Semper Human

by Ian Douglas

  “No,” Socrates told him. “The Core is about 350 light years in that direction.” Garroway sensed the gesture, deeper into an impenetrable haze of blue-white radiance beyond. “This is the Great Annihilator.”

  Garroway had heard of it. A black hole, yes…but not, as once had been imagined, the supermassive black hole at the Galaxy’s exact center. The true Galactic Core consisted of a black hole of about two million solar masses, but, until the Core Detonation wavefront reached the vicinity of Earth, there would be no physical evidence pinpointing it from Earth’s vicinity save for the observed movements of core stars, no light, no radiation of any sort.

  The Great Annihilator, on the other hand, was a black hole of only about fifteen solar masses, but it was far noisier—as heard from Earth, at any rate—than its far larger brother nearby. Twin shafts of high-energy radiation speared in opposite directions from the poles of its central hub, streams of positrons emerging from the turbulent areas above the black hole’s north and south poles. The interaction of antimatter with normal matter hundreds of light years from the singularity filled the Core with radio noise—the 511 keV screech of positronium annihilating its normal-matter counterpart—electrons. The object had been detected and named “The Great Annihilator” by Earth astronomers millennia ago, but the discovery had only deepened the mystery of the actual nature of the Galactic Core. By measuring the velocities of stars in the Annihilator’s immediate vicinity, astronomers had proven that it was a black hole, but not the far more massive one at the exact center that they’d been looking for.

  In Garroway’s day, of course, it had been well understood that the Xul Dyson cloud had been masking the radiation leakage from the actual Core, and would continue to do so until the Core Detonation crawled out into the Galactic suburbs and impinged upon waiting detectors and sense organs. The Great Annihilator, though, had become a footnote to Galactic cosmography, a little-brother satellite of the larger, better known singularity at GalCenter.

  The Core Detonation would have swallowed the Great Annihilator centuries ago. Evidently, the object had not been destroyed, as might have been expected. Clouds of dust and gas sweeping out from the Core explosions had spiraled into the Annihilator’s accretion disk, which glowed now as brightly as a supernova. So much matter continued to fall into the singularity itself that vast quantities, instead of being swallowed, were flung outward as radiant plasmas, and the radio shriek of annihilating matter was far louder now than it had been twelve hundred years before. Garroway could hear that shriek overlaid upon the visual image. Inset windows gave scrolling blocks of data describing the energies exploding from the brilliant object. Radiation levels, he noticed, were high enough to instantly fry any organic matter.

  He watched the glowing object for a moment. Through filters raised by the software controlling the imagery, he could actually see the movement of the inner edge of the accretion disk as it whipped across the singularity’s event horizon.

  “We have detected signals emerging as nonlocal events from within the Great Annihilator,” Schilling told him. “The physics are…difficult. Suffice to say that phase-shifted habitats may have been inserted into the black hole’s ergosphere.”

  “Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “that there’s something alive inside that Hell?”

  “Something, yes,” Socrates said. “The Xul, or a part of them. And they’re using their base within the Great Annihilator to attack us.”

  “Inside a black hole?”

  “Within the ergosphere, yes.”

  “That’s impossible,” Garroway said, shaking his head. “Nothing can escape a black hole’s gravitational field if it gets too close, not even light. That’s part of the thing’s definition.”

  “You’re aware of phase shifting, aren’t you, sir?” Schilling asked.

  “Yes. We have…sorry, had bases and ships back in my day that could rotate out of phase with four-dimensional spacetime. They existed at the base state of Reality, what we called the Quantum Sea.”

  “The Xul apparently can do that as well,” Socrates said, “and from the Quantum Sea, it’s possible to manipulate gravity.”

  “The quantum converters?” Schilling added. “The devices we use to provide microsuns for our terraform projects in the Kuiper Belt and beyond? We phase-shift those into the Quantum Sea, where they can draw as much energy as we need directly from the Reality base state. The Xul are doing something similar inside the Great Annihilator.”

  “What?”

  “We’re not sure,” Socrates said. “It’s possible that they hope to affect the entirety of the Reality base state…to, in effect, rewrite what we’re pleased to think of as reality.”

  “Editing us out of existence?”

  “It’s a possibility. That, at least, is one of the scenarios our Xul iteration programs have developed. But it’s also possible that they’re using singularity-identity nonlocality to infect our AI and computer networks with alien emomemes.”

  “Whoa,” Garroway said. “You just lost me…about eight hundred years ago.”

  “Singularity-identity nonlocality?” Schilling asked. Garroway nodded.

  “The theory can be a bit murky,” Socrates told him. “Do you know how stargates work?”

  “Not the technical details, but yes,” Garroway said. “In principle, at least.”

  Stargates were immense artifacts scattered across the Galaxy and beyond, ten-to twenty-kilometer-wide rings within which pairs of planetary-mass black holes revolved in opposite directions. The interplay of moving gravitational fields opened direct links between one gate and another, light years distant, with which it was tuned. Exactly who had built them, or when, was a mystery, but stargates were still the principal means of long-range travel throughout the Galaxy.

  “Stargates work,” Socrates told him, “because the movement of singularities within two stargates can be tuned to one another so that they essentially become congruent, a fancy way of saying they are the same. Identical. The same gate, but located in two widely separated places at once…orbiting Sirius, say, and the Galactic Core. The theory depends on quantum states and an aspect of quantum dynamics called nonlocality, which says that two objects or particles entangled at the quantum level remain connected to one another, as though there was no space, no distance, between them.”

  “I know about that one,” Garroway said. “Albert Einstein called it ‘spooky action at a distance,’ and refused to accept that it described the universe realistically.”

  “Albert…who?” Schilling asked.

  “Einstein,” Socrates told her. “A pre-spaceflight philosopher.”

  “Physicist, actually,” Garroway said. “At least according to the history downloads I’ve seen.”

  “Physicist, then,” Socrates agreed, “though physicists and philosophers are much the same thing when it comes to describing aspects of the metaverse that can only indirectly be apprehended, and which can only be described by myth and metaphor. In any case…if you have access to base-state reality in one black hole, you theoretically have direct access to all black holes…and to the star gates as well, since they depend on artificial singularities for their operation.”

  “We don’t know if they’re really trying to change reality,” Schilling said. “That may be too much of a stretch even for them. But we have detected signals emerging from several stargates that suggest they’re broadcasting emomemes.”

  “And what the hell is an emomeme?”

  “‘Meme’ is an old term for a transmissible unit of cultural information,” Socrates told him. “Especially one that can be passed on from mind to mind verbally, by repeated actions, or through general cultural transmission. Religions are memes. So are fashions in bodily adornment. Or popular sayings or slogans or tunes or fads in entertainment or advertising.”

  “Right,” Schilling said. “If I say ‘vavoob!’ That probably doesn’t mean much to you.”

  “‘Vavoob.’ Nope.” He shook his head. “Can’t say
that it does.”

  “But it’s a popular saying in Sol-System cities right now. It means…I don’t know. Sexy. Smart. Well integrated.”

  “‘With it?’”

  “With what?”

  “Never mind. Your point is taken.”

  “The expression is one of the current memes in human panurban culture,” Schilling told him. “Comes from a routine by Deidre Sallens, a well-known eroticomic VirSim personality. You haven’t been exposed, so it’s meaningless to you.”

  “Memes tend to pass from person to person or group to group like a virus,” Socrates added.

  “I’ve heard the term before,” Garroway said. “Even in my day. How is that different from an emomeme?”

  “Emomemes are emotional memes…specifically those affecting how people feel about other people, about ideas or situations or groups. Things like racial stereotypes. Or prejudices against a given group of people or beings. A particular religion. A particular cultural worldview. A particular sexual practice or preference. They can also affect how strongly we respond to such impulses. Turning belief in a certain religious worldview into fanaticism, for instance. Or anger into rage.”

  “And…you’re saying the Xul are beaming these things to us through the stargates?”

  “There is intelligence to support this, General,” Socrates told him. “Yes.”

  “How? I mean, how do these emomeme things affect humans? I always thought of ‘meme’ as a kind of metaphor, another word, maybe, for ‘idea.’ Not something with a physical reality.”

  “In this case,” Socrates said, “they are quite objectively real.”

  “Think of extremely efficient, self-contained, and well-camoflaged software,” Schilling told him, “viruses, if you will, infecting the personal AIs resident in people’s implants. Through the infected AIs, people’s attitudes, the strength of their emotional responses, even their very belief structures can be…changed.”

  “Oh,” Garroway said. Then his eyes widened as the implications became clear. “Oh!…”

  6

  2201.2229

  Associative AI Net Access

  Government Node

  Earthring, Sol System

  2245 hours, GMT

  “Gentlebeings, we have a problem. A big problem.”

  Star Lord Garrick Rame looked out from his electronic viewpoint across the other representatives of the Associative Conclave. The stadium-sized chamber appeared to be filled with them, though only a handful were physically present. Most appeared within translucent pillars of light; some of them occupied luminous pillars that looked hazy or even murky with their native atmospheres. The Eulers, for instance, seemed to float within cylindrical columns of dark and nearly opaque water, while the one Veldik present was almost lost in the nearly impenetrable yellow mists of its sulfurous world. A few pillars were night black, their occupants nocturnal beings who shunned visible light.

  “If you mean, Lord Rame, that the Xul group entity poses a threat to the Associative, the evidence suggests otherwise. We have no proof of these emomemonic manipulations you’ve described.”

  The speaker was Lelan Valoc, a transfigured s-Human, her enlarged and elongated skull encased in the nano enhancement sheath hardwiring her into the Galactic Net. Her image addressed the Conclave from the speaker’s dais a few meters from Rame’s viewpoint.

  In fact, each being linked into the Conclave saw the assembly from the same electronic viewpoint. The AI running the room simulation took care of projecting each image onto the speaker’s dais as that representative was recognized.

  Overhead, within the vast dome of the room’s interior, a piercingly brilliant blue rose hung suspended in emptiness, backdrop to a multi-hued spiral disk of infalling starstuff. Rame had just completed his presentation, a virtual sim of the final moments of the OM-27 Eavesdropper Major Dion Williams, as it approached the Galactic Center. Together, the assembled Conclave had witnessed the doomed craft’s approach toward the Great Annihilator, had witnessed the eerie bending of light and beamed transmissions in a gravitational lensing effect, had watched the vessel shudder, flare, and disintegrate.

  The echoes of Lieutenant Vrellit’s shrill last words, broadcast over the vessel’s QCC unit, still hung in the air of the chamber.

  “Get! Them! Out! Of! My! Mind!…”

  If the AI-crafted sim wasn’t proof, what was?

  “My Lord, if there is a threat, as suggested by our simulations,” Rame replied slowly, “we, this Conclave and the many cultures it represents, would be at direct and terrible risk. The Xul would have access to our memories, and to the Metamind itself. They might even be able to influence our deliberations without our knowing it. We must improve our electronic security…and we must directly address the Xul threat.”

  “And I say the threat is overstated,” Valoc replied. “One ship approaching a black hole at the Galactic Core destroyed? There’s no indication that the Xul caused this. We might simply be seeing the accidental failure of that ship’s radiation shielding within an unforgiving environment.”

  “If that were all we were dealing with, my Lord,” Rame said carefully, “I might agree with you. But we’ve had evidence for centuries that the Xul have been learning how to infiltrate our electronic networks.”

  “And there has never been the slightest indication that our security has been compromised,” Valoc replied, dismissive. “Even if it had been, the internal protective measures already in place are more than adequate. These…these rumors of Xul ghosts within our e-systems have persisted for centuries, now. Specters. Chimeras. Surely, if they were able to reach us, they would have done more to us by now than give rise to idiot rumor and ghost stories!”

  “And what,” Rame said, “if this rising tide of sociocultural disturbances is due to Xul interference, Xul contamination, Xul attacks through our own electronic nets? Maybe all we’ve seen so far have been reconnaissance probes as they’ve tested our systems, our defenses. Maybe it’s taken them this long to learn enough about us to be able to attack us in this way! If there’s even the slightest chance they are loose within the Galactic Net…Lords of the Conclave, can we afford to take that chance?”

  Rame felt an inner tug, and a voice whispered at the back of his mind that another lord had been recognized. The new speaker materialized, apparently suspended in emptiness between the flower of the Core Detonation and the crowd below. It was a G’fellet, hunched and massive, its body encased in a chitinous, segmented shell.

  “The problem-difficulty,” it said, its two-throated voices giving an odd, mismatched echo to the words as the Conclaves translators attempted to keep up with the doubled and not-quite-synchronous streams of thought, “lies-rests with the lower ranks-the nadhre. Quell-end the rising-disobedience, and the problem-difficulty is-will be solved.”

  As it spoke, Rame accessed a background channel, checking the Conclave library for data on the new speaker. He thought he remembered this one, but it was always best to be certain of your data.

  Yes. He’d remembered correctly. The G’fel, from most human perspectives, were obsessed with hierarchy and the chain of command. Nadhre was one of their words for the lower castes within their culture—slaves, cleaners, social guardians, and both male sexes of their species. G’fellet—a neuter subspecies bred to facilitate communications—tended toward a somewhat aristocratic detachment, an attitude Rame thought of as “it’s not my problem.” Working productively with the hard-shelled xenomalacostracans—they physically resembled an uncomfortable mix of land crab and shrimp—could be an adventure at times.

  “These reported disturbances,” Rame said, “are the symptoms, my Lord. Not the disease.”

  Another figure replaced the G’fellet—this one the icon for a t-Human community representative identified as Radather. With no physical form to display, it used an avatar, an image of a young man with green-slit eyes, cat’s ears, and a tail. “The warriors Lord Rame called for should be sufficient,” the uploaded personality said, �
�if their reputation is to be believed.”

  “How long,” Lord Valoc asked, “before these human Marines arrive?”

  “The Globe Marines have been revived, Lord Valoc,” a resonant voice said. The speaker, known only as the First Associate, was an AI moderator resident within the government Net. Without either a physical avatar or an electronic icon, it was invisible, but its presence could be felt by all linked into the system, huge, deep, powerful, and all but omniscient. “Against my best judgment, but they have been revived. I still fail to see what a handful of ancients can do against this new threat.”

  “We are not yet in agreement that there is a major threat,” Valoc pointed out. “A threat, yes. But the Galaxy is large, the Associative stable. I see no possibility of these…attacks, if that is what they are, being more than a nuisance.”

  “We would prefer to see hard proof that these phenomenon are real, and that they in fact constitute a threat,” another delegate put in, a paraholothurid from a world deep within the Sagittarian star clouds in toward the Galactic Core. The taxonomical name indicated that the being’s morphology in some ways was similar to that of a terrestrial sea cucumber, though in fact it was heavily scaled, giving it the appearance of a three-meter-long pine cone with a single red eye glaring from within a nest of slender, branching manipulators at the tip. They lived in seaside mounds of their own excrement, communicated through bursts of radio noise, and were arrogant egoists, certain of their privileged place in the cosmos. Humans knew them as Cynthiads, presumably after the person who’d first contacted them.

  “And just what would you accept as a threat?” Rame asked.

  The being hesitated as though thinking about the question, though it was of course impossible to read feeling or intent into those alien features.

  “The Master’s Eye is ever upon us,” it said after a moment, “and in fact we have nothing to fear from any of His servants. There is always the possibility of misunderstanding or accident, but the Master will keep us alive for His pleasure.”