Count to a Trillion

by John C. Wright

  “You could ask Blackie to dope me up again,” snorted Montrose. “But of course I’d bite. Where y’all keep the ketchup?”

  “I have a question for the Learned Montrose,” Narcís D’Aragó broke in. “The difference in what we can call the racial intelligence quotient defines the relative utility of the Client species, Man, to the Patron species, the Hyades Domination, is expressed in this formula.” A touch on his bracelet made certain of the floor symbols brighten for emphasis. “The delta of the relative utility defines the curve expressing minimal–maximum cost-efficiency for dispatching the World-Armada. That is expressed here, the political game-theory expressions. The Beta Section of symbols which describes the galaxy, apparently has additional figures, a type of star-map, showing the lines of communication, the orbits of incoming fleets or travel routes or something of the sort, reaching from Epsilon Taurus in Hyades to Sol. The value—if we are translating the figures correctly—equals the mass of the gas giant astronomers detected in orbit there. Perhaps that is a vessel, not a gas giant. Or perhaps the gas giant was to be totally converted to fuel to launch flotillas of smaller vessels this way. The symbol did not distinguish between mass and energy. I am wondering on what grounds you concluded their launch date? Apparently there is a formula in here determining not just the date, but the composition of the Armada, its acceleration—how did you deduce it?”

  “The composition? That I don’t know. One of those expressions is their launch-energy calculation. We can deduce the energy-volume and intelligence of whatever is being sent against us. A small flotilla of very large ships or a very large flotilla of small ships, it is all the same as far as the total mass-energy of useful weaponry is concerned. It could be a gas cloud or a dirigible gas giant. Doesn’t matter. We know the total. The number is large.”

  “And the launch date?”

  “It can be calculated from their expression controlling our value to them.”

  “What is our value to them? What do they want with us? Do you remember?”

  “No, I—wait—” He started to speak, but stopped. Because he did remember.

  His eyes grew round.

  4. Memory Fragment

  He would have expected their symbol for the Milky Way galaxy to be a double spiral. It was not. The position of the visible suns in the arms of the galaxy was not what the Monument Builders had emphasized as the identifying symbol: Instead it was a Cartesian square of text, showing the black-body radiation wavelengths of the gravitational centers of the galaxy, with an additional ring of symbols which could deciphered into the absorption characteristics and geometry of the gas cloud surrounding the Milky Way and her gravitationally-trapped neighbors. In his mind’s eye, Montrose converted the glyphs in the Zeta Segment into a map that could visualize in crisp detail. To the Monument Builders, the galaxy was not a double spiral of light, but a black doughnut with a dark heart.

  It was easy to assign a fragment of his mind to the task of detecting the pattern in the strings of number-symbols. The fourth degree expressions were the six parameters of orbital mechanics, which identified specific stars. The fifth degree gave not orbits, but acceleration and decelerations of moving bodies.

  The stars of the Hyades Cluster were shown swinging along in the great orbits around the core of the galaxy. Here was Sol, tracing out another orbit. Chains of acceleration and deceleration, like threads of a spiderweb, reached through the diagram. A set of lines connected the two: the path elements of a coming armada.

  Other mathematical expressions described volumes of spheres, expanding from certain centers over time. Here were equations he recognized as hierarchical cascade functions.

  Even in his superior state of mind, he was not immune to fear. If anything, the sensation was sharper, more precise, scalpel-like, because he saw more of the implications, more possible dangers, than his sleepwalker mind.

  That equation was divarication function applied to governing systems, to prevent orders from being mutated and misinterpreted when passing from decision-centers to action. The theorem could apply to any information system, the core in a computer, the brain in an organism, the court of a sovereign …

  It was a pantomime in mathematical sign language to show the size and boundaries of the movements of human populations into the stars, the degree of control.

  The equations taken all together, smaller symbols insider larger ones which in turn were written in lines and shapes to form larger symbols yet, all were rich with meaning. If put into words, it would have said:

  THE MATTER-DISTORTION PROCESS KNOWN AS LIFE WHEN FOUND DISQUIETING THE MAGNETOSPHERE OF THE ANTIMATTER STAR AT V 886 CENTURI TO BE RESTRICTED TO THE STATUS OF NEGATIVE-POWER IMBALANCE, HENCE ARE CLIENTS (PASSIVE RECEPIENTS OF ACTION) OF THE ACTIONS OF DOMINANT POWER (HYADES CLUSTER). IF DETERMINED TO POSSESS SUFFICIENT UTILITY TO BE HELD IN INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE TO THE IMPERATIVES DESCRIBED IN THE FOLLOWING EQUATIONS … ALL OTHER OPTIONS ARE SUBJECT TO RETALIATION OF THE FOLLOWING MAGNITUDES … PAIN IS THE DETERRENT OF NONCOMPLIANCE, INCLUDING CESSATION OF MATTER-DISTORTION PROCESS KNOWN AS DEATH …

  Then came a group of symbols he could not read. But the next group after that he was able to convert into a star-chart using the same semi-automatic “idiot savant” segment of his mind as read the greater galactic map. He could read the star-chart and accompanying legend.

  DEATH … CASUALTY RATES OF NINE OUT OF TEN ARE EXPECTED AND ACCEPTABLE … FIRST DERACINATION SWEEP … SOL, ALPHA CENTAURI, 36 OPHIUCHUS, OMICRON ERIDANI, 61 CYGNI, 70 OPHIUCHUS, 82 ERIDANI, ALTAIR, DELTA PAVONIS, EPSILON ERIDANI, EPSILON INDI, ETA CASSIOPEIAE, GLIESE 570, HR 7703, TAU CETI …

  5. Deracination

  That was what he remembered. But nothing was clear. He could not summon back the equations themselves. Inside the hollow circle of the Table Round, the Monument underfoot remained meaningless to him, a chaotic fractal pattern triangles and curves, sine waves and Celtic knots. The crystal clarity of thought could not come back to him.

  And he was thinking: Sleepwalker mind? Is that what you think of me? Damn you. Come out of my skull and say that to my face! Our face … um. Aw, pox on it.

  Montrose repeated to the Hermeticists the message he recalled, the stars from the star-map. The dark chamber was as silent as a winter morning. They listened without moving.

  He said, “They mean to sweep us up like seeds and plant us as colonists on other worlds, places we now know there are semi-earthlike bodies. It is forced migration on a massive scale: The figures involve populations in the billions … but the whole thing is crazy. I must have read it wrong! Why not use their own people? What advantage be there to them to move us to other worlds? It would be like the British transporting Australian Aborigines to Ireland.”

  Del Azarchel said, “You said they were machines. Do you remember why? What part of the symbolism shows that?”

  Montrose shook his head. “I ain’t sure. I reckon that was just me trying to simple-up things for the yahoo in the room. The difference between biological, biochemical, electronic, or neuro-electronic information systems, at that level of civilization—no difference, is it? Once you can rebuild yourself from the molecular level up, and out of any substance you fancy, soft or hard, stored as a pattern in a mainframe or spun out into any form of matter need calls for—no such thing as machines you can properly call by that name. It’s all alive. Or all dead.”

  Del Azarchel said, “Is that something the Monument says? Or is that your speculation?”

  “Look yonder. The nine recurring cycles in the Mu and Nu acreage of symbols—obviously meant to be read as one group, not two—the Monument Builders had an expression for the volume of information content in circulation in the combined mental systems of a civilization. It expresses nested topographies of ever-increasing levels of Superintelligence. From their point of view, the mental systems, computers and computer-engineers, libraries and librarians, is all one thing. One system, at least as far as their calculus is concerned. A Noösphere.”

 
Montrose pointed at the Monument image shining on the floor. “There. I think the mind-body expression is addressed in the main sequence of the Omicron group, which looks so weirdly like an E8 classification of complex simple Lie algebras. I ain’t surprised if the relation of self-awareness to inanimate matter falls into a that yonder root lattice: We’d expect any semiotic system to have the properties of trivial center, simply connected, and simply laced.”

  He stared at the swirls and knots of the nonlinear writing system, trying to grasp the elusive half-forgotten thought.

  “If I am right, the mind-body expression applies to any race, any planet, any form of intelligence anywhere. It is the nature of intelligence itself. The way matter encodes thoughts. Of course, I suppose anyone building a monument like this, a universal message meant to be read by any form of intelligence that blind and crazy Mother Nature can invent, the Monument Builders just have to have a firm understanding of the nature of the mind. They’d have to, wouldn’t they? Otherwise, there couldn’t be no monument to build.”

  Father Reyes said delicately, “The yahoo?”

  Montrose blinked as if waking from a trance, and stared at the other man uncomprehendingly. “Beg pardon?”

  “You said you were trying to simplify things for the yahoo. Who is that?”

  “Oh. That monkey thing that was in the room I was at. I am not sure what it was doing there, but it left once Del Azarchel and I started talking. It was in a little cart. I remember wondering if the creature had been brought from a zoo, or was a pet of Del Azarchel.…”

  Reyes y Pastor gave a grim and ironic little smile. “It was Del Azarchel.”

  “What? No. I remember talking with Del Azarchel. About the Monument.”

  “You were talking with Del Azarchel’s model. The yahoo was the real Del Azarchel. That is what humans look like to the Posthuman, to the daemon, living in your head.” He uttered a chuckle, seeing the look on Menelaus’s face. “I do not mean you are possessed! In that same way that Socrates had a driving voice that compelled him to scale the slopes of highest thought, what he called his daemon, you have a daemon in you. It is benevolent, I am sure. Somewhat benevolent.” Reyes y Pastor turned to the group. “We have heard from this primitive version of the most Learned Menelaus Montrose. Is there anything more to be gleaned from him?”

  A murmur ran through the chamber. Montrose saw the overhead screens record a vote of “nay.”

  Reyes y Pastor continued mildly. “Then let us by all means move to the main business of the Conclave. I am assuming we all favor the creation of forms of intelligence to surpass Man. May I call the question?”

  Another murmur of assent. There was no debate on the point: The screens overhead flashed a vote of “aye.”

  Montrose was staggered by the overweening pride of it all. The Hermeticists fully intended to guide human evolution through the next eight millenniums of time.

  But then he reflected. The threat from the Hyades was so remote in space, so far off in time, that only the most audacious plans could now be dreamed that might one day, centuries and millenniums hence, be fruitful.

  And, come to think of it, what else could the Xypotech be meant to do? Montrose imagined hundreds, or thousands, of buildings housing these vast minds, fortresses and warehouses and factories of them, stretching from sea to sea, across Asia, across the sea-bottoms, orbiting in vast flotillas between Earth and Moon—and perhaps someday—the machines of man would make other machines to make other machines yet, years and centuries and generations of work. Would it be enough to mount a defense for the humans left on the green surface of the world? Could the Solar System be made into a fortification vast enough to hinder, slow, and fend off what came across the darkness from the Hyades? What kind of navy would match the godlike alien power? What kind of weapons? What kind of minds would be smart enough?

  The vision startled him. Perhaps the Hermeticists were right to think big. Thinking small would not solve a problem like this.

  Montrose snapped back to the present moment, wondering at what he had just heard.

  Father Pastor had spoken: “We are crippled by a lack of data. Fortunately, we have exactly one prototype working model of a Posthuman consciousness as our ally! Therefore the chair will entertain a motion to put the question of the best design for a race to supplant Man to our own Crewman Fifty-One, whose usefulness to the Conclave in times past has proven itself.”

  Montrose was frozen in that hush of shock that comes as a prologue to outrage. He could not believe such an idea could be proposed in such bland tones. The nodding and whispering faces around the table were blank and bored. To them the notion was routine.

  Reyes y Pastor was still talking. “Her Serene Highness has made it clear that she wishes no one to interfere with the delicate neural surgery done so far, and yet I think we must discuss the possibility of, ah, a second medical intervention to waken the other Montrose, the daemon, to learn what we can from him. The floor is open to whomever wishes to speak.”

  “I damn well wish to damn well speak, you pustulating bastard.”

  Montrose stood up. He was not doing this to make himself look imposing (although this did) but to allow him to draw his heavy dirk from where it was tucked behind the folded of cloth of the long hood hanging down his back. He casually put one hand behind his back, and felt the grip of the knife handle.

  The rational part of his mind told him he could not escape from a locked chamber with seventy-one men, now young and strong, and with who-knew-what additives and accelerants coursing through their bloodstreams, or tweaked into their nervous systems. Only Narcís D’Aragó was visibly carrying a weapon, but Montrose assumed the others were armed as well, because in their situation he would have been. So he told the rational part of his mind to shut up.

  “What in the world, or in hell, make you gents think you got any right to say what happens to me? You thinking of tinkering with my brain without my say-so? My damned brain?! Sounds like you done it before. Did I help you conquer the Earth? I doubt y’all were cunning enough to do it by your own poxy selves. Did I help kill off the Captain, you hellbound traitorous mutineers? Well, I am not helping you again! I’ll see you in perdition being rogered by the scabby blue member of Old Nick first! And—”

  And he stopped because the Hermeticists seemed startled. Startled at him? No. To judge by their expressions, they had already dismissed anything he was going to say. He was just a donkey in their eyes, a body that carried around the useful daemon of Mr. Hyde.

  Was there something else in the room? He looked left and right only with the corners of his eyes, not moving his head. Yet he saw nothing that had not been there a moment ago. He looked up.

  The screen showing the many-branching conversation tree had shot out a new thread or two, and the colors changed as a previous conversation was prioritized—the bookmark for the comment where D’Aragó had mentioned how they could destroy anyone they could not suborn, when Montrose asked if they meant for him to kill himself—that was now lit up in red, and had the floor.

  Montrose noticed something odd. No one seemed to have his hand on his red control amulet at that moment. Some of the Hermeticists were reaching into their suits, no doubt for pistols, others had their hands on their chair-arms, and were rising to their feet.

  Who had pushed the button to change which topic? The screen notation that held the minutes of the meeting was now marked as Speaker X. Who was X? According to the mark, it was someone waiting to speak. Someone not in the room, watching remotely.

  The Hermeticists were motionless as hares.

  Montrose licked his lips. The only person he could think of who was not here was the Princess Rania. He said, “I yield the floor to the next speaker for one minute, for a comment or a motion.”

  A voice rang out like a cold bell of iron.

  It was not the Princess. It was not even remotely human. But it was Del Azarchel’s voice.

  Learned members of the Conclave! Until such time as y
ou recognize me as the Senior Officer of the Landing Party, I can serve you only in an advisory capacity. I have made a preliminary model of Montrose/Daemon double-consciousness, and compared it with your previous library of cliometric calculations, extrapolating the possible action to a time-depth of eight thousand years.

  The findings agree with my own sense of judgment. Montrose, whether in Human or Posthuman form, will not cooperate with our endeavors.

  11

  Posthuman Humanity

  1. Artificial Self-Awareness

  Each of the black-garbed old-young men was tense, their expressions hovering between curiosity, elation, or awe. They had not expected this voice—labeled X—to speak.

  X stood for Xypotechnology. Or perhaps it stood for Ximen. This was the only absent Hermeticist: Ximen Del Azarchel in his Posthuman version, as an Iron Ghost. Evidently the technicians had stirred the unliving creature to wakefulness. It had done some sort of calculation—cliometry, whatever that was—and it sounded like it had gone through an entire library of calculus to reach its conclusion. How long had it been since Montrose left the Gray Room? Less than an hour.

  Del Azarchel, the flesh-and-blood version, said, “I think we can persuade the Learned Montrose, given time.”

  And I think at a rate several orders of magnitude more carefully and swiftly than do you, employing modes of thought for which you have no terms. I have already reached the conclusion it would take you weeks and years to reach. You cling to a false idea of Montrose and his value, because otherwise the sacrifices I made to preserve him during the expedition would shame us. You can neither see the patterns in his behavior, nor have you spoken to the Posthuman version of him, who is, if anything, less ambiguous and hesitant. Montrose is your rival in this and in all matters.