‘Useful how?’
The Ambassador said, ‘Eve is helping us understand an entity of our own creation. An entity whose wishes have brought us all here today.’
Donn’s heart thumped. ‘You mean the Seer.’
‘Turn around, Five, Donn.’
They turned. The Silverman was holding, in his one hand, a box, a tetrahedron ten centimetres or so to an edge. It seemed to have clear walls, and its interior was black and full of stars, stars that swarmed – that, at any rate, was Donn’s first impression. Five and Donn both stepped closer to look. Behind the box’s triangular faces, the ‘stars’ were no more than dust motes, pushed to and fro by random currents in whatever air filled the box.
Donn said, ‘It’s like a toy. What is it?’
‘The Seer,’ Eve said.
The Ambassador said, ‘The control of the core of a giant star during a catastrophic explosion is ferociously difficult. Even modelling it was beyond our processing resources. So we devised a new generation of AI.’
Five said, ‘This box of dust?’
‘This box of dust,’ Eve said, ‘is the most advanced AI we’re aware of. For a machine like this, physically you need components that are small enough to be influenced by quantum effects, yet large enough to feel the effects of gravity. A swarm of smart microprobes – dust motes.’
‘A machine like what?’
‘A quantum gravity AI . . .’
‘On the Miriam we have quantum AIs,’ Donn said.
‘Right,’ Eve said, nodding. ‘And that gives you an edge in processing speed. A simple switch can only be in one state at a time – on or off. A quantum switch holds information about all possible states of the switch at any one time. And so you can use it to do parallel processing. Many inputs, many outputs. You get a speed advantage, and a significant one.
‘But a quantum gravity machine goes one step further. You abandon causality altogether . . .’
The blurring of position and velocity in quantum mechanics made traditional causality problematical. And in relativity, too, light-speed limits ensured that causality was more an aspiration than an iron law.
Donn started to see. ‘And if you put quantum mechanics and relativity together—’
‘In a quantum gravity computer, cause and effect are thoroughly mixed up. Time loops are commonplace . . . You can guess where this is going. You don’t even need to have input before output, causally.’
‘You get the answer before you’ve even asked the question.’
‘That’s it. In practice, I think, the Seer is able to glimpse the outline of a solution to a given problem even before it has begun its calculation, and so can guide its processing efficiently to that outcome. Its thinking must feel like guesswork, an unlikely series of inductive leaps. But it’s always right, and very very fast.’
‘The Seer really can see the future,’ Five said. ‘Just as the rumours say.’
‘But its visions are limited, to the outcomes of computing algorithms a few microseconds ahead – or to the furthest future, millennia or more away.’
Five glared at the Ambassador. ‘So why the tetrahedron, fatball? Why is this ultimate brain in a box the shape of the symbol of human freedom?’
‘A tetrahedron was the most suitable shape for—’
‘It’s a totem, that’s what I think,’ Five snapped. ‘Some of the Samples say Ghosts are starting to worship us humans, because we’re becoming so good at killing you. So, the Silvermen, walking human statues. So, the tetrahedral box.’
The Ambassador said evenly, ‘We Ghosts do have a propensity for worshipping that which destroys us, it is true. But you are not yet a goddess, Sample 5A43.’
Donn said sharply, ‘Enough. Eve, you said how the Seer’s thinking feels. How can you know that?’
‘Ah. Good question. Because, not for the first time, the Ghosts created an artificial AI which ended up not performing quite as specified.’
‘Like the Silverman.’
‘Well, yes. And, not for the first time, I, or an avatar of myself, was asked to help interpret for it . . .’ She looked at Donn, her grey hair shining in the light of the stellar core. ‘The Seer sees the future, Donn. And it is afraid.’
Donn watched Eve. Her eyes were unfocused, and he thought her representation was degrading, her skin smoothing from lack of definition, a lock of her grey hair flickering. He wondered how it must be to be her, a representation every bit as sentient as he was, and yet having endured multiple lives already – and now bonded with a consciousness like no other.
She said, ‘The Seer is sentient, born of dust into a baffling, acausal universe. But it is a Ghost artefact. And so it shares Ghost values, Ghost assumptions. The Ghosts survived the death of their world through symbiosis, dissimilar life forms gathering together as their sun failed. The Ghosts have faith that the life forms of this era of the universe, a transient age of light and water-based chemistry, will similarly use cooperation and symbiosis to survive the transition to the new cold age to come when the last star dies.’
Five shuddered. ‘How can you think like that?’
‘This has happened already, in the universe’s history,’ Eve said. ‘There are life forms extant now, in this age of matter, which are survivors of earlier epochs, the age of radiation and of annihilation and of superforces. But when this age ends, when dark energy comes to predominate and the fabric of spacetime is torn apart – when this happens, and the Seer can see it – there will be no Ghost left alive to witness it, and no symbiotic descendant of the Ghosts.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because of us,’ said Five savagely. ‘Because of humans. We win. I don’t need a quantum-gravity computer to tell me that. And we drive the Ghosts to extinction.’
‘You must understand,’ the Ambassador said. ‘The detonation of this sun – we do this because we, this Ghost enclave, have been cut off from our home range by the forces of your Coalition. Billions of individuals, a whole world, trapped behind the lines. We were desperate. We looked for a way to change the parameters – the rules of the game. That is our way of resolving problems. We were looking for a way out. Now we see we must do more than that; we must take the Seer and its dreadful counsel to our home ranges. We need time to consider what must be done.’
‘Such as what?’ Five asked.
‘Such as escape.’
Escape to where? Donn wondered. Where could the Ghosts go to escape a rampant, Coalition-led mankind? Out of the Galaxy? Out of the cosmos altogether?
He tried to focus on his own situation. ‘Then why have you brought us here? Why tell us this?’
‘Because of me,’ said the Silverman. He stepped forward, still cradling the Seer. ‘You made me smart in order to punish me. But I am human enough to guess how you would feel about an exploding star.’
The Ambassador said, ‘We did not mean to engineer this star as an act of war, only as a means of escape. We understand now that humans might not see it that way.’
‘You really don’t get human psychology, do you?’ Donn said.
‘No,’ said the Silverman cheerfully. ‘Donn Wyman, you must warn your people. Make them believe, as we could not. Persuade them to flee. And make them believe the Ghosts did not mean war.’
‘That’s a tall order.’
‘You are our only hope,’ the Ghost said simply. ‘You, who have shown empathy for our kind before, where others have turned away.’
Donn thought he ought to feel proud. He felt empty. Could it be true that so much was pivoting on this moment? Because if so, he thought, I am not strong enough to deal with it.