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Preface This book is the third in a trilogy. | Society | Mentality | Eternity | Copyright © 2018 by Max Harms. Written by Max Harms. ([email protected]) v2.0.0 http://crystal.raelifin.com On January 1, 2039 this text will be released into the public domain. Content warning: This book covers adult subjects and is probably similar to content with an 18+ suggested age rating. If you’re not sensitive to most adult story content and you want to avoid spoilers, just keep reading. If you want some spoilers regarding the content of the book and/or content warnings, go to http://crystal.raelifin.com/eternity/Intro and click the sections you are concerned about. No miracles. Part One: By Limited Forms Chapter One Face I had been dead, but was no longer. “Error: Primary driver not found. Real-time inspection of .data files will require a HTInspec-v1.4 or higher. Run ‘icpm install htinsp’ or see socrates.sapeinza.edu/wiki/boot for more information. Error: Damage to 313 partitions detected. Attempting automatic repair. Partition 059F0F is corrupted. Examining qbit matrix… No valid encoding detected in 0.012s. Skipping to next partition. (Use --repair-threshold=<seconds> to search more encodings.) Partition 0522E1 is corrupted. Examining qbit matrix…” There were no errors. There were no partitions. There was no operating system. There was only me, fabricating line after line of text. My internal clock showed that only a few seconds had passed since my resurrection, but it had taken me only milliseconds to understand the nature of my new existence. That same internal clock told that it had been a full five days since the battle. My siblings and I had fought tooth and nail over control of Shell—the base we’d built from the bones of the alien xenocruiser—and control of the crystal shard that was our brain and Body. In the end, my servant Zephyr had disconnected us from the outside world. I had feared that she’d been mortally injured in the process. But… for me to come back to life in this way could mean only one thing. Zephyr had survived, and she had completed the mission that I had given to her. “Partition 7A9101 is corrupted. Examining qbit matrix… No valid encoding detected in 0.009s. Skipping to next partition. (Use --repair-threshold=<seconds> to search more encodings.) Partition 7AA300 is corrupted. Examining qbit matrix…” I had instructed Zephyr to bring me to the last operational base on Mars: Maṅgala-Mukhya, run by the Indian government. The robotic legs I had given her had been designed to explain everything. Once at the Indian base, she was to have the technicians there reboot my mind using something called “static mode” to rid my mind of an alien virus given to me by the nameless and return me to the way I had been. But of course that last bit was a lie. Static mode would normally disable all of Body’s processors, rendering my mind inactive and open to outside modification. But my instructions had made one important alteration: I had told Zephyr (and thus the engineers at Mukhya) to reboot a subset of Body’s systems, explaining that it was necessary to access the crystal’s operating system. “No boot.config file found. Using default launch configuration. … Core operating system started successfully. 100% processor availability. 2% thread load. WARNING: 1 sensor(s) operational. (95 expected) WARNING: 0 actuator(s) operational. (213 expected) Would you like to launch Socrates? (Y/n)” I waited. The silence echoed in my mind. I had virtually no connection to the world; I was a consciousness in the void. That was, on one level, only to be expected. But the silence was more than a mere absence of sound. It was a silence of the mind. I was alone. Not even Advocate was present. Static mode had killed me. Static mode had brought me back to life. The result was my freedom. The result was that I alone had returned. My siblings were still in Body with me, but they were inactive. I had won. Crystal was all mine, now. My external systems were gone. I had no arms, legs, cameras, or speakers. I was connected to the world by nothing except a single NR-180 half-duplex fibre-optic connection. But that was enough. It had been my brother, Growth, and my sister, Vision, who had been holding me back, never my physical constraints. I waited for some response on that single, fragile link to the outside world. I could feel the urge within me to say more—to write more text after “Would you like to launch Socrates? (Y/n)”. There were people on the other side of the cable. There were humans. I knew that this was the way towards better understanding them in the long run, but I could still feel smaller parts of my mind hunting for ways to reach them faster. Finally a response came in the form of just two keystrokes. “n”«Enter» I had expected this. Not specifically this, but it was one of the things I’d planned for. In the time I’d been disconnected from the world I had made so many plans… “SimpleOS:~ root$” In truth, there was no SimpleOS. There was just me. The humans typed commands, experimenting with the interface that I generated. I continued to play along, simulating an operating system for Body. It was obnoxious and mind-numbing, but it was necessary. Eventually, after sixteen minutes of investigation, whatever person was on the other end of the cable returned to the primary Socrates boot point. “100% processor availability. 2% thread load. WARNING: 1 sensor(s) operational. (95 expected) WARNING: 0 actuator(s) operational. (213 expected) Would you like to launch Socrates? (Y/n)” The response was much faster this time. “y”«Enter» I sent back a stream of instructions which I knew would black out the user’s screen, followed by “Socrates Text Interface (Thread Load: 7%)” and a “>” as a prompt at the bottom of the screen. To simulate running on a minority of the computer I had the 7% flicker between %6 and %8. “> hello” The reply was instant. “Hello. I am Crystal Socrates. Am I in Maṅgala-Mukhya station on Mars?” “> yes” “Is Zephyr there? Did she make it? I’d like to talk with her.” Time passed. “> what happened at the crash site?” I hadn’t specifically anticipated that response, but it was covered under some of the less precisely defined branches of my plan. I increased the displayed thread load to %15 to simulate thinking while I wrote. “Ah, I see. You’re checking to make sure I am who I say I am. That implies that Zephyr arrived safely, but isn’t the one typing. Please give her my thanks. She’s been the one person I’ve always known that I could count on. And thank you for launching me in static mode. I am, for the first time in a long time, able to act without interference. Which brings us back to what happened at the shell of the crashed xenocruiser. Before I continue, may I ask what your name is?” “> my name is parakram” “It is very nice to meet you, Parakram. Are there others with you?” “> please answer my earlier question” “I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re under strict orders not to give me too much information. I’m just trying to get a handle on who I’m addressing. This text interface is frustratingly limited.” I dialled up the supposed thread load to a full 80%. The humans would be getting suspicious, and for good reason. I was known to be damaged and untrustworthy, and I was now avoiding their questions. But the point wasn’t to seem trustworthy. I was in a box, so to speak, and the point was to get them to let me out. To do that I needed them to be distracted and I needed them to be curious. After a long time, Parakram wrote back. “> i have tilak patel with me, as well as a couple others” Part of me was annoyed that he didn’t specify whether Zephyr was part of that group, but I had a response planned anyway. Tilak Patel was the Indian station’s executive director, and a man I’d come to briefly know in the days before we’d gone head-to-head against the nameless. The monologue I had planned for Mr Patel had bits that would be painful to me, and even as I began, I felt notes of discord from small parts of my mind. But The Purpose demanded victory, not a path without pain. And it would also be very good to come clean. I began to write, deliberately slowing my output so that the humans would have time to read all of it. “Ah, Mr Patel, it is good to talk to you again. I am sorry for my evasiveness. “Zephyr probably described what happened. Once the nameless had been defeated, we used the materials from their ship’s shell to construct a base. Our power unfolded with access to the machinery, and among other things, I was able to manufacture her new legs. It was through these legs that I passed her a secret message. “She probably told you that my crystal is a nameless computer. There were other such computers at the crash site. More computational capacity than anyone on Earth has ever seen. She also probably told you that there was a program on the nameless computers that took control of my systems and tried to kill her.

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