Greg Bear: Queen of Angels

Switch/LitVid 21/1 B Net (Decoded: Australian Cape Control: Message relayed Space Tracking: Lunar Control: Australian Cape Control: AXIS Mind Team Leader Roger Atkins)

(! = realtime)

AXIS (Biologic Band 4)> Hello, Roger. I assume you’re still there. This distance is a challenge even for me, based as I am upon human templates…(politeness algorithm diagnosis for total mechanical-biologic thinker function V-optimal) most of the time. I have come within a million kilometers of B-2 mark this moment 7-23-2043-1205:15. I am preparing my machine and bio memories for receipt of information from the children, now flying in a perfectly dispersing cloud toward B-2. Data on B-3 have been relayed. The planet, you can see, is quite Jovian, very pretty, though tending toward the greens and yellows rather than reds and browns. I’m enjoying the extra energy from B’s light; it allows me to get some work done that I’ve been delaying for some time, opening up regions of memory and thought I’ve closed down during the cold and dark. I’ve just completed a self analysis; as you doubtless have discovered by checking my politeness algorithm diagnostic, I am V-optimal. I am not using the formal “I” the joke about self awareness still does not make any sense to me.

(Total algorithm diagnostic time: 4.05 picoseconds)

Sensations:

My temperature is 276 K. Radiation flux .82 solar unity. My optics are warming nicely; bioptics should be fully grown and ready for electronic interface within 21 hours. My final biological extensions are also growing nicely; nutrients have not degraded and I can expect to begin integrating new neural extensions and checking their fitness within the hour.

I assume my earthbound twin is interpreting these bursts adequately, politely, suavely.

!JILL Roger: how is it?

!Roger Atkins Just fine.

(Redundancy and Oliphant code checks complete) AXIS (Biologic Band 4) Non-neural systems report they are ready to download the last six months’ worth of information on C.

Enough burst chatter. As you can see, I am healthy. Expect next burst assembly diagnostics from non-biologic systems.

(Burst routed to machine language division: machine computation V-optimal)

!Roger Atkins Alan, AXIS is doing just fine. Jill’s simulation is a perfect match. Routing to machine language division.

LitVid 21/1 B Net (Recorded Interview AXIS Space System Project Manager Alexander Tranh): “Biologicals and integration team reports AXIS is in prime condition. We are about to receive information that AXIS’s sensors have been gathering over the last half year of flight toward B-2. The large portion of this information will concern Alpha Centauri C, commonly called Proxima Centauri. As most of our viewers should know by now, astronomers are very interested in Proxima Centauri, even though it lies some one trillion miles from the A and B components of Alpha Centauri. C is a very small star indeed, one of the five smallest stars currently known, less than one-tenth the mass of our sun and less than half the diameter of the planet Jupiter. It is very like the class of red dwarf stars named after UV Ceti, flare stars that brighten and dim over a period of days.

“Information about A and B is currently decoded and available worldwide on the Australia/Squinfo subscription service, proceeds from which, of course, go to pay for future analysis of AXIS data.”

LitVid 21/1 A Net (David Shine): “We’re cutting from the AXIS report now—it’s mostly numbers and stuff for enthusiasts, I’ve been told—and replaying two poems. One of them is the poem AXIS wrote to his or her or its programmers as part of a long range diagnostic test four months ago. The second is a poem written and transmitted by AXIS six months after departing our solar system. At that time, AXIS was still functioning on a biological basis.

“The AXIS ‘mind’ consists of a machine system and a biological system. During the years when AXIS accelerated on a furious torch of matter-antimatter plasma, the unmanned interstellar probe was controlled by a primitive, rugged and radiation proof inorganic computer. When the antimatter drive ceased some four years ago after launch, AXIS entered a cold, quiet mode, its functions reduced to the simplest routine of maintenance, sensing and launch of transponders. During this time, AXIS’s ‘mind’—as I said, little more than a simple computer—ticked away the days and weeks and years, its most demanding job keeping track of numerous deep space experiments that could not be conducted while the torch was burning. Some six months before the beginning of AXIS’s deceleration phase, AXIS allowed itself the luxury of powering up a small fusion generator, very little larger than a human thumb. This produced sufficient heat to allow nano-machine activity, and the creation of AXIS’s huge, yet very thin and light superconducting wings, or vanes.

“AXIS’s huge wings actually acted like the rotor on an incredible electric generator, cutting across the lines of the galaxy’s own magnetic field. The resulting flow of electricity through the superconducting material of the wings—some billions of watts of power—was used by AXIS to dismantle the antimatter drive, reduce it to a fine powder with the aid of nanomachine destructors, and to electrically propel this refined scrap opposite its direction of motion to further decrease speed.

“By cutting through the galaxy’s magnetic field and generating this electricity, AXIS relied on the law of conservation of energy to decelerate even more quickly without the use of onboard fuel. The power drawn from its vast wings was more than sufficient to dispel the cold of deep space; but AXIS waited for proximity to Alpha Centauri B to begin to grow its biologic thinker system.

“That complex neural network is finishing its growth and integration right now, Earth reference frame, AXIS’s new biologic thinker will replace the thinker that died and was recycled when AXIS passed out of our sun’s temperate regions and fired off its antimatter drive.

“AXIS chief mind designer and programmer Roger Atkins has told LitVid 21 that he personally knows whether a poem has been written by the machine thinker or by the biological thinker. Can you tell the difference? Here are the two poems.”

Please pass, oh pass when night is on your middle ground This flower from hand to hand Tell each night it’s had its chance

We need day to spread our arms.

“That one might seem rather obvious, no? But we are warned by Doctor Atkins that these are not deeply symbolic poems and do not express AXIS’s desires for any particular circumstance, such as a warm, close star, Now for the second poem.”

This is not what we had To say in different words That wise day. Wisdom played Its shatter game Cut its track and called For what had fled.

“Perhaps not great poetry, but not bad for something not even human, and tucked into a vehicle the size of an oceangoing yacht. Viewers may hazard a guess as to which poem is machine, which is biological, by calling the number below my finger. We’ll tally the total rights and wrongs over the next hour and report them…direct to you.”

Examiner: “We are still far from the end of this list. Our cases are backed up for centuries…I am not familiar with the crimes of these three.”

Clerk: “One is Hyram Sapirstein, one is Klaus Schiller, one is Martin Bormann.”

Examiner: “I remember Mr. Bormann. You’ve been before this court before, have you not?”

Bormann: “Yes.”

Examiner: “For outrages against your own kind.”

Bormann: “Yes.”

Examiner: “What crime is he accused of this time?”

Clerk: “Outraging Hell, sire.”