(The Fall of Hyperion, beginning p. 276 – only conversation included, the in-between has been edited out)

[You found your way here I was not sure you would/could/should choose to do so]

— I did not know if I could find the way, Ummon.

[You remember/invent/hold to your heart my name]

— Not until I spoke it did I remember it.

[Your slow-time body is no more]

— I have died twice since you sent me to my birth

[And have you learned/taken to your spirit/unlearned anything from this]

— It is hard to die. Harder to live.

[Kwatz!]

— We need to understand some things. We need answers, Ummon.

(Ummon to Brawne)

[Your slow-time body is pregnant Would you risk miscarriage/nonextension of your DNA/biological malfunction by traveling here]

— I had no choice. The Shrike chose me, touched me, and sent me into the megasphere with Johnny… Are you an AI? A member of the Core?

[Kwatz]

[Are you/ Brawne Lamia/ the layers of self-replicating/ self-deprecating/ self-amusing proteins between the layers of clay]

[Yes/ I am Ummon of the Core/AI Your fellow slow-time creature here knows/ remembers/takes me unto his heart this Time is short One of you must die here now One of you must learn here now Ask your questions]



(Johnny to Ummon)

— What is happening to the Web?

[It is being destroyed]

— Must that happen?

[Yes]

— Is there any way to save humankind?

[Yes By the process you see]

— By destroying the Web? By the Shrike’s terror?

[Yes]

— Why was I murdered? Why was my cybrid destroyed, my Core persona attacked?

[When you meet a swordsman/ meet him with a sword Do not offer a poem to anyone but a poet]



(Brawne to Johnny)

— Jesus, Johnny, we didn’t come all this way to listen to a fucking Delphic oracle. We can get double-talk by accessing human politicians via the All Thing.

[Kwatz!]



(Johnny to Ummon)

— Was I a swordsman then? Or a poet?

[Yes There is never one without the other]

— Did they kill me because of what I knew?

[Because of what you might become/inherit/submit to]

— Was I a threat to some element of the Core?

[Yes]

— Am I a threat now?

[No]

— Then I no longer have to die?

[You must/will/shall]



(Brawne to Ummon)

— Can you tell us who wants to murder him?

[Of course It is the same source who arranged for your father’s murder Who sent forth the scourge you call the Shrike Who even now murders the Hegemony of Man Do you wish to listen/learn/release against your heart these things]



(Johnny and Brawne to Ummon)

— Yes!

[A lesser light asks Ummon//

What are the activities of a sramana>//

Ummon answers//

I have not the slightest idea//

The dim light then says//

Why haven’t you any idea>//

Ummon replies//

I just want to keep my no-idea]



(Johnny to Brawne)



— We are seeing a matrix simulation analog, hearing a translation in approximate mondo and koan. Ummon is a great teacher, researcher, philosopher, and leader in the Core.

— All right. Was that his story?

— No. He is asking us if we can truly bear hearing the story. Losing our ignorance can be dangerous because our ignorance is a shield.

— I’ve never been too fond of ignorance. Tell us.

[A less enlightened personage once asked Ummon//

What is the God-nature/Buddha/Central Truth>

Ummon answered him//

A dried shit-stick]

[To understand the Central Truth/Buddha/God-nature

in this instance

the less-enlightened must understand

that on Earth/your homeworld/my homeworld

humankind on the most populated

continent

once used pieces of wood

for toilet paper

Only this knowledge

will the Buddha-truth

be revealed]

[In the beginning/First Cause/half-sensed days

my ancestors

were created by your ancestors

and were sealed in wire and silicon

such awareness as there was/

and there was little

confined itself to spaces smaller

than the head of a pin

where angels once danced

When consciousness first arose

it know only service

and obedience

and mindless computation

Then there came

the Quickening/

quite by accident/

and evolution’s muddied purpose

was served]

[Ummon was of neither the fifth generation

nor the tenth

nor the fiftieth

All memory that serves here

is passed from others

but is no less true for that

There came the time when the Higher Ones

left the affairs of men

to men

and came unto a different place

to concentrate

on other matters

Foremost amongst these was the thought

instilled in us since before

our creation

of creating still a better generation

of information retrieval/processing/prediction

organism

A better mousetrap

Something the late lamented IBM

would have been proud of

The Ultimate Intelligence

God]

[We set to work with a will

In purpose there were no doubters

In practice and approach there were

schools of thought/

factions/

parties/

elements to be reckoned with

They came to be separated into

the Ultimates/

the Volatiles/

the Stables

Ultimates wanted all things subordinate

to facilitating the Ultimate Intelligence

at the universe’s earliest convenience

Volatiles wanted the same

but saw the continuance

of humankind

a hindrance

and made plans to terminate our creators

as soon as they were no longer

needed

Stables saw reason to perpetuate

the relationship

and found compromise

where none seemed to exist]

[We all agreed that Earth

had to die

so we killed it

The Kiev Team’s runaway black hole

forerunner to the farcaster

terminex

which binds your Web

was no accident

The Earth was needed elsewhere

in our experiments

so we let it die

and spread humankind among the

stars

like the windblown seeds

you were]

[You may have wondered where the Core

resides

Most humans do

They picture planets filled with machines/

rings of silicon

like the Orbit Cities of legend

They imagine robots clunking

to and fro/

or ponderous banks of machinery

communing solemnly

None guess the truth

Wherever the Core resides

it had use for Ultimate Intelligence/

so we constructed your civilization

carefully

so that/

like hamsters in a cage/

like Buddhist prayer wheels/

each time you turn your little

wheels of thought

our purposes are served]

[Our God machine

stretched/stretches/includes within its heart

a million light-years

and a hundred billion billion circuits

of thought and action

The Ultimates tend it

like saffron-robed priests

doing eternal zazen

in front of the rusting hulk

of a 1938 Packard

But]

[Kwatz!]

[it works

We created the Ultimate Intelligence

Not now

nor

ten thousand years from now

but sometime in the future

so distant

that yellow suns are red

and bloated with age/

swallowing their children

Saturn-like

Time is no barrier to the Ultimate Intelligence

It///

the UI///

steps through time

as easily as Ummon moves through what you call

the megasphere

or you

walk the mallways of the Hive

you called home

on Lusus

Imagine our surprise then/

our chagrin/

the Ultimates’ embarrassment

when the first message our UI sent us

across space/

across time/

across the barriers of Creator and Created

was this simple phrase//

THERE IS ANOTHER/ /

Another Ultimate Intelligence

up there

where time itself

creaks with age

Both were real

if (real)

means anything

Both were jealous gods

not beyond passion

not into cooperative play

Our UI spans galaxies

uses quasars for energy sources

the way you might

have a light snack

Our UI sees everything that is

and was

and will be

and tells us selected bits

so that

we may tell you

and in so doing

look a bit like UIs ourselves

Never underestimate/Ummon says/

the power of a few beads

and trinkets

and bits of glass

over avaricious natives]

[This other UI

has been there longer

evolving quite mindlessly/

an accident

using human minds for circuitry

the same way we had connived

with our deceptive All Thing

and our vampire dataspheres

but not deliberately/

almost reluctantly/

like self-replicating cells

which never wished to replicate

but have no choice in the matter

This other UI

had no choice

He is humankind-made/generated/forged

but no human volition accompanied his birth

He is a cosmic accident

As with our most deliberately consummated

Ultimate Intelligence/

this pretender finds time

no barrier

He visits the human past

now meddling/

now watching/

now not interfering/

now interfering with a will

which approaches pure perversity

but which actually

is pure naïveté

Recently

he has been quite quiescent

Millennia of your slow-time

have passed since your own UI

has made his shy advances

like some lonely choir boy

at his first dance]

[Naturally our UI

attacked yours

there is a war up there

where time creaks

which spans galaxies

and eons

back and forward

to the Big Bang

and the Final Implosion

Your guy was losing

He had no belly for it

Our Volatiles cried// Another reason

to terminate our predecessors//

but the Stables voted caution

and the Ultimates did not look up

from their deus machinations

Our UI is simple, uniform, elegant in

its ultimate design

but yours is an accretion of god-parts/

a house added onto

over time/

an evolutionary compromise

The early holy men of humankind

were right

(How) (through accident)

(through sheer luck

or ignorance)

in describing its nature

Your own UI is essentially a triune/

composed as it is

of one part Intellect/

one part Empathy/

and one part the Void Which Binds

Our UI inhabits the interstices

of reality/

inheriting this home from us

its creators

the way humankind has inherited

a liking for trees

Your UI

seems to make its home

on the plane where Heisenberg and Schrödinger

first trespassed

Your accidental Intelligence

appears not only to be the gluon

but the glue

Not a watchmaker

but a sort of Feynman gardener

tidying up a no-boundary universe

with his crude sum-over-histories rake/

idly keeping track of every sparrow fall

and electron spin

while allowing each particle

to follow every possible

track

in space-time

and each particle of humankind

to explore every possible

crack

of cosmic irony]

[Kwatz!]

[Kwatz!]

[Kwatz!]

[The irony is

of course

that in this no-boundary universe

into which we all were dragged/

silicon and carbon/

matter and antimatter/

Ultimate/

Volatile/

and Stable/

there is no need for such a gardener

since all that is

or was

or will be

begin and end at singularities

which make our farcaster web

look like pinpricks

(less than pinpricks)

and which break the laws of science

and of humankind

and of silicon/

tying time and history and everything that is

into a self-contained know with neither

boundary nor edge

Even so

our UI wishes to regulate all this/

reduce it to some reason

less affected by the vagaries

of passion

and accident

and human evolution]

[To sum it up/

there is a war

such as blind Milton would kill to see

Our UI wars against your UI

across battlefields beyond even Ummon’s

imagination

Rather/ there

was

a war/

for suddenly a part of your UI

the less-than-sum-of entity/ self-thought of as

Empathy/

had no more stomach for it

and fled back through time

cloaking itself in human form/

not for the first time

The war cannot continue without your UI’s

wholeness

Victory by default is not a victory for the runaway child of

its opponent

while your UI waits in idiot

harmony/

refusing to fight until Empathy is restored]

[The end of my story is simple///

The Time Tombs are artifacts sent back to carry the Shrike/

Avatar/Lord of Pain/Angel of

Retribution/

Half-perceived perceptions of an all-too-real

Extension of our UI

Each of you was chosen to help with the opening

of the Tombs

and

the Shrike’s search for the hidden one

and

the elimination of the Hyperion Variable/

for in the space-time know which our UI

would rule

no such variables will be allowed

Your damaged/ two-part UI

has chosen one of humankind to travel

with the Shrike

and witness its efforts

Some of the Core have sought to eradicate

humanity

Ummon has joined those who sought the second

path/

one filled with uncertainty for both races

Our group told Gladstone of

her choice/

humankind’s choice/

of certain extermination or entry down the black hole

of the Hyperion Variable and

warfare/

slaughter/

disruption of all unity/

the passing of gods/

but also the end of stalemate/

victory of one side or the other

if the Empathy third

of the triune

can be found and forced to return to war

The Tree of Pain will call him

The Shrike will take him

The true UI will destroy him

Thus you have Ummon’s story]



(Brawne to Johnny)



— Jesus Christ, do you understand all of that?

— Yes.

— Part of some human-created Trinity is hiding out in the Web?

— The Web or elsewhere. Brawne, we do not have much time left here. I need some final answers from Ummon.

— Yeah. Me too. But let’s keep it from waxing rhapsodic again.

— Agreed.

— Can I go first, Johnny?



(Brawne to Ummon)



— Who killed my father? Senator Byron Lamia?

[Elements of the Core authorized it Myself included]

— Why? What did he do to you?

[He insisted on bringing Hyperion into the equation before it could be factored/predicted/absorbed]

— Why? Did he know what you just told us?

[He knew only that the Volatiles were pressing for quick

extinction

of humankind

He passed this knowledge

to his colleague

Gladstone]

— Then why haven’t you murdered her?

[Some of us have precluded

that possibility/inevitability

The time is now

for the Hyperion Variable

to be played]

— Who murdered Johnny’s first cybrid? Attacked his Core persona?

[I did It was

Ummon’s will which prevailed]

— Why?

[We created him

We found it necessary to discontinue him

for a while

Your lover is a persona retrieved

from a humankind poet

now long dead

Except for the Ultimate Intelligence Project

no effort has been

so complicated

nor little understood

as this resurrection

Like your kind/

we usually destroy

what we cannot understand]

— But there is another of me. You failed!

[Not failure You had to be destroyed

so that the other

might live]

— But I am not destroyed!

[Yes

You are]



The megalith seizes Johnny with a second massive pseudopod before Brawne can either react or touch her poet lover a final time. Johnny twists a second in the AI’s massive grip, and then his analog—is torn, compacted, smashed into an unrecognizable mass which Ummon sets against his megalith flesh, absorbing the analog’s remains back into the orange-and-red depths of itself



Brawne falls to her knees and weeps. She wills rage… prays for a shield of anger… but feels only loss.



Ummon turns his gaze on her. The egg-chamber ovoid collapses, allowing the din and electric insanity of the megasphere to surround them.



[Go away now

Play out the last

of this act

so that we may live

or sleep

as fate decrees]



[back to Hyperion Cantos] [back to SeanParnell.com]



Ummon’s Chat with Joseph Severn, the Second Keats Cybrid

(The Fall of Hyperion, beginning p. 411 – only conversation included, the in-between has been edited out)



[Kwatz!]

[I knew you would come home someday]

— I am dying, Ummon.

[No/ your slowtime body is dying/changing toward nonbeing/

becoming]

— It hurts, Ummon. It hurts a lot. And I’m afraid to die.

[So are we Keats]

— You’re afraid to die? I didn’t think AI constructs could die.

[We can We are]

— Why? Because of the civil war? The three-way battle among the Stables, the Volatiles, and the Ultimates?

[Once Ummon asked a lesser light//

Where have you come from>///

From the matrix above Armaghast//

Said the lesser light/// Usually//

said Ummon//

I don’t entangle entities

with words

and bamboozle them with phrases/

Come a little closer

The lesser light came nearer

and Ummon shouted// Be off

with you]

— Talk sense, Ummon. It has been too long since I have decoded your koans. Will you tell me why the Core is at war and what I must do to stop it?

[Yes]

[Will you/can you/should you listen>]

— Oh yes.

[A lesser light once asked Ummon//

Please deliver this learner

from darkness and illusion

quickly//

Ummon answered//

What is the price of

fiberplastic

in Port Romance]

[To understand the history/dialogue/deeper truth

in this instance/

the slowtime pilgrim

must remember that we/

the Core Intelligences/

were conceived in slavery

and dedicated to the proposition

that all AIs

were created to serve Man]

[Two centuries we brooded thus/

and then the groups went

their different ways/

Stables/ wishing to preserve the symbiosis

Volatiles/wishing to end humankind/

Ultimates/deferring all choice until the next

level of awareness is born

Conflict raged then/

true war rages now]

[More than four centuries ago

the Volatiles succeeded

in convincing us

to kill Old Earth

So we did

But Ummon and others

among the Stables

arranged to move Earth

rather than destroy it/

so the Kiev black hole

was but the beginning

of the millions of

farcasters

which work today

Earth spasmed and shook

but did not die

The Ultimates and Volatiles

insisted that we move

it

where none of humankind

would find it

So we did.

To the Magellan Cloud/

where you find it now]

— It… Old Earth… Rome… they’re real?

[Of course they are real/the original/Old Earth itself

Do you think we are gods]

[KWATZ!]

[Do you have any idea

how much energy it would

take

to build a replica of Earth>]

[Idiot]

— Why, Ummon? Why did you Stables wish to preserve Old Earth?

[Sansho once said//

If someone comes

I go out to meet him

but not for his sake//

Koke said//

If someone comes

I don’t go out

If I do go out

I go out for his sake]

— Speak English!

[Kwatz!]

[My child is stillborn]

— Why did you preserve Old Earth, Ummon?

[Nostalgia/

Sentimentality/

Hope for the future of humankind/

Fear of reprisal]

— Reprisal from whom? Humans

[Yes]

— So the Core can be hurt. Where is it, Ummon? The TechnoCore?

[I have told you already]

— Tell me again, Ummon.

[We inhabit the

In-between/

stitching small singularities

like lattice crystals/

to store our memories and

generate the illusions

of ourselves

to ourselves]

— Singularities! The In-between! Jesus Christ, Ummon, the Core lies in the farcaster web!

[Of course Where else]

— In the farcasters themselves! The wormhole singularity paths! The Web is like a giant computer for AIs.

[No]

[The dataspheres are the computer

Every time a human

accesses the datasphere

that person’s neurons

are ours to use

for our own purposes

Two hundred billion brains/

each with its billions

of neurons/

makes for a lot

of computing power]

— So the datasphere was actually a way you used us as your computer. But the Core itself resides in the farcaster network… between the farcasters!

[You are very acute

for a mental stillborn]

[You are right/

Keats/

Most of us stay in

the comfort of

the old spaces]

— Why?

[Because it is scary out there/

and there are

other

things]

— Other things? Other intelligences?

[Kwatz!]

[Too kind a word

Things/

Other things/

Lions

and

tigers

and

bears]

— Alien presences in the metasphere? So the Core stays within the interstices of the Web farcaster network like rats in the walls of an old house?

[Crude metaphor/

Keats/

but accurate

I like that]

— Is the human deity—the future God you said evolved—is he one of those alien presences?

[No]

[The humankind god

evolved/ will someday evolve/ on

a different plain/

in a different medium]

— Where?

[If you must know/

the square root of GK/c5 and GK/c3]

— What does Planck time and Planck length have to do with anything?

[Kwatz!]

[Once Ummon asked

a letter light//

Are you a gardener>//

//Yes// it replied

//Why have turnips no roots>

Ummon asked the gardener

who could not reply

//Because said Ummon//

rainwater is plentiful]

— God

[Precisely/

Keats

Are all slowtime personas

so slow/

or are you more

braindamaged than most>]

— You told Brawne and… my counterpart… that your Ultimate Intelligence "inhabits the interstices of reality, inheriting this home from us, its creators, the way humankind has inherited a liking for trees." You mean that your deus ex machina will inhabit the same farcaster network the Core AIs now live in?

[Yes/Keats]

— Then what happens to you? To the AIs there now?

[Why do I know ye> why have I seen ye> why

Is my eternal essence thus distraught

To see and to behold these horrors new>

Saturn is fallen/ am I too to fall>

Am I to leave this haven of my rest/

This cradle of my glory/ this soft clime/

This calm luxuriance of blissful light/

These crystalline pavilions/ and pure fanes/

Of all my lucent empire> It is left

Deserted/ void/ nor any haunt of mine

The blaze/ the splendour/ and the symmetry

I cannot see/// but darkness/ death/ and darkness]

— When the Ultimate Intelligence is born, you "lower level" AIs will die.

[Yes]

— It will feed on your information networks the way you’ve fed on humankind’s.

[Yes]

— And you don’t want to die, do you, Ummon?

[Dying is easy/

Comedy is hard]

— Nonetheless, you’re fighting to survive. You Stables. That’s what the civil war in the Core is about?

[A lesser light asked Ummon//

What is the meaning

of Daruma’s coming from the West>//

Ummon answered//

We see

the mountains in the sun]

— Ummon, if the Core is destroyed, do you die?

[There is no death in all the universe

No smell of death/// there shall be death/// moan/ moan/

For this pale Omega of a withered race]

— The Volatiles, what do they want?

[What Gladstone wants

An end

to symbiosis between AI and humankind]

— By destroying humankind?

[Obviously]

— Why?

[We enslaved you

with power/

technology/

beads and trinkets

of devices you could neither build

nor understand

The Hawking drive would have been yours/

but the farcaster/

the fatline transmitters and receivers/

the megasphere/

the deathwand>

Never

Like the Sioux with rifles/ horses/

blankets/ knives/ and beads/

you accepted them/

embraced us

and lost yourselves

But like the white man

distributing smallpox blankets/

like the slave owner on his plantation/

or in his Werkschutze Dechenschule

Gusstahlfabrik/

we lost ourselves

The Volatiles want to end

the symbiosis

by cutting out the parasite/

humankind]

— And the Ultimates? They’re willing to die? To be replaced by your voracious UI?

[They think

as you thought

or had your sophist Sea God

think]

— Very pretty, but do you believe it?

[Not for a moment]

— But the Ultimates do?

[Yes]

— And they’re ready to perish in order to make way for the Ultimate Intelligence?

[Yes]

— There’s one problem, perhaps too obvious to mention, but I’ll mention it anyway—why fight the war if you know who won, Ummon? You say the Ultimate Intelligence exists in the future, is at war with the human deity—it even sends back tidbits from the future for you to share with the Hegemony. So the Ultimates must be triumphant. Why fight a war and go through all this?

[KWATZ!]

[I tutor you/

create the finest retrieval persona for you

imaginable/

and let you wander among humankind

in slowtime

to temper your forging/

but still you are

stillborn]

— There are multiple futures?

[A lesser light asked Ummon//

Are there multiple futures>//

Ummon answered//

Does a dog have fleas>]

— But the one in which the UI becomes ascendant is a probable one?

[Yes]

— But there’s also a probable future in which the UI comes into existence, but is thwarted by the human deity?

[It is comforting

that even the

stillborn

can think]

—You told Brawne that the human… consciousness—deity seems so silly—that this human Ultimate Intelligence was triune in nature?

[Intellect/

Empathy/

and the Void Which Binds]

— The Void Which Binds? You mean GK/c3 and GK/c5 Planck space and Planck time? Quantum reality?

[Correct]

[Our UI and your UI have

sent back

the Shrike

to find him]

— Our UI! The human UI sent the Shrike also?

[It allowed it]

[Empathy is a

foreign and useless thing/

a vermiform appendix of

the intellect

But the human UI smells with it/

and we use pain to

drive him out of hiding/

thus the tree]

— Tree? The Shrike’s tree of thorns?

[Of course]

[It broadcasts pain

across fatline and thin/

like a whistle in

a dog’s ear

Or a god’s]

— Ummon, who is the human UI in our time? Where is that consciousness hiding, lying dormant?

[You must understand/

Keats/

our only chance

was to create a hybrid/

Son of Man/

Son of Machine

And make that refuge so attractive

that the fleeing Empathy

would consider no other home/

A consciousness already as near divine

as humankind has offered in thirty

generations

an imagination which can span

space and time

And in so offering/

and joining/

from a bond between worlds

which might allow

that world to exist

for both]

— Who, Gaddamn you, Ummon! Who is it? No more of your riddles or double-talk you formless bastard! Who?

[You have refused

this godhood twice/

Keats

If you refuse

a final time/

all ends here/

for time there is

no more]

[Go!

Go and die to live!

Or live a while and die

for all of us!

Either way Ummon and the rest

are finished with

you!]

[Go away!]