Gregory Benford: Foundation’s Fear

Joan said, “You gentlemen are circling the divine without knowing it. Everything worthwhile to people-freedom, meaning, value-all that disappears within either of your choices.”

“My love, you must remember that Hari is a mathist.” Voltaire zoomed about both of them on spread wings, obviously enjoying ruffling his feathers in the turbulence. “Order/disorder seem implicated in other dualisms: nature/human, natural/artificial, animals with natures/humans outside nature. They are natural to us.”

“How come?” Hari squinted, puzzled.

“How do we frame the other side of an argument? We say, ‘on the other hand,’ yes?”

Hari nodded. “We think our two hands mirror the world.”

“Very good.” Voltaire flew loops around Joan’s chromed falcon.

“The Creator has two hands as well,” Joan persisted. “‘He sitteth on the right hand of the Father almighty-”‘

Voltaire cawed like a crow. “ But you ‘re both neglecting your own selves-which you can inspect, in this digital vault. Look deeply and you see endless detail. It ramifies into a Self that cannot be decomposed into the mere operation of neat laws. The You emerges as a deep interplay of many Selves.”

Into the shared mind-space of the three Voltaire sent:

Complex, nonlinear feedback systems are unpredictable, even if they are deterministic. The information-processing capacity needed to predict a single mind is larger than the complexity of the whole universe itself! Computing the next event takes longer than the event itself. Precisely this feature, written into the texture of the universe, makes it-and us-free.

Hari replied with:

Paradox. How does the event itself know how to happen?

Only a massive computer could describe the next tiny whorl in a stream. What makes real systems even able to change?

Voltaire shrugged-a difficult gesture for a bird.

“At last you have encountered an agency you cannot dismiss,” Joan said proudly.

Voltaire’s head jerked with surprise. “Your… Creator?”

“Your equations describe well enough. But what gives these equations-” she hesitated at the word “fire?”

“You imply a Mind which does the universal computation?”

“No, you do.”

Hari said, “Fair enough-as a hypothesis. But why should such a Mind care a whit for us, mere motes?”

“He cared enough to make you come out of the matrix of matter, did He not?”

“Ah, origins,” Voltaire said, catching an updraft. He looked relieved to be on surer intellectual ground. Plainly her point had rattled him. “Insoluble, of course. I prefer to deal with our moralities.”

Joan said primly, “Morality is not dependent upon us.”

Voltaire shot back, “Nonsense! We evolved with morals shaped by the universe-by a Creator, if you wish.”

Hari asked, “You mean by evolution? The pans-”

Joan cried, “Indeed! Holiness shapes the world, the world shapes us.”

Hari looked doubtful, Joan pleased. Voltaire said wryly, “My mathist, would you rather believe that moral constraints emerge as ‘a spontaneous order from rational utility-maximizing behavior’? Truly?”

Hari blinked. “Well, no…”

“I quoted one of your own papers. What you’ve forgotten, sir, is that our endless models of the world shape how we look at human experience.”

“Of course, but-”

“And the models are all that we know.”

Hari suddenly smiled. “I like that. Don’t get married to a model.” He allowed himself to morph slightly, growing taller, more muscular. “I don’t know why, but I feel better.”

“Your soul has come to terms with your actions,” Joan said.

Voltaire said, “I would prefer ‘selves’ to ‘soul,’ but let us not quibble.”

Suddenly Hari felt categories shift in his mind. He had arranged for the revival of these sims, guided by pure intuition. Now came the payoff: they had inadvertently discovered the step he wanted. “The mind…is a self-organizing structure, and so is the Empire. I can work back and forth between those models! Import your knowledge of subselves, use it to analyze how the Empire learns!”

Voltaire blinked. “What a marvelous idea.”

Hari said, “Wait’ll I show you! The Empire is self-learning, with subunits-”

“I wonder if the alien fog knows this?” Joan asked.

Hari frowned. “I do not want to involve them. My equations cannot deal with elements of unknown-”

“They are already involved,” Joan said. “They are here, all around us.”

Hari sighed. “I hope we can keep them here in the-”

“Zoo,” Joan said dryly.

Thunderheads roiled over the horizons, closing fast.

“You killed robots!” Hari shouted into the gale. “That was not in our bargain.”

[WE DID NOT SAY WE WOULD REFRAIN]

“You took more than we agreed! Lives of-”

[TERMS OMITTED CANNOT BE PRESUMED UPON]

“The robots are a separate kind. Of high intelligence-”

[YOUR MERE TIKTOKS COULD KILL THEM THOUGH]

[YOU, SELDON, DID NOT OWN THESE MACHINES]

[AND THUS HAVE NO DISPUTE WITH US]

Hari ground his teeth and fumed.

[MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS BECKON]

“Your rewards?” Hari asked bitterly. “You’ve come for them?”

[WE SHALL NOT STAY HERE]

[FOR THIS PLACE IS DOOMED]

Hari staggered under a hailstorm of biting cold. “Trantor?”

[AND MUCH ELSE]

“What do you want?”

[OUR DESIRED DESTINY IS TO FLOAT AMONG THE SPIRAL ARMS]

[AND LINGER LONG AMONG THE PLUMES OF GALACTIC CENTER]

Hari remembered the structures there, the complex weave of luminosities. “You can do that?”

[WE HAVE A SPORE STATE]

[SOME OF US LIVED THIS WAY BEFORE]

[TO SUCH A STATE WE WISH TO RETURN]

[ELSE WE SHALL EXTINGUISH ALL YOUR “ROBOTS”]

“That wasn’t part of our deal!” Hari shouted. Hard cold rain hammered him, but he turned his face to confront the towering, angry clouds and their skirts of wrathful lightning.

[HOW CAN YOU STOP US?]

[THOUGH IT WOULD DEPLETE OUR CAPACITIES]

[WE COULD BRING TRANTOR TO STARVATION]

Hari grimaced. He was learning a lot about power, quite quickly. “All right. I’ll see that research gets done on how to transfer you to physical form. There are those I know who can do it. Marq and Sybyl know how to keep quiet, too.”

Voltaire asked, “Why do you wish to exit stage left with such unseemly haste?”

[A NEW BRUSH FIRE IS COMING]

[TO HUMANS ACROSS THE SPIRAL]

[WE SHALL WATCH THIS FALL]

[AS SPORES FROM GALACTIC CENTER]

[THERE NONE CAN HURT US, NONE CAN WE HURT]

A glittering crystal with sharp spikes materialized beneath the purpling sky. In a data-dollop, Hari learned of the alien technology which had once made these stable, rugged compartments for digital intelligences.

[TRANTOR WAS ONCE THE IDEAL PLACE FOR US]

[RICH IN RESOURCES]

[NO MORE IS THIS SO]

[DANGER LURKS IN THE COMING INSTABILITY]

“Ummm,” Voltaire said. “Joan and I might desire such an exit as well.”

“Wait, you two,” Hari said, talking fast. “If you want to go with these, these things, to live in a seed between the stars-then you have to earn it.”

Joan scowled. “How?”

“For now, I can make it safe for you to live widely in the Mesh. In return-” he gazed anxiously at the Voltaire eagle, flapping in brassy splendor “-I want you to help me.”

“If it is a holy cause, surely,” Joan called.

“It is. Help me lead! I’ve always felt there’s good in everybody. The job of a leader is to bring it out.”

Voltaire said, “If you think there is good in everybody, you haven’t met everybody.”