It was in wholeness with the world.
After a split second more full than a mortal lifetime, it moved to its purpose. From the net it raised the attention of a specific program, and they communicated.
In words, which the communication was not:
SHOULD THERE BE ANY ENTRY WHATSOEVER OF THE PROSERPINA FILE, AUTHORIZED OR NOT, TRACE THE LOCATION OF THE SOURCE AND INFORM AGENT VENATOR. ALERT THE NEAREST PEACE AUTHORITY BASE FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION.
DO NOT SPECIFY THE REASON FOR THIS.
APPROVED, responded the system. ENTERED AS AN INSTRUCTION.
And then, like a mother’s anxious voice:
You are troubled. You are in doubt.
I do not doubt, Venator saw. I do not quite comprehend, but I will believe.
(How can the system, even the Teramind, know what the outcome would be? Humankind is mathematically chaotic. We can learn no more than that history has certain attractors. Attempts at control may send it from one to another, unpredictably. A new element, introduced, may change the entirety in radical fashion, from the configuration to the very dimensionality. Is it possible to write the equations? If they be written, is it possible to solve them? A danger is foreseeable, but a disaster either happens or it does not. We exist as we are because those who existed before us ran fearsome risks. How can we be sure of what we are denying those who exist after us, if we dare not set ourselves at hazard?)
We cannot be sure.
But in that case—
You shall know.
And the cybercosm took Venator into Unity.
Twice before had it done so, for his enlightenment and supreme rewarding. Anew it opened itself entirely for him. He went beyond the world.
He could not actually share. The thoughts, the creations that thundered and sang were not such as his poor brain might really be conscious of, let alone enfold. The intellects, star-brilliant, sea-fluid, rose over his like mountains, up and up to the unimaginable peak that was the Teramintj. Yet somehow he was in and of them, the least quivering in the tremendous wave function; somehow the wholeness reached to him.
Reality is a manifold.
He became as it were a photon, an atom of light, arrowing through a space-time curved and warped by matter that itself was mutable. He flew not along a single path but an infinity of them, every possibility that the Law encompassed. They interfered with each other, annulling until almost a single one remained, the geodesic—almost, almost. Past and future alike flickered with shadows of uncertainty. He came to a thing that diffracted light, and the way by which he passed was knowable only afterward. He met his end in a particle of which he, transfigured, was the energy to bring it anywhere. The course that it took was not destined, but was irrevocable and therefore a destiny.You have learned the theory of quantum mechanics as well as you were able. Now behold the quantum universe—as well as you are able.
The identity that guided him was a facet of the Unity; but it communed with him as no sophotectic mind ever might. For this was the download of a synnoiont who died before he was born, which the Unity had taken unto itself.
Yang: The continuum is changeless, determined at the beginning, onward through eternity. For the observations of two observers are equally valid, equally real, but their light cones are not the same. The future of either lies in the past of the other. Thus tomorrow must be as fixed as yesterday.
Yin: The paths are ultimately unknowable. The diversities are unboundedly many. To observe is to determine, as truly for past as for future. Mind gives meaning to the blind evolutions that brought it into being. Existence is meaning. Within the Law, the configurations of the continuum are infinite. All histories can happen.
Yang and Yin: Reality does not branch. It is One.
He could no more look into the universe of the Teramind than he could have looked into the heart of the sun. He could know that it was there, in glory, forever.
Afterward he lay a long while returning to himself. Once he wept for loss, once he shouted for joy.