Chapter 45 Chapter Forty-Four
Death, I discovered, is not a pleasant experience.Leaving the familiar rooms and rapidly cooling bodies of Plaza de España was like being expelled from a familiar warm home by fire or flood, driven into the night.I felt a very violent shock and a surge of empathy.I dashed toward the supernet and experienced a sense of shame, that sudden embarrassment that comes when we suddenly realize in our dreams that we have forgotten to put on our clothes and are standing naked in public. Such a reaction.
Naked, that's the right word to use, and I'm desperately trying to maintain my simulated personality that's been torn to shreds.Through this almost frenzied electronic cloud of memories and reveries, I managed to focus my mind on the image of a legitimate human being I once was—or at least the person whose memories I shared.
Mr. John Keats, five feet tall.
Hypernet is scarier than ever—so bad there's no deathbed shelter I can escape to.Huge shapes moved beyond the black horizon, and loud voices echoed in the knotted void, like footsteps in an abandoned castle.Underneath, and after, there was a constant, heart-pounding rumble that sounded like wagon tires rolling down the flagstone road.
Poor Hunter.I really want to go back to him, just show up like the same guy, and tell him that I am actually better than I look now.But at this moment, the Old Land was a dangerous land for me: the Shrike was there, its substance burning on the data plane of the Hypernet like flames on black velvet.
The inner core is calling me with great energy, but there is more danger there.I remember Cloud Gate killing another Keats in front of Braun Lamia - just pinched that Sim's personality on him and it simply fell apart, the man's basic core memory was Melted like a salted slug.
this is nothing.
I have chosen to die and thus attain godhood, but I have a lot of chores to do before I go to sleep.
Hypernet scares me, but I'm even more afraid of the kernel, and the black passage through the singularity of the data network that I have to go through makes me shudder.But there is nothing there.
I swam quickly into the first black cone, like a symbolic leaf swirling in an all-too-real vortex, and then into the data plane I wanted, but I was so dizzy and disoriented that I could only That sits for a while—whether it’s the core AI accessing the nerve centers of these memories, or the bacteriophage routines that inhabit those purple cracks in those mountains of data, they can see me—but the chaotic scene in the technology core Saved me: The giant core personalities are too busy laying siege to their own city of Troy to care about their back door.
I found the datanet access code I wanted and the synaptic umbilical cord I needed, and in a fraction of a second I followed the old road to the Whale Center, entered the government building, came to the infirmary there, entered the In Paul Durley's drug-induced dream.
One of the things my personality does best is dreaming, and I happened to find that the memory of my travels in Scotland produced a pleasing dream scene in which I persuaded the priest to tell him to go away.As an Englishman and a free thinker, I've been against anything with a Catholic papacy, but I have to give credit to the Jesuits - they were taught obedience over logic, and for once, that quality gave All human beings bring benefits.When I told Du Lei to leave, he didn't ask why... Woke up like a good boy, wrapped himself in a blanket and left.
Meina Gladstone thought I was Joseph Seven, but she took my message as if it were an oracle from God.I'd love to tell her, no, I'm not that one, I'm just the one who came up ahead.But I have come to deliver the letter, and since it has been delivered, I can leave.
On my way back to Hyperion, I passed the core, smelled the smoke of the civil war, caught a glimpse of a strong blinding light, that was probably Cloud Gate, and he was being destroyed.The old master (if that was really him), died not citing koan, but screaming in pain, like any conscious entity making the sound of pain when it is thrown into an oven.
I hastened to move forward.
The teleportation link to Hyperion was slim: a single military teleportation gate and a damaged jump ship within the shrinking perimeter of the battle-damaged Overlord ship.Under the attack of the Ouster, the hidden field of the singularity can only resist for a few minutes.The overlord torch ship carrying the core death stick weapon was preparing to teleport into the system. At the same time, I walked in and found out the direction in the narrow data network plane, so I could take a good look.I stopped and watched what happened next.
"My God," Merio?"Meina Gladstone is sending a message through the priority 1 stream," Arundez said.
Theo Lane came over, and together with the old man, he stared at the overriding data above the holographic well, and they slowly became clear from hazy.From the bedroom where the Consul had been brooding, he stepped out and down the iron spiral staircase. "Another message from Whaleheart?" he cried.
"It's not just for us," Theo said, as he watched the red code take shape and slowly fade away, "it's a Transcendence relay message, sent to everyone, everywhere."
Alun Dezi sat on the soft cushion of the holographic cabin. "Quite wrong. Has the CEO ever broadcast on full frequency before?"
"No," said Theo Wren, "it would take an astonishing amount of energy just to encode such a stream of information."
The Consul stepped forward, pointing to the disappearing code. "It's not a stream of information. Look, it's real-time transmission of information."
Theo shook his head. "We're talking hundreds of millions of gigaelectron volts of transmitted energy."
Alan Dezi blew a whistle. "Hundreds of millions of gigaelectron volts, that must be a matter of urgency."
"Surrender all," Theo said. "Only then will there be real-time broadcasts throughout the universe. Pleasant Stone sends messages to Ousters, Outworlds, invaded planets, and the Ring. Messages must cover all communications Frequency, holographic TV and datanet bands. Surrender for sure."
"Shut up," the Consul said.It was obvious that he had been drinking.
The Consul has been drinking since he returned from the hearing.Even as Theo and Arundez patted him on the back and celebrated his return alive, he kept sullen and sullen, even as the spaceship took off, flew away from the flock, and accelerated to Hyperion. What an improvement, having been drinking alone for two hours.
"Meina Gladstone will not surrender," the consul said vaguely.He still held the Scotch bottle in his hand. "Although you are optimistic."
The torch ship "HMS Stephen Hawking", the overlord spaceship built in the 23rd century and carrying the name of a famous and revered scientist, stands General Arthur Morpurgo.Standing on deck 3C, he raised his head and signaled the two bridge officers to be quiet.Under normal circumstances, a torch ship of this level will be equipped with twenty-five crew members.But now, since the weapon bay is loaded and equipped with the death stick device of the inner core, there are only Morpogo and four volunteers on board.The monitor and the discreet voice of the computer confirmed to them that "Stephen Hawking" had entered the voyage on time and was accelerating smoothly to near-quantum speed towards the Lagrangian point three located between Moe and its supermoon. The military teleportation gate rushes forward.The Moya portal leads directly to the teleporter in the fiercely defended Hyperion airspace.
"One minute and eighteen seconds to the transmission point," said bridge officer Saluman Morpurgo.He is the general's son.
Moboge nodded, and pressed the button to play the multi-frequency transmission information in the system.The bridge projector was busy processing mission data, so the admiral just turned on the CEO's voice broadcast.He couldn't help smiling.What would Meina say if she knew he was conducting "Stephen Hawking"?It's better not to know.There was nothing he could do but stand here.He didn't want to see the consequences of the explicit orders he'd given himself for the past two hours.
Moboge looked at his eldest son, full of glory, so intense that it was even on the verge of pain.There were very few Torchship-class officers he could promote to the mission, and his son was the first to volunteer.Among other reasons, the fanaticism of the Morpurgo family may alleviate some doubts in the core.
"Citizen friends," Gladstone said, "this is my last broadcast to you as CEO."
"This terrible war, which has destroyed three of our worlds and is now about to encroach on a fourth, has always been believed, as you know, to be waged by the Ouster horde."
"It's a lie."
The communication band was suddenly disturbed, blurred, and disappeared. "Go to Hyperlight," said General Morpurgo.
"One minute and three seconds to the transfer point," intoned his son.
Yueshi's voice reappeared and echoed in his ears, slightly unclear because of Chaoguang's encryption and decryption. "...understand that our ancestors...ourselves...have entered into a Faustian pact with a force that has nothing to do with the fate of mankind.
"The kernel is the mastermind behind this intrusion.
"The kernel is responsible for the long, comfortable dark ages of the mind.
"The Kernel is responsible for the ongoing attack, they want to destroy humanity, wipe us from the universe, and replace us with machine gods of their own design."
Bridge Officer Saluman Morpurgo kept his head buried in the circle of the dashboard. "Thirty-eight seconds to the transmission point."
Mo Boge nodded.The other two crew members on the 3C bridge were covered in sweat and shining.The general realized that his face was also wet.
"... proves that the inner core resides...has always resided...in the dark realm of the teleportal gate. They consider themselves our masters. As long as the Ring exists, as long as our beloved Overlord is connected by teleporter, they will always be our master."
Morpurgo glanced at his chronometer.Twenty-eight seconds to go.Transmissions to Hyperion - for humans - will be in real time.Mo?Baige was sure that once they entered Hyperion airspace, the death stick weapon in the inner core would be triggered in some way he didn't understand.The claws of death's shock wave will reach the Hyperion planet in less than two seconds, and devour the furthest troops of the Destroyer swarm in more than ten minutes.
"Therefore," said Meina Gladstone, in a voice that betrayed her emotion for the first time, "as Chief Executive of the House of Human Overlords, I have authorized the Space Forces of the Military Department to destroy all known Singularity shelters that exist. field and teleportation devices.
"Destroy mission...burn mission...will start in ten seconds.
"May God bless my overlord.
"May God forgive us."
Bridge officer Saluman Mopurgo said calmly, "Five seconds until the transmission, Father."
Mo Boge's eyes crossed the bridge and fixed on his son.The projection behind the young man shows a portal that slowly grows, grows, and finally surrounds them.
"I love you," said the general.
In 2.6 seconds, 263 singularity spheres connected to 72 million teleportation gates were destroyed.The fleet of the military headquarters, deployed by the executive order issued by Morpurgo, immediately responded professionally to the order that had just been unsealed three minutes ago, destroying the fragile teleportation ball with rockets, cutting weapons, and plasma bombs.
Three seconds later, with the cloud of wreckage still dissipating, hundreds of military spaceships found themselves stranded, all isolated, separated from other systems by weeks to months even through Hawking drives, Still have a few years of time debt.
Thousands of people are stranded in teleportation transport.Many were killed instantly, torn or torn in half.Many more had their arms severed before the portal was paralyzed in front of or behind them.Some people simply disappear.
Such was the fate of the "HMS Stephen Hawking" - exactly as expected - the moment the ship was teleporting, the entrance and exit portals were artfully destroyed, and no part of the torched ship was in the real world. Survive in space.Later tests gave a definitive conclusion: the so-called Death Stick weapon was triggered in the strange core geography between the portals (whatever that time and space is).
The result is unknown.
But the consequences for the rest of the worlds and citizens of the Web are immediately apparent.
The data network, over seven centuries, at least four of them, on which almost everyone lived, encompassing the whole world and all communication and access bands, simply ceased to exist.At that moment, hundreds of thousands of citizens went mad—shocked, catatonic by the loss of sensations that were even more important to them than sight and hearing.
Millions of data plane operators, including many, many so-called cyberrunners and system cowboys, are lost, either by their simulated personalities being crashed by the datanet, or by their brains being damaged by neural shunts Burn out from overload, or die from what came to be known as the "zero zero feedback" effect.
The homes of millions of people became isolated death dungeons, because these places can only be accessed through teleporters, and these millions of people all died as a result.
The bishop of the Doomsday Atonement Church—the leader of the Shrike Church—has carefully arranged himself to stand by at the end of the day, and is now comfortably staying in a hollowed-out mountain in the middle, with abundant reserves, that is the crow of Yongpu Xingbei District deep in the mountains.Numerous teleporters are the only way in and out.The bishop, along with thousands of acolytes, exorcists, chanters, and gatekeepers, rushed into the inner sanctuary, vying for the last breath of God's air, and then died.
Terena Greenwing--The Millionaire Publisher--was ninety-seven years old and, thanks to Paulson's physical therapy and cryosomnia, lived a full three hundred years.But she made a big mistake. On that important day, she actually stayed in the office on the 435th floor of the superline minaret in Babel, the fifth city in Jingti Center, and that office could only be accessed through a teletransmitter. in and out.For the first fifteen hours, she believed that teleportation service would be restored quickly, but afterward she finally heeded her employee's comm call request to remove the containment wall so the electromagnetic vehicle could pick her up.
Terena was simply too careless to follow instructions.The explosive decompression threw her from the 435th floor like the cork of an over-shaken champagne bottle.Employees and members of the rescue team in the waiting electromagnetic vehicle asserted that the old woman had been swearing at God throughout the entire 400-meter fall.
On most worlds, chaos gets a new definition.
A large part of the ring network economy ceases to exist with the disappearance of the local data network and the ring network Wanfang network.Trillions of marks - hard-earned and dirty - disappeared in an instant.The Universal Card no longer works.The systems of everyday life start coughing, wheezing, shutting down.Now, without black market currency or banknotes, you cannot buy groceries, pay for travel on public transmission lines, pay the smallest debt, or receive any service for weeks, or months, or years. Years, everything depends on which world this is.
The Great Depression that swept across the Internet like a tsunami is only a secondary matter that can be considered later.For most families, the dramatic consequences that follow are immediate and personal.
My parents teleported to work in other places as usual, for example, from Tianjin Siding to Fuxingzhizhi, but they came back late tonight, not an hour, but——if they can find an immediate transmission tool , one of the few Hawking-powered gyro craft still agonizingly traveling between worlds—delayed for eleven years.
Members of the well-to-do family are staying in their stylish mansion in a multiverse when they listen to Pleasant Stone's speech.They raised their heads and looked at each other, separated only by the open portals between the rooms, only a few meters apart, and in the blink of an eye, they were separated by light-years and years of real time. Their rooms have now become completely It's airtight.
The kids are at school, at camp, or playing, or in the care of a babysitter.But before being reunited with his parents, he will have grown up.
Central Square, which had earlier been amputated in sections by the winds of war, now found itself utterly obliterated, and those endless rings of handsome shops and excellent hotels cut into tacky sections would never be reunited.
With the great portal darkened and dead, the Tethys River has become a stagnant pool.The river gushes out and dries up, and the fish rot in heaps under two hundred suns.
Riots raged.Lusus ripped himself apart like a wolf biting his own guts.New Mecca and martyrs follow.Qingdao-Xishuangbanna celebrated its release from the clutches of the Ouster nomads and hanged thousands of former overlord officials.
There were riots in Maui, too, but to celebrate, hundreds of thousands of descendants of the First Family ousted the Outerworlders who had taken over the world and re-routed the moving island.Then millions of collapsed vacation home owners were forced to demolish the thousands of oil rigs and tourist centers that pockmarked the Equatorial Islands like pox.
A brief period of violence in the midst of revival was followed by a successful social reorganization and a series of efforts to provide the necessities of an urban world without farmsteads.
On the North Island, the cities are empty as people return to the coast, the icy seas and their ancestral fishing boats.
Enter Parvati, chaos and civil war.
On Dracon 7, people began to carnival revolution, and then, a retrovirus plague broke out.
On Fuji, after taking it easy, people immediately established an orbital shipyard and built a batch of Hawking-driven gyroscopic spacecraft.
Enter Asquith, people point their fingers and yell, and then the Socialist Labor Party of the World Congress wins.
Enter Payson, everyone prays.The new pope, His Majesty Theia I, convened the Council - the thirty-ninth administration of the Vatican - to declare a new era in the life of the Church and empower the Council to prepare the missionaries for their long missionary journeys.Lots and lots of missionaries.Many missionary trips.Pope Theia declared that these missionaries were not lobbyists but explorers.The Church, like many species accustomed to living on the brink of extinction, adapted and persevered.
On Tempest, riots, death, agitators rise.
On Mars, the Olympus Command temporarily gets in touch with the troops far away through super-light.They confirmed that the "Ouster attack wave" had ceased abruptly everywhere except the Hyperion system.The intercepted kernel spacecraft is empty and has no programmed instructions.The aggression is over.
Enter Metaxor, riot, revenge.
On Qom Riyadh, a self-proclaimed fundamentalist Shia came out of the desert, gathered a hundred thousand followers, and wiped out the Sunni Zemstvo within hours.The new revolutionary government put the mullahs back in power, turning the tide of history back to 2,000 years ago.The people rejoiced and rioted.
On the outlying world of Armaghast, things went on as they always had, except without the tourists, new archaeologists, and other imported delights.Armaghast is a labyrinthine world.The maze there is still empty.
On Hebron, New Jerusalem, the center of the outer world, was terrified, but the Zionist elders were quick to restore order to the city and the world.Make a plan.Precious outer world necessities are rationed and shared.The desert was reclaimed.Farms were opened up.Trees are planted well.People complain to each other, thank God for their deliverance, and argue with God about the hardships of that same deliverance, and go on about their business.
On the sacred forest, the entire area is still burning, and the curtain of smoke covers the entire sky.Soon after the last "you group" left, more than 20 giant tree ships soared into the sky, passed through the clouds, and slowly climbed to high altitudes driven by fusion propellers. With tree body.As soon as they left the gravity well, most of the giant treeships began to rush in all directions along the ecliptic of the universe, and began to rotate at an accelerated speed for a long time to perform quantum leaps.The super-luminous information flow jumped from the ship of the giant tree to the group of wanderers waiting in the distance.Reseeding has begun.
At the Center of Whale, the center of power, wealth, commerce, and government, the hungry survivors left the dangerous mansions, the useless cities, and the collections of incompetent orbits to pour out, looking for someone to scold.Looking for someone to punish.
They don't have to go far to find them.
When the portal completely stopped functioning, General Van Hitt was in the government building, and now he is commanding the remaining 200 sailors and 68 security personnel to guard the complex.Former chief executive Meina Gladstone still commands six Praetorian officers.Korschef and the other high councilors had already fled in the first and last military evacuation lander, and he left the six for Pleasant Stone.
Somewhere, the mob got hold of anti-aircraft missiles and cutting weapons, and another three hundred government building employees and refugees didn't want to go anywhere else until the encirclement was lifted or the protective shields stopped functioning.Yueshi stood at the forward observation point, watching the carnage.The mob had destroyed most of the deer park and the neatly arranged gardens, but at last the last line of the Interdiction Field and the Containment Field blocked their way.There are now at least three million raging people squeezing the barrier, and the number of mobs is increasing every second.
"Can you set back the concealment field fifty meters, and restore them before the mob pours in?" Yueshi asked the general.Cities in the west were ablaze, and smoke enveloped the entire sky.Thousands of men and women were jostled by the long dragon behind them, crashing into the hazy concealed field, and finally the bottom two meters of the glistening wall looked like they had been smeared with strawberry jam.Tens of thousands of people ignored the pain caused to their nerves and bones by the concealed field, and kept pushing towards the inner field.
"Yes, Mr. Executor," Van Hitter said, "but why?"
"I want to go out and talk to them." Yue Shi's voice sounded exhausted.
The marines stared at her, convinced she was playing some dull joke. "My Lord Executor, in a month they'll be willing to listen to you...or us...on the radio or holotv. In a year, maybe two years, when order is restored and rationing goes smoothly, they'll forgive. But it will take the next generation to really understand what you did...understand that you saved them...you saved us all."
"I want to talk to them," Meina Gladstone said. "I have something to give them."
Van Hitt shook his head and looked at the military officers in a circle. They were looking at the thugs outside through the opening of the bunker before, but now they turned to stare at Yueshi, with the same suspicion and fear on their faces.
"I'll have to check with CEO Korschev first," General Van Hitter said.
"No," Meina Gladstone said exhaustedly, "he rules over an empire that no longer exists. I still rule over a world I destroyed." She nodded to her Praetorian guard, the guards From the orange and black gown, he took out the death stick.
None of the army officers moved.General Van Hitter said, "Meina, the next evacuation ship will arrive in time."
Yue Shi nodded, seemingly absent-minded. "It's going to land in the inner garden, I think. The mob will be momentarily at a loss. Retaking the outer containment field will give them a moment's hesitation." She looked around, seeming to forget something, and then she held out her hand to Van Hitter. "Goodbye, Mark. Thank you. Please take good care of my people."
Van Hitt shook hands with her, and the woman in front of her straightened her ribbon, absently touched the comlog of the bracelet, as if praying for good luck, and then walked out of the bunker with the four guards.The small group walked slowly across the trampled garden towards the shelter.The reaction of the mob on the opposite side seemed to be a single headless organism, constantly squeezing the purple blocking field, screaming crazy words.
Yue Shi turned around, raised a hand as if to wave, but signaled the Janissaries to go back.Four guards hurried across the unkempt grass.
"Quick," said the older one of the remaining Janissaries.He pointed to the remote control of the interdiction field.
"Fuck you mother." General Van Hitt said clearly.As long as he is alive, no one dares to step near the remote control device.
But Van Hitter forgot that Pleasure Stone still had an access code, which allowed him to enter the tactical dense light link.He saw the ex-executive pick up the comlog, but he was too slow to react.The lights on the remote flashed red, then green, and the outer field suddenly disappeared before reappearing within fifty meters.In an instant, Meina Yueshi stood alone outside the arena, with no barrier between her and the million mobs, except for a few meters of grass and countless corpses, who fell to the ground with a sudden retreat of the field wall .
Pleasant Stone raised his arms, as if to embrace the mob.Those three seconds seemed to be frozen, and the scene was silent, and no one moved.Immediately afterwards, the mob roared, like a huge beast roaring, thousands of people rushed forward, holding sticks, stones, knives and broken bottles in their hands.
For a split second, it seemed to Van Hitter that Pleasant Stone stood there like an impassive rock, enduring the pounding waves of the mob.He saw her black tie and bright sash, saw her standing there stiffly, arms still raised, but then hundreds of people came, the crowd closed in, and the CEO disappeared.
The Janissaries dropped their weapons, and the naval guards immediately took them into custody.
"Dark the containment field," Van Hitter ordered, "tell the lander to land in the inner garden in five minutes. Quick!"
The general turned and left.
"My God," Theo Lane said while watching the fragmented reports pouring in from above the super light.There are so many millisecond-long streams of information being fed in that it's impossible for a computer to separate them.The result is a wild hodgepodge of madness.
"Play the destruction of the Singularity Containment Ball," the Consul said.
"Okay, sir." The spacecraft replied, interrupting the super-light information, replaced by a sudden burst of white pulse, and then, as the singularity swallowed itself and everything within a radius of 6,000 kilometers, everyone showed a A short-lived flower of wreckage and a sudden collapse.The tool showed the gravitational tidal effect: easy to correct at such a distance, but also wreaked havoc on Overlord and Ouster ships anchored in Hyperion battles.
"All right," said the Consul.The torrent of Chaoguang's report came back again.
"Really?" Alan Dezi asked.
"True," said the consul, "Hyperion is an outworld again. But this time, there's no ring to make the other worlds outbacks."
"Unbelievable," said Theo Lane.The ex-governor sat drinking scotch: it was the first time the consul had seen his aide enjoying himself.Theo poured himself another glass. "The Ring Web... is gone. Five hundred years of expansion has been wiped out."
"It didn't go up in smoke," said the consul.He put his unfinished glass on the table. "The planet still exists. The culture will spread out and grow, but we still have the Hawking drive. This is an advanced technology developed by ourselves, not rented from the core."
Melio Arandezi came closer, palms together, as if praying. "Has the core really disappeared? Is it really destroyed?"
The Consul listened for a while to the chatter, the cries, the pleadings, the military reports, the pleas for help, on the AVI. "Maybe it wasn't destroyed," he said, "but it was cut and sealed."
Theo drank the wine in one gulp and carefully put the glass down.His green eyes had a calm, glazed look. "You think there are...they have other webs? Other teleportation systems? Spare cores?"
The consul gestured. "We know that they succeeded in creating an ultimate intelligence. Maybe that ultimate intelligence allowed for ... screening of ... cores. Maybe it was trying to make some old-fashioned AI an assembly line - with weakened capabilities - like those artificial Smart plans make billions of humans a backup."
Suddenly, the chattering super light information stopped abruptly, as if the information was cut off by a knife.
"Spaceship?" the Consul asked, wondering if there was a power failure somewhere in the receiver.
"All trans-luminous messages are aborted, most halfway through," said the spaceship.
The Consul felt his heart pounding, and he remembered the Death Rod weapon.But no, he understood immediately that that weapon could not affect all worlds at once.Even with hundreds of devices firing at the same time, there is still a time lag in sending the final message due to military headquarters and other distant transmitters.But what should that be?
"The information appears to have been cut off by interference in the conducting medium," said the ship, "but, as far as I know now, this is impossible."
The consul stood up.Interference in the conducting medium?The meta-optical medium, as humans understand it, is the Planckian infinite topological superstring terrain of space-time itself: that is, what artificial intelligence mysteriously calls the "conjunctive void."That medium cannot be disturbed.
The spaceship suddenly said: "Transluminal information received-sending source: everywhere; encryption basis: unlimited; information flow rate: real-time."
The Consul opened his mouth to tell the ship to stop babbling nonsense, but suddenly, the air above the holographic well blurred, something that was neither an image nor a data sequence emerged, and a voice said:
"From now on, no abuse of this band will be permitted by you. You have interfered with others who are using this band very seriously. When you understand the true purpose of this band, we will restore access to it. Goodbye. "
The three of them sat there, silent all the time, except for the reassuring rush of the ventilation fan and the countless soft sounds of the journey.Finally, the consul said: "Spaceship, please send a standard super-light time positioning information flow, do not encrypt. Add another sentence 'Please reply to the received station.'"
A brief pause of a few seconds—such a long response time for the ship's artificial intelligence-level computer is incredible. "Sorry, I can't do it." Finally it finally responded.
"Why can't it be done?" asked the Consul.
"Trans-optical transmission of information is no longer ... permitted. Superstring media is no longer acceptable for tuning."
"Is there nothing on the hyperlight?" Theo asked, staring at the empty space above the holowell, as if someone had suddenly turned the holofilm off during its most exciting part.
The spaceship paused again. "Actually, Mr. Wren," it said, "there will be no Hyperlights from now on."
"Damn it," the Consul muttered.He gulped down his drink, went to the bar and poured another glass. "Ancient Chinese swear words." He muttered.
Melio Arendez looked up. "what?"
The consul raised his glass and drank. "An ancient Chinese swear word," he said, "it is better to be a dog of peace than to be a man in troubled times."
As if to compensate for the loss caused by the super-light, the spacecraft began to play the broadcast audio in the system and the intercepted dense light gibberish, and at the same time projected the real-time scene of Hyperion’s blue and white sphere, as they moved toward It slows down, and the planet spins, slowly growing.
Notes:
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