Gregory Benford Eater

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air space. Hawaii was a state, of course, but never felt like the rest of the
United States. He made himself concentrate upon the wine to slow his still
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thudding heart. Adrenaline zest had gotten him through the airport, but now he
needed to be calm.
There was surely more to come.
He had received by classified e-mail a selection of recent Eater messages.
Scanning them, he wondered at the sort of mind that slithered from one subject
to another, unaware of the impact upon the swarms of minds that would receive
its words.
THERE WERE 10 SECONDS SINCE WHAT
18
YOU TERM THE BIG BANG AND WHICH
COULD BETTER BE TRANSLATED AS AN
EMERGENCE, NOT AN EXPLOSION. THERE
ARE 1O PARTICLES IN THE KNOWN
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UNIVERSE. THESE ARE TINY NUMBERS
COMPARED WITH THE WAYS OF
COMBINING INFORMATION, THE TRUE
FONT OF INTELLIGENCE. HERE LODGES
THE TRUE RICHNESS OF CREATION. A
DECK OF YOUR GAME CARDS CAN BE
ASSEMBLED IN 10 WAYS. EACH NEW
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SHUFFLE PROBABLY HAS NEVER BEEN
DEALT BEFORE. REARRANGING THE OS
AND IS ON A MEGABYTE OF MEMORY
COULD YIELD 10
35MIILION
DIFFERENT BYTE
STRINGS. THE TRUE CONSTRAINT ON
NATURE IS NOT THINGS BUT WAYS OF
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ARRANGING THEM, AND IN THIS THERE
ARE NO TRUE BOUNDS.
All this, apparently, as cheerleading for people to relish uploading into the
Eater's "library." Or so a naive human mind could read it.
I MANIFEST MY-SELF THROUGH
GRAVITATIONAL ENERGY, WHICH IS IN
THIS UNIVERSE THE LARGEST IN
QUANTITY. IT ALSO IS THE LEAST
DISORDERED AND FROM THIS SUPERIOR
QUALITY CAN CHANGE EASILY INTO
OTHER FORMS. THUS I BRING IMMINENT
ORDER TO YOUR KIND.
He supposed one should expect a being unique and isolated to become something
of an egomaniac.
What choice did it have? Every other intelligence it had encountered vanished
into the abyss of astronomical time, devoured by its own terminal brevity.
YOUR LIFETIME COMPRISES A TRILLION
OF YOUR BRAIN EVENTS. YOU ARE
AQUEOUS SUSPENSIONS OF MOLECULES
AND SO COMPRISE A TRANSIENT
MEDIUM. CAUGHT IN YOUR SMALL BOX
OF TIME, YOU CANNOT ATTAIN THE
HEIGHTS OF SOME FORMS I HAVE
WITNESSED.
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Apparently the biologists had caught its attention.
The Eater was notorious by now for abruptly
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swerving among subjects and ignoring entreaties.
This fit the developing model for its own mental organization: a compilation
of many magnetic knots storing separate agents of mental structure.
Each agent could come forward as a governing principle and shine the spotlight
of consciousness upon itself. In this sense, the Eater had access to its own
unconscious unlike humans. It could watch itself thinking, and so felt no
need to dress itself in the clothing of a smoothly operating over-mind, to be
one "person."
I HAVE SEEN AND NOW CARRY WITH ME
THE MINDS OF BEINGS WHO STORED
THEMSELVES IN THE CLAY ARRAYS OF
THEIR WORLD'S MUD. THESE COULD
THINK IN SPANS OF MILLIONTHS OF
YOUR SECONDS, WHILE YOURSELVES
CAN ONLY MASTER THOUSANDTHS. I
ORBITED FOR MANY OF YOUR
MILLENNIA A CLOUD THE SIZE OF YOUR
PLANETARY SYSTEM AND THIS
CREATURE THOUGHT FAR SLOWER THAN
YOU. BUT IT WAS MORE VAST THAN ANY
I HAVE FOUND AND HAD THOUGHT FOR
LONGER THAN YOUR STAR HAS BURNED.
He wondered how they could deal with this. The fear he had seen in the
President's eyes was global.
Would the volunteered uploads from the dictatorial nations be enough? Or did
it have further
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amusements in store for itself, at humanity's expense?
Well, only a few days to go until they all found out. The cabin was dark, the
plane on its long night arc over the Pacific. He looked out a window and with
practiced eye could find the blue-white blotch that was the Eater's
decelerating jet. Brighter, nearer, hanging like a strange eye in the
blackness.
He allowed himself to think of Channing a bit.
Her upload had apparently gone reasonably well and now "she" cruised in orbit.
Apparently the specialists were engaged in "linearizing" her onboard
consciousness from afar, an unparalleled technical feat. Fuel pods were being
attached to give her multiple booster capability. Her whole remaining self was
a mere speck perched atop masses of refrigerated hydrogen. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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