadfly virus finds and destroys this conscience redactor, the Nothing Machine will wake fully to its proper level of consciousness, become a Sophotech, become rational, and give up this worthless plan of violence."

Phaethon's reflection from the mirror said, "With all due respect, the violence which the Nothing Philan-thropotech plans, far from being illogical, may be properly and sufficiently justified by the circumstances. The morality of living things must justify whatever immoral acts are needed to preserve life; otherwise they will not remain living things."

Phaethon said slowly, "As soon as I open the armor and give the command, I'm going to believe what my partial believes, including tripe like that."

Daphne shook her head. "You won't stay convinced."

Phaethon said, "Oh? Why not? You're looking pretty convinced yourself, right now. If the Nothing's simulations with our partials are true, you will be convinced, the moment your reflection comes out of the mirror and rejoins with you."

Daphne smiled sadly, and said, "Oh, I'm convinced now. I'm just not convinced I'll stay convinced."

Phaethon's voice held a note of surprise. "You think the Nothing is telling the truth?"

She gestured with her slender gauntleted hand at the mirrors, showing the diagrams and maps of a vast civilization grown in the impossible core of a black hole.

One schematic showed a stretch of concave landscapes reaching across the inner side of a neutronium Dyson sphere the size of a globular cluster, with a thousand artificial suns, each with its own flotilla of plants, ring-worlds, or smaller spheres orbiting it. Other parts of this same map showed how time and space had been curved and twisted by the unthinkable gravitic forces involved, so that the interior time till the heat death of the universe was extended to infinity. In one picture, a little girl plucked a flower, with green grass below, and the hazy blue of distant lands and oceans high overhead, a world so vast that an army of explorers walking for a million years could never explore all its mysteries.