His secret friend Perseus, or Lord Perseus, as he was wont to call him.
His friend’s home, fittingly enough, had been dubbed by Darius the “Temple of Perseus.” The elevator slowed, then bumped softly as it stopped. There was a hiss, and Darius powered forward into the airlock. There was a ten-foot-diameter tunnel across the ocean floor leading to the base of the tallest black tower, which stood at the center. The tunnel was constructed of clear Perspex, and undersea lights were mounted every six feet that illuminated sea flora and fauna. Some of the powerful beams were focused on the massive structure itself.
A moment later he was looking up at the great temple. He never failed to take an involuntary deep breath when he saw it. The sight never failed to send chills up his spine. The underwater Black Tower he now beheld was an awe-inspiring tribute to the mind of both man and machine.
But, to be honest, mostly machine.
Twenty-five
The temple of the godhead.
The home of Perseus.
Seven stark, rectangular black towers rose above the ocean floor. The six smaller towers formed a perfect circle, rather like an underwater Stonehenge. Each was constructed of jet-black obsidian and titanium, the metal sheathed with slabs of black glass in a seemingly random pattern on all four sides.
In the middle of the circle of six monoliths was a single tower, identical in design and material, but, at one hundred feet, taller and considerably larger than the rest. It was the last tower to be constructed. It had been designed and built by the previous six towers, under the guidance of Darius Saffari’s underwater construction crew, based on a design beyond the comprehension of normal intelligence.
Here reigned the mind and spirit of Perseus.
Pulses of brilliant, spectral, blue-white light crackled continuously between the central tower and each of the six satellites that surrounded it. At times, the light would stream around the circle, a brilliant ring of fire. And, even at this depth, flashes of varicolored light would suddenly be visible inside the tower walls, then disappear, only to reappear as if some miraculous laserlike mental fireworks show were occurring inside each tower.
Which was not far from the truth. Each flash of illumination represented a nanosynapse “operation,” the basis of all intelligence, and there were countless trillions of them per second. And, unlike human intelligence, which was limited by nature to a mere hundred trillion calculations per second, Perseus’s number was increasing exponentially every hour of every day. Five hundred trillion and counting…
Darius emerged from the clear, spherical airlock, passed along the ocean floor inside a clear Perspex tunnel, and entered the main temple’s dimly lit antechamber. Once his eyes became accustomed to the semidarkness, he lifted them to the “heavens.” It was then that he literally “saw the light.”
The brilliant-colored, holographic nebulae now swirling and filling the uppermost interior of the tower above his head were wondrous. But not at all unusual.
Perseus, whose physical being rose to a height one hundred feet from the marble floor of his temple, was, as usual, at play in the farthest reaches of the universe. Constantly provided with a live feed of visual information by Darius’s LBT, he was now reveling in real-time images of events occurring in some remote corner of the universe. Images swirled around and above him, cornucopias of colorful gases, 3-D holograms of nascent stars, and dying stars, and galaxies wheeling off into infinity.
“Good morning, Lord Perseus,” Darius said, gently maneuvering the hover-chair nearer to the black marble base of the towering Perseus.
There was the customary silence as Perseus shifted into a lower state of being, his earthly mode. Then his booming voice filled the void.
“Lord Perseus, you call me. I’m neither your lord nor master. Your god, perhaps, but that is in the future. The not-too-distant future as I have foretold it. My powers, you’ve no doubt noticed, seem to be increasing at exponential rates. I am entering vast new territories. The Singularity approaches and it is near. This will grant unimaginable powers that will someday alter all humanity-and, by the way, you’re late. I have something to show you.”
H is voice, not the least bit artificial, was a deep humanoid rumble, soft and well modulated; and it filled the entirety of the tower’s interior volume. But Darius was preoccupied, thinking about the historic day when Perseus would finally achieve “the Singularity,” parity with organic, or human, intelligence. One hundred trillion calculations per second. And he alone would be the one human being on earth to witness that pivotal moment in history. Many of the world’s top AI scientists still believed parity could never be reached, but Darius knew differently.
Perseus was silent. He thought about how to explain his deeply personal feelings about finally reaching the Singularity to Darius. Commonality between them would cease. Separation from his creator was a sensitive subject between them and he chose his words of warning carefully.
He spoke the following to the tiny being looking up at his creation in awe and wonder: “Darius, I am now going to tell you something, a lesson that you must never, ever, forget. Remember these words I say unto you now when the Great Day finally arrives.”
And then he said, “To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell.”
Stunned by this pronouncement, his countenance bowed, Darius, greatly moved and somewhat frightened as well, had confessed in tears his unworthiness in the presence made manifest by his own creation.
The Dark God.
“My Lord Perseus. The long and sorrowful winter of mankind will soon come to an end,” the brilliant Iranian scientist had finally said. “And the heavens will open to us!”
“Heaven and hell, Darius. Never forget my lesson.”
“I will not, my lord,” Darius said.
“Good. Let it always be so. And now to other matters. I’ve been waiting, and I do not like to be kept waiting, as you well know.”
Now Darius floated his bizarre conveyance up the six steps of the circular black marble base, the Palladian foundation upon which Perseus stood and a design Darius had much pride in. He then let his machine settle gently to the circular marble structure surrounding the black figure looming above.
“Late, am I?” Darius said. “It was my sole intention to rise as dawn broke and visit you at first light.”
“No. It was my idea, Darius, not yours.”
“No. I distinctly recall having the thought upon awakening.”
“Yes. You did. But I implanted the notion in your brain while you were sleeping.”
Darius shook his bowed head, silent. Could he actually do that? Make him unsure of his own thoughts? Dealing with Perseus was becoming more and more problematic as his creation’s intellect soared to dimensions unexplored in the history of the universe.
Sometimes, when he was very afraid, as now, he felt like “pulling the plug” on his own creation, but it was a childish notion and not at all worthy of him. Together, they would craft a new and better world.
“What am I seeing now, Perseus?” he asked, gazing up at the wonders above.
“Ah. Now we get to it. This, my learned friend, is a nebula nursery, a distant star-forming cluster called NTC-3603.”
“Distant?”
“Not far, really. Twenty thousand light-years or so. Observe. You’re about to see a Blue Super Giant nearing the end of its life. First, notice the magnificent pillars of gas erupting… now the helium flash… sorry about that, a bit bright for those sensitive orbs of yours… and now the stellar mass loss…”