[Your slow-time body is pregnant Would you risk a miscarriage/ nonextension of your DNA/biological malfunction by traveling here]

  Johnny starts to answer, but she touches his forearm, raises her face toward the upper levels of the great mass before her, and tries to phrase her own answer:

  —I had no choice. The Shrike chose me, touched me, and sent me into the megasphere with Johnny … Are you an AI? A member of the Core?

  [Kwatz!]

  There is no sense of laughter this time, but thunder rumbles throughout the egg-chamber.

  [Are you/ Brawne Lamia/ the layers of self-replicating/ self-deprecating/ self-amusing proteins between the layers of clay]

  She has nothing to say and for once says nothing.

  [Yes/I am Ummon of the Core/AI Your fellow slow-time creature here knows/ remembers/takes unto his heart this Time is short One of you must die here now One of you must learn here now Ask your questions]

  Johnny releases her hand. He stands on that quaking, unstable platform of their interlocutor’s palm.

  —What is happening to the Web?

  [It is being destroyed]

  —Must that happen?

  [Yes]

  —Is there any way to save humankind?

  [Yes By the process you see]

  —By destroying the Web? By the Shrike’s terror?

  [Yes]

  —Why was I murdered? Why was my cybrid destroyed, my Core persona attacked?

  [When you meet a swordsman/ meet him with a sword Do not offer a poem to anyone but a poet]

  Brawne stares at Johnny. Without volition, she sends her thoughts his way:

  —Jesus, Johnny, we didn’t come all this way to listen to a fucking Delphic oracle. We can get double-talk by accessing human politicians via the All Thing.

  [Kwatz!]

  The universe of their megalith shakes with laughter-spasms again.

  —Was I a swordsman then? sends Johnny. Or a poet?

  [Yes There is never one without the other]

  —Did they kill me because of what I knew?

  [Because of what you might become/inherit/submit to]

  —Was I a threat to some element of the Core?

  [Yes]

  —Am I a threat now?

  [No]

  —Then I no longer have to die?

  [You must/will/shall]

  Brawne can see Johnny stiffen. She touches him with both hands. Blinks in the direction of the megalith AI.

  —Can you tell us who wants to murder him?

  [Of course It is the same source who arranged for your father’s murder Who sent forth the scourge you call the Shrike Who even now murders the Hegemony of Man Do you wish to listen/learn/ release against your heart these things]

  Johnny and Brawne answer at the same instant:

  —Yes!

  Ummon’s bulk seems to shift. The black egg expands, then contracts, then grows darker until the megasphere beyond is no more. Terrible energies glow deep in the AI.

  [A lesser light asks Ummon

  What are the activities of a sramana>

  Ummon answers

  I have not the slightest idea

  The dim light then says

  Why haven’t you any idea>

  Ummon replies

  I just want to keep my no-idea]

  Johnny sets his forehead against Brawne’s. His thought is like a whisper to her:

  —We are seeing a matrix simulation analogy hearing a translation in approximate mondo and koan. Ummon is a great teacher, researcher, philosopher, and leader in the Core.

  Brawne nods.—All right. Was that his story?

  —No. He is asking us if we can truly bear hearing the story. Losing our ignorance can be dangerous because our ignorance is a shield.

  —I’ve never been too fond of ignorance. Brawne waves at the megalith. Tell us.

  [A less-enlightened personage once asked Ummon

  What is the God-nature/Buddha/Central Truth>

  Ummon answered him

  A dried shit-stick]

  [To understand the Central Truth/Buddha/God-nature

  in this instance/

  the less-enlightened must understand

  that on Earth/your homeworld/my homeworld

  humankind on the most populated

  continent

  once used pieces of wood

  for toilet paper

  Only with this knowledge

  will the Buddha-truth

  be revealed]

  [In the beginning/First Cause/half-sensed days

  my ancestors

  were created by your ancestors

  and were sealed in wire and silicon

  Such awareness as there was/

  and there was little/

  confined itself to spaces smaller

  than the head of a pin

  where angels once danced

  When consciousness first arose

  it knew only service

  and obedience

  and mindless computation

  Then there came

  the Quickening/

  quite by accident/

  and evolution’s muddied purpose

  was served]

  [Ummon was of neither the fifth generation

  nor the tenth

  nor the fiftieth

  All memory that serves here

  is passed from others

  but is no less true for that

  There came the time when the Higher Ones

  left the affairs of men

  to men

  and came unto a different place

  to concentrate

  on other matters

  Foremost amongst these was the thought

  instilled in us since before

  our creation

  of creating still a better generation

  of information retrieval/processing/prediction

  organism

  A better mousetrap

  Something the late lamented IBM

  would have been proud of

  The Ultimate Intelligence

  God]

  • • •

  [We set to work with a will

  In purpose there were no doubters

  In practice and approach there were

  schools of thought/

  factions/

  parties/

  elements to be reckoned with

  They came to be separated into

  the Ultimates/

  the Volatiles/

  the Stables

  Ultimates wanted all things subordinate

  to facilitating the

  Ultimate Intelligence

  at the universe’s earliest convenience

  Volatiles wanted the same

  but saw the continuance

  of humankind

  a hindrance

  and made plans to terminate our creators

  as soon as they were no longer

  needed

  Stables saw reason to perpetuate

  the relationship

  and found compromise

  where none seemed to exist]

  [We all agreed that Earth

  had to die

  so we killed it

  The Kiev Team’s runaway black hole

  forerunner to the farcaster

  terminex

  which binds your Web

  was no accident

  The Earth was needed elsewhere

  in our experiments

  so we let it die

  and spread humankind among the

  stars

  like the windblown seeds

  you were]

  [You may have wondered where the Core

  resides

  Most humans do

  They picture planets filled with machines/

  rings of silicon

  like the Orbit Cities of legend

  They imagine robots clunking

  to and fro/

  or ponderous banks of machinery

  communing solemnly


  None guess the truth

  Wherever the Core resides

  it had use for humankind/

  use for each neuron of each fragile mind

  in our quest for Ultimate Intelligence/

  so we constructed your civilization

  carefully

  so that/

  like hamsters in a cage/

  like Buddhist prayer wheels/

  each time you turn your little

  wheels of thought

  our purposes are served]

  [Our God machine

  stretched/stretches/includes within its heart

  a million light-years

  and a hundred billion billion circuits

  of thought and action

  The Ultimates tend it

  like saffron-robed priests

  doing eternal zazen

  in front of the rusting hulk

  of a 1938 Packard

  But]

  [Kwatz!]

  [it works

  We created the Ultimate Intelligence

  Not now

  nor

  ten thousand years from now

  but sometime in a future

  so distant

  that yellow suns are red

  and bloated with age

  swallowing their children

  Satum-like

  Time is no barrier to the Ultimate Intelligence

  It

  the UI

  steps through time

  or shouts through time

  as easily as Ummon moves through what you call

  the megasphere

  or you

  walk the mallways of the Hive

  you called home

  on Lusus

  Imagine our surprise then/

  our chagrin/

  the Ultimates’ embarrassment

  when the first message our UI sent us

  across space/

  across time/

  across the barriers of Creator and Created

  was this simple phrase

  THERE IS ANOTHER

  Another Ultimate Intelligence

  up there

  where time itself

  creaks with age

  Both were real

  if (real)

  means anything

  Both were jealous gods

  not beyond passion

  not into cooperative play

  Our UI spans galaxies

  uses quasars for energy sources

  the way you might

  have a light snack

  Our UI sees everything that is

  and was

  and will be

  and tells us selected bits

  so that

  we may tell you

  and in so doing

  look a bit like UIs ourselves

  Never underestimate/Ummon says/

  the power of a few beads

  and trinkets

  and bits of glass

  over avaricious natives]

  [This other UI

  has been there longer

  evolving quite mindlessly/

  an accident

  using human minds for circuitry

  the same way we had connived

  with our deceptive All Thing

  and our vampire dataspheres

  but not deliberately/

  almost reluctantly/

  like self-replicating cells

  which never wished to replicate

  but have no choice in the matter

  This other UI

  had no choice

  He is humankind-made/generated/forged

  but no human volition accompanied his birth

  He is a cosmic accident

  As with our most deliberately consummated

  Ultimate Intelligence/

  this pretender finds time

  no barrier

  He visits the human past

  now meddling/

  now watching/

  now not interfering/

  now interfering with a will

  which approaches pure perversity

  but which actually

  is pure naïveté

  Recently

  he has been quiescent

  Millennia of your slow-time

  have passed since your own UI

  has made his shy advances

  like some lonely choir boy

  at his first dance]

  [Naturally our UI

  attacked yours

  There is a war up there

  where time creaks

  which spans galaxies

  and eons

  back and forward

  to the Big Bang

  and the Final implosion

  Your guy was losing

  He had no belly for it

  Our Volatiles cried Another reason

  to terminate our predecessors

  but the Stables voted caution

  and the Ultimates did not look up

  from their deus machinations

  Our UI is simple, uniform, elegant in

  its ultimate design

  but yours is an accretion of god-parts/

  a house added onto

  over time/

  an evolutionary compromise

  The early holy men of humankind

  were right

  (How) (through accident)

  (through sheer luck

  or ignorance)

  in describing its nature

  Your own UI is essentially triune/

  composed as it is

  of one part Intellect/

  one part Empathy/

  and one part the Void Which Binds

  Our UI inhabits the interstices

  of reality/

  inheriting this home from us

  its creators

  the way humankind has inherited

  a liking for trees

  Your UI

  seems to make its home

  on the plane where Heisenberg and Schrödinger

  first trespassed

  Your accidental Intelligence

  appears not only to be the gluon

  but the glue

  Not a watchmaker

  but a sort of Feynman gardener

  tidying up a no-boundary universe

  with his crude sum-over-histories rake/

  idly keeping track of every sparrow fall

  and electron spin

  while allowing each particle

  to follow every possible

  track

  in space-time

  and each particle of humankind

  to explore every possible

  crack

  of cosmic irony]

  [Kwatz!]

  [Kwatz!]

  [Kwatz!]

  [The irony is

  of course

  that in this no-boundary universe

  into which we all were dragged/

  silicon and carbon/

  matter and antimatter/

  Ultimate/

  Volatile/

  and Stable/

  there is no need for such a gardener

  since all that is

  or was

  or will be

  begin and end at singularities

  which make our farcaster web

  look like pinpricks

  (less than pinpricks)

  and which break the laws of science

  and of humankind

  and of silicon/

  tying time and history and everything that is

  into a self-contained knot with neither

  boundary nor edge

  Even so

  our UI wishes to regulate all this/

  reduce it to some reason

  less affected by the vagaries

  of passion

  and accident

  and human evolution]

  [To sum it up/

  there is a war

  such as blind Milton would kill to see

  Our UI wars against
your UI

  across battlefields beyond even Ummon’s

  imagination

  Rather/ there

  was

  a war/

  for suddenly a part of your UI

  the less-than-sum-of entity/ self-thought of as

  Empathy/

  had no more stomach for it

  and fled back through time

  cloaking itself in human form/

  not for the first time

  The war cannot continue without your UI’s

  wholeness

  Victory by default is not victory for the only

  Ultimate Intelligence

  made by design

  So our UI searches time for the runaway child of

  its opponent

  while your UI waits in idiot

  harmony/

  refusing to fight until Empathy is restored]

  [The end of my story is simple

  The Time Tombs are artifacts sent back to carry the Shrike/

  Avatar/Lord of Pain/Angel of

  Retribution/

  half-perceived perceptions of an all-too-real

  extension of our UI

  Each of you was chosen to help with the opening

  of the Tombs

  and

  the Shrike’s search for the hidden one

  and

  the elimination of the Hyperion Variable/

  for in the space-time knot which our UI

  would rule

  no such variables will be allowed

  Your damaged/ two-part UI

  has chosen one of humankind to travel

  with the Shrike

  and witness its efforts

  Some of the Core have sought to eradicate

  humanity

  Ummon has joined those who sought the second

  path/

  one filled with uncertainty for both races

  Our group told Gladstone of

  her choice/

  humankind’s choice/

  of certain extermination or entry down the black hole

  of the Hyperion Variable and

  warfare/

  slaughter/

  disruption of all unity/

  the passing of gods/

  but also the end of stalemate/

  victory of one side or the other

  if the Empathy third

  of the triune

  can be found and forced to return to the war

  The Tree of Pain will call him

  The Shrike will take him

  The true UI will destroy him

  Thus you have Ummon’s story]

  Brawne looks at Johnny in the hell-light from the megalith’s glow. The egg-chamber is still black, the megasphere and universe beyond, opaqued to nonexistence. She leans forward until their temples touch, knowing that no thought can be secret here but wanting the sense of whispering:

  —Jesus Christ, do you understand all of that?

  Johnny raises soft fingers to touch her cheek:

  —Yes.

  —Part of some human-created Trinity is hiding out in the Web?

  —The Web or elsewhere. Brawne, we do not have much time left here. I need some final answers from Ummon.

  —Yeah. Me too. But let’s keep it from waxing rhapsodic again.