John Wright - The Golden Transcendence

Second, the Transcendence was aware of itself:

The Transcendence was, at once, profoundly joyous, but wracked with terrible sorrow.

Yet, even a Mind such as it was, she was, he was, they were, knew sadness: for the vision of what that Mind could have been, and would become, hung clear within the vastnesses of this all-embracing Mind of minds; and it knew itself inadequate. It was too soon, too soon, for this Mind to wake to full awareness.

Far too soon. And yet...

It attempted greatly. All the minds of this great Mind, and every part, and every combination of parts, reached into themselves, around themselves, above, below, connecting thought with thought, insight within insight, and sought to capture, to express, to understand, the one fundamental ultimately simple and infinitely complex expression, which at once, both would be (and would create) the relation to (and the nature of) itself and the universe; and which would, at once, sever the illusion that seemed to separate itself from the universe, but which would confirm the identity and rich individuality that separated them.

The expression was to affirm all existence, right and wrong, confirm all theories, cherish all dreams, challenge all falsehoods, and (with the perfect elegance of a raindrop falling though a clear night that reflects, in perfect miniature, each distant star) the expression was to express all within itself, including itself, and the expression of itself expressing itself.

It attempted greatly, straining.

Third, the Transcendence was aware of its own nature:

What was the Transcendence? What words could describe it?

Physically, it was both ultimately simple and infinitely complex, a complexity of thought that always turned inward on itself, always outward to embrace the universe.

Slowest things and swiftest things alike were there.

Signals from beyond Neptune crossed the slow deep of space, loitering at the speed of light, carrying unthinkable complexity of information; noumenal patterns; living thought; a dance of souls across a tapestry as wide as the Solar System.

Quantum-sized energy changes within the depths of large immobile Sophotech housings, beneath the Earth, or in grand buildings on her surface, or in orbit, or in and around the other worlds of mankind, certainly were a main part of the Transcendence. But they were not the only part. And yet the thoughts that flowed from machine to machine certainly formed the swift and cool ocean within which the slower icebergs of living thought floated.

But like glaciers in an ocean, all was thought; all substances were one. The same water moves through the system, whether it slowly melts from glaciers, floats as evaporated cloud, falls as rain, or washes as sea across the glacier to freeze to ice again. All was simply one, like water; all was intricately complex, like the dance of a billion water-droplets in an hydrosystem.

The hours and days it took for one thought to go from Neptune to the sun and back were the same, to the Transcendence, as the picoseconds of the Sophotech thoughts sliding across wave barriers in their sub-molecular electrophotonic latticeworks. Likewise, the slumbering thoughts tumbling through the brains of slow, slow men, with their ponderous plod of neuro-electric charge, the heavy movements from axon to dendrite, were part of the same dance, the same tapestry, the same clear sea as all the Transcendence.

All were joined in the effort to think.

Like a surprised child still half-asleep, groggy with dreams, too tired, far too tired yet, to wake, the Mind of all minds realized it would have to pause (a brief pause, to a mind such as it was, she was, he was, they were) and, in another thousand years, strain yet again, to reach out as if with arms of titanic fire, to grasp the bright universe, and yet to find its arms too small, far too small; and yet to smile at the boldness of the attempt, and to cherish what real good the attempt produced.

Partial expressions of the unrealized oneness, like the jeweled complexity of snowflakes, played across the myriad minds and overminds of the One Mind. The Transcendence was delighted with the reflections, the slivers of cool insight, the simple clarity and unity a new perspective gave, and laughed, like a child at a fun-house mirror, at the distortions imposed on each other partial expression, when any partial expression was treated as if it were whole, extending, by analogy, to areas where it was not apt. But in that mirror-play, that wild game of mathematics and poetry, new thoughts, fresh as virgin snow, appeared, and like old friends in a masquerade, ancient insight took on new guises; for even inadequate expressions had a resonance with each other-surface similarities, haunting likenesses, hints of underlying patterns, allusions of design. Like a crystal bell that sets all of her sister bells to chiming with the sweetness of her perfect note, the shattered fragments of the partial expressions rang throughout the universe of thought.

The Transcendence was, at once, aware of the universe, and the universe was ultimately simple, infinitely complex. It was aware, at once, of the littlest of things and of the greatest, of their underlying unity and resplendent divarication. As if in a single instant of time, it saw the growth of life in the universe, and the ultimate ending or things. As if in a long, slow eon of history, it saw the death and rebirth of the Nothing Machine, one microsecond of dissolving singularity accomplished over many years of subjective time; and a change of mind that time could not measure.

And as the Transcendence was dying, dissolving, ending, it paused. For a brief moment, like a game played out in the evening when the work of the day was done, it paused. Or like the dreamy sigh when a reader, profoundly moved, closes the last page of a great book, unwilling to put the book down, lingers to think on the echo of the final words in his imagination, it paused. In that pause, the Transcendence accomplished the little matters that the participating individual minds, ironically, thought of as the main business of the Transcendence.

The Transcendence, as if smiling gently at its own shortsightedness, reviewed all the courses of action since the last Transcendence, from what seemed (to it) a moment ago; examined every thought and dream of all machinekind and, as an afterthought, mankind as well; established harmonies, priorities, reconciliations; rewarded virtue with joyful clarity of understanding and punished vice with terrible clarity of understanding, so that each act rewarded or confessed itself; fanned through the various dreams of the future, and seeing what every one of which it was composed desired, and balancing that against what they ought to desire, and taking into account the uncertainties, the limitations, and the costs of each possible future, reviewed, judged, dreamed, smiled sadly, and chose one. Knowing full well it would not come true quite as anyone expected, and knowing as well that to fail to choose was the worst choice, the Transcendence examined the futures, and chose one.

Fourth and finally, the Transcendence was aware how it would be remembered, later, only in fragments, by each little part of itself, herself, himself, themselves: the Sophotechs, the mass-minds, the Warlocks and Invariants and other humans, each, later, would know a different truth, and distort, amusingly, grossly, those parts it did not know.

Those memories, of course, could be, within the limits allowed by law and propriety, adjusted, woven, played with, emphasized, ignored, adorned, so that maybe, just maybe, there would be a little more harmony, a little less meaninglessness, and a little more happiness, a little less illogic, running through the souls of machine and man until the next time the Transcendence stirred in its mighty sleep, and tried to rise, and attempted the great work of cherishing the universe, and of healing the wide, strange breach between matter and meaning, between love of life and the victory of entropy.