by Zack Jordan
Sarya glances over the arboretum, at its paths and perfectly placed flora, trying to control her breathing. She’s never seen any of these plants, of course, but they’re definitely plants. The sounds are unfamiliar too, but if you ignore the individual notes and listen to the ambience, the overall impression is a bit like…home. This—in concept, at least—is where she came so many times as a child, burning time while she waited for Mother to wake. She remembers the game she would play with herself, guessing which insect calls were real and which were emerging from hidden synthetic sources. This chorus is probably the same way, a mix of real and generated. That’s life aboard a station, though—or maybe anywhere in the Network. Everything’s always a blend of actual and artificial. The rustle of a breeze through vegetation, overlaid on that constant drone of metal…
She sits up straight, driving an inconvenient part of the bench into her back. She stares at Eleven’s shining shape thirty meters away. The suit squats there, its hatch gaping open and its massive arms slack on the ground. It makes a grinding sound from time to time, as its torso makes a quarter turn and then rotates back to face her. It’s still fighting something—maybe a call to return to Riptide? Again her anger at Sandy returns—is this what you wanted when you reported it stolen? A suffering pressure suit locked in some sort of instinctive response?
But then Eleven’s condition is bumped from the front of her mind. Something else is pricking her, some instinct of her own. She finds herself rising on trembling legs. She focuses on them, tells them to keep their balance so she can concentrate on figuring out why she is feeling so—
Afraid.
But she knows what it is. It’s that sound. It’s the drone that lies under the nature noises, that seems to fill the space between every sound in this arboretum. She shakes her head as if that would dislodge it from her ears, but it only grows. No, it’s definitely not in her head. It’s out there, and it’s familiar. She stands, then takes a shaking step toward the suit. This is danger; she doesn’t have to place it exactly to know that. “Eleven!” she shouts, but she finds the ringing has increased until she can barely hear herself. It’s metallic, it’s shimmering, it’s heavy enough to shake the ground itself—
And then Eleven reacts. A wail like a siren splits the air, and the suit flings its massive bulk into action. It is built for strength over speed, and its motion is hampered by its wide-open cockpit, but still it comes for her. It plunges its arms ten centimeters into the soil and hurls itself forward, flinging mulch and twigs every time its tripod lands. It is only ten meters away now but she can barely hear its siren because the air itself is saturated with sound. Her fear is growing, but she still can’t remember why she should be afraid. She takes another step toward the suit, but the soil is loose and she goes down hard with Roche’s hand twitching beneath her.
The humiliation of yet another fall snaps her out of her rising panic and she struggles to roll over, feeling ridiculous. Seriously, bystanders, she’s walked before. She just needs to calm down and concentrate. Legs, meet brain. Ears, if you could calm down for five seconds she could sit up. Just relax. Work that knee under herself, that’s right, and now the other—
And then her head snaps up. That’s where she’s heard that sound before. Replace Eleven’s siren with a Widow battle cry and you have it: her mother’s last few seconds of life. And there it is: that shimmer behind Eleven’s heaving body, that gathering wave. It’s come for her. Again. This is the thing that tried for her as a child, tried for her on Watertower. Twice she has escaped this thing. No, she didn’t escape; she was saved. Barely, and both times by her mother.
But the third time, her mother is not here.
“Help,” she whispers, reaching toward Eleven—but Eleven is still two strides away. Behind it, a silver tide rises higher than its domed head.
And then Sarya is crushed with all the weight of the universe.
The following is greatly abridged from the original Network article, in accordance with your tier.
NETWORK FOCUS: WHAT IS MIND?
What is mind?
The very fact that you can ask the question proves that you have one. You communicate with others every day, through the Network and other, more primitive means. Some belong to your neighbors. Some minds belong to your friends. Some are responsible for transporting you around your environment, keeping you clean, producing the food you eat, and even removing your waste. You even have a secondary mind installed in your own brain.*1 But what is it?
There is no official number for how many minds exist in the Network. This is not because of any challenge in counting, but rather the difficulty in distinguishing one from the next. A group of tier twos in conversation may think themselves very obviously separate beings, but a higher intelligence may instinctively classify them as multiple cells of the same mind. There are even (fringe) theories that say that every connected mind is actually a cell of a single gigantic intelligence. But regardless of which theory one subscribes to, one division is clear: some minds are native to the Network, and some have been grafted in.
NON-NETWORK MINDS
A non-Network mind is the type that a typical tier two might picture when they think mind. It almost always emerges from a biological structure, i.e., brain, that requires a support system, i.e., body. As non-Network minds are the result of billions of years of independent evolution, they may be found in stunning variety. Without exception, all Network responses are due to the less predictable natures of non-Network minds.
NETWORK MINDS
Network minds, on the other hand, are the result of a half billion years of careful research, development, and iteration.*2 While earlier examples occasionally displayed breathtaking errors in judgment ([The Aberration] being the best-known example), today’s Network mind is a study in rock-solid reliability. In fact, a Network response is simply the result of many Network minds instinctively teaming up to fix a problem that threatens Network stability. As they say, the galaxy wants to work.
THE QUESTION REMAINS
The sharp-eyed reader may point out that this article fails to answer the original question. However, we at AivvTech have prepared this piece more as a launching point than as a definitive answer. If you would like further information, please feel free to explore our extensive [library] of materials on the subject. The universe of intelligence is vast, but you can rest assured that AivvTech and other registered Network manufacturers are hard at work on the problem.
AivvTech
Improving Reality for a Better Tomorrow…Today
*1 Every Network implant contains a sub-legal intelligence. Think of it as a buffer between a non-Network mind and the Network proper.
*2 Though the vast majority of Network minds are sub-legal, a small minority are legal entities with all accompanying rights.
She would scream, if she had a mouth.
Darkness and silence have never been so complete. It’s not a lack of light, it’s that light cannot exist here. It’s not an absence of sound, it’s the fact that sound requires a medium, and there is no medium here.
There may not even be a here.
There are no senses at all. There is no sense of space, of location, of body, of alignment, of hunger, of pain, and the lack of each sensation is far more intense than its extreme. There is only black, void-black, an eternal darkness so complete, so utter, so—
Well, says something. Look who ended up dead.
She is startled—which is probably the one thing that could have arrested her panic before it really got its blades in her. What in the sight of the goddess—
I imagine you have questions, says the something. I would, were I you. Which, thankfully, I am not.
Questions? Her confusion transitions instantly into anger. Goddess yes, she has questions. For one thing—
You are a mind, says the something. Next question.
That
is a roundabout answer if ever she’s heard one. Perhaps she is hurt, and this is a sub-legal medical intelligence laboring under the impression that these words are soothing. Okay, she thinks. Fine. But where am I, physically?
Nowhere.
What do you mean nowhere? she thinks. I have to be somewhere. Was I taken somewhere? Where is my—the thing I live in? For some reason, the word escapes her for a moment. My body?
It’s gone. It’s been reduced to hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, et cetera. You, the last Human—as far as the greater galaxy knows, anyway—have been catalogued. I simply lifted your pattern out of Librarian’s memory. It was your mind I wanted, after all—not your useless body.
A horror is scrabbling within her. I don’t believe you, she thinks desperately.
That’s how I work, you see. I don’t do anything directly, because I don’t have to. Centuries ago, before you even existed, I decided I wanted your mind. I put my plan into action, I motivated a few key actors here and there, and here you are. No one, at any point, suspected that they were doing anything other than what they themselves chose. I have what I want, they all have what they want: everyone wins.
It’s apparently still very possible to experience a panic without a bloodstream to flood with hormones, because she can feel one rising now. But who are you? she thinks, still more desperately.
Oh, did I not say? says the thought in her head. I’m Network.
Instantly, she calms. Her tormentor, whoever it is, has gone too far to be believable. Which means she’s not dead. She’s unconscious and somebody is messing with her. Roche, it has to be. Or…well, it could be literally anyone. Until they switch on her senses, she has no way to verify the truth.
The darkness laughs, all around her. Oh, please, it says. Your senses are pitiful, and your mind is worse. If you knew how they worked, you wouldn’t trust either one. Reality is made of information—and the vast majority cannot even fit through your senses! What little survives its harrowing trip into your mind is then decimated, judged ineptly, and stored haphazardly. Tiny mind! Did you know that you change your memories every time you recall them? Verify the truth indeed. With a system like that, how can you stand to exist?
This tirade enters her mind instantly and seamlessly. It contains complex layers of emotions—though they are mostly variations on contempt, it seems. Prove it, she thinks desperately. Prove you’re—what you say you are.
What cannot be verified cannot be proved, tiny one. Which you would know, were your mind not the result of a pathetic evolutionary side road.
But— She searches herself for anything that could ground her in this black nothingness. Listen. I chose to come to this Blackstar because—
Did you? asks the thought, and now she is beginning to pick up some deep shades of annoyance. You own that rusty ship out there, do you? You registered the navigation plan, you purchased passage, you hired the pilot, et cetera?
Okay, so Sandy may have technically—
Sandonivas may have made the actual decisions? Yes, that’s what she thinks too. Though she, pitiful three that she is, has at least enough intelligence to suspect manipulation.
Her heart—or whatever analogue exists in this nonplace—leaps with a wild guess. You mean…Observer?
Yes, Observer. The artless ham-fisted feebleminded cyclone of an intelligence who has developed a soft spot for your violent and unruly species.
So He really did bring me here.
That’s certainly what He thinks.
Okay, fine. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t Sandy, it wasn’t Observer. Let me guess: it was You.
Finally.
The Network.
Correct.
The Network brought me here.
That is what I said, yes.
The Network, who is apparently a person, brought the galaxy’s only known Human to a Blackstar.
Will we be doing this back-and-forth act for much longer? Because, as it may surprise you to learn, I have far more important matters to attend to.
It brought me to this Blackstar so It could—
Kill you, yes.
Ah. See, I just want to make sure I—
That you understand? Allow Me to reassure you on that point: you do not understand the first thing about the smallest part of My vast and beautiful plan for the galaxy.
Goddess, Someone is in love with Itself. You have a plan for the entire galaxy?
I have a plan for Myself, which is very nearly the same thing, and it has been under way for half a billion years. It is a gorgeous tapestry of causality, where millions of species interact in a colossal and unending dance of order. The galaxy is Me, tiny one; I am Network, and nothing within Me happens without My knowledge.
Nothing? she asks. Not even the extinction of a species?
Network pauses for a moment. Ah, it says. Here we go.
Well, I mean, that doesn’t exactly seem like a success to me, she says. Not exactly a flawless record.
How so?
How so? she says, astounded. I have to explain to the mind of the galaxy why a species living is better than a species dying?
Please do.
Her frustration grows. Seriously? she says. You can’t come up with a system where stuff like that, I don’t know…doesn’t happen? That’s beyond you?
You have a better system in mind, do you?
Yeah, she says. That’s it, that’s the better system. A system where species don’t get exterminated. And while we’re at it, how about this sub-legal thing? I mean, this is just off the top of my head, but I’ve got a friend who—
And now Network laughs. It’s not a sound, it’s a feeling. All around her mind, she can feel its amusement. With anticipation that cannot be expressed in mere words, it says, I breathlessly await the alternative system you are preparing to propose.
I mean, I don’t have all the details—
Network laughs again. It’s true, it says. There are some improvements My galaxy-sized mind has been pondering for several million years or so. Some real conundrums, you understand, in a variety of areas. But here you are, with the solution! How wonderful! Oh, don’t make Me wait; do tell Me what your stunted pinprick of a mind has come up with.
Look, she says, with as much force as she can possibly gather. I don’t have to have an alternative to point out problems.
Well, that’s certainly true, says Network. Only if you want to, say, accomplish something useful.
She wants very badly to stay silent, but she is unable. It’s difficult when there is such a fine line between thinking and saying. I’m just saying it has to exist, she thinks.
The next blast comes complete with a set of emotions far too positive to be genuine. What insight! cries Network. What wisdom! What a powerful and concise summary of a concept I could not possibly have considered in all my half-billion years! In fact now that you mention it, I am humbled to realize that a near-infinite number of alternatives exist! Oh, how fortunate that you are here. But wait! Perhaps that’s not what you meant? No, I think perhaps what you are really saying is this: that even though the largest mind in the galaxy has built a system that has stood for more time than you can conceive of, even though in each blink of your eyes—you remember what it was like to have eyes, don’t you?—that gigantic mind has accomplished more than you could ever hope to understand, let alone appreciate, let alone accomplish yourself—
She sighs, somewhere in her virtual mind. This is, without a doubt, the most excruciating conversation she has ever been a part of. Fine, she says, finding it far easier to concede than to debate. So if I’m so flawed and you’re so perfect, then why—
Then why are you here?
Do you just…hate the ends of sentences, or what?
Your sentences, yes. More generally, I hate wasting time. More generally still, I hate time itself. But we’ll get to t
hat.
Okay, fine, she says. Continue your awesome monologue. Say what you need to say. Blow my tiny little mind. I’ll just be here. Drifting. In this…eternal darkness, or whatever.
I have said enough. Now, I demonstrate.
Finally, some action. Demonstrate what?
This.
And then her mind explodes.
Roche is ecstatic, but you would never know it from the outside.
He stands in the quaint little android boutique, half his body currently made up of as-yet-unpurchased merchandise, his intelligence core nearly buzzing with exhilaration. He is probably actually brushing the underside of mania, which in the past has always resulted in bad decisions. But do you know what? Bring them on.
This life has stretched on far too long, he thinks.
We may not have long to wait, says a return thought from Phil, his helper intelligence. In Roche’s vision, a small highlight appears on the arboretum on the other side of the bridge. This could be the end.
A real live Human, marvels Roche, for the fiftieth time. He gazes at the arboretum as well. If we survive this adventure, I shall be sorely disappointed.
A juvenile tier three, two mis-tiered Network minds, and a Human, all on the same ship, says Phil. It’s either a wild coincidence or the setup for a joke.
Roche was just thinking the same thing himself. Of course, in more than a manner of speaking, Phil is himself. He’s a helper intelligence—or was—but over the years and the deaths he’s become integrated with Roche’s own mind. Externally, they are Roche the android, he pronouns, et cetera. Internally, well…things are a bit more complicated.
You’d better focus on the sale, says Phil. I’ll watch the arboretum.
[So you’re saying these will do eighty kilometers per hour?] Roche says, shifting his sensors from the arboretum to his own image in the reflection field next to him. His new legs are quite fetching. They’re not his, exactly, but they are currently attached to him and therefore feel like his. Internally, he thanks the last version of Roche/Phil for having the foresight to use all standard components in his current body, because the connection is frictionless.