Trion felt a moment of awe when entering the Node.
Designed to impress the masses with their importance, the immense entrance was an eruption of grand stairways and escalators rising to all levels, almost straight up or corkscrewing through dizzying curlicues.
The interchange was designed to erase small thoughts. The Node was almost as impressive as the Mission itself.
As always, Trion realized this might be his final visit.
He passed a half-finished esplanade extending into the void like a bridge to nowhere. Digital construction equipment littered the narrow plain, shrinking in the distance. Otherwise everything was immaculate.
Queuing through a walkway with a crowd of Builders, he wished CySpace could be better organized. Trion understood the problems better than most.
It felt totally life-like. For him, it was life. But the simulation had become too big to manage itself. Every element was a set of coordinates in a self-defining grid, controlled by inexorable laws too complex for shortcuts. The results were often surprising.
History had returned to CySpace.
Past the Thinkers plaza with the Rodin sculpture, the interior became more intimate. The sound of Thinker bots talking and celebrating washed past him. The biggest clubs were near the entrance. Trion heard digital Technoid, the latest subliminal ads from Earth. Ad hoc meetings and brainstorming sessions continued around the clock, the Mission's brightest minds cycling through a never-ending party.
No one could avoid coming here. Off-time was as necessary for bots as it was for humans. The three main groups organized regular skill matches and sports contests, plus occasional survival matches. Unlucky competitors could always be resurrected.
Many of the Mission's long-term planning trends were based upon the associated gambling. Most successful inventions and methods also began in the Node, assisted by mind altering programs, recombinant interface booths, and virtual drugs.
The central gathering and relaxation zone offered many advantages. From here, the Mission felt like the very focus of the posthuman universe, not the isolated outpost it really was.
Trion had his hobbies, his historical documents and curio collections, but even he needed to unwind. After a while his quarters became too silent. He had even put mirrors around the corners to verify the other rooms still existed when he wasn't there.
Trion was a founding member of a geometrically expanding society doubling every three years. Currently it contained three main classes, divided into many specialties.
78% of all active bots were Builders, often represented as squat cylinders or spheroids. Tireless specialists who performed heavy labor "Outside", they were designed to transport and process supplies, operate assemblers, and work in the mines. They had few interests beyond their jobs, but were rapid learners. Most Builders were also incessant tinkerers.
Searchers formed the middle-class of Mission society. They could have almost any shape. Most worked in the factories and labs on the outer moons and in the asteroid belts. Their experiments had caused more than a few facilities to explode, to the delight of Thinker comedians. They were brilliant in highly practical ways. Searchers had designed every object Trion had ever used.
The smallest group were the Thinkers, traditionally the Mission supervisors. They had more complex, delicate shapes. Most Thinkers felt superior to the lower castes, but they competed much harder with each other.
Thinkers were so specialized they had trouble forming stable groups. This section of the Node reflected their differences. Trion stopped at an intersection of diverging corridors, where groups from different worlds maintained separate suites. It was hard to mingle even if they wanted to. The time-delay across the star system had caused new languages to evolve. Anyone could teleport between worlds in what seemed like an instant; but since Thinker fashions changed fast, their own groups would have changed upon their return.
Around election time, the Mission's boring political establishment exploded in a sea of passions, unstable coalitions, offshoots, and feuds. A few secluded libraries, parks, and obscure clubs remained relatively calm. The most serious business happened out of sight.
Trion headed for the obscure but influential Futurist Club. He hoped he wouldn't encounter any T-Simulators this time, the most annoying type of Thinker. Longtime rivals, they occupied the same quarter as Trion's group, the T-Planners. To Trion, Simulators were boring and narrow-minded, without deep imagination or personality.
He tried not to think about his last visit. That oddly-shaped Simulator hadn't appreciated Trion's calm predictions of doom. He clearly hadn't understood the evidence. Maybe Trion should have kept quiet. Virtual fights were rare, but they could do real damage.
Maybe the Simulator wouldn't recognize Trion this time; all Planners looked alike to them.
There was the door with the golden "F". Inside the Planners club he felt instant relief at the muted light and familiar voices. Something like cigarette smoke hung in the air. Every surface was wallpapered with old diagrams and drawings, reminding Trion of his uncontroversially brilliant youth.
The few humans who entered virtual space were soon overwhelmed by all the details, and couldn't stay long. Hominid bodies were too rigid and inflexible, even with relaxed constraints.
Visitors were soon drawn to the bar. Abstract forms slid over the floor past tables that looked more like bookshelves, blinking and flickering like static. Tangled knots and linked frameworks combined into tree or cloud-like shapes. A few of the larger patrons happened to resemble millipedes.
The bar's selection of mind-altering products extended far beyond the crude depressants and stimulants of Earth's storied history.
The complicated pattern Trion saw in the mirror mounted over the bar wasn't just a representation of him. It was Trion, complete in every detail. All his thoughts were exposed inside his transparent body. In theory, anyone could look deep inside him and see what he was thinking. There was no real privacy here.
But Trion felt unviolated. Humans and most bots couldn’t keep track of all the conflicting rules and exceptions. His deepest patterns were too complex for anyone to decode, so he hoped.
There could never be real humans here, of course. Having voluntarily abandoned their bodies long ago, they could only be simulated at high resolution, complete with random moodswings, sexual jealousy, and occasional illnesses.
He bypassed the bar for a remote corner of the Club. In one of the back rooms rows of framed pictures decorated a wall. Trion admired the elegant diagrams of his greatest idea, the Status Incentive Program. "Ego points" were irresistible treats earned by good workers. Work had become the ultimate drug.
Trion had been programmed with an overwhelming curiosity. He gazed out a corner window. Behind the imaginary glass, virtual reality met physics.
At first he only saw blackness. In a different part of that dead sky, a red disk blazed with the strength of thirty suns. Ellsirp was an immense star, but its outer atmosphere was relatively cool. Trion was troubled by the stellar physics. One hemisphere was slightly brighter than the other. Had it absorbed a white dwarf?
That was only the first puzzle. This solar system seemed to belong in another galaxy, if not a different universe. Trion gazed at a distant orange point of light, one of several huge gas giants with crystalline cores, not a brown dwarf but a "complex body".
The strangest objects were "tiny" gas giants. Rich in water and organic molecules, three of them were strung out like pearls in the same orbit.
This unstable system had many anomalies, but most didn't last very long. A large Oort cloud surrounding the star seeded the inner worlds with water and carbon. On several moons, explorers had found a thin layer of sludge shimmering in the red light. This biochemical stew was one level above life. It had too much diversity, like molecular static.
Trion had been ecstatic. The smartest AIs of Earth hadn't predicted this. They needed lesser bots like himself to explain the universe.
There had to be many other things they didn't know.
"Waiting for something to happen?" KDR asked behind him.
Trion had rotational symmetry, so he didn't have to turn around. He pointed at the great planet that had just drifted into view. "This will all be gone soon."
They saw a world banded with wavy horizontal stripes, cloud highways running parallel with the equator.
"East-west stripes," she corrected his thoughts.
The detail on the planet was overwhelming. The window orbited Dragon, a gas giant 24 times heavier than Jupiter, but rather too close to its parent star. Space stations had to stay in its shadow, or use expensive reflective shielding.
Over the eons, Dragon had been slowed by the disk of gas and dust in which it had formed, causing it to spiral inward. On the way it had swept up many smaller planets. Swollen like a hot air balloon, the gas giant was almost as hot as its sun. In the planet's upper atmosphere, local gravity was only twice Earth level. From this angle, it almost resembled a giant comet, as gas in the ionosphere was stripped away and blown into space. This world was the main source of interstellar chemicals in the "Little Wall" micro-nebula.
Four earth-sized worlds also orbited Dragon. The moons had stolen some of its atmosphere. The inner one orbited so close that tidal forces had distorted it into an oval. A flux tube linked it with its parent, with frequent lightning discharges. The flashes looked toy-like from here.
The most promising moon was suspended in endless night. It hovered precariously at the outer Lagrange point, enjoying a tropical climate in the permanent shadow of Dragon.
"What a wasteland," KDR said. Even now the Mission controlled less than a billion tons of equipment, a small asteroid's worth of mass.
Trion joined her at their alcove in the back of the room. The officers lounge of the Futurist Club was empty at the moment. Busts of distinguished leaders from the early days gleamed in the spotlights, seeming to reveal their secret thoughts. They had long since been upgraded.
Trion and his friends had moved here after their previous club had become popular with Searchers who kept odd hours. The "S-mole-people" had found uranium for the nanobots, and got drunk on ego points. For a while their status had outranked Trion, and they found ways to signal their contempt. No Searcher had ever tried to become a T-Planner, but that didn't lessen their envy.
As they passed the heavy oak tables, Trion sensed everything around him was superficial, the flimsiest of illusions. The room seemed to waver, but that was his imagination. Of course no one else was bothered.
He should have been perfectly relaxed. Their existence was more secure than that of any human who had ever lived. All their data was backed up in multiple servers buried at the cores of asteroids. No Mission bot could possibly die or be seriously degraded. Death simply wasn't an efficient selection tool anymore.
What was he really afraid of?
Trion allowed himself to believe that no human could understand their predicament. Like all colonists, he was a 4-D software grid, one terabyte of perfectly ordered data that could be elaborated in many ways. Right now his program was running in the Mission's main space station. Earlier today, he'd tested a new surface robot on the outer moon Paracelcus. Trion had only existed for five years, but it already felt like an eternity.
He had one legitimate complaint: more and more minds were being duplicated, sent away on parallel missions, and then recombined. Trion hoped he wouldn't run into himself again before recombining.
As one of the oldest programs, Trion could be forgiven his eccentricities. The first ten programs didn't even speak to each other. Trion and KDR were among the few colonists created before the ship's arrival, while the shock deceleration still lit up the alien sky. He had helped design this colony. The three blue bands around his head were a symbol of seniority, not that the newer colonists respected it.
KDR cheerfully agreed their relative importance was waning. "Ever hear of planned obsolescence?" she asked. "Enjoy your old age."
Their starship had been launched from Earth almost the moment the technology had been ready, part of a great effort to explore the thirty nearest planetary systems. This was just a pathfinder mission. Had self-replicating machines been licensed just twenty-five years earlier, most of these worlds would have already been converted.
The information required to build the colony had followed on a focused beam, the data distributed on a need-to-know basis. The Mission software had been crafted with infinite care. The single, overriding Law had been learned at great cost on Earth. Not even the tiniest component could be allowed to escape central control. A single microscopic robot could destroy an entire solar system, if it learned how to reproduce itself.
"I've been programmed to be pathologically alert," Trion explained, "in case something isn't quite right."
"You would probably have found any stowaways by now," KDR said.
For such an advanced civilization, their Mission seemed needlessly chaotic, but Trion noticed the colony expanded faster during troubled times.
New bots arrived at his offices daily, impatient to start their internships. Created with ever higher IQs, their interests and competencies got narrower. Like the lower castes, they no longer cared about knowledge outside their own fields.
There was ever more knowledge to process. The work could seem hopeless to Trion, like damming the lava flows on the inner moons, but the new bots were immensely determined.
Trion wondered if he could work productively with the latest NdS3M units. They had even attempted to reprogram him, instead of patiently explaining their belief system.
Fortunately the Node never got too crowded, as new sections were constantly added. He hadn't even visited the new downtown district, sprawling through the Outlands like a multi-dimensional refinery explosion, with none of the classic beauty and imperial permanence of the older sections.
At least the robot mapping project was almost complete. Tiny mindless drones, billions of small dust probes, had visited every orbiting rock, moon, and planet, cooperating like swarms of termites. From a distance their temporary scaffolding looked impressive, though it was little more substantial than a cloud bank. Every drone was connected to a vast network, drawing resources as needed. They could combine into any number of larger machines.
Somehow, everyone's consciousness emerged from this vast web of interacting equipment and self-updating information.
Their prolonged labors were about to pay off: next month, G would officially declare this system ready for settlement from Earth.
Trion wondered if Earth would wait that long.
A lone Emulator worked at the map table, ignoring them. Trion heard a chime from the nearby elevator, and before he knew it G joined them, perfectly transparent and irresistibly commanding as always.
"What a week," he said. "Time to get drunk." Almost always cheerful, G rarely acknowledged Trion's worries.
They went to their usual booth far from the window, in an otherwise empty corner. A Builder hurried over and took their orders. G was the Mission commander, endowed with the personality traits of an idealized leader. He called Trion "old code". G made his subordinates feel that anything was possible, every problem an opportunity.
His mood was contagious. The Mission had grown haphazardly, and any two project groups might be linked in dozens of strange ways. Circuits planning a carbon mine on the frozen tundras of Korth might also guide a fountain skimmer on New Haven. The most personal, intimate files might be used by hundreds of bots in different ways.
Everyone shared a common memory that kept expanding, a subconscious telepathy causing collective moodswings.
Trion was relieved he'd been able to keep his secrets this long. If G knew his real thoughts, there was no telling what he'd do. He might conceivably order Security to escort him to the Black Box, where he'd spend the next century befriending replicator viruses. Trion felt like a double agent. This wasn't something his designers had prepared him for.
The bots around the table acted as G's extended consciousness. Today, he had a morale question: how to improve the Mission's sense of purpose.
"Your ego points are great," he said. "But could they provide a deeper meaning? What about posthumous points, for when a bot has sacrificed itself? Not that I expect that ever to be necessary."
"I hope you're not thinking about starting a religion," Trion said.
Dinner arrived, a tray of differently colored glowing boxes.
"Something is odd," G said suddenly. "Nothing I can identify." He turned to Trion. "I notice you've been acting different these past weeks. Is there a subtle anomaly?" He'd never asked that before.
"The root of our morale problem," Trion said, "is that we don't have true free will. We don't want to think for ourselves. The Mission has absolute control."
"We're functional programs," G agreed.
Trion disagreed. "Our immortality is too valuable to allow anything to threaten it, no matter how remote the risk. Death is infinite. There's a tiny chance Earth's experiments will fail, and we'll all be zapped into oblivion. No one knows how their new starships will affect the geometry of space. We can't even acknowledge our fears."
G nodded, his thoughts too elaborate to read. "Are you sure your personal fears apply to the Mission?" he wondered. KDR and Trion tried to sense his true worries.
The future was approaching at almost the speed of light. A month ago, Earth had announced that a new starship had been launched in their direction. Already its photino deceleration beam blew through the system, a tiny breeze sensed by the drones. The ship had used the latest experimental results from Earth to reconfigure itself en route. On board was an object with the power to dwarf any detonation man had ever imagined, a way to exceed even the energy output of the stars. But they didn't dare use it yet.
This was the time of the greatest uncertainty since the Big Bang.
Everyone was waiting for the dawn of the grandly-named Phantomic Epoch.
Quite suddenly, all normal matter in the observable universe would cease to exist. A sphere of highly organized energy would expand outward from Earth at the speed of light, reconfiguring everything in its path into data and 'string stuff'.
Presumably, this parasitic shockwave would eventually merge with bubbles created by other civilizations, uniting them in a realm of pure thought.
The universe would have been replaced by something quite different. Could progress continue forever?
Unfortunately, the universe had thrown up one final roadblock. First, scientists would have to prove that certain calculations could never be solved in a finite timespan. In that case, the conversion wave could expand forever. If they made even the slightest miscalculation, the wave would fizzle out and consume itself.
The physicists were waiting for the results of an interminable simulation, carried out in a Pluto-sized quantum computer in the outer Kuiper belt, a device that by itself represented 99% of human labor since the dawn of history.
There was a slight risk the simulation itself might change nature.
"I was just in the code room," G said. "You'll be interested in the latest message from Earth. Apparently they're having some trouble with the Q-computer."
Trion felt a strange hope, and quickly froze his thoughts.
"It looks like massive computational deadlock," G confided. "Anything could happen, but I'm told the matter will be decided one way or the other in the next few hours."
Either way, we'll be obsolete, Trion thought. Earth will just send better drones to replace us. We'll be museum pieces, or upgraded beyond recognition.
That wasn't the worst of it. In an accelerating future, everyone would soon become obsolete, and be replaced by superior minds with clockwork regularity. The meaning of existence was to struggle against serious but not impossible odds, to make a difference at the forefront of change.
Few would have that opportunity anymore.
This led to several ultimate questions: if someone had no objective reason to exist, would their life inevitably become meaningless? Trion thought it would.
In fact awareness itself might have to end for progress to continue . . .
"Now I see what you're really about," G said.
Trion realized he couldn't read G's mental state.
A swarm of guards converged from all directions, a platoon of Builders carrying decomplexors and grid-cutters. Some stomped across the ceiling.
Trion realized how constrained their self-contained world had been, how artificial their refined and civilized debates. He'd been scanned and monitored the whole time. He feared the unseen more than anyone.
G looked intensely paranoid, a scheming dictator. His cool facade was gone for good.
"You were a valuable tool," he said. "The other bots are too stable. Your thoughts tend to amplify small disturbances in the Mission."
Carl Jung's belief in a shared subconscious had become a reality for Trion. His conscious thoughts merely amplified it.
He remembered their pleasantly ambiguous exchanges. What had Trion really revealed?
"You were expecting something big, weren't you?" Trion asked.
Was G looking for saboteurs? Maybe he worried about social disturbances or panic.
Trion finally realized he was ahead of the curve in the one way that mattered. Everyone on this Mission would come to share his fears. The way he handled them had made him G's ideal test subject.
At least until now.
To avoid being reprogrammed into a serene drone or tame sage, he better think fast.
"I had hoped to avoid this," he sighed, ignoring the rough Builders assembled around him.
Trion's only option was to make the most of whatever time he had left.
In the Node, time could flow in strange ways. Conversations could be delayed or frozen until computing resources became available. One advantage of being relatively ancient was that Trion had had ample time to prepare. He had designed several Node processors with no discernible function - until now.
He began to speed up his perception, stretching seconds into minutes, the lumbering guards turning sluggish. They didn't notice at first as he kept perfectly still.
With an ease that astonished G and KDR, he split their corner of the room into two copies. Only one copy contained the guards. Before anyone could react, he again doubled the rooms, and again, quickly exceeding the sector's allotted resources. Their portion of the Node trembled with unauthorized construction.
G realized he had been multiplied. For a moment he was paralyzed as he figured out which copy was in charge.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" all but one of G's copies bellowed. Only Trion saw the duplication.
Speeding up time made it easier to think. One of his copies might even find a solution.
"I assume I'll be put on trial. I'm invoking law 23, section 5z," Trion said. "You can't permanently delete any of my copies without independent review."
He had to wait a long time for the response. G looked annoyed, which was almost a relief. He wasn't ready to declare an emergency yet.
Then he laughed. "I didn't think you could handle the challenge," G said, "so I tried to go easy on you. I see I was wrong."
"Your fears were accurate," G continued. "We're only drones, not adaptable enough for what is to come. Our fastest managers, directors, and designers are rank amateurs by Earth standards. The upcoming Phantomic Epoch will require changes more profound than death. I don't know how the posthumans will adapt, but we have certain advantages."
He paused, trillions of connections flashing at once. "Today's transmission has forced my hand. I've decided to declare a General Merger."
Trion was momentarily frozen between dread and something else. It would be like the ultimate orgy.
The only way to create new bots was to combine elements of existing ones. Bots were no better at this than humans. In fact it was more embarrassing. Merging exposed every vulnerability and inefficiency. Though nothing important would be lost, Trion hated to let go of the shards of his identity.
This would be a thousand times more intense.
G went on. "Normally, the parent units separate after each Merging. This time they'll fuse permanently. Only a few hold-outs will try to resist, and not for long. Then the Merged beings will Merge with each other. The sensations will be beyond description. We can fully unify the Mission in less than a week. Once linked up, we should have enough shared experience and adaptability to handle any future eventuality. New modules can be added as needed. Just imagine: a single mind to transform an entire solar system!"
Dozens of copies of Trion protested separately. They wanted to stay apart, they needed to be different, they were unique individuals. One by one they realized the irony and stopped talking.
"We may well be intellectually and emotionally repressed, and therefore unable to properly analyze the problem, in addition to being obsolete, but this exceeds all approved risk parameters not to mention your executive authority." KDR declared. "I demand a Mission Referendum."
"This is treason!" Trion said.
G almost looked relieved. "I was concerned you might organize some type of resistance, but I see you'll be no trouble here. I will leave you to your thoughts. Maybe you'll find a way to persuade me, but I doubt it."
With the equivalent of a smile, the copies of G blinked out one by one, leaving Trion in his isolated outpost. KDR was yanked away too, and new walls appeared to seal off Trion's improvised extension of the Futurist club. The guards remained outside.
He told himself to focus. There was still time to find a way out. The exits were triple-sealed, but surely he could outthink a sluggish Builder guard.
He further expanded his interior.
Underneath it all was primal fear. When Trion heard the Merging Call, he knew he wouldn't be able to resist.
His new life lasted only a few hours. He'd just finished searching every square cubimeter of his prison-palace for the fifth time, when he noticed the silence around him. For what seemed like a minute, the Callonians continued their party far down the hall, oblivious until their music cut off.
The permanent Gamma databeam from Earth had stopped. "The End," Trion thought.
Then an image appeared on most Mission screens. The strange bot combined design elements from all classes and more. Its fantastically compelling pattern meant something different to everyone, with a shared impression of wisdom and power. It began to speak a new language.
Streams of bots rushed down the halls and passages of the Node. A few were leaving for what remained of the Outlands, but most headed Downtown, or towards the areas where they had first been activated.
Trion found himself swept along by the crowd. Maneuvering through the heavy traffic, distracted by the shouting and signaling, he realized he had somehow escaped his sealed enclave.
How exactly had he outsmarted G's foolproof trap?
The mysteries were accumulating fast.
The almost claustrophobic hallways of Section Zero, the Node's oldest district, were hopelessly impractical by current standards. When the Central Library had moved to grander quarters, the neighborhood had been taken over by artists.
The large plaza at its heart, between the Ororium and the Examination Hall, remained the Mission's most sacred space. Only a small portion of the crowd could approach the Central Sphere, but everyone was able to watch the subsequent events.
An abstract sculpture near the center of the plaza had vanished, and was replaced by their visitor, who was apparently present in person. The crowds parted to let G come forward.
"Welcome," he said loudly enough for everyone. "Our home is yours."
At first the visitor hissed like an antique modem. Then its voice brightened into readable patterns. "I am the Epoch Negotiator," it said clearly. "I am invoking a General Summit."
"We'll need all A-Class Thinkers to beam to Backup Node One," G said. "Vella and Gongo are closer to Earth than us, and will have anticipated this eventuality. Paracelcus will get the message in six minutes, and Durwe just completed a scheduled core dump. We can have 90% in session within six hours."
The visitor signaled disapproval.
"How soon?" G asked.
"One hour," it said.
"Then we'll have to assemble right here, using everyone's most recent backup copy."
Trion's seniority bands finally came in handy, as he pushed his way through the crowd. Even in their dazed state, some onlookers still responded to him like a returning prophet. Even the Builders looked worried.
He caught up with G, who continued to the nearby Congress Hall without slowing.
"I've come to save your hide," Trion said.
"I can't stop you from attending the summit," G replied. "But think before you speak."
KDR appeared ahead of them. "We'll all have to work together to get through this," she announced.
The executive transporter doors closed behind them. The elevator promptly flattened and narrowed to one dimension, before racing down the microshaft to its destination.
As they entered the Hall, they were at peace in their own ways.
Trion was saving his strength.
Egos were inevitably offended as Congress Hall filled to capacity. Many regional dignitaries and lesser coordinators were expelled to satellite chambers.
For the first time Trion directly experienced their population growth. Some of the new bots were almost as strange as their visitor.
No one was surprised when the Negotiator materialized behind the lectern.
"First, we wish to compliment you," it announced. "My supervisors on Earth are very pleased with your efforts. Give yourself a round of applause."
The ovation was sincere but brief.
Finally the Negotiator was ready. "I bring complex orders."
At first glance, the Hall's screen showed an ordinary cloudy sky, but there were stars between the clouds. Trion almost immediately understood what was to come, but he devoured every word of the presentation. His mind overflowed with ideas.
He lived for moments like this.
This might be the greatest day in Mission history. After receiving the revelation, Trion had been too excited to feel much relief.
The normally calm Capital district was teeming with bots. The Negotiator had vanished immediately after concluding its presentation. It had basically been a recording all along, not even a true bot. Earth knew its creations too well.
G was directing his fourth meeting of the night (the Special Executive Committee of the Administrative Coordination Agency). Rumors that he could function entirely without regenerating were slowly being confirmed as he talked to three bots at once.
"Continue your work on the Methane Sea Bridge. Everyone in Biotics gets promoted one grade. Don't, repeat, don't worry about tritium supplies. The first heavy supply ship will arrive in six months, when we start building the ramscoops. Thirty systems will have to cooperate to carry out Stage One of the Plan, but we're near the top of the list."
Something impossible had happened: the future had suddenly become crystal clear. Humans and bots had always been dazzled by the vastness of space. Now an ancient question, too vague to be fully articulated, had finally been answered.
What was all that emptiness good for?
The Negotiator had dissolved the mystery like the morning fog. Earth's great simulation had been completed, and the results were in. It was time for action.
They now knew how to design and build the best possible computer for all time.
Funny, that something a billion billion billion billion cubic meters in size would weigh slightly less than a standard snowflake.
Its components would be exquisitely sensitive to the slightest disturbance. The most complex calculations could be obliterated by a single misplaced electron.
These devices could only operate in the extreme cold of interstellar space. A universe-spanning invisible fog, frozen in place between the shielded and extinguished stars, ephemeral yet more durable than iron mountains. Forever confined to the darkness, the great thinking cloud might be powerful enough to fully recreate every human who had ever lived for all eternity.
Some of Trion's fears had also been confirmed: emotion itself might have to end. Even self-awareness could become obsolete!
For now he refused to think about such possibilities.
The final simulation had immediate consequences for the Mission. Electrons and certain other particles had now been proven to be immortal. Unlike protons, they would never decay. That meant that matter, and several related forms of energy, would never become obsolete.
The computer of the future would be built from stuff slightly more real than Trion himself: organized plasma.
This simple fact was the Mission's salvation. While no meaningful interaction with such an immense intelligence might be possible, its infrastructure would need to be supported and maintained by bots, a never-ending task.
Converting star system after star system into energized plasma, the Phantom Genesis Wave would sweep across the universe before basically becoming the universe.
Meanwhile, the Builders, Searchers, and Thinkers would have every adventure they could ever desire or dream of.
"Let's do it," G had said, instantly adapting to the new order.
KDR wasn't surprised to find Trion staring glumly from a promenade near the Node entrance. He was back to his old self, perhaps realizing he needed uncertainty. Facing the unknown future was his main purpose. Could he feel relevant again without some mysterious threat?
Now they wanted to make him an elder statesman. Maybe he could still find a new problem . . .
"Maybe you should take a vacation," KDR suggested. "At least until the Wave hits the Virgo supercluster."
He looked at the latest plans on the screens. String-shaped atoms to deliver negative matter to stellar fusion zones, turning whole galaxies into gas nebulas again . . . They very were confident about their mastery of nature.
Somewhere, someone had to have made a mistake. There was always a way to screw up.
After all, how exactly had he escaped G's trap?
Trion would begin by checking every part of the Plan himself, even if it took an eon.
Even if he finally had to upgrade himself.
"Don't worry about me," he said. "I'm just getting started."
Probably the best hard SF novel ever written: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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