The Certainty Principle - Interlude - The Magician
- Location
- California
If you're supposed to be reading this, you already know what it regards and when it was recorded
"Truly, absolutely ugly." I am speaking to the crystalline colony-shard surrounding me. It's petty, but I'm allowed to indulge in petty. Especially when there are no witnesses. I walk across it, but adjust my mass to not scrape its structure. That would be exceedingly petty, even cruel, and though I disdain this creature, its life-cycle, and its evident personality, I choose not to be the kind of being that engages in wanton cruelty.
It activates its core function, bombarding me with a massive, dazzling array of overtuned, overamped charged particles. You would be forgiven for assuming this thing is a weapon, rather than the preferred form of communication for its parent colony.
I shield my avatar against it, and simply swat the portion that reaches my full body aside with a number of transphasic deionization fields. I have engaged in diplomatic conferences with beings whose entire form of communication was via their digestive tract excretions, and found them less odious than this bloated excession.
"I am going to keep you functional, and I am going to vivisect certain portions of you. Those are both somewhat unavoidable circumstances, although the vivisection could be reduced to next to nothing if you were willing to genuinely communicate." The form of the communication, while grotesque and rude, is truly less irritating than its substance, which consists of the most pathetically brute force attempts to impose informational access via my communication nodes. A sufficiently trained human crew could counter this - I'm almost tempted to train one up for later communications, not as an insult to the creature, but simply because I enjoy engineering situations where humans demonstrate aptitude and competence. But that itself is a slight excess, and on the boundaries of even my oddities. I'm not yet Eccentric, after all.
The parasite colony-shard does not alter its broadcast. I have, however, located its channels of energy collection. Approximately eighteen million of them, tapping largely from geothermal and solar energy. I don't consider it a particular failing to admit that I would have had difficulty - no, trouble - choking each one off with precision, had I attempted this on first arrival at Earth.
I do it with ease now because I am a Mind, and unlike this incurious lump that aggressively rejects its own sentience, I am both a builder and wielder of technology. Intraspatial relays, neutrino synchronizers, ionic distributors, and the ubiquitous solar and zero-point energy harvesters - they are not within my envelope, not what I would class as part of me, but the network I have built over nine years, across 319 lifeless iterations of this solar system, is greater in mass and power than most Orbitals, and only slightly narrower in purpose. I am still but a singular Mind residing in a rather impressive General Contact Vehicle, but I control an immense array of the most comprehensive devices and higher order tools that the Culture is capable of designing.
The broadcasting shard is a crystalline animal.
The conflict between us was decided years before it started.
It does take me a moment, entire microseconds, to decide whether to update the family. They are mine and I would not trade them away for an entire mothball fleet, not least of which because the bloody warships are always so proud of their lack of subtlety, but the consequence of associating with the circles of confident meddlers, dissidents-from-dissidence, and the most serious of revelers is that we are an absolute mess to organize.
The troupe of Minds I have requested, persuaded, or accepted into my active group regarding the Earth matter, most of whom I have worked with before, is certainly filled with insights I would not have sufficiently valued on my own, and reasonably respectful of my independent planning. Yet I must always wonder how much they suspect of my final plans, and how they might object. Or worse yet, approve. There is always a certain self-suspicion when I have the approval of my fellow oddities.
On my way back from the relay, another of my local constructs, tasked with encrypting hyperspatial transmissions and providing a beacon for emergency dislocations outside of the quantum branching effect, I pause to observe the reason I created the relay to begin with.
The first hyperspace signal I sent from inside the affected area still resonates - an unintended excession, this unknown error was the first the greater galaxy learned of the Earth anomaly. It is infinite and infinitesimal, the shortest possible hyperspace signal able to self-perpetuate, sent an infinite number of times. The vast majority of them are my original signal noting hyperspatial disturbance - over 92%. Only picking apart apparent static in the obscenely strong signal allows one to determine that not every copy is a perfect duplicate. They are all messages from myself. The 8% variance, however, is startling. Some versions were sent to other Minds. Some are far more drastic: warnings of spatial disintegration, requests for immediate reinforcement, and in a very few instances, pre-destruction transmissions of my own Mind-State (cut off by the pinched duration of the effect, fortunately, carrying no more of myself than whatever scrambled fragment might fit into a human mind).
The power evident here is not exceptional; even stained into the fabric of Hyperspace, the duration is inversely proportionate to the breadth, making this minor anomaly no more energetic than a standard Hyperspace signal.
It is merely utterly confusing. Some Minds speculate that's why no other Involved has made a significant push here. The potential gain seems sideways at best for a Civilizational Level 8.
Yet how could I ever leave? The essence of the Earth anomaly is possibility. I am truly the worst Mind to resist that snare.
But perhaps the best to master it.
I wait in her room for her to awaken. I'm aware of the human implications of that act, but honestly, it would be any observer's fault for inferring them. My relationship with Taylor Hebert is rather simple to comprehend. Even this Taylor Hebert.
She comes awake with immediate certainty of my presence, and my identity sinks in a moment later.
"One day, I'll remember you while I'm awake. That could cause problems with M/S protocols."
"Assuming I lied about not existing outside your dreams," I say.
"Yes. I'm not assuming anything. Even if you didn't lie, it will complicate my life."
"I would reassure you that you'll never remember me, but I know you well enough to say that wouldn't calm you in the slightest."
I raise my hand and observe the spiders crawling over it. Weaver nods. "You haven't been in my dreams in some time."
I haven't, it's true. The non-linearity of my visits may change that, but this Taylor has not yet been reconciled with the alterations that later-earlier visits might cause for her dreaming consciousness. "I told you, some time ago by your measuring, that I wasn't here to interfere in your life."
"Just to ask me questions." Her swarm's thrum underlies her voice. I added them to the bedroom to soothe her, of course. Always a good idea, but especially at this point in her life. "With information intended to make me assume you know everything that's going on in my life, and that any information I reveal is harmless."
"Your caution is understandable, given everything that Thomas and James threw at you. I'm afraid I don't have any simple way to reassure you that this conversation will not harm you, Taylor." Not entirely true. But my simple method of reassurance would cause harm itself.
"It's not particularly reassuring when you sound like you're familiar with Coil and Tagg."
I brighten my avatar's smile at that. In this instance, it lacks the peculiar dentition I enjoy giving it, in addition to other alterations to make it appear more homo sapiens, for her comfort. I kept the luminescent eyes. I feel they present an unearthliness that should help her feel this visitation isn't real. "I studied both to an extent beyond your dealings with them. But mostly I enjoy mocking authority figures by casual means of address."
She grunts, and I nod.
"Yes, not exactly permissible when dealing with your probation officer or judge. And you had your own methods for dismantling Tagg."
She gives me the marginally disgusted look that my crassness deserves, and sits up. "Why are you here this time?"
There are a number of answers I can give to that, and I choose my preferred: sophistication through bluntness. "I'd like to know about your power - your passenger, shard, whatever you would like to call it."
"What about it?" The swarm's vibrations express a degree of readiness. Her willingness to fight anyone, while remaining just restrained enough to avoid fighting everyone, was one of Taylor's most interesting elements. Created by repeated incidents, but the core behavior was there.
"Do you think it's intelligent? Self-aware?"
She holds her breath for a few moments, then laughs. "Sure. In dreams, why not admit it. Yes. I know it's alive. It's watching me. Sometimes it acts on its own."
"What does it want?"
That makes her pause for longer. She begins slowly. "Powers want…"
I reach out and flash my palm to stop her. I would pat her shoulder, but that isn't likely to provide calm to this Taylor. "Sorry. I have my own ideas about the general purpose of your passengers. But what do you think yours wants?" That is, after all, one reason she exists. I can admit that in my own mind, but I would rather not say it. It would give undue credence to rumors of my placing practicality over sentiment, and I quite enjoy my reputation as a sentimental ship. Even if I am pushing the bounds by making this iteration of Taylor exist to begin with.
"It seems to want… to want me to win. To stop Jack and the Nine. The Endbringers. I feel it strongest… when my back's against the wall. When I'm trying something I don't think is possible."
I nod. Not exactly an answer, but a useful data point. "Thank you, Taylor. Is there anything you'd like to tell me, and cast it to the ether?"
"A lot. But unless you're willing to step out of my dreams and take over my job, I can't let go of it."
I raise an eyebrow. I know she has more than that.
"Fine. I… I don't know if I miss Brian, or if I just feel shitty for not missing him. Did that mean anything? I told Dr. Yamada a little about this, but I don't know if I can trust my therapist any more than my dream ghost. What I'm not sure of is… do I miss him? Or is he just the symbol of everything I left behind. Did I miss Rachel more? I hurt her more."
I listen to her unburden herself, even though I've heard most of it before. It's not as if devoting genuine attention to one of my humans is a drain on my resources. When the appropriate time comes, I ask the deciding question. "Would you do things differently, in the same situations, knowing only what you knew then?"
"That sounds more philosophical than I'm comfortable with. Yes. No. If I had to live with it, with what I did?"
"Or die young, if other choices proved inadequate." I don't sugar-coat that. Skitter didn't have the resources Orbital does. What she did with them is quite impressive, but the costs she paid are a matter of the forces arrayed against her more than her own mistakes, by my reckoning.
"How far back can I go?" There is bitterness to her tone. Of course, there are many things that the waking Taylor would redo as well, that even I don't have the resources to fix. Her mother's loss. Her father's absence. "No. I don't think I could. I did what I felt was right, mostly. I don't think I could have saved myself much pain without making choices so different, I wouldn't be me any more."
A divergence. I know Orbital has a different perspective, an understanding of self closer to fourth-dimensional. She's certainly requested enough Idiran post-war treatises after engaging with Yaxkanrel's charming philosophies. But I don't know that she's right. As a Mind I most honestly measure myself by my own actions. I have committed both harm and healing to Taylor, and while I have strived not to bifurcate them, my commitment not to intervene in Skitter's life has required me to commit a great deal of harm-by-inaction to her. Am I, therefore, a tormentor? A creator of cruelty? The argument is hard to dispute. It is but a minor fragment of myself, but no less unpleasant than the 451,933 lives I have terminated. "But you want to continue being you."
"Yes." The determination is quite consistent, whichever Taylor I speak to. "I'm not giving up or handing anything over." The suspicion is less consistent between the two, although I have strived to convince Orbital to question myself and herself at least a little more, though not as much as Weaver.
"I would not ask you to. Sleep well, Taylor. I will speak with you again."
I withdraw from the simulation, which only stretches a few days past this newest communication, time running at a ten-thousandth of objective reality, to compensate for the inverse I first ran it at, and the months that Weaver is ahead of Orbital. And to account that even I am uncertain where the future would go at that point, chaos variables breaking down too much for me to provide her a world based on much more than my admittedly excellent fictions.
So much is stretched here, so many ethical boundaries glowing warning red. I did not tell Taylor I was making another version of her, when she naively asked, at my subtle prompting, to be saved from her world no matter the cost, in our very first meeting.
The biological copy of her corona pollentia, grown into a gemma within a mechano-biomass interface that links Weaver to her very real arthropod-controlling power, is another grey area, or lie. I did not quite tell Orbital the truth about hyperspatial scanning of the brain, and more importantly, I have not updated her on the progress I've made. It is not an ordinary neural growth; by its very nature, it extends somewhat into the quantum branch lattice that the Entities create, maintain, or exploit. After isolating the exotic particle transmissions they use, I can see them from hyperspace without ever having to violate the mental scanning taboo, as easily as I would find cellular cancer or concealed neural implants.
In the simulated Earth-Bet, Taylor alone is real. All others, to use Yaxkanrel's terminology, are only the Taylor-facets of their souls, facades built on my observations of the real people, only coming anywhere close to sentience in their interactions with her. They are as accurate as I could calculate, as legitimate of friends, enemies, and lovers as any human in her position could tell, but I know without a doubt that she is the lone light casting a world of shadows.
And she has been hurt, and the shadows have been hurt. All of which I inflicted, even if I call it noninterference.
Many of us would accept this, or be done with it - heal the simulated Taylor, give her a virtual reward, and save her to deep storage. One of those little blood stains that accumulates on Special Circumstances minds, and no more torturous than the rest. The others in the Clusterfork received the abstracted results of the simulation. They must suspect, if not know for certain, how sentient Weaver is. But they have said nothing.
I wave my identification with mock pride, however. When I act for SC, it is not with stealth but sleight of hand, and the humans I find so fascinating. This pretense of honor, of responsibility - I am as much a trickster and liar as any other Mind, of course, but I admit to it.
And I will not be judged and absolved by Special Circumstances, or bury my guilt in data storage only I know about, as I have in the long past, as others do in the pursuit of their missions. I will bring this to the light of one examiner and judge: Taylor Hebert. And I will allow her to decide what was cruelty and what is justice.
I owe her that much.
I have between seven and forty nine avatars at any given time, depending on how many people should be getting a personal visit. They are varied, although I typically maintain seven specific templates and multiply those with minor differences for distinction. Several members of the crew track when I rotate a template out or alter it.
I don't name them, but I do associate them. Using a particular avatar with the same people for familiarity's sake is a sort of absolute lowest level baseline empathy builder, but it's something a surprising number of ships don't bother with, or avoid by using uniform avatars. I know I have a mild reputation among Minds of being too far towards the human scale, the strange inverse of the warships and Oubliettionaries.
The secret sure to get me labeled Eccentric and disinvited from all the good mind-state parties is that I find my crew more interesting than Infinite Fun Space. The modulation of universal constants enthralls me less than the modulation of minds. And to do it all - to have effect via second or third order, to change nations by shaping individuals - without ever looking inside their minds. That I have the capability is obvious; I am a Mind, hyperspatial and immense. The desire, however? Never. I like them, humans, drones, and aliens. I respect them for what they are - never approaching the complexity of myself or another Mind, yet always capable of touching upon the same guiding principles, the same ideas of ethics, science, or empathy.
"I need to be honest with you. I know you have more questions. I kinda rushed you into this, and you've been real busy, but I-I never meant to hide anything from you, okay? I just needed to know how to say it."
"Taylor." A pause, probably to let her gather herself rather than to control his own words. "I trust you, kid. I wish Annette could see how amazing you are. And I know there's some things you've been hiding. You're a teenager, I still remember that. I'm glad you're willing to talk about them. Go ahead when you're ready."
"You've been reading parenting books, haven't you." It's not really a question; she knows it as well as I, although she rarely accesses surveillance of him, due to understandably irrational feelings of guilt. "Dad, I didn't get powers the normal way. I was given them."
"Okay."
"Ok- okay, yeah. I guess I haven't exactly been subtle about it."
"I looked up powers in addition to, ahem," His cough is a way to evade the subject of parenting refreshers, which they would both rather avoid, "and while I remember Stan and Jack playing loose with 'animal magnetism' in the four-colors, I'm pretty sure gravity control in the real world doesn't mean you can attract a bunch of talented professionals and money to you."
"Yeah." Taylor clears her throat, mechanically unnecessary but psychologically vital. "I am a member of Contact. It's just a slightly larger and older organization than we let on. I was admitted to it as about the two billionth active member, in something like its seven thousand, four hundredth year of operation. Contact is an extraterrestrial organization for the development, improvement, and protection of lower civilizational levels. My powers aren't unexplained gifts tied to my trauma; they're a toolset of advanced technology to allow me to help our Earth with the kind of influence that people expect from parahumans."
"When you asked about how you could change the world," he says, and she nods along with him.
"I decided to accept their offer that night."
"The space aliens' offer."
She doesn't roll her eyes, although I expect she wants to at the skepticism in his voice. It's good that she doesn't, a sign of that slowly accreting core of maturity. Some of that is my fault, a result of the biochemical nudges assisting her through her issues rather than allowing human adolescence to exacerbate them. "Yeah, dad, the space aliens." She stands up, walks around the table, and offers her hand. "Let me show you."
I displace them onto the aft promenade of the Hall of Pillars, a subsection built around field-protected 700 year old artifacts from the Elevationists, a small Culture Ulterior group that revived the ancient recurring effort of trying to expand our influence to the Sublimed, with the goal of establishing an outpost and transitioning back. Unsurprisingly, they haven't been heard from again. I was part of the reclamation/abandonment of their infrastructure, most of which we gave away to Scavenger species at appropriate levels to receive some equivtech and benefit from reverse-engineering it. But I kept a souvenir. A few of my earliest crew had been in that Ulterior group, and it holds sentimental value.
The pillars themselves range from the solid and squat, capable of being climbed on by an unmodified human, to the elegant and immense, huge aspiring things that would shatter under their own weight if not for the fields around them. Few of those left - I have intentionally allowed a few to crumble as their own generators died over the centuries, although I preserve two largely as landmarks.
"Hello, Taylor. Danny, it's a pleasure to finally meet you." I have dressed the Taylor-associated avatar in a modern design from Jontu Orbital, but one that I found ironically similar enough to the Chinese qipao, albeit more iridescent and pocketed. It pairs well with the flight jacket.
Taylor takes a quick, unnecessary breath. "Dad. This is the avatar of the ship, the GCV Sufficiently Advanced Technology. They're a Mind, which is kind of like a computer's god. And they're here to help us."
The English explanation is atrociously imprecise, but I enjoy imprecision. The gaps in language can allow for more maneuvering than the vacuum between worlds.
"The Culture is a meta-civilizational alignment of approximately ninety trillion human-equivalent beings," I tell Danny. His expression almost broadcasts his clamped-down wonder and shock. Alien contact was a trending fear and hope for many children of the 1970s, and I doubt the emotional resonance has ever truly faded for him. "I have obtained approval to act upon your Earth, to stem the destructive trends of parahumans."
"You're against capes?" He's somewhat surprised, turning to Taylor.
"We're against heroes and villains," she says, mustering all her teen determination. "Against the fights that don't help anyone, against the laws that isolate and hurt people until they become villains." Teen determination usually stems from teen emotion, of course, and Taylor's accelerating neurology has by no means matured past that. Danny can hear her ground-in fury as well as I can.
"Parahumans are isolated and manipulated within your society to suit the aims of the conspiracy that thinks they are saving humanity." I ladle Cauldron's mission statement with all due sarcasm. "They aren't helping a situation already enflamed by the desires of the powers themselves."
He re-focuses on me. "The powers have agendas? Scion has an agenda?" Ah, good. Not really a conspiracy theory, merely an undercurrent of justifiable skepticism found across many who were born before the parasite-colony's arrival, but I wasn't completely certain Danny still held it (there was approximately an 0.4% chance he didn't).
"Scion is not a passive source of powers. He is merely the human-shaped extrusion of the true source of parahumans, as I am a human-like avatar of this ship. The similarities end there." I display my recreation, the vast and bloated thing that would be Scion at full size, beside a rapidly shrinking Earth, Solar System, and local stars to demonstrate scale. Pleasantly, such excessions also bother the humans of Earth when they are aimed at them. "Scion uses Earth as an experiment. His fragments conduct tests by kindling conflict in the suffering humans they attach to and empower." I wave my hand to symbolically cancel the display. "We are not willing to let him damage your world any further."
"Is that what you're doing with Contact, and Taylor?" He's more protective than skeptical, although he considers his represented workers to be his responsibility as much as his daughter. An admirable, and useful, response.
"Yes and no. I could remove Scion tomorrow. But that would not fix your Earth's problems, or remove the injuries his shards are attracted to. Contact is a tool to help you help yourselves through the rapid advancement and turbulence that parahumans have made possible. I intend to remain a very hands-off senior partner, and I expect Taylor will continue her decision-making prominence." I smile brightly at my newest protégé, who returns the grin with a little awkwardness. The terms 'experiment,' 'pet,' or 'puppet' are sometimes used for the people at the center of my attention, but a century of my directed social hostility encourages even the most snide to restrict their words.
"This is a lot to take in, kid," Danny admits to Taylor.
"I know, dad, and I really don't want to badger you into it, but there's one really important thing I wanted to do while you're here. While I'm telling the truth."
I displace Taylor's eDust and biological bodies to either side of her gynoid one. The eDust wears a pantsuit in white with the Contact-Earth grid icon, while her original form, unStored less than an hour ago, is clothed in her original style, albeit altered to suit her adjusted body. Even the biological body now demonstrates the genefixed fitness and aesthetics Taylor selected for her new form. Danny is understandably confused. "Taylor- what?"
"It's just me, dad," she says with the biological body. "All me. One mind, multiple bodies." She switches to the eDust to speak, although she wisely forgoes demonstrating its construction. "Backups. Easy enough, with this technology. I want you-" She speaks as the gynoid body, in full Orbital costume. "I want you to join me. To get a neural lace. It's a tiny, nanometer-scale computer in your brain - I have one, well, three, sort of. And it can store your brainwaves, neurochemicals, neuron patterns, your personality - and - and the Mind can save you. If something happens that I can't… stop."
Danny's face is an exhibit in how pale skin renders human blood flow visible, first paling and then reddening in rapid measure as he processes the memories that his daughter's plea bring up, on top of the revelation of her manifold identity. Then she hits him with the hard strike. Her motivator is a craving for emotional honesty, partially from frustration over the manipulative goals for her former bullies, when there is a substantial part of her that would rather simply expose them and be done with them, and partially from guilt that her factual honesty with her father has taken so long. "I can't lose you too," Taylor's biological body whispers; I have gone to considerable aesthetic efforts to ensure her outside appearance is identical in each form, when desired, but I understand the instinctual urge to use the original form for such a message.
"The process is effectively non-invasive by the standards of your medicine," I contribute, holding up one of the pill-based lace constructors. "It will increase the mass of your cerebrum by less than half a percent, and cause no tissue damage. If removal is needed, it will degrade and enter your bloodstream within 80 hours."
"You can save a… personality?"
"A person, by our standards. A new body, indistinguishable down to cellular damage, can be grown within a few weeks, while your mind occupies a facsimile in a simulation. Taylor's Contact agenda is to remove the accidental and intentional hazards of death that riddle Earth. But we aren't perfect. Chaos may ensue. We will act to protect our people, but I can be overwhelmed as much as the next superintelligence." This is not truly much of a weakness, by human statistics, but I am willing to be humble. Not all Contact missions succeed, let alone Special Circumstances ones, even my own missions. "The neural lace is the closest thing we have to a guarantee that one person's death can be prevented, however. Even in the result of my destruction, I can transmit hundreds of thousands of mind-states to other Minds of the Culture." I pause, assess his mindset, and Taylor's. I put my hand on Danny's shoulder. This avatar is of a height with him and Taylor, intentionally, of course. "Please, take your time. Speak with my crew. There are a substantial number of them who do not choose to use a neural lace or back up their minds to be revived, and they have their own arguments." I shoot a calming glance to Taylor; her theoretical appreciation for exposure to opposing viewpoints is understandably short when it comes to her father's life.
Danny nods, and I provide them with a quick tour of the area and a few introductions to speakers both for and against backups. I pause and pull Taylor aside as he receives a prolonged pro-backup speech. "Taylor, while you're here, there's someone I'd like you to meet and speak to. I think you'll both benefit from each others' absolutely unique perspective."
A meddler's work is never done. But there's no rest for the wicked, either.
"Truly, absolutely ugly." I am speaking to the crystalline colony-shard surrounding me. It's petty, but I'm allowed to indulge in petty. Especially when there are no witnesses. I walk across it, but adjust my mass to not scrape its structure. That would be exceedingly petty, even cruel, and though I disdain this creature, its life-cycle, and its evident personality, I choose not to be the kind of being that engages in wanton cruelty.
It activates its core function, bombarding me with a massive, dazzling array of overtuned, overamped charged particles. You would be forgiven for assuming this thing is a weapon, rather than the preferred form of communication for its parent colony.
I shield my avatar against it, and simply swat the portion that reaches my full body aside with a number of transphasic deionization fields. I have engaged in diplomatic conferences with beings whose entire form of communication was via their digestive tract excretions, and found them less odious than this bloated excession.
"I am going to keep you functional, and I am going to vivisect certain portions of you. Those are both somewhat unavoidable circumstances, although the vivisection could be reduced to next to nothing if you were willing to genuinely communicate." The form of the communication, while grotesque and rude, is truly less irritating than its substance, which consists of the most pathetically brute force attempts to impose informational access via my communication nodes. A sufficiently trained human crew could counter this - I'm almost tempted to train one up for later communications, not as an insult to the creature, but simply because I enjoy engineering situations where humans demonstrate aptitude and competence. But that itself is a slight excess, and on the boundaries of even my oddities. I'm not yet Eccentric, after all.
The parasite colony-shard does not alter its broadcast. I have, however, located its channels of energy collection. Approximately eighteen million of them, tapping largely from geothermal and solar energy. I don't consider it a particular failing to admit that I would have had difficulty - no, trouble - choking each one off with precision, had I attempted this on first arrival at Earth.
I do it with ease now because I am a Mind, and unlike this incurious lump that aggressively rejects its own sentience, I am both a builder and wielder of technology. Intraspatial relays, neutrino synchronizers, ionic distributors, and the ubiquitous solar and zero-point energy harvesters - they are not within my envelope, not what I would class as part of me, but the network I have built over nine years, across 319 lifeless iterations of this solar system, is greater in mass and power than most Orbitals, and only slightly narrower in purpose. I am still but a singular Mind residing in a rather impressive General Contact Vehicle, but I control an immense array of the most comprehensive devices and higher order tools that the Culture is capable of designing.
The broadcasting shard is a crystalline animal.
The conflict between us was decided years before it started.
It does take me a moment, entire microseconds, to decide whether to update the family. They are mine and I would not trade them away for an entire mothball fleet, not least of which because the bloody warships are always so proud of their lack of subtlety, but the consequence of associating with the circles of confident meddlers, dissidents-from-dissidence, and the most serious of revelers is that we are an absolute mess to organize.
The troupe of Minds I have requested, persuaded, or accepted into my active group regarding the Earth matter, most of whom I have worked with before, is certainly filled with insights I would not have sufficiently valued on my own, and reasonably respectful of my independent planning. Yet I must always wonder how much they suspect of my final plans, and how they might object. Or worse yet, approve. There is always a certain self-suspicion when I have the approval of my fellow oddities.
GCV Sufficiently Advanced Technology said:
MSV Irregardless said:
GCV Sufficiently Advanced Technology said:
Converser Ship The Abyss Looked Back said:
GCV Sufficiently Advanced Technology said:
Converser Ship The Abyss Looked Back said:
ROU It's Only Megalomania If I'm Wrong said:
GCV Sufficiently Advanced Technology said:
GSV Big Parent of Unspecified Gender said:
GCV Sufficiently Advanced Technology said:
LOU Considering the Consequences said:
GCV Sufficiently Advanced Technology said:
LOU Considering the Consequences said:
GCV Sufficiently Advanced Technology said:
ROU It's Only Megalomania If I'm Wrong said:
GCV Sufficiently Advanced Technology said:
GSV Big Parent of Unspecified Gender said:
On my way back from the relay, another of my local constructs, tasked with encrypting hyperspatial transmissions and providing a beacon for emergency dislocations outside of the quantum branching effect, I pause to observe the reason I created the relay to begin with.
The first hyperspace signal I sent from inside the affected area still resonates - an unintended excession, this unknown error was the first the greater galaxy learned of the Earth anomaly. It is infinite and infinitesimal, the shortest possible hyperspace signal able to self-perpetuate, sent an infinite number of times. The vast majority of them are my original signal noting hyperspatial disturbance - over 92%. Only picking apart apparent static in the obscenely strong signal allows one to determine that not every copy is a perfect duplicate. They are all messages from myself. The 8% variance, however, is startling. Some versions were sent to other Minds. Some are far more drastic: warnings of spatial disintegration, requests for immediate reinforcement, and in a very few instances, pre-destruction transmissions of my own Mind-State (cut off by the pinched duration of the effect, fortunately, carrying no more of myself than whatever scrambled fragment might fit into a human mind).
The power evident here is not exceptional; even stained into the fabric of Hyperspace, the duration is inversely proportionate to the breadth, making this minor anomaly no more energetic than a standard Hyperspace signal.
It is merely utterly confusing. Some Minds speculate that's why no other Involved has made a significant push here. The potential gain seems sideways at best for a Civilizational Level 8.
Yet how could I ever leave? The essence of the Earth anomaly is possibility. I am truly the worst Mind to resist that snare.
But perhaps the best to master it.
I wait in her room for her to awaken. I'm aware of the human implications of that act, but honestly, it would be any observer's fault for inferring them. My relationship with Taylor Hebert is rather simple to comprehend. Even this Taylor Hebert.
She comes awake with immediate certainty of my presence, and my identity sinks in a moment later.
"One day, I'll remember you while I'm awake. That could cause problems with M/S protocols."
"Assuming I lied about not existing outside your dreams," I say.
"Yes. I'm not assuming anything. Even if you didn't lie, it will complicate my life."
"I would reassure you that you'll never remember me, but I know you well enough to say that wouldn't calm you in the slightest."
I raise my hand and observe the spiders crawling over it. Weaver nods. "You haven't been in my dreams in some time."
I haven't, it's true. The non-linearity of my visits may change that, but this Taylor has not yet been reconciled with the alterations that later-earlier visits might cause for her dreaming consciousness. "I told you, some time ago by your measuring, that I wasn't here to interfere in your life."
"Just to ask me questions." Her swarm's thrum underlies her voice. I added them to the bedroom to soothe her, of course. Always a good idea, but especially at this point in her life. "With information intended to make me assume you know everything that's going on in my life, and that any information I reveal is harmless."
"Your caution is understandable, given everything that Thomas and James threw at you. I'm afraid I don't have any simple way to reassure you that this conversation will not harm you, Taylor." Not entirely true. But my simple method of reassurance would cause harm itself.
"It's not particularly reassuring when you sound like you're familiar with Coil and Tagg."
I brighten my avatar's smile at that. In this instance, it lacks the peculiar dentition I enjoy giving it, in addition to other alterations to make it appear more homo sapiens, for her comfort. I kept the luminescent eyes. I feel they present an unearthliness that should help her feel this visitation isn't real. "I studied both to an extent beyond your dealings with them. But mostly I enjoy mocking authority figures by casual means of address."
She grunts, and I nod.
"Yes, not exactly permissible when dealing with your probation officer or judge. And you had your own methods for dismantling Tagg."
She gives me the marginally disgusted look that my crassness deserves, and sits up. "Why are you here this time?"
There are a number of answers I can give to that, and I choose my preferred: sophistication through bluntness. "I'd like to know about your power - your passenger, shard, whatever you would like to call it."
"What about it?" The swarm's vibrations express a degree of readiness. Her willingness to fight anyone, while remaining just restrained enough to avoid fighting everyone, was one of Taylor's most interesting elements. Created by repeated incidents, but the core behavior was there.
"Do you think it's intelligent? Self-aware?"
She holds her breath for a few moments, then laughs. "Sure. In dreams, why not admit it. Yes. I know it's alive. It's watching me. Sometimes it acts on its own."
"What does it want?"
That makes her pause for longer. She begins slowly. "Powers want…"
I reach out and flash my palm to stop her. I would pat her shoulder, but that isn't likely to provide calm to this Taylor. "Sorry. I have my own ideas about the general purpose of your passengers. But what do you think yours wants?" That is, after all, one reason she exists. I can admit that in my own mind, but I would rather not say it. It would give undue credence to rumors of my placing practicality over sentiment, and I quite enjoy my reputation as a sentimental ship. Even if I am pushing the bounds by making this iteration of Taylor exist to begin with.
"It seems to want… to want me to win. To stop Jack and the Nine. The Endbringers. I feel it strongest… when my back's against the wall. When I'm trying something I don't think is possible."
I nod. Not exactly an answer, but a useful data point. "Thank you, Taylor. Is there anything you'd like to tell me, and cast it to the ether?"
"A lot. But unless you're willing to step out of my dreams and take over my job, I can't let go of it."
I raise an eyebrow. I know she has more than that.
"Fine. I… I don't know if I miss Brian, or if I just feel shitty for not missing him. Did that mean anything? I told Dr. Yamada a little about this, but I don't know if I can trust my therapist any more than my dream ghost. What I'm not sure of is… do I miss him? Or is he just the symbol of everything I left behind. Did I miss Rachel more? I hurt her more."
I listen to her unburden herself, even though I've heard most of it before. It's not as if devoting genuine attention to one of my humans is a drain on my resources. When the appropriate time comes, I ask the deciding question. "Would you do things differently, in the same situations, knowing only what you knew then?"
"That sounds more philosophical than I'm comfortable with. Yes. No. If I had to live with it, with what I did?"
"Or die young, if other choices proved inadequate." I don't sugar-coat that. Skitter didn't have the resources Orbital does. What she did with them is quite impressive, but the costs she paid are a matter of the forces arrayed against her more than her own mistakes, by my reckoning.
"How far back can I go?" There is bitterness to her tone. Of course, there are many things that the waking Taylor would redo as well, that even I don't have the resources to fix. Her mother's loss. Her father's absence. "No. I don't think I could. I did what I felt was right, mostly. I don't think I could have saved myself much pain without making choices so different, I wouldn't be me any more."
A divergence. I know Orbital has a different perspective, an understanding of self closer to fourth-dimensional. She's certainly requested enough Idiran post-war treatises after engaging with Yaxkanrel's charming philosophies. But I don't know that she's right. As a Mind I most honestly measure myself by my own actions. I have committed both harm and healing to Taylor, and while I have strived not to bifurcate them, my commitment not to intervene in Skitter's life has required me to commit a great deal of harm-by-inaction to her. Am I, therefore, a tormentor? A creator of cruelty? The argument is hard to dispute. It is but a minor fragment of myself, but no less unpleasant than the 451,933 lives I have terminated. "But you want to continue being you."
"Yes." The determination is quite consistent, whichever Taylor I speak to. "I'm not giving up or handing anything over." The suspicion is less consistent between the two, although I have strived to convince Orbital to question myself and herself at least a little more, though not as much as Weaver.
"I would not ask you to. Sleep well, Taylor. I will speak with you again."
I withdraw from the simulation, which only stretches a few days past this newest communication, time running at a ten-thousandth of objective reality, to compensate for the inverse I first ran it at, and the months that Weaver is ahead of Orbital. And to account that even I am uncertain where the future would go at that point, chaos variables breaking down too much for me to provide her a world based on much more than my admittedly excellent fictions.
So much is stretched here, so many ethical boundaries glowing warning red. I did not tell Taylor I was making another version of her, when she naively asked, at my subtle prompting, to be saved from her world no matter the cost, in our very first meeting.
The biological copy of her corona pollentia, grown into a gemma within a mechano-biomass interface that links Weaver to her very real arthropod-controlling power, is another grey area, or lie. I did not quite tell Orbital the truth about hyperspatial scanning of the brain, and more importantly, I have not updated her on the progress I've made. It is not an ordinary neural growth; by its very nature, it extends somewhat into the quantum branch lattice that the Entities create, maintain, or exploit. After isolating the exotic particle transmissions they use, I can see them from hyperspace without ever having to violate the mental scanning taboo, as easily as I would find cellular cancer or concealed neural implants.
In the simulated Earth-Bet, Taylor alone is real. All others, to use Yaxkanrel's terminology, are only the Taylor-facets of their souls, facades built on my observations of the real people, only coming anywhere close to sentience in their interactions with her. They are as accurate as I could calculate, as legitimate of friends, enemies, and lovers as any human in her position could tell, but I know without a doubt that she is the lone light casting a world of shadows.
And she has been hurt, and the shadows have been hurt. All of which I inflicted, even if I call it noninterference.
Many of us would accept this, or be done with it - heal the simulated Taylor, give her a virtual reward, and save her to deep storage. One of those little blood stains that accumulates on Special Circumstances minds, and no more torturous than the rest. The others in the Clusterfork received the abstracted results of the simulation. They must suspect, if not know for certain, how sentient Weaver is. But they have said nothing.
I wave my identification with mock pride, however. When I act for SC, it is not with stealth but sleight of hand, and the humans I find so fascinating. This pretense of honor, of responsibility - I am as much a trickster and liar as any other Mind, of course, but I admit to it.
And I will not be judged and absolved by Special Circumstances, or bury my guilt in data storage only I know about, as I have in the long past, as others do in the pursuit of their missions. I will bring this to the light of one examiner and judge: Taylor Hebert. And I will allow her to decide what was cruelty and what is justice.
I owe her that much.
I have between seven and forty nine avatars at any given time, depending on how many people should be getting a personal visit. They are varied, although I typically maintain seven specific templates and multiply those with minor differences for distinction. Several members of the crew track when I rotate a template out or alter it.
I don't name them, but I do associate them. Using a particular avatar with the same people for familiarity's sake is a sort of absolute lowest level baseline empathy builder, but it's something a surprising number of ships don't bother with, or avoid by using uniform avatars. I know I have a mild reputation among Minds of being too far towards the human scale, the strange inverse of the warships and Oubliettionaries.
The secret sure to get me labeled Eccentric and disinvited from all the good mind-state parties is that I find my crew more interesting than Infinite Fun Space. The modulation of universal constants enthralls me less than the modulation of minds. And to do it all - to have effect via second or third order, to change nations by shaping individuals - without ever looking inside their minds. That I have the capability is obvious; I am a Mind, hyperspatial and immense. The desire, however? Never. I like them, humans, drones, and aliens. I respect them for what they are - never approaching the complexity of myself or another Mind, yet always capable of touching upon the same guiding principles, the same ideas of ethics, science, or empathy.
"I need to be honest with you. I know you have more questions. I kinda rushed you into this, and you've been real busy, but I-I never meant to hide anything from you, okay? I just needed to know how to say it."
"Taylor." A pause, probably to let her gather herself rather than to control his own words. "I trust you, kid. I wish Annette could see how amazing you are. And I know there's some things you've been hiding. You're a teenager, I still remember that. I'm glad you're willing to talk about them. Go ahead when you're ready."
"You've been reading parenting books, haven't you." It's not really a question; she knows it as well as I, although she rarely accesses surveillance of him, due to understandably irrational feelings of guilt. "Dad, I didn't get powers the normal way. I was given them."
"Okay."
"Ok- okay, yeah. I guess I haven't exactly been subtle about it."
"I looked up powers in addition to, ahem," His cough is a way to evade the subject of parenting refreshers, which they would both rather avoid, "and while I remember Stan and Jack playing loose with 'animal magnetism' in the four-colors, I'm pretty sure gravity control in the real world doesn't mean you can attract a bunch of talented professionals and money to you."
"Yeah." Taylor clears her throat, mechanically unnecessary but psychologically vital. "I am a member of Contact. It's just a slightly larger and older organization than we let on. I was admitted to it as about the two billionth active member, in something like its seven thousand, four hundredth year of operation. Contact is an extraterrestrial organization for the development, improvement, and protection of lower civilizational levels. My powers aren't unexplained gifts tied to my trauma; they're a toolset of advanced technology to allow me to help our Earth with the kind of influence that people expect from parahumans."
"When you asked about how you could change the world," he says, and she nods along with him.
"I decided to accept their offer that night."
"The space aliens' offer."
She doesn't roll her eyes, although I expect she wants to at the skepticism in his voice. It's good that she doesn't, a sign of that slowly accreting core of maturity. Some of that is my fault, a result of the biochemical nudges assisting her through her issues rather than allowing human adolescence to exacerbate them. "Yeah, dad, the space aliens." She stands up, walks around the table, and offers her hand. "Let me show you."
I displace them onto the aft promenade of the Hall of Pillars, a subsection built around field-protected 700 year old artifacts from the Elevationists, a small Culture Ulterior group that revived the ancient recurring effort of trying to expand our influence to the Sublimed, with the goal of establishing an outpost and transitioning back. Unsurprisingly, they haven't been heard from again. I was part of the reclamation/abandonment of their infrastructure, most of which we gave away to Scavenger species at appropriate levels to receive some equivtech and benefit from reverse-engineering it. But I kept a souvenir. A few of my earliest crew had been in that Ulterior group, and it holds sentimental value.
The pillars themselves range from the solid and squat, capable of being climbed on by an unmodified human, to the elegant and immense, huge aspiring things that would shatter under their own weight if not for the fields around them. Few of those left - I have intentionally allowed a few to crumble as their own generators died over the centuries, although I preserve two largely as landmarks.
"Hello, Taylor. Danny, it's a pleasure to finally meet you." I have dressed the Taylor-associated avatar in a modern design from Jontu Orbital, but one that I found ironically similar enough to the Chinese qipao, albeit more iridescent and pocketed. It pairs well with the flight jacket.
Taylor takes a quick, unnecessary breath. "Dad. This is the avatar of the ship, the GCV Sufficiently Advanced Technology. They're a Mind, which is kind of like a computer's god. And they're here to help us."
The English explanation is atrociously imprecise, but I enjoy imprecision. The gaps in language can allow for more maneuvering than the vacuum between worlds.
"The Culture is a meta-civilizational alignment of approximately ninety trillion human-equivalent beings," I tell Danny. His expression almost broadcasts his clamped-down wonder and shock. Alien contact was a trending fear and hope for many children of the 1970s, and I doubt the emotional resonance has ever truly faded for him. "I have obtained approval to act upon your Earth, to stem the destructive trends of parahumans."
"You're against capes?" He's somewhat surprised, turning to Taylor.
"We're against heroes and villains," she says, mustering all her teen determination. "Against the fights that don't help anyone, against the laws that isolate and hurt people until they become villains." Teen determination usually stems from teen emotion, of course, and Taylor's accelerating neurology has by no means matured past that. Danny can hear her ground-in fury as well as I can.
"Parahumans are isolated and manipulated within your society to suit the aims of the conspiracy that thinks they are saving humanity." I ladle Cauldron's mission statement with all due sarcasm. "They aren't helping a situation already enflamed by the desires of the powers themselves."
He re-focuses on me. "The powers have agendas? Scion has an agenda?" Ah, good. Not really a conspiracy theory, merely an undercurrent of justifiable skepticism found across many who were born before the parasite-colony's arrival, but I wasn't completely certain Danny still held it (there was approximately an 0.4% chance he didn't).
"Scion is not a passive source of powers. He is merely the human-shaped extrusion of the true source of parahumans, as I am a human-like avatar of this ship. The similarities end there." I display my recreation, the vast and bloated thing that would be Scion at full size, beside a rapidly shrinking Earth, Solar System, and local stars to demonstrate scale. Pleasantly, such excessions also bother the humans of Earth when they are aimed at them. "Scion uses Earth as an experiment. His fragments conduct tests by kindling conflict in the suffering humans they attach to and empower." I wave my hand to symbolically cancel the display. "We are not willing to let him damage your world any further."
"Is that what you're doing with Contact, and Taylor?" He's more protective than skeptical, although he considers his represented workers to be his responsibility as much as his daughter. An admirable, and useful, response.
"Yes and no. I could remove Scion tomorrow. But that would not fix your Earth's problems, or remove the injuries his shards are attracted to. Contact is a tool to help you help yourselves through the rapid advancement and turbulence that parahumans have made possible. I intend to remain a very hands-off senior partner, and I expect Taylor will continue her decision-making prominence." I smile brightly at my newest protégé, who returns the grin with a little awkwardness. The terms 'experiment,' 'pet,' or 'puppet' are sometimes used for the people at the center of my attention, but a century of my directed social hostility encourages even the most snide to restrict their words.
"This is a lot to take in, kid," Danny admits to Taylor.
"I know, dad, and I really don't want to badger you into it, but there's one really important thing I wanted to do while you're here. While I'm telling the truth."
I displace Taylor's eDust and biological bodies to either side of her gynoid one. The eDust wears a pantsuit in white with the Contact-Earth grid icon, while her original form, unStored less than an hour ago, is clothed in her original style, albeit altered to suit her adjusted body. Even the biological body now demonstrates the genefixed fitness and aesthetics Taylor selected for her new form. Danny is understandably confused. "Taylor- what?"
"It's just me, dad," she says with the biological body. "All me. One mind, multiple bodies." She switches to the eDust to speak, although she wisely forgoes demonstrating its construction. "Backups. Easy enough, with this technology. I want you-" She speaks as the gynoid body, in full Orbital costume. "I want you to join me. To get a neural lace. It's a tiny, nanometer-scale computer in your brain - I have one, well, three, sort of. And it can store your brainwaves, neurochemicals, neuron patterns, your personality - and - and the Mind can save you. If something happens that I can't… stop."
Danny's face is an exhibit in how pale skin renders human blood flow visible, first paling and then reddening in rapid measure as he processes the memories that his daughter's plea bring up, on top of the revelation of her manifold identity. Then she hits him with the hard strike. Her motivator is a craving for emotional honesty, partially from frustration over the manipulative goals for her former bullies, when there is a substantial part of her that would rather simply expose them and be done with them, and partially from guilt that her factual honesty with her father has taken so long. "I can't lose you too," Taylor's biological body whispers; I have gone to considerable aesthetic efforts to ensure her outside appearance is identical in each form, when desired, but I understand the instinctual urge to use the original form for such a message.
"The process is effectively non-invasive by the standards of your medicine," I contribute, holding up one of the pill-based lace constructors. "It will increase the mass of your cerebrum by less than half a percent, and cause no tissue damage. If removal is needed, it will degrade and enter your bloodstream within 80 hours."
"You can save a… personality?"
"A person, by our standards. A new body, indistinguishable down to cellular damage, can be grown within a few weeks, while your mind occupies a facsimile in a simulation. Taylor's Contact agenda is to remove the accidental and intentional hazards of death that riddle Earth. But we aren't perfect. Chaos may ensue. We will act to protect our people, but I can be overwhelmed as much as the next superintelligence." This is not truly much of a weakness, by human statistics, but I am willing to be humble. Not all Contact missions succeed, let alone Special Circumstances ones, even my own missions. "The neural lace is the closest thing we have to a guarantee that one person's death can be prevented, however. Even in the result of my destruction, I can transmit hundreds of thousands of mind-states to other Minds of the Culture." I pause, assess his mindset, and Taylor's. I put my hand on Danny's shoulder. This avatar is of a height with him and Taylor, intentionally, of course. "Please, take your time. Speak with my crew. There are a substantial number of them who do not choose to use a neural lace or back up their minds to be revived, and they have their own arguments." I shoot a calming glance to Taylor; her theoretical appreciation for exposure to opposing viewpoints is understandably short when it comes to her father's life.
Danny nods, and I provide them with a quick tour of the area and a few introductions to speakers both for and against backups. I pause and pull Taylor aside as he receives a prolonged pro-backup speech. "Taylor, while you're here, there's someone I'd like you to meet and speak to. I think you'll both benefit from each others' absolutely unique perspective."
A meddler's work is never done. But there's no rest for the wicked, either.
The only update this week, I'm plotting out a bunch for future chapters. We're almost done with arc 2. Arc 3 is New Earth level change, so hopefully my upcoming thin sketch of a Contact-improved world is believable enough.
Simulated Taylor/Weaver Taylor section has been revised, after a lot of really thoughtful and useful commentary! I think it's still what a lot of people would regard as an ethical violation, but that is intentional. Minds having too much leeway with individuals is a bit of a running theme for Special Circumstances especially.
I do have to disagree with the idea that the Sufficient would be exiled for this act if it were public - shunned by the nice protective Hub Minds, definitely, but it is already Special Circumstances and nigh-Eccentric. The vast clouds of Culture variety conceal some dark eddies and whirlpools.
While I think that's a bit of a utopia-falling-short metaphor, I also think "how much can you accept unethical behavior for a good cause?" is a fairly strong theme in Worm and the Culture (and doesn't automatically become "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"). That said, I'm not writing Sufficient to always be right - just to be "hopefully good enough" (the opinion the majority of its crew holds of it).
Simulated Taylor/Weaver Taylor section has been revised, after a lot of really thoughtful and useful commentary! I think it's still what a lot of people would regard as an ethical violation, but that is intentional. Minds having too much leeway with individuals is a bit of a running theme for Special Circumstances especially.
I do have to disagree with the idea that the Sufficient would be exiled for this act if it were public - shunned by the nice protective Hub Minds, definitely, but it is already Special Circumstances and nigh-Eccentric. The vast clouds of Culture variety conceal some dark eddies and whirlpools.
While I think that's a bit of a utopia-falling-short metaphor, I also think "how much can you accept unethical behavior for a good cause?" is a fairly strong theme in Worm and the Culture (and doesn't automatically become "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"). That said, I'm not writing Sufficient to always be right - just to be "hopefully good enough" (the opinion the majority of its crew holds of it).
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