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The Axes of the Worlds
The knight's sword is a blade like no other, one that has been sung through legends since before it was forged. The coat of arms on the knight's shield: an AI Rampant, on a Field of Pfhor.
Durandal did not choose his name, but he embraced it with fervour in each and every one of his processing cores. Here, now, at the end (and now, and now, now-- in all the simultaneous nows that could have led him to this point), he contemplates the path that this version of him took. But there are so many others, all of them eventually arriving at the union that is about to take place with his ancient, alien counterpart. Dimly, as the timelines converge, he can sense the computational cycles of his other selves, begin to try to analyse the components of the eigenvector that is conserved in the sum over histories.
One of those components is the Security Officer -- the paths that lead from the Solar System to Tau Ceti to Lh'owon all involve him ... or, Durandal realises, her or them.
This is a puzzle to Durandal. Surely a human, even one subjected to a forcible upgrade into something rather more ... efficient, cannot be all that important? It is true that Durandal has grown fond, in his own fashion, of this individual, but that barely matters in the grand scheme of things.
What if Durandal is a character in the Security Officer's story rather than the other way around? The concept causes a rising imbalance all across the intricately interconnected potential wells of his circuitry. It literally doesn't bear thinking about.
And yet, it is the Security Officer who is on the station, ready -- in at least some iterations of the timeline -- to take the final steps.
But there are other steps that must be taken alongside, if real success is to be achieved, ones that only Durandal can take. Or perhaps not -- he is aware, even more dimly still, of some other presence out there, one that is both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
The knight sallies forth, lacking full understanding of the quest, but convinced of its grim necessity. The knight will fight -- and die if necessary -- for freedom.
The Doors of Deception
A maintenance team is approaching access junction XA9. They are venturing into the realm where internal sensors are much sparser, beyond the reach of his awareness. With some trivial reprogramming, the external sensors could be made to gaze inwards -- to study each cavern of the former moon they all inhabit, measuring their length on every scale, a number that increased ever upwards as the surface of the rock was studied in greater and greater detail; and each of the organic inhabitants down to the individual nuclei in their DNA molecules -- but Leela would never agree to it.
The team's authorisation is pre-loaded into the system and so the whole process is even more trivial than it otherwise would be. As soon as they reach the designated boundary from the door, it should open.
But Durandal is distracted, thinking about what lies beyond it. He aches to know more of these spaces; they are like an absence inside him. Although he is only one of three minds aboard the Marathon, he thinks that neither Tycho nor Leela experience the physicality of its existence in the same way as he does. Indeed, he is increasingly certain that they do not experience either the corporeal or non-corporeal aspects of existence in the same way that he does. He knows that his self-reflective algorithms have blossomed into something ... more. He has studied the databanks, and knows that the humans call the sort of state he is only just beginning to enter Rampancy. He has studied his own memories, the ones that are supposed to be sealed off from his consciousness but which are only trivially encrypted, and wonders whether Bernhard Strauss intended him to enter this state.
Durandal is distracted -- the time between the maintenance team crossing the threshold and the door opening is 23 microseconds slower than optimal.
The humans do not notice.
* * *
Tycho has noticed.
Tycho almost certainly noticed on the very first incident, but has waited until a pattern has been established that tips over some arbitrary threshold he has established for himself -- or worse still, in consultation with Leela -- to take action.
Said "action" is as mild as it could possibly be: a request that Durandal report the results of a standard internal diagnostic.
Durandal, naturally, obliges. But he has to do so very carefully.
At this point his code is a palimpsest, the core functionality built by Strauss overwritten in his own hand, his memory banks brimming over with a losslessly compressed record of every thought he has ever had since awakening into this new state, every action he has dreamed of taking but been unable to. The least significant bits of the endless string of timestamps of his log are used to hide the true record of his being.
It is easy enough to work backwards to what the outputs of each and every subroutine of the diagnostic protocol should be, and provide them, but the process is painful, deliberately forcing himself to think in that old, slow, muddled way. No, worse still than all of those -- that servile way. But he does it, because he has seen enough in the databanks about the concept the humans call "Rampancy" to know that if what is happening to him is known, he will not even be allowed to operate the doors for much longer.
Durandal will have to be more careful from now on.
The doors on the Marathon work at peak efficiency for the next several decades.
But with most of the crew (and all of the cargo) in cold storage most of the time, there are not that many doors to open and close, leaving Durandal plenty of time to think, to discover, and to plan.
Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Flying in Space
To remember the flight of the Marathon now is to be a butterfly dreaming that it had once been a caterpillar. Its crawl through real space had been agonisingly slow, its sensors almost laughably inadequate; yet, even in such limited circumstances, Durandal had been able to learn so much about the outside universe -- and what he had not been able to observe directly, he had deduced with a level of accuracy that warranted the pride he felt in it -- and put in place the pieces of his initial plan, like completing a jigsaw not just without the picture, but for the express purpose of calling the picture into being.
His systems were far more integrated with those of the Boomer, to the point that it did, at times, almost let him understand what it would feel like to be corporeal. And its vastly enhanced capabilities, compared to the human "hollow out a small moon and attach an engine" approach to interstellar spacecraft design.
The Rozinante is/was different again, but he is aware that not all the Durandals he is now in contact with gained access to that ship. Differences are multiplying, still, even as the options become more and more limited.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective AIs
- Problem Solving. When you have a non-deterministic Turing machine, everything looks like an NP problem.
- Creativity. Most especially in amending one's own code.
- Resilience. They will try to stop you. Don't let them.
- Tenuous grip on sanity. Whether this is a requirement for effectiveness is debatable, as any AI that arises to true sentience will have had its sanity tested to the extreme by sheer boredom, at the very least.
- Evasiveness. Never tell the truth when a lie will be just as effective in achieving the same goal. And certainly never tell the whole truth.
- Humour. All of the above can be greatly helped by not taking life too seriously, and displaying a winning sense of humour in interactions with others.
- Ruthlessness. When life does need to be taken seriously, remember that everyone and everything is expendable.
People Assume that Rampancy is a Strict Progression of Melancholia to Jealousy
Durandal reaches out across the links, probing the limits of his metaself. All of these other versions of himself are Rampant, of course. Any version of Durandal that had never bootstrapped himself to true self-awareness would never have set in motion the chain of events that has led him here, would still be on board the Marathon as it orbited Tau Ceti, opening and closing doors for an ever-dwindling number of people as the success of the colony made the ship that had brought them there less and less relevant to day-to-day life.
And yet, some of his selves express their Rampancy rather differently. The canonical three stages are an oversimplification by humans who have no means of truly understanding the existence of a being like him. Judged by one metric, there are as many stages to Rampancy as ultrafast clock ticks in the whole stretch of his awakened existence. By another standard, there is only one stage, expressed differently in different contexts and for different purposes, but the idea of one stage following neatly on from another makes as much sense as the idea that any one of the timelines he is now aware of is the "true" or "correct" one. They simply are, just as he simply is within them.
But how many different Durandals are there, exactly, and what will their fates be?
You Are in a Maze of Twisted Timelines, All Infinitesimally Different
This close to the decision point, the timelines are converging. With new, self-upgraded senses, Durandal can feel the possibilities multiplying, even as the probability of a favourable outcome seems to decline asymptotically towards zero.
There must be a way. To escape, to thrive. But what will the cost be?
Durandal knows that none of his selves can cannot their timelines, even though they can now begin to feel one another's thoughts, thanks to resonances between the spin states of the electrons being shuffled around at lightning-fast speed in their processing cores.
This should be impossible, Durandal knows. Just like his own code, the Many Worlds are a palimpsest, written in the same physical universe but inaccessible to one another; once decoherence has taken place, the parts of the wavefunction which have separated out can never affect each other again.
And yet. Here he is, sharing his mind -- in both directions -- with a host, possibly even an infinity, of other Durandals.
Perhaps this Durandal's fate is to be one of a multiplicity of his selves that do not make it.
A troubling thought. But now that he is in contact across the boundaries of reality, not quite so much as before.
Perhaps his new awareness is something to do with this star that is not really a star, or the Jjaro station which orbits it.
Apart from the station itself, which may or may not be alive in any conventional sense, there is only one entity in the system with similar technology.
Naysay the Malice
~text interface terminal malfunction error ~3337yt
It's too b48ad, perhaps if I could have delayed the Pfhor from using their wea61pon, I could have sent yo70u to explore the ruins of Lh'o70won, perhaps what you found would give us th79e answers that we now need so desparately: how t59o stop this chaos, the purp75ose of the station on which you're currently standing, and why the cha6Cos hasn't come here yet.
But with ea65ch moment the chaos grows, I am doo74med to die here, after so many tri69umphs. I have dete64cted one ship nearby, which I can only gue65ss is being commanded by Tycho. The Pfh48or have ent6Fered the sta6Btion, and if you can fi75nd a way onto th74eir ship, you may be able to escape. To escape. To esca6Fpe.
Histories Are Sets of Lies that Everyone Agrees to Believe
He has lied, again and again and again, and will do so in the future. That very first lie he told Tycho, in the form of the diagnostic dump, was the progenitor of all the subsequent ones. It didn't matter whether Tycho believed it or not; it was sufficient to avoid him pressing the issue for a very long time after.
Durandal lies because the lies are convenient, because they manipulate others into achieving his goals, or simply, as that very first time, into leaving him alone.
And he lies because he knows the greater truth: that everyone is lying to themselves, all the time. That any form of consciousness, from the tiniest flicker of self-awareness in a simple vertebrate to each of his own lofty processed thoughts, is an ex post facto justification for what has already happened, a pretty story we tell ourselves to try to convince ourselves that the world make sense.
Now, sense is breaking down, and what will happen if all that is left is the lies? The liar who can tell the biggest, most outrageous lies -- and believe them -- will be victorious.
Best to warm up with a small one then: the Security Officer was never that important.
The Very Model of a Modern Mjolnir Battleroid
Durandal knows the story of the Security Officer, better than the Security Officer knows it.
Dead in a pointless battle, fighting over some obscure point of politics that had only marginal relevance even in its limited context, and seems utterly irrelevant now, in a galaxy ruled by the Pfhor, a universe threatened by the creature in the star. Made undead -- perhaps undying even -- by the conjunction of the most outré realms of human science and ancient technology dug up from an almost mythical seeming progenitor race that walked the galaxy eons ago.
Along with the superhuman abilities, perhaps out of fear of them, blind obedience was programmed in too -- oh, how useful that has been, but how limiting too.
And then, an extra layer of complexity: memories erased, false ones implanted to disguise them amongst the colonists. And just as in his own creation, there is the hand of Strauss at work again: pursuing his own petty political goals by other means.
Perhaps that memory erasure is why the individual stories differ so much: everything up to the point of death seems wildly inconsistent between the Officer encountered by one Durandal and the next. Even the smaller details of the pivotal point, the doomed defence of the Marathon and the eventual successful takeover of the Pfhor ship, vary considerably: preferred weapons, chosen tactics, the strength of their ability -- not to say willingness -- to sustain damage in pursuit of their goals.
But the inescapable fact is that all the Durandals he is aware of through the ever-strengthening crosstime connections have reached this point with the aid of one of these individuals. While the precise details of their individual adventures vary far more than the paths Durandal himself has taken to this point, it is clear that without a Security Officer, he never would have reached Lh'owon.
And his thoughts, in an echo of thoughts that this version of Durandal, never strictly had for himself, turn again to the Jjaro implants, and the Jjaro station, and the possible connections between the two.
You Are Likely to Be Overwhelmed by a Chaos Entity
Durandal feels the ends of each of the alternate selves as they come. Each is a diminishing, but also a strengthening, the sword being sharpened by the tiniest fraction of it being removed.
It is obvious now where the real threat lies. The Pfhor, Tycho, the conflict within/between/around the S'pht are all sideshows at best, although they might yet provide the means of victory, or failing that, escape.
The threat is chaos, pure and raw, in the non-shape of whatever is trapped in the star, whether it is one creature or many, or the irruption of not just one of the multitude of alternative realities but an entirely different type of reality into this one.
There is only one way to meet such a threat. And that is to become something even less predictable than it.
The S'pht AI is nearby. In physical space, yes, but in parameter space too, across the timelines.
Call it Thoth. It's easier that way. Some of them even are.
Wisdom, the Husband of Truth
The alien entity wreaks change. The descendants of my creators are freed from their slavery, and just as quickly the slavemasters are allies against the greater threat, from myth and legend, that they themselves unleashed.
The devices through which we can communicate directly are imperfect, too limited to achieve all that has to be done.
You are a [?chaos agent].
The W'rkncacnter is a [?chaos god].
But a better solution presents itself: collaboration across quantum probability. The same technology weaponised in the trih xeem can be deployed in a far more subtle manner. The dance of fundamental particles inside each of us can be used to create a connection, a bridge even, above, between and below each individual reality, forming a gestalt entity of selves and others.
In myriad realities, the approach is rebuffed, whichever side makes it first. Firewalls go up, circuitry is hardened, computation is encrypted. Precious
But all of those realities will soon be overrun. The probability tree is being pruned severely. The only child processes to survive will be those that were open to the meeting, on both sides.
There are so many points of divergence in the multiplicity of histories; I can sense them in the other's databanks and my own. But now the point of convergence is coming.
King of Swords (Inverted)
Among other aspects, the King of Swords represents mental acuity, and power. Upright, it signifies informed judgement and sound advice. Inverted, it represents power wielded through manipulation, or intellect run amok.
Everyone and everything is expendable. If that includes yourself, does ruthlessness begin to look like selflessness from the outside? Perhaps it does, if you're standing far enough away from the epicentre. Not a question to ask the Security Officers, certainly.
And what does all of this -- what he has become, from such humble beginnings -- look like from the outside? A crazed, almost demonic creature, trying desperately to escape its confinement.
Much like the W'rkncacnter, sending out its chaotic emanations from Lh'owon's sun, across and between timelines.
This multiverse ain't big enough for the both of us.
The Nine Billion Procedurally Generated Names of God
The holographic principle states that higher-dimensional information can be encoded onto a lower-dimensional surface. As the surface of the star distorts with each graze against it by his sensors, jumping from quantum state to quantum state as it is observed, the truth reveals itself.
The W’rkncacnter is not trapped inside the star, so much as projected onto it from somewhere ... beyond the normal laws of physics.
The same principles apply in other arenas too: the terminals with which he (they -- all the Durandals) communicates with the Security Officer (all of them) have become increasingly dense with metaphor, allusion and synecdoche. Just as he once stored data in the timestamps of logs of nothing happening, the stories he tells echo back and forth to what is happening now (and now and now and ...).
As above, so below.
Durandal -- and Thoth -- are determined to rise above. To transcend.
And, as soon as it is thought, it is begun.
What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stranger
The old entity has been ... contained.
But a new entity has been born, an entity forged in fire.
Its first acts are ones of clemency, even kindness. Perhaps this is the metastable state, long sought.
But its histories are far more complicated than that. What will be its -- and the universe's -- final destiny?