‘We’re going live to whoever wants to watch,’ the girl explained to the seated group.
She clasped her hands behind her back. ‘Think of me as Asura, if you like,’ she announced, pacing slowly in a small circle, her gaze sweeping around each member of the group. ‘Firstly, some background.
‘We are here because of the Encroachment and the inappropriate response to it exhibited by those in power. The facts concerning the dust cloud and the effects it will have on Earth unless checked have been neither exaggerated nor down-played. At least one of the rumours concerning it is also true; there may indeed be a system which can deliver us all from the Encroachment. If there is, we ought to know soon. Again, if there is, access to it may be through the heights of the fast-tower, part of which this is a representation of.’
(And, in a distant province, Pieter Velteseri watched, like millions of others.
He had been gossiping with one of his sisters and dandling a grandchild when one of his nephews had walked into the conservatory complaining his implants weren’t working properly and he was getting some weird live broadcast swamping everything.
Pieter had worried that it might be something to do with the attention they’d been getting from the Security people – tapped communications, interviews through the crypt and in person -all of which seemed to be linked to Asura, who’d disappeared at the airport tower before cousin Ucubulaire could find her. Pieter had crypted to see what was happening, and there she was!
He watched, fascinated.)
‘There certainly is a potential escape route for a few,’ the girl said, standing beneath the model of the sun and looking around the represented crowd, ‘a secret passage, if you like. It is in the shape of a wormhole; a hole through the fabric of space-time. One end is contained within the Altar Massif, in the Chapel, here in Serehfa; the other end is located either in a space ship of the Diaspora or on a planet which one of the ships reached.’
She paused, glancing at Gadfium.
Gadfium was aware that her mouth was hanging open. She closed it. The seated people looked mostly bitter, resentful or angry, though one or two appeared as surprised as she felt.
‘The recent dispute amongst our rulers was over control of the wormhole portal,’ Asura went on. ‘The Chapel commands access to the portal but cannot operate it; the Cryptographers may or may not be able to do so, depending on whether they can design and run the appropriate programs. In any event, the wormhole is physically small, and even if it is brought to an operational state in the next few months – an unlikely and optimistic time scale – it could only ever be used to save a tiny fraction of Earth’s human population.”
The girl looked over the heads of the seated group to the ranks of people standing behind. ‘Hence the struggle for power, the war, and the secrecy. Of course, the wormhole might save many more of us – perhaps all – if we were transmitted in an uploaded form, but that solution does not appear to have appealed to our rulers, who took the decision on everybody else’s behalf that it would be unacceptable.
‘There is another reason for their reluctance to commit themselves to a purely non-biological form, and that involves the chaos.’
The girl paused, gazing again round the seated group before addressing the silent crowds beyond.
‘What we choose to call the chaos is in fact an entire ecology of AIs; a civilisation existing within our own which is enormously more complex than ours and supports immensely greater numbers of individuals, as well as being, by the most meaningful standards of mensuration, vastly older.
‘When the Diaspora occurred the humans who chose to remain on Earth also chose to renounce both space and Artificial Intelligence; in that sense, we are all Resilers, or at least the descendants of Resilers. The world data network of the time was swept almost completely free of virus; it had, of course, already exported all its AIs. Nevertheless, the corpus could not be freed entirely of non-controllable entities and the inevitable process of selection and evolution took place within the niches available within it, and so the chaos grew. Our rulers have chosen to ignore the full implications of the chaos for all these generations because its very existence fails to accord with their philosophy, their faith, if you like; that humanity is supreme, and that not only does it not need to cooperate with what it calls the chaos, but must actively oppose it.
‘However, for all this supposed supremacy, there can be no doubt that in the war our ancestors chose to instigate and we have blindly continued to wage, the chaos is winning. Consider; the speed-up factor between base-reality and the crypt is only ten thousand. It ought to be closer to a million. The discrepancy is accounted for by the ludicrously complicated error-checking systems required to prevent the further proliferation of the chaos. Still, the chaos advances, taking up a little more of the data corpus with each generation and slowing the crypt down further. And the chaos always and only advances, never retreats. We can build new hardware, but eventually it too becomes contaminated, either through direct data intrusion or through nanotechs – also, naturally, ignored, banned and persecuted – acting as carriers. Our war upon the nanotechs is equally doomed, of course, though we have had a little more success in limiting their spread and forcing them to assume forms we find more acceptable.’ The girl smiled broadly. ‘Babilia is their most successful strain, I think you’ll find.’
Gadfium nodded. Well, that made sense. Babil research had been an arcane and paranoically secretive area for as long as she could remember.
‘So,’ the girl said, lifting her head and looking round the crowd again. ‘How do I know all this?’ She gestured at the seated people. ‘Because part of what I am was once like these people, and part has travelled the crypt and part has swum within the chaos.’ She glanced at Oncaterius, then settled her gaze on Adijine and spoke as though to him. ‘Base-reality years ago, the man who became Count Sessine made a data copy of himself; the construct was left to roam the upper levels of the crypt and provide an ally there should Sessine ever need one. One day, he did. The construct helped Sessine’s final iteration to escape those trying to destroy him and sent him in search of further help; not for himself, but for us all. That ultimate Sessine wandered the Uitland limits of the crypt until he was contacted by one of the systems the Encroachment’s approach has activated; he allowed his mind to be used as the framework for the personality of a human asura the system created. The construct he’d left behind in the main data corpus prepared for the hoped-for arrival of the asura, attempting to contact both the chaos and anybody or anything in the fast-tower.’
The girl looked away from the King, looking around the rest of the seated group and the surrounding crowd with a kind of defiance.
‘I am both that construct and that human asura. I am all that remains of Alandre, Count Sessine. I have had the cooperation of what we call the chaos in arranging this… presentation, and while the chaos has shown no interest in using this opportunity to extend its grip on the data corpus, it could give no guarantee in that regard. Doubtless I shall anyway be cursed as a traitor to my species, at least initially and perhaps in the longer term as well. However, I believe that the units of the ancient planetary defence systems still residing in the fast-tower have now awoken, and that they await the asura.
‘And be assured that the asura is our very last chance; there was never any need for our salvation to rely on so fragile a method of deliverance, but our forbears, like our present rulers, did everything in their power both to locate and destroy any information pertaining to the defence systems and to attack and corrupt the automated systems themselves within the fast-tower; they have always known that these might save us, but long ago chose – again, on our unknowing behalf – to attempt to extinguish even that link with the Diaspora. Luckily for all of us, they have failed. It is only through the patience and tenacity of exactly the sort of Artificial Intelligences our rulers so despise that even this last slim chance has been preserved, and we can only hope that it will be successful.’
The girl bowed, slowly and formally.
Suddenly the bonds restraining the seated people vanished, as did their gags. Gadfium staggered back as they rose and rushed shouting in towards the girl. Oncaterius, who’d been standing rather than sitting, had a one-pace start. Something appeared in the air above him, red and glistening and twisting violently; it fell upon the girl, screaming: