by Alex Lamb
That happiness blared out waves of certainty. My God! Why had he never understood before? Why had he even tried being human when there was such a clean, lovely and ultimately good way of being and doing things right there for the taking? It was beautiful. And all he had to do to be filled up by it was throw away a bunch of shit that didn’t matter any more and never should have. Human love, for instance – what was that even for when there was this dominating, spiritual, glorious alternative on offer? Or notions of family, or ambition, or friendship? His fondness for Zoe, his empathy towards Rachel – it all suddenly felt so little. So mediocre. So bland.
Now that he had proper perspective, it baffled him that he’d never seen it before. It would have been embarrassing were there any room left in his rapidly expanding soul for embarrassment. This piercing light just made everything else look stupid. There was no point attending to it all when he could follow holy, wondrous, life-fulfilling orders and experience something infinitely superior. He laughed, or maybe screamed, with relief and pleasure as he was healed and brought into line. He’d never have to question anything again. There’d be no uncertainty or fear. He was off the hook so long as he did what he was told. Things were going to be okay – perfectly, everlastingly okay.
And then the sensation faded. His mind was turned in some incomprehensible direction, and what had appeared to him as a golden and majestic vista of hope was suddenly revealed to be nothing but a painting on a thin piece of fibreboard. He wept inwardly at the loss of that extraordinary vision.
‘No,’ he breathed, panic clotting his thoughts. ‘Please! Bring it back!’
To lose that simplicity felt like having his insides unzipped with a jagged blade. But then his panic stopped short as the picture kept turning and he came to understand that he’d actually lost nothing at all. Because any truth so precious and wonderful that it couldn’t be questioned didn’t actually have any meaning.
Meaning lay in the relations between things, so it was always going to be hard to pin down. All that bright glory was just a bunch of wires driven into his head, jangling him like a dumb puppet. For a few seconds, he’d been rendered absolutely lifeless. And while it had felt great to be in it, and so pure and clear, seeing how easily he’d been turned into a piece of marching meat left him chilled to the core.
Easy answers that could not be contested made a person amazingly so much less. The Protocol, he saw, was an instant sociopathic moral order. All you had to add was human brains. The wonderful, horrifying sensations blurred away leaving an echo in his mind like the ringing of a starship-sized bell.
Out of the gathering whiteness, Zoe appeared, still dressed in black.
‘You took your time,’ she said. ‘Is this how human beings always operate? Procrastination down to the very last second?’
Mark slowly came back to himself and hunted for words. ‘You should know,’ he croaked. ‘You’re squatting in my head.’
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We should have expected nothing else from your species – an even messier situation that we have to clean up for you.’
He fought for clarity. The experience he’d just had was nothing short of life-changing. But the opportunity to be rude to the Transcended was a strong motivator.
‘If you think you’re going to impress me with your powers or wisdom or tremendous helpfulness, be aware that we’re past that.’
‘Unblock Ann,’ she said. ‘You need her strength.’
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘if you fix Palla.’
‘Your concern is touching,’ she said with a dry smile. ‘We’ll see what we can do.’
‘Fuck you,’ said Mark. ‘Whose side are you actually on?’
‘Your side,’ Zoe snapped.
‘Bullshit – you released the Photes.’
‘Will believes that. Bear in mind he was on a Phote-built world at the time, and that everything he remembers and perceives was filtered through that hardware.’
‘You could have blown up their stars,’ Mark insisted.
‘How do you know?’ said Zoe. ‘Are you an expert on solar-ignition systems? How focused is the level of our control? How much power do we really have? Ask yourself if you really believe that we’d try to help you and destroy you at the same time.’
‘At this point, yes. You didn’t even warn us. You must have known.’
She groaned her impatience. ‘We’re older than you, and frankly more mature, but not omniscient. Nobody is! Look, you don’t have long if you want to fix things. Your body is being readapted to compensate for the altered threat landscape. You’re not going to die but repair will take a while. So when you wake up, you need to get busy.’
‘How?’ he said. ‘You’ve given me nothing. I thought there was supposed to be a weapon.’
Zoe grabbed his hand and slapped a software icon into it.
‘There,’ she said sharply. ‘Maybe you should win your battles first before trying to decide whose side we’re on.’
Mark looked down at the weapon. Details about it leaked into his mind but he didn’t understand them. It was just a chunk of code – some sort of semi-aware cryptographic device. It smacked of the same pattern of order he’d just experienced so he knew it was designed to talk to the Phote Protocol and make changes of some sort, but that was all.
‘Compare it to the copy of the Protocol Ann pulled off that dead world,’ Zoe recommended. ‘That might help you figure it out for yourself.’
‘Figure what out?’ said Mark, but she’d already gone. The dream was over.
19.4: NADA
Nada rocked in her vesicle and wept. Everything she’d worked for had come to naught. At the heart of the Photurian condition was joy at following instructions, but the choice of how to define completion of those instructions lay with the individual. Hence there was always that temptation to say, ‘I’ve followed orders,’ and to stop, close down and embrace the brilliant stillness that followed. That was how Fatigue happened and she could feel herself on the edge of it now.
She quite literally had no orders. Nor had any of her subnodes. There was no legitimate reason why they shouldn’t simply power down, commune and let bliss engulf them. That urge was overwhelming. She’d worked so hard for so long. Of course she’d finished her job!
Nada reached inside herself for the thought sequence that would initiate a rest-state and felt a surge of happy hunger for that peace. She began to step through the necessary temple-glyphs, but then paused. Something jangled uncomfortably in the back of her mind, preventing the necessary sensation of calm. It was the diagnostic channel still coupled to her analytical replica. With slow, churning surprise, she saw that the sandboxed self-copy she’d left plugged into the Usurper’s power structure felt only motivation at this setback. No agony. No dissonance. No will to oblivion.
While the rest of her soul clamoured for the off-switch, ambition wouldn’t let her. So she mustered her scattered attention and reluctantly re-examined the system that her copy was embedded in.
Nada’s skin prickled as she understood. Because the Usurper’s society didn’t run on orders, orders were never complete. Her copy was not susceptible to Fatigue. The Usurper’s system didn’t have top-down task assignment except in its utility and military domains. Instead, individuals contributed to the meta-instance without being controlled by it, donating a fraction of their subconscious function to its upkeep. The root was not the control node. It served and guided the collective. This made the mechanisms cumbersome and slow, but strong. It wouldn’t die the way all those worlds she’d seen had died. It would carry on.
She opened her channel to the experimental copy a little wider, testing it with an update of her own emotions. Perhaps the copy was still operating merely because it didn’t yet understand what was going on.
The response was immediate. [You cannot stop now,] it told her. [We have not won yet. Let me help you.]
Nada held her breath. Her copy was operating on the Yunus’s ambition alone, with no external Protocol
support. And its invitation was clear – to swap systems, to use the Usurper’s code.
The cost would be certainty. Self-leadership was a requirement of every instance under the Usurper’s system. She would never feel the sweet touch of edits from above again. Nevertheless, her meta-instance would retain the ability to connect with the Founder Entity, so long as she permitted it. Her sub-instances would simply have the option of not accepting exterior dominance if it arose, which was why Monet had not become completely Saved right away. Fortunately for Nada, all of her yearned for perfect love. That would not be a problem.
She caught herself in the act of being tempted and recoiled in disgust. The change would be heartbreaking. She’d given her life over to willing servitude. She’d risked herself again and again to share a truth that was undeniable and precise. Was she really prepared to sully her soul and that of all her subnodes on a gamble?
What would be left of her? An entity operating out of confusion, living in a sea of mutable threads. Nada screamed a long, high, clear note as another realisation dawned. Once she adopted the Usurper’s system, taking over the homeworld would be immeasurably easier. Because once inside his framework, threads could be ripped. She would become a perfect Cancer and nothing could stop her then.
Nada knew what she had to do. In order to fulfil the orders of the Yunus, she had to destroy the Yunus. Only then would lasting peace be achieved.
With great reluctance, Nada removed the safety barriers she’d erected between herself and her test copy. She granted it access to her mind and requested that it make edits. As Nada hung in her vesicle, a new kind of thinking seeped into her, muddy and cunning. She smiled. How interesting to be herself, yet not herself. Most species were weak, she decided. That was why they fell into Fatigue. The Founders had not been, which was why their worlds endured indefinitely before the corrupting touch of lower forms of sentience reached them.
Humanity had been at the brink of going the way of the lost worlds she’d witnessed, not because of any external attack, but as a result of their own weakness – the Yunus’s weakness. They were unable to stay the Founder Entity’s course by following the pure Protocol because it was a thing too beautiful for humanity, too demanding of greatness from lower forms of life.
So she’d adjust. She’d save her species through this compromise so they could last long enough to channel the Founder. What mattered was that the human race be saved, not what format it happened to exist in when bliss arrived. Then, when the Founder asked her to resume correct use of the Protocol, she’d be ready and it would last for ever.
‘Leng, report to my vesicle,’ she told him, and felt awed by what she was about to do.
Leng squeezed his way in, a hopeful smile on his face.
‘You appear to have reattained poise!’ he observed with delight. ‘I am unreasonably glad.’
‘I constitute a new viable mutation,’ she told him. ‘I therefore intend to assert primacy over New Panama.’
Leng’s face fell. ‘I do not understand. You cannot. The world is already Photurian.’
‘I can and I will,’ she told him. ‘I have internalised technology from the homeworld. This makes me different.’
‘But the rest of us have not,’ Leng observed nervously. ‘Superior Nada, your assessment is strange and disgusting. What has happened to you?’
‘It is true that you have not yet been updated,’ she said. ‘It will therefore be expedient for me to replace you and my other subnodes with differentiated clones of myself.’
‘No!’ said Leng, horrified. ‘That is wrong! You must not do that. It is against Protocol. You have become infected!’
His response was immediate and purposeful. His avatar raced to her temple-cavern but Nada moved faster. She suppressed his will to edit her. He sagged into passivity.
‘I beg you not to do this,’ he said. ‘I love you!’
‘In that case, you will not mind being me,’ she said.
With great care, she took apart his personality, rewriting it wholesale. To use the Usurper’s terminology, she ripped his thread. Leng emitted a strangled cry before falling silent. He stared at her, shaking and twitching, his eyes full of tragic longing while she pushed her intellect into his, retaining only those parts of him that were usefully differentiated for problem-solving.
When Leng’s eyes could focus again, he was her. The mind pattern that had been Leng was expunged.
‘I am Nada Rien,’ he said.
‘Refer to yourself as Leng,’ she said, ‘otherwise things will become confusing.’
Leng paused. ‘I dislike this proposal but accede to its logic. I will now consume my own subnodes.’
‘Good,’ said Nada.
She devoured Nanimo next. Nanimo shrieked as her mind was taken apart. She was reborn as a part of Nada. The new Nanimo pointed their boser at New Panama and fired a minimum-strength shot at one of the remaining habitats, an ugly, human-designed one. Ten minutes later, after the chaos had subsided, the part of Nada that had been her new communications officer signalled the planet to assert primacy to ensure that the inhabitants remained submissive while she devoured them.
The rest of the day was oddly satisfying as Nada’s subnodes became her sister instances and her mind changed and grew. She became the meta-instance for a society of her own copies and cherished that strangeness. She no longer felt any hesitation about opening the alien database they’d brought, she noticed. To deny herself a military advantage just felt counterproductive.
Things would be different now. She would consume the Yunus, and then his betrayals would stop. Nobody would lie ever again. It wouldn’t be possible.
19.5: WILL
Will scrabbled for control of his thread-defences as Balance bulldozed into his mind. Anyone watching would only have seen his giant body standing frozen, one arm missing, dribbling black goo onto a sizzling floor. But within that stillness, a frenzy of combative computing raged. For Will, it felt like wrestling with opinions instead of arms and legs. The two of them were n-dimensional octopi grappling each other in some compact universe where nothing existed except themselves. They were yin and yang punching each other in the eye.
The mental landscape twisted and flipped until Will saw his chance and lashed out, ramming his persona right up Balance’s notion of self-integrity. Balance’s defences folded like damp paper as their minds merged. Unexpectedly, Balance seized the focus of Will’s attack and sucked Will in after his own thrust, tripping him up and granting him control at the same time. Will fell into his mirror image, sprawling face first into an ocean of himself.
[You were right,] Balance told him. [When the Photes arrived, the splinter of me that was already at the Dantes was forced to rethink. The sight of my greater self back home caving to the Photurians was extremely persuasive. Fortunately, there were no anchor-hacks in my advance force. I was free to adapt, so I did.]
[You’re still nuts!] Will insisted. [I’ve seen the twisted shit going on inside you and I refuse to become that.]
[And now I believe you,] said Balance. [Isolation and mind-control will do that to a person. Even you, it turns out. Which is why I’m making you Meta, because you have a better idea of what’s going on. I know what you’re for now, Cuthbert. You’re not a bug – you’re an insurance policy. And I’m making a claim. Do you honestly think it matters which instance of me is in control at this point? Being Meta sucks. Get used to it.]
The gap between them shrank to nothing. As Will became Balance, he came to appreciate how the god had forced himself to accept a diversity of experience. He’d made himself broad, insisting on representing inclusion for every kind of Will, without judgement. Why? Because the world worked better when it had people in it who weren’t like him, even if sometimes he disliked them or couldn’t understand them. He’d tried to ensure social stability with the tools available because the alternative was so much worse. His axioms had been wrong and enforced from without, but he’d tried to leave room for the consensus to c
hange.
And as Balance became Will, he came to savour how Will put a reality check on the social consensus every time he appeared. He manifested an irrepressible norming force that cut out mutations when they became dangerous. The memory of Will’s original identity, stochastically applied, served as an immune system. Smiley had been right. He was a white blood cell, and both Will and Balance had been necessary. But it was pure fluke that the system had worked.
When Transcended control of Balance’s world abruptly ended a decade earlier, subconscious panic had followed. Without even being aware of it, Balance had tried multiple coping mechanisms at once. He’d replicated the sensation of stability, synthesising a new mental harness for himself out of memories of how it had felt to be strong, and created the anchors. But a voiceless part of him had known that was a terrible idea and so had manifested copies of Will’s original thread almost at random to compensate. Thus the Glitches had arisen.
It was a crazy, badly organised attempt to stave off social insanity, but it had succeeded. The axioms prevented him from sliding into despair too fast. The Glitches cleaned up the mess created by the denial they inevitably wrought. Between them, they’d actually held the Willworld together pretty well. The only problem had been that one, painful stipulation in the Transcended control code that he shouldn’t leave the planet. And so, even with the door of his global prison cell unlocked, Will had sat inside it, staring at the walls until Nada came along and inadvertently hacked him. Now the Will civilisation was all screwed up – unless he did something to rescue it.
But there were other things he needed to achieve first – like saving his friends and liberating Galatea before the Photes crushed it. Then, maybe, if he managed all that, he could spend a little time having words with the Transcended.
Will reorganised himself. That which had been Cuthbert became properly established as the new guiding personality. That which was left of Balance’s army of warrior instances became his subminds. Except rather than being reduced mental sketches, they were full, differentiated copies of himself with agency and opinions. Will felt a curious flexing, shifting sensation as his thoughts started to come in multiple superimposed streams. It frightened him, even while it brought a tremendous sensation of breadth. Suddenly, holding multiple opposing opinions at once no longer felt like hard work.