Chapter 63 Chapter nine

It was just after dawn when they attacked us.There were five of them, not Lutherian but still muscular, all men, and they worked fairly well together. The first sound I heard was the sound of the apartment door being kicked open.Immediately I rolled out of bed and jumped to the side of the bedroom door, watching them scurry in one by one.Johnny sat up and looked at the head man holding the stunner, and he started yelling.Johnny put on his cotton shorts before going to bed; I remained naked.I am naked, and the opponent is wearing clothes. If I start the fight like this, the situation will indeed be very disadvantageous to me.But the biggest problem is psychological.If you can get over the nervousness of being outnumbered, the rest is trivial.

The man in the lead saw me, but he still tried to knock Johnny out first, and he paid the price for this wrong choice.I leapt away, kicking his weapon away and punching him behind the left ear, knocking him to the ground.Now, two more people entered the room pushing and shoving.This time they learned how to behave, and deal with me first.The remaining two jumped at Johnny. I blocked a person's four-finger thrust, quickly dodged a life-threatening kick, and retreated step by step.There is a cupboard standing on my left, and the top drawer comes out as soon as it is pulled out, and it is very heavy.I picked it up and smacked it. The big man in front of me covered his face with his hands, and the thick wood split into pieces instantly. Due to this instinctive reaction, he left a gap for a moment. I seized this opportunity and gave it my all. kick him.Bad Guy Two let out a muffled sound, and fell on his back on his anti-partner.

As Johnny struggled, an intruder wrapped his arms around his neck, choking him so hard he couldn't breathe.And another was pressing his feet.I crouched to avoid my number two's attack, caught his punch, and jumped across the bed.The guy holding Johnny's feet was crawling out of the window without saying a word. Someone jumped on my back and I rolled over to the opposite side of the bed, leaning my back against the wall trying to lift the guy behind me.This guy is in great shape.He resisted tenaciously, trying to strangle me by the neck.He was in big trouble at that moment, that place is not easy to mess with, I bent my elbow, hit his lower abdomen hard, and dodged away.The man with Johnny's neck dropped him and kicked me in the ribs, a well-deserved blow that really wasn't covered.I withstood half of the force and felt that at least one rib was broken, but I immediately dived down without thinking about elegance, and with a trick of monkey stealing peaches, I crushed one of this guy's balls with my left hand.He screamed and fell unconscious.

I never forgot the stunner I dropped on the floor, and neither did my last opponent.He hastily turned to the opposite corner of the bed, threw himself on the ground, and grabbed the weapon that was out of reach.Now, I could clearly feel the pain from my broken ribs, but I lifted the big bed, and Johnny on it, and slammed it into the guy's head and shoulders. I crawled under the bed from my side, retrieved the stunner, and walked to an empty corner with my back against the wall. A guy has fallen out of the window.We are on the second floor.The guy who came in first was still lying in the doorway.The guy I kicked had already knelt on one foot, propping up two elbows.Judging by the blood on the mouth and chin, I guess a rib had punctured his lung.He was panting heavily there.The big bed had smashed the guy's head off on the floor.The guy with Caccioni's neck was curled up by the window, holding his crotch, and was vomiting.I silenced him with a stunner, then walked up to the guy I kicked and picked him up by his hair. "Who sent you here?"

"Go to hell." He spat bloody saliva on my face. "Maybe later," I said, "I'll ask you again, who sent you?" I put three fingers on his ribs, where the rib cavity seemed to be sunken, and I pressed there. The fellow screamed and turned pale.The blood that was coughed up was bright red, which set off the pale skin. "Who sent you?" I pressed four fingers against his ribs. "Bishop!" He straightened up, trying to shake my hand off. "What bishop?" "Lusus... Shrike Temple... Please, don't... oh shit..." "What do you want to do with him...with us?"

"It's nothing... oh god damn it... don't! I want a doctor, please!" "Of course. Answer me first." "Knock him out and take him...back to the Lusus...shrine. Please. I can't breathe." "If you resist... shoot or kill." "Okay," I said, grabbing him by the hair and lifting him higher, "we didn't hire anyone, we didn't mess with anyone. Why did they get him?" "I don't know," he screamed.One of my eyes remained alertly fixed on the door of the suite.The stunner was still in the palm of my hand, right in the hand that was holding his hair, "I...don't...know..." He was panting.Blood dripped from his mouth onto my arms and left breast.

"How did you get here?" "Electromagnetic cars...roof." "Where did it come from?" I tore his clothes off.There is no comlog.There are no other weapons.On the skin above his heart was a tattoo of a blue trident. "Are you thugs?" I asked. "Um... Parvati Brotherhood." Not in the ring network.Probably impossible to track. "you all are?" "Um...please...help me...oh shit...please..." He collapsed limply, almost unconscious. I dropped him, stepped back, opened the stun beam and shot him. Johnny sat up, rubbing his neck, staring at me with strange eyes.

"Get dressed," I said, "time to go." The electromagnetic car was an old transparent mast light observation car, and there was no palm lock on the ignition panel or touch display.Before we crossed France, we had caught up to the morning and evening line.Johnny looked down into the darkness, which he said was the Atlantic Ocean.Now, there are occasional lights on the floating city or the drilling platform, other than that, the only light comes from the stars, and the light of the underwater biome in this endless swimming pool. "Why should we ride in their car?" Johnny asked.

"I want to see where they teleported from." "He said it was the Luthers Shrike Temple." "Yes. We shall see." Johnny looked out to sea twenty kilometers down, I could barely see his face. "Do you think those people are going to die?" "One's dead," I said. "The guy with the blown lung needs a doctor. Two are fine. And the one fell out of the window, I don't know what happened. Are you worried about that?" "Yes. You guys played really... so rough." "Though street squabbles abhor me, the energy in them is beautiful," I quoted. "They're not Cybermen, are they?"

"I don't think so." "So, there are at least two groups trying to catch you...the artificial intelligence, and the Shrike Temple. And we are still kept in the dark." "I have an idea now." I lay on the foam chair and turned around.The brilliant constellation of stars above us—not the ones in the old Earth sky hologram, nor the ones I've seen on the Ring that I know of—cast a bright light, and so I saw Johnny's eyes. . "Tell me," I said. "You mentioned Hyperion, which gave me a clue," he said, "the fact that I don't even know anything about this planet. It's been erased from my mind. That's why it's important. "

"Strange case: dog barking into the darkness," I said. "what?" "Nothing. Go on." Johnny leaned over. "The only reason why I don't know about Hyperion is that some forces at the core of technology don't want me to know." "Your cyber…" I feel weird calling Johnny that now. "You live on the Web most of the time, don't you?" "right." "Don't you see Hyperion mentioned occasionally? The news occasionally mentions this world, especially when the Church of the Shrike is a topic of news." "Maybe I didn't hear. Maybe that's why I was murdered." I lay down and looked up at the stars. "Let's ask the bishop," I said. Johnny said the lights ahead came from another Simcity: New York City in the mid-21st century.But I don't know what plan the city was rebuilt for.I turned off the autopilot mode of the electromagnetic car and descended. Towers rose from the wetlands and lagoons of North American seashores, an age of fetishism in urban architecture.Several buildings were brightly lit.Johnny pointed to an old but dignified building, and said, "That's the Empire State Building." "Okay," I said, "whatever that is, that's where the electromagnetic car is going to land." "is it safe?" I smiled at him. "There is no absolute safety in one's life." I switched back to the free-wheel drive state, and the car landed on a small open-air platform, just behind the spire of the building.We got out of the car and stood on the shattered balcony.It was very dark, and only the lights of a few buildings and the lights of stars could be heard from far below.A few steps away, a teleporter portal was outlined in hazy blue light in what might have been an elevator door. "I'll go in first," but as soon as I finished speaking, Johnny had already walked in.Holding my borrowed stunner in hand, I followed. I've never been inside Lusus' Shrike Temple before, but there's no doubt we're there now.Johnny was standing a few steps in front of me, but there was no one else around except him.The place was cool and dark, like a cave, if a cave could be that big.A frightening palladium sculpture hangs there by invisible cables, and there must be some imperceptible breeze making it spin there.The teletransmitter flickered and suddenly disappeared, and Johnny and I turned around at the same time. "Ah, we did their job for them, didn't we?" I whispered to Johnny.Even if it was a whisper, the voice seemed to echo in the red hall.I hadn't planned to teleport to the temple with Jonny. Then, those lights seemed to become brighter, but this did not illuminate the entire giant hall brightly, but the range of light slightly increased, and finally let us see a group of people forming a semicircle over there.I remembered that some of these people were called exorcists, and some were called reciters, and others were called, I have forgotten.Whoever they were, seeing them standing there was worrying enough.There were at least two dozen men there, robes alternately red and black, their high foreheads aglow with red lights casting overhead.I recognized the bishop at a glance. Although he was shorter and fatter than most of us, there was no doubt that he came from my world, and his robe was bright red. I had no intention of hiding the stunner.If they want to raid us, I can use this to take them all down.Possible, but unlikely.I didn't see any weapons they carried, but their robes were big enough to hide an entire armory. Johnny walked toward the bishop, and I followed.We stopped ten paces from him.The bishop was the only one not standing.The chair he is sitting on is made of wood and looks as if it can be folded. The fine armrests, pillars, back rest, and chair legs can be folded tightly for easy portability.The mass of flesh under the bishop's robe is clearly visible, but no one can say that it is the same hand and leg. Johnny took another step forward. "Why did you kidnap my cyber body?" he said to the saints of the Shrike Church, as if the rest of us didn't even exist. The Bishop giggled, shaking his head. "My dear... Entity, indeed, we want you to come to our place of worship, but you have no evidence that we are trying to kidnap you." "I'm not interested in evidence," Johnny said, "I'm curious why you asked me to come here." Suddenly I heard a rustling sound behind me, and I spun around quickly, raising my stunner pointing, but the wide circle of Shrike priests remained motionless.Most people are out of range of the stunner.I wish I had your father's projectile weapon with me. The bishop's voice was deep and textured, as if it filled the entire huge space. "You must know that the Doomsday Salvation Cult has always had a firm interest in the world of Hyperion." "Know." "You must also know that in recent centuries, Keats, the poet of the old land, has been inextricably linked with the humanistic myths of the Hyperion colony, right?" "Yes, so what?" The Bishop scratched his face with a large red ring on his finger. "We are deeply saddened that you voluntarily asked to participate in the Shrike Pilgrimage and then reneged on your promise after we approved it." There was something almost human about Johnny's startled expression. "I volunteer? When?" "Eight local days ago," said the Bishop, "it was in this place. You came here on your own initiative and told us that idea." "Did I say why I wanted to make this... Shrike Pilgrimage?" "You said yes... I think your exact words were... 'very important for your education.' If you want to see the transcript, we can show it to you. All conversations in the temple are recorded. You may also talk to us Request a copy of the transcript and watch it at your convenience." "Okay," Johnny said. The bishop nodded, and an acolyte, who knows what the hell his name was, retreated into the darkness and, a moment later, returned with a standard video chip in his hand.The bishop nodded again, and the man in the black robe stepped forward and handed the chip to Jonny.My stunner was at the ready until the guy returned to the semicircle of caretakers. "Why are you sending thugs to follow us?" I asked.It was the first time I spoke in front of the bishop, and my voice sounded very loud and natural. The saint of the Church of the Shrike gestured with his fat hand. "Mr. Keats said he was very interested and wanted to join us on the most sacred pilgrimage. We believe that the end of redemption is approaching, so this pilgrimage is very important to us. However, our spies reported that Mr. Keats has been successively A few attacks, and a private detective...it was you, Ms. Lamia...caused the destruction of a Cyberman who was the bodyguard that the technology core provided to Mr. Keats." "Bodyguard!" This time I was the one who showed surprise. "Of course," said the Bishop.He turned to Johnny and said, "Mr. with the dreadlocks, the one who was just murdered at Saints Outing, isn't that the same guy you introduced us to as a bodyguard over a week ago? see him." Johnny was silent.He seemed to be struggling to remember something. "Anyway," the bishop continued, "we must have your answer about the pilgrimage before this week is over. The 'Sequoia' will depart from the Web in nine days." "Those are the saint's treeships," Johnny said, "they don't make long-distance jumps to Hyperion." The bishop smiled. "This time it will. We have reason to believe that this may be the last pilgrimage sponsored by the church. In order to allow as many believers as possible to complete the journey, we have chartered the saint's ship." The bishop gestured, The man in the red and black robe retreated into the darkness.The bishop stood up, and the two exorcists stepped forward, folding the chairs. "Please give me an answer as soon as possible." After finishing speaking, he left.There is only one exorcist left, and he will lead us out. There are no extra teleporters left.We walked out from the main gate of the temple, stood on the top step of the long staircase, overlooking the central square in the center of the hive, breathing in the cool air that smelled of motor oil. My father's automatic pistol is still in its original drawer.I opened the clip, made sure it was full, and pushed the clip back, put the weapon on me, and went back to the kitchen, where breakfast was cooking.Jonny sat at the table, peering down through the gray window, at the pier.I brought the omelet over and set one in front of him.He looked up and watched me pour my coffee. "Do you think what he said is true?" I asked. "What do you think about going on a pilgrimage?" "Didn't you also see the video recording?" "Records can be falsified." "Yes. But this one doesn't." "Then why are you volunteering for the pilgrimage? After you've talked to the Shrike Church, after you've talked to the Saints' captain, why does your bodyguard want to kill you?" Johnny took a bite of the omelet, then cut another piece with his fork and popped it into his mouth. "Body... bodyguard, I have no idea what happened. He must have been assigned to me the week I lost my memory. His real purpose was apparently to keep me from finding out about something... If I stumbled across it, Then get rid of me." "Is this thing in the ring network, or in the data plane?" "I guess it's in the Ring." "We need to know who this man... this thing is working for, and why they sent him to be your bodyguard." "I know that," Johnny said. "I just asked. The kernel said, I need a bodyguard. This cyberman is controlled by the artificial intelligence node, and that node corresponds to the security department." "Ask him, why did he kill you?" "I asked. They categorically denied it and said it couldn't happen." "Then why did this so-called bodyguard sneak around you for a week after you were killed?" "They replied that since I... interrupted... and did not request security protection again, the kernel authorities felt it was prudent to provide me with protection." I laughed out loud. "Protection. Why the hell did the guy run away after I caught him on Saint's World? Johnny, this story they gave you is full of holes." "right." "The bishop didn't explain why the Church of the Shrike had a teleporter leading to the old place... whatever you call that stage world." "We didn't ask him." "I didn't ask because I wanted to come out of that damn temple alive." Johnny didn't seem to be listening to me.He sipped his coffee and looked somewhere thoughtfully. "What's wrong?" I said. He turned to look at me, his thumbnail tapping his lower lip. "Braun, there's a paradox here." "what?" "If I really intend to go to Hyperion... let my cyberbody go there... then, I can no longer stay in the technological core. I must inject my consciousness into the cyberbody." "Why?" As soon as I finished asking, I already understood. "Think about it. The data plane is an abstraction. It's a hybrid of the data web and the matrix. The data web, generated by computers and artificial intelligence; designed, is now recognized as the common ground for humans, machines, and artificial intelligence." “But the AI ​​hardware does exist somewhere in physical space,” I said, “somewhere in the core of the technology.” "Yes, but this has nothing to do with the operation of artificial intelligence consciousness," Johnny said, "I can 'exist' anywhere, as long as there is a nested data network, I can go there... Of course, this includes All the ring worlds, the data planes, and anything tech-core built, like the Old Lands...but only in those environments can I say I'm 'conscious', or run sensors, or run remote controls, like This cyborg." I put down my coffee cup and stare at this thing, loving him the night before, as a human being. "yes?" "The colonial world lacks a data network," Johnny said. "Although there are super-light transmitters that can communicate with the technology core, this connection is limited to data exchange... just like the first computer interface in the information age.. ...that's not a flow of consciousness at all. Hyperion's datanet is so primitive it's almost non-existent. As far as I know, the core has no connection to that world." "Is that normal?" I asked, "I mean a colony world so far away that there is no connection, is it normal?" "It's not normal. The core is connected to every colonized world, to the interstellar savages like the Ousters, and to other resources beyond the imagination of the Overlord." I sat there, dumbfounded. "What? With the Ousters?" Since the war on Brescia a few years ago, the Ousters had become the number one enemy of the Ring.The thought of the Kernel being connected to the Ousters really gives me chills.And the core is just a collection of the same group of artificial intelligences, making suggestions for the House and the overall situation, maintaining our entire economic system, maintaining the long-distance transmission system, and maintaining technological civilization.Also, what exactly does Jonny mean by "other resources"?At the moment, I had absolutely no desire to figure this out. "But didn't you say that your cyberbody can go there?" I asked him, "What do you mean by 'injecting consciousness' into your cyberbody? Artificial intelligence can completely become... Human? Can you exist only in your Saimab?" "Yes. It worked," Johnny said softly. "Once upon a time, there was a personality reconstruction, not too far from mine. It was a 20th-century poet named Ezra Pound. He gave up My own artificial intelligence personality escaped into his cyber body and escaped from the ring network. But this Pound reconstructed personality went crazy." "Maybe sober," I said. "right." "Then, all the data and personality of an artificial intelligence can exist in the organic brain of a cyber body." "Of course not, Braun. Not one ten thousandth of my total consciousness will survive this transformation. Organic brains cannot process information the way they do, not even the most primitive. Synthetic personalities would not be The personality of the original artificial intelligence... it will neither be a real human consciousness, nor a cyber body..." Johnny stopped in the middle of speaking, and he quickly turned around and looked out of the window. After a long minute, I asked him, "What's the matter?" I held out a hand, but didn't touch him. He continued to stare blankly. "I said that these consciousnesses will not become human beings, maybe I was wrong," he said softly, "the resulting personality may very well become human beings, and it can carry some kind of extraordinary madness, with the insight to transform into human beings." Power. It can... If you take away all our memories over the years, take away all the core consciousness... the snake can become the personality that this cyber body is designed to be..." "John Keats," I said. Johnny turned away from looking out the window, and closed his eyes.His voice was hoarse, with emotion.This is the first time I heard him recite the poem: "The fanatic has a dream, he weaves Heaven of the church, you are the land of barbarism, In his loftiest sleep, conjecturing heaven, It's a pity that the parchment was not recorded in this dream, Indian Wild Leaf The melodious voice leaves only a beautiful image. Only the laurel tree where they lived, dreamed, and died; Only poetry can tell his dreams, only beautiful words can save Imagination under black magic and dumbing sorcery. The living said: 'Never be a poet—maybe not be able to tell your dreams'? But everyone's soul is not a piece of dead wood, not only has eyes and mouth he should have love Should be nourished by his mother tongue. This dream is about to start now Is it the idea of ​​being a poet or a fanatic, We shall know when the warm strokes that touched my hand are buried in the grave." "I don't understand," I said, "what does this poem mean?" "Meaning," Johnny said, "I know what decisions I'm going to make and why I'm making them. I don't want to be a cyborg anymore, I want to be a human. I wanted to go to Hyperion before. I still want to .” "Someone killed you a week ago because of that decision," I said. "right." "And you still want to try?" "right." "Why not inject consciousness into your cyberbody here? Why not become human on the Web?" "That's never going to happen," Johnny said. "What you see as a complex interstellar society is just a drop in the bucket of the Inner Reality Matrix. I'm constantly confronted by artificial intelligences, and at their mercy. The Keats personality  … The real entity . . . never survives." "Okay," I said, "you have to leave the Web. But there are other colonies. Why Hyperion?" Johnny grabbed my hand.His fingers were long and warm and strong. "Don't you understand, Braun? There are a lot of connections here. There are good reasons to suggest that Keats' dream of Hyperion was some kind of cross-world communication between his personality then and his personality now. Communication between people. All that aside, Hyperion is also the key mystery we have right now—whether materially or poetically. It is likely that he... my birth, death, and resurrection, Just to explore Hyperion." "That sounds crazy," I said. "What a grand fantasy." "Almost certainly," laughed Johnny, "I've been enjoying it, too!" He grabbed my arm, put his arms around my legs, and put his arms around me, "Braun, you'll come with me Are you going to Hyperion with me?" I blinked in surprise, both at his question and at my answer, which sent warmth through my body. "I will," I told him, "I will." We walked into the sleeping area, and for the rest of the day, we vomited and fell asleep.Finally I woke up to the faint light of the third floor coming from the industrial trench outside.Johnny lay on his back, his hazel eyes open, staring at the ceiling, lost in thought.But not too selfless, he was still smiling and still had his arms around me.I nestled my face against his body, leaned on his arm, and continued to sleep.