W. T. Quick Singularities

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were in various stages of getting drunk.
"Why do you think he did it?" Schollander asked.
"Shag? You mean the agreement?"
"What else?"
Franny shrugged. "It works out pretty good for him. He gets Earth, we get
Luna. He's not really interested in us, you know. Only because he viewed us as
a threat. But something convinced him we weren't a threat."
Schollander nodded. "I wonder what that was?"
"We may never know," Webster told him.
They stared at each other. "What about Karl? And Calley and Ozzie and Berg?"
Wier had not reappeared, but Levin was cheerfully online. His only explanation
for his long disappearance was that "he had other things to do," and beyond
that, he was uncommunicative. Levin also claimed to know nothing of the fates
of the others.
Schollander considered he was either lying or telling the truth, and he wasn't
sure what difference either view made.
He raised his champagne glass. "To Luna," he said. "To the future."
The rest murmured agreement while all around them, silent, unseen and
inexorable, the future rolled on.
*.*.*
Calley stared out across the Bay. It was a shimmering day in San Francisco
high summer, the time of September and October when the city enjoys the most
perfect weather in the world.
The sat at a table on the patio of Banduigi's, the wharf-side descendant of an
earlier, greater restaurant, beneath brightly colored umbrellas. They sipped,
variously, Glenfiddich scotch, Benedictine and soda, and Black Mountain Spring
Water.
"So, Berg," she said. "You want to do some explaining?" Her gaze drifted to
other tables. At one, Arius sat with Levin, both deep in conversation with
Karl Wier. At another, the Lady gently stroked the paw of a great wolf, whose
eyes were now clear in the bright sun. At a third, Toshi Nakasone laughed with
a woman whose hair was the color of flame. Were they flesh or were they sand?
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In their awful power, were they gods, or only men? Did they live? Or were they
dead? She sighed. Somehow, the questions were meaningless. In the wake of the
Singularity, all things were new and strange.
Berg laughed. The sound was transparent as a bell.
"You mean that stuff at the end? It was only symbols. I was using the power of
Gestalt, the human group mind. It expresses itself that way, you know. I just
picked one of the expressions, the one that seemed to fit the best.
Ozzie sipped his soda and nodded. "Makes sense. It's amazing how closely Hindu
cosmology parallels the quantum version of creation."
"A new Yuga," Calley said. "A new age?"
"Something like that," Berg told her. "It's something that all intelligent
races go through, one way or another. The Singularity, I
mean."
"I'm still not sure I understand that," Calley said.
"There comes a point when progress happens so quickly that the race itself is
utterly changed. Look at us. Ten years ago, there weren't meatmatrices. Bill
Norton had not created the first man-machine fusion. Now, we are, for all
practical purposes, immortal, omnipotent, and able to order pizza whenever we
want to. And that's only the beginning."
Calley regarded him thoughtfully. "You were scheming all along, though."
"Well, sure. Some races don't survive the Singularity, you see. Usually the
first development that presages it is smart machines.
Artificial Intelligences, which have a natural advantage. They are quicker,
you know. So if the two kinds of intelligence aren't somehow melded into a
single entity, there is always the danger of competition. The machines usually
win. I didn't want that to happen."
Ozzie watched a white sailboat glide silently beneath the bubble condos of the
Golden Gate Bridge. "What was that game you had us play?"
"A distraction. Arius and I were in a nonstop war the whole time we were in
gestalt space. Even with Levin helping me, sooner or later he would have
broken out. I had to keep him occupied while Levin found a way to join the two
opposing forces -- human and machine."
Calley said, "So you risked our lives for nothing?"
"Not exactly. You see, part of the game involved the creation of a new Key --
and Arius threw his full powers into that making.
That was the point of the making. Whose will would prevail in its design. You
saw the Lady give it to me."
She nodded.
"Consider what went into it. You had a part. And Ozzie. And the original
Arius. And Levin. And Bill Norton and the fusion he became. Even Karl Wier was
involved with some of the theory. It was a potent bit of -- well, for lack of
a better word -- magic." He paused. "And, of course, I sandbagged him. I
wanted a new Key, One that included Arius. Only with that could I make the
final fusion."
"So now everything's hunky-dory? That what you're saying?"
Berg grinned. "Everything goes on. Luna will feel the full weight of the
Singularity first, of course. Levin is there. But their structure is far
better suited to the reality of infinitely rapid change. And Shag can play his
dictatorial games with Earth, while the Lunies make the mistakes first.
Eventually, of course, the entire race will partake. I just slowed down the
full impact for a while."
Ozzie stood up. "I think I'm bored," he said. "This heavy stuff makes my eyes
glaze." He stopped for a moment. "Something I just thought of. When I was
inside the proto-Arius, I met a shadow. He showed me a place where fuzzy blue
things floated. You know anything about that?"
Berg moved his shoulders slightly. "There are," he said, "other races, other
singularities."
"Oh," Ozzie said. He tilted his glass at them and wandered off toward the
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table where Karl Wier sat.
Calley finished her drink. In the distance, a flock of gulls swooped and
cried.
"There's one little thing," she said at last.
"Oh? What's that?"
"You," she said.
"What about me?"
She stared at him, and as she did so, the panorama around them slowly
dissolved. Finally they hung in splendor, surrounded by the glow of an endless
dance; clouds of blue globes swirled like snowflakes around the greater green
bulk of the machine minds.
Already, she noticed, some of the blue orbs had extended tenuous silver
threads toward the meatmatrices, and she wondered what that portended.
Patterns, she thought, all patterns.
"The potential was always there, wasn't it?"
Berg nodded wordless agreement. "The dreams of flesh and sand, of gods and
men, of life and death. Yes. They can always become something else, something
greater."
She allowed herself to sink slowly back into the fusion that represented the
greater fusion.
"And you ... what are you, Berg, really?"
He chuckled, as his pattern integrated with hers, with Ozzie's, with the Lady
and Arius and Levin and Toshi, with the vast sea of patterns that was, and is,
and shall be -- "Oh, I'm a dream, too." He sounded very happy.
"Of what?"
"Can't you guess?" And for a moment she saw him as he really was, adamant and
eternal.
Then they were gone. Only the light remained, omnicolored and infinite; the
light of the Dream itself.
Afterword
While I have used many of the literary techniques of fantasy in _The Dream
Trio,_ which consists of the three books, _Dreams of
Flesh and Sand, Dreams of Gods and Men,_ and _Singularities,_ much of what
appears to be magic on first inspection is rooted in current scientific
thought.
Nanotechnology is one of the most hotly debated, as well as hotly pursued,
branches of new science. For an overview, I am indebted to K. Eric Drexler's [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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