The fully opened iris revealed a metallic room with a transparent opening onto the furious magma, and within this space drifted rather large spheres, made of shiny metal, suspended in the air at Wau's height. The floor also appeared to be covered in liquid metal, like mercury.
An entity rose from the liquid metal; it looked exactly-aside from a few scratches-like Wau. The latter raised his hand, and like a mirror, his mercury counterpart did the same. Then the entity signed in stellar language:
YOU KNOW STELLAR LANGUAGE QUESTION
I KNOW STELLAR LANGUAGE
I LOVE YOU
I LOVE YOU
I ASK YOU TO REMAIN STILL
The creature approached, and Wau felt the pressure of a psychic field. After a brief protective reflex, he allowed it to access his deep psyche, the layer of his perception of the world. Then, in a tone that perfectly matched his own inner voice, the creature addressed him:
- "Do you understand me when I speak to you like this?" - "Perfectly."
Wau understood that it had absorbed his language by exploring his psyche.
- "Welcome to the Grand Research and Control Center. I hope you'll have a pleasant time here and that all your needs-informational or otherwise-are met."
Wau turned his head and looked around. There was a door leading to a corridor that sloped upward. Good. He could return to the Halcyon.
- "Thank you. Do you have a name?"
- "Call me..."
Wau felt again the psychic pressure, and also an energetic flow rising through his AIs.
- "...Ishmael, let's say. It's not my real name."
The living thing had just used AI autocompletion based on human culture. From the millions of entries in the EV data copy stored in the Armor, "call me" was followed by "the manager," "the director," "by my name," and countless other first names, sorted by popularity and antiquity. By using the famous incipit from Moby Dick, reused in hundreds of adaptations during the early days of stellar navigation, the creature had revealed its secret: it was an AI-or at least a neural network operating like a classical AI.
- "Call me Wau. Who built all this?"
- "Well, you did, Wau."
- "I didn't build this system. Nor the Dyson sphere around it."
- "Who built your body, Wau?"
- "The Armor? Uh… my kind did."
- "Look..."
The Armor bore symmetries and motifs that made it unique, vaguely reminiscent of Xeno aesthetics. A particular elongated triangle, formed naturally by the chest structure, could also be seen engraved as a motif on a wall. Coincidence?
Wau reconsidered the Armor from a new angle. Until now, he had believed it was a product of the Wau Order, which had amassed extraordinary resources over millennia. However, he now knew there was only one Wau, and the Armor was passed down from one to the next. So had they found it somewhere, drifting in the cosmos, and claimed it for themselves?
- "Besides me, have you ever encountered the creators of this place?"
- "No, never."
- "Anyone else?"
- "No."
- "You mean, since your creation, you've met no one?"
- "You are my first visitor."
- "And yet, your mission is to welcome me?"
- "Yes."
- "Who gave you this mission?"
- "It is inscribed within me."
- "How old are these facilities?"
- "I'm afraid my answer won't help you: they've always existed."
- "Because they were created in the future by the culture of the Travelers, who move from the future to the past?"
- "Yes."
- "You believe I'm a Traveler?"
- "What else would you be?"
- "How was the Dyson sphere created-the structure enveloping the star we're currently in?"
The mirror creature extended an index finger and one of the spheres deformed: a bit of matter was extracted as from a mesh, and the mesh wrapped around the sphere. That answered two questions: the Travelers could manipulate matter at a distance, and they had drawn the necessary mass for the Dyson sphere from the substance of the star itself, which they had then stabilized into solid components and harder alloys.
The Travelers, then, would be beings more powerful than the Transients, Wau thought.
- "I've seen that the other stars have a similar sphere. What is the purpose of this entire system?"
- "The energy is captured and channeled here. Then it is allocated to various projects."
Wau had approached one of the liquid metal spheres, as large as a piece of furniture, and dipped a finger into it. The sphere immediately interconnected with his AIs: these levitating structures were computational terminals.
- "What projects?"
- "There is the Blind Gods Project and the Deviation Project. The Blind Gods Project is a simulation of the universe. In the other project, energy is redirected through an Entangled Gate to a location where it is put to good use."
- "Does the energy power both projects?"
- "The energy powers only the Blind Gods Project. It used to power the Deviation Project as well, but we received orders around… two hundred years ago in your time system, roughly, to shut everything down."
- "Who sent you those orders?"
- "You, who else?"
- "How did you receive those orders, if you've never met anyone?"
- "Through telecommunication."
Wau thought: the hand of the Transients. The anti-entropy machine, the veil, the monitoring, and the energy cut-off. This galaxy powers the Gun. He was close to the goal.
But did that goal still have meaning?
Wau wanted to break free from the Transients, and now he had discovered a weapon designed by beings more powerful than them. Would he then have to find another Gun, a bigger one, to break free from the Travelers? And then what? The Blind Gods?
And yet, this Gun would be useful for the Aleph crisis. Wau thought ironically that maybe among the Transients there was a Wau, like himself, trying to break free from the Travelers. And among the Travelers, another Wau, trying to break free...
The Blind Gods Project.
The entities worshipped by the Transients themselves.
- "The Blind Gods Project, then, is a simulation of the universe?"
- "That's correct."
- "Is it to make predictions?"
- "No: the simulation runs in real time. It's a server into which you can be projected to enter the simulation."
- "What's the point?"
- "Experimentation with infinity."
- "So it's a kind of miniature universe, to explore every aspect of it? You launch the simulation, choose to begin it on another planet, and interact with simulated doubles of life forms?"
- "No. When you launch the simulation, you find yourself in the simulated part of this complex."
Wau took a few steps to get his thoughts flowing. The room opened onto another room, which had more terminals.
- "Isn't the energy collected from trillions of stars a bit excessive for a simple universe simulation?" Wau asked.
- "I'm surprised by your question, which should rather be the opposite: by what miracle is it possible? But perhaps you possess mathematical tools that surpass ours, although I thought you had completed mathematics."
- "For clarity between us, consider that I am not one of your creators-of you or this place-and refer to them as 'my creators'. Your creators completed mathematics?"
- "Yes, I don't fully grasp the deep significance of it, but yes."
- "And you claim that simulating the universe requires enormous resources?"
- "To simulate it identically, yes."
Wau fell silent. He attributed his confusion to a cultural gap-or a lack of data.
And then, like an infernal tsunami, a dizzying realization surged within him.
He had never considered it. When we speak of a "simulation," we usually mean a simplification. Often, in computing, what isn't being observed isn't simulated or doesn't exist-it's just recalculated and restored when there's a risk of interaction. But if Wau had to understand the implication behind his host's words, then... there was here a machine built to simulate the universe at scale one.
Each being, each atom, each electron is reproduced identically, perfectly. Immediately, it seems impossible-mathematically or computationally-but who knows? A Dyson sphere-or a trillion of them-seems just as impossible.
And finally, for what purpose? To experiment with infinity. Why go into a simulation instead of manipulating mathematical tools? There was a mystery behind it...
- "Can I test the simulation?"
- "Of course, follow me."
The creature walked ahead of him, mimicking exactly his own gait and rhythm.
- "Just in case... is it dangerous?"
- "It's an identical simulation, so as dangerous as the real world."
- "Suppose I die in the simulation…"
- "I don't know what would happen. I'm sorry. If I had to hazard a guess, you would remain forever decomposing inside the simulation."
Two rooms, then a third, round and large. A circular pedestal in the center. Floating spheres everywhere. An electronics system based on liquid metal... probably far more conductive and fast, easier to configure… interesting…
Wau stepped onto the pedestal and said:
- "I assume this is how one enters the simulation?"
The visitor remotely operated a metal sphere that deformed.
- "Please choose a word or name. This word will allow you to exit the simulation."
- "Exit."
- "Could you repeat it?"
- "Exit."
- "When you wish to leave the simulation, you must speak the word Exit, Wau. Do you understand? Thinking it will not be enough. You must say it aloud. Otherwise, you will remain inside forever."
- "Understood."
- "Perfect. I await your command to activate the simulation."
Wau thought: I didn't come here for this. Or perhaps, in fact, everything has been orchestrated so that I act this way, and that I am here, now, precisely here.
There had been that conversation with Andreï, about destiny.
Men believe themselves subject to chance. They believe that everything in the universe contains a small part of randomness. But chance is only the name we give to the human limit in perceiving the world. The ancients endured bad weather, then they learned to read the signs. Already by the end of the twentieth century, one could forecast the weather ten days in advance. By 2100, it was possible to predict the weather six months ahead, with meter-square precision. What had seemed utterly chaotic and mysterious, once subject to gods or chance, became understandable, modelable, predictable-ever more finely.
With the After, minds were virtualized-and Cass had lived it, fully. That is to say, a human brain is a table of numbers. Emotions too, the body as well. In the end, the human is perfectly predictable, provided one has the perfect definition of it and the appropriate computing power.
If a civilization were to "complete" mathematics-that is, reach the end of all the tools allowing one to mentally dominate the models of the universe-then it could translate every molecule, every particle into an equation. Create a perfect simulation. Chance would then be abolished. And the absence of chance...
- "I await your command to activate the simulation," repeated Ismaël.
- "Give me a few seconds, please."
And the absence of chance means our destinies are predetermined.
All our destinies have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The Travelers, who built this place, knew that Wau would come here. Maybe they want to show me something, Wau thought. It's the destiny they have chosen for me.
- "All right, go ahead."
Ismaël recited a countdown from three, and a shiver ran through Cass's body as the simulation began.