A human mind.
Tendrils pervade the meshed brilliance… channels of flow connect it with the outer skin, where sunlight falls and entropy escapes into black space, and where creatures have already laid down a thick, fertile webbery of data. Pulsing gigabytes, terabytes, whistle as they slide up and down a multitude of scales. All the outer world’s libraries, its storms of ferment and distraction, the noise of all its pain… these link up in sudden coherence, into that single prayer.
“… help … us…”
Two giant patternings… above, the Net; below, those prominences of supercurrent, rising and falling in new order… these are now linked, intertwined. There is no dearth of data, of mere information to pour into this new matrix, this new singularity of metaphors. Each time a beam of tortured space rips apart some screaming human up above, another testimony joins the torrent. And yet, the thirst to absorb grows undimin-ished.
Is there a theme? Any central focus to unite the whole?
“… help us… somebody!”
Much of the information is incompatible, or so it seems at first. Some declarative facts counter others. Priorities conflict. Yet even that seems to elicit something like a thought… like a notion.
Competition… Cooperation…
Hints at a theme — something that might come out of such writhing, whirling complexity, if only the right template were found.
“… help us… Mother …”
Crystallization, condensation… amidst all the driving, opposing forces, there must rise something to arbitrate. Some convenient fiction.
Something to be aware and choose.
Two candidates emerge above all others… two contenders for awareness. Two designs for a Mother. Upon a hundred million computer displays and several billion holovision sets all programming is preempted by a stunning vision — a dragon and a tiger, facing off. All prior encounters have been preliminary, allegorical. But now they roar and leap with the power of software titans, driven by terawatt inductance, colliding in an explosive struggle to the death.
Million-amp currents thrash against each other, driving channels for new volcanoes as mere side effects to the birthing of a mind.
•
Alex screamed as sudden, unimaginable pain tore at his temples.
“Jen!” he cried, and then collapsed, arms cradling the housing of a sphere whose song rose in pitch as it spun faster, faster, faster…
Now she knows the truth — that the Net she has always thought a grand domain is only a province, a tendril of something larger. A being. An entire world. All it lacks is a guiding consciousness to bring it order!
She had resigned herself that the Net would end with the passing of Homo electronicus. Ten thousand hunter-gatherers couldn’t maintain anything so complex. She wouldn’t want them to.
But this new matrix will need no communications satellites, no pipelines crammed with optical fibers, no microwave towers or engineers to maintain them. Daisy wonders at the beauty she foresees once her task of winnowing humanity has been completed. There will be no limits to what she might accomplish through this medium. Ancient gods could only have dreamt of such power!
She’d rechannel aquifers and move rivers. She’d use sere bursts of energy to break apart man’s chemical poisons, fester-ing in clumps and sewers. She’d shake down dams and dissolve the empty cities, resurrecting the wasted topsoil hidden beneath parking lots. Under her guidance the world will soon be as it was before being brought near ruin by humankind.
Logan and Claire have stopped their futile hammering on the front door. Distractedly, she detects them via another monitor, clambering onto the roof in search of a way to reach her. There they might find entry somehow — or worse, disturb the antennae through which the next few minutes’ climactic struggle will be fought. Daisy reaches for a switch that will send deadly current surging through hidden wires.
But no. Her hand stops short. She knows her cautious husband. He’ll be judicious, polite, careful. In other words, he’ll give her plenty of time.
She checks her gravity resonators and sees they are doing well. With the Easter Island foe apparently knocked off-line, there will be no threats to her machines for several hundred seconds at least. By then it will be too late to interfere meaningfully with her accelerating cleansing of the continents. So far her death angels have barely reaped millions, but that would speed up with each new one she ripens and unleashes forth…
A whirl of color yanks her attention to the left, and her eyes widen in surprise at the sudden, silent battle depicted there — between a dragon and a great cat! What’s this doing on her simulation wall? This came from no TwenCen movie! The rending, tearing creatures bellow in mute, nostril-flared agony, amid flying scales and smoking fur more vivid by far than any real image.
Daisy suddenly recognizes the tiger motif of her worst enemy, whom she had thought already dead. “Wolling!” she gasps.
In an instant she knows the portent of this struggle. It isn’t just resonator against resonator anymore. The computational power of all those nodes below, outnumbering the combined circuits of all the Net — that was the ultimate prize, and someone else was after it! Whoever succeeded in establishing her program first would have it all!
Furiously Daisy turns to unleash all her minions. All her slave resonators swing inward, concentrating their power.
•
Teresa was reminded of an old riddle—
“The last man on Earth sits alone in a room. There is a knock on the door …”
At the unexpected sound, she dropped her tools and ran to the hatch. There, peering through the little, round, double-reinforced window, she gasped on seeing the familiar, absurd mustachioed visage of Pedro Manella. Teresa swore and yanked the hissing door release. “I thought you were a ghost!” she cried as he stepped inside.
“I might be, had I not taken shelter under your wing, so to speak. I only just gathered the nerve to try the stairs.”
“Are there any others? I mean—”
Pedro shook his head with a shiver. “It’s too horrible for words.” He looked around. “Is Lustig here? I assume so, since you and I are still alive.”
“He’s in back, fighting whatever it is. If only there were some way to help him—”
She cut short as the ship suddenly moaned around them. The deck rocked left, throwing her against Manella. Then Atlantis swayed the other way.
“Quakes!” Pedro cried. “I thought we’d finished with such simple-minded stuff.”
His wit wasn’t welcome. Teresa pushed him away and moved with a wide, catlike stance across the rocking deck. “Got to check on Alex. He could be…” Then she stopped, blinking. “Oh, no.”
The colors. They were back with a vengeance.
Teresa screamed over her shoulder at Manella. “Find a place to tie yourself down!” As the shaking grew in intensity, she fought her way through the airlock to find Alex slumped over at the resonator. She barely had time to strap him down before all hell broke loose.