John C Wright Golden Age 03 The Golden Transcendence

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black hole was made, the singularity fountains at Cygnus X-l could have
provided the energy to accelerate it. How could such a thing be seen by our
astronomers in flight? It would absorb all light."
Terrier said, "X-ray or gamma point sources would emerge as swept-in particles
were sheared by tidal forces. Something for us to look back over astronomical
records to check."
Vidur said, "Look. A finer-grained image is being rendered."
It was true. The ghost-particle array now showed some internal details of the
ice-locked chamber. The ship mind hypothesized a possible view, based on the
fuzzy images, the cloaked echoes of energy discharges. The hypothetical
picture showed Xenophon hanging like a blue sphere, in his most
heat-conserving form, in fee middle of the tiny chamber.
Diomedes raised his hand. "Xenophon is aware of us."
Instantly, all four of them were embraced into the ship-mind, and the
information flowed back to the In-ner System, to Neptune, and to this far and
lonely outpost, and flooded through them.
It was the final thought of the fading Transcendence.
And Xenophon was there.
Xenophon was using a sophisticated Silent Oecumene mind-warfare technique to
watch the Transcendence (or tiny surface parts of it) without joining. This
was Xenophon, hidden, encrypted, surrounded by walls of privacy, in a small
cell, attached by a long, invisible tether of radio-laser communication, to
the Neptunian Embassy at Trailing Trojan City-Swarm.
For a moment of Transcendence time, which was several days of real time, the
last movement of the Transcendence watched him watching.
The thought preoccupying all the gathered minds was this: Perhaps there was
still some hope that Xenophon could be salvaged or reformed.
Xenophon was allowed to see, in the deepest thoughts of the Golden Oecumene,
the honest awareness of the futility of the Silent Ones and all their
irrational philosophy. The war would probably not be as long as Helion's
projection had extrapolated. The Nothing Machine's ability to produce copies
of itself was severely limited by the fact that, unless all copies maintained,
somehow, a complete uniformity of opinion and thought-priority, conflicts
would arise between them.
Such conflicts had to be resolved by violence, since the Nothing philosophy
eschewed reason.
Foresight of that coming violence would require the Master Nothing to make the
copies and lesser Nothings as weak, stupid, fearful, and un-innovative as was
possible, given their tasks.
Colonizing new star systems with hosts of stupid and uncreative machines as
colony managers was surely to be a series of slow, nightmarish failures. The
empire of the Silent Ones, if it existed at all, would be a small one. Perhaps
they had not even left their home star at Cygnus X-l yet.
If so, then Phaeton's first mission there might resolve matters quickly. This
"war" might be over even before the planned first warship, the Nemesis
Lacedai-mon, was launched by the New College.
What, then, was the point of any of Xenophon's efforts? Why had he helped this
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madness? Why did he still support a cause doomed to failure?
At this point Xenophon realized these thoughts were directed at him; that the
minds on which he was spying were watching him, patiently watching him.
Giving him one last chance to be reasonable.
And yes, of course, Atkins was there, loaded into the ship-mind of the Phoenix
Exultant as she approached. In the middle of the otherwise free and peaceful
Transcendence, Atkins had introduced a military thought-virus. The vaunted
mind-war techniques of the Silent Ones did not detect or stop it.
This simple virus was one that interfered with normal time-binding and
information-priority routines in the brain. In effect, it made someone in the
Transcendence ignore what was happening outside; no more than an exaggeration
of a normal reflex. But it allowed the Phoenix Exultant, huge and hot, to
close the distance to the ice cell without being noticed. Xenophon was
preoccupied.
The final thought of the Transcendence calmly bade Xenophon and the universe
farewell, and ended. Xenophon woke, and saw the gigantic, invulnerable
starship almost atop his hiding place.
From one part of the blue sphere that formed his body, Xenophon's
neurocircuitry writhed, constructed an emitter, and sent a message to a nearby [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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