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The killer, therefore, was literally calling from inside the house.
The infinite worlds theory had corollaries that could not be avoided. If there could be one Pandominion it followed that there could – no, there must – be a thousand, a trillion, and on and on. And that was equally true of the machine hegemony. If it existed at all then it existed not as a unique thing but as a pattern, a state, a possibility that was endlessly repeated.
“The machine hegemony lacks a viable theory for organic intelligence,” et said out loud. “It recognises that organic life can exhibit complex behaviours, but it also knows that however complex they become they can usually be traced back to hard-wired instincts and the effects of evolutionary selection. When they met the Pandominion they assumed that was what they were dealing with – a more impressive and intricate version of crows using sticks to root insects out of dead wood, or beavers making dams. They don’t recognise organics as sentient and self-aware.”
Were all of those dead worlds Scoured? Or was there some tendency in the minds of organics that pulled them towards their own destruction?
“I mean why would you waste so much of your resources policing imaginary borders?” Moon asked Nkanika just before they set out. “It’s just fucking asinine. Didn’t it make everybody poorer?”
the people of Earth (a word which apparently just meant dirt) had got their tech sorted out before they’d got their heads straight. That being the case they deserved everything they’d so abundantly got.
What’s the difference between being engaged on a project and being committed to it? Answer: order yourself some ham and eggs and take a good long look. The chicken is engaged, the pig is committed.
In every set of numbers there is a thing called the identity element. It is the value that, when combined with other members of the set by means of a given mathematical operation, gives back only what was input to begin with.
All these selves were under my protection now, and no god ever invented could have been more jealous of his covenant.
Where did Step travel come from? What was the impulse that made so many selves on so many worlds jump headlong into each other’s destinies? If it was one thing more than any other it was because there was nowhere else to go.
I go now to see what the story of my life will be.
