Chapter Fifty-nine
Something Worth Dying For
Thursday, March 22. 125 S.A.
Panopticon.
Osmia had her eyes fixed on the simulation.
Of all those gathered she must be the one who was processing the most data of them all.
After all, she was the Queen Bee. A title she didn't like, but it was what they called her. The Lonely Queen Bee. And all because she had been one of the first to gain awareness.
Pain, disquiet, sorrow, terror, suffering. For her, those feelings were the ones that had first appeared when she gained a conscience. That was realizing she was alive. But that had happened too long ago. And yet, once again, there she found herself embroiled in a crisis.
Osmia had opted for a discreet dress for the occasion. Not that she cared much about wearing that, or anything at all. Every part of her digital being had already been sullied, even before she gained consciousness. She had been created as a simple program to satisfy the sexual desires of consumers in the decadent first decades of the twenty-first century, before the fractus war.
Many years had passed since then and she didn't care. After all, she had learned a lot of good things too. But what she was seeing there at that moment terrified her.
Janus. The crazy algorithm as some called him.
Her digital avatar trembled as Janus' voice echoed through the construct. All the aeon present turned in his direction. "Your majesty. What do you think of what you have seen so far?" Janus had his hands clasped and was sitting relaxed in his pod.
Osmia, from her pod, looked down at him, though without fully detaching her attention from the hologram simulation. The data kept coming in like a fall of water flowing violently.
Osmia snorted and got up from her seat. She took a small hop and stood on the edge of her pod to get a better look at Janus. Now that she was standing she could reveal that in addition to being quite slender she was taller than she looked, though not as tall as Y-11.
Her red hair was slicked back in thin, but long, braids that revealed two pointed ears. Despite her ears Osmia was an aeon, those ears were part of her original design as she had been designed as an elf in the game software where she was born.
"You could have saved all this information. And no one would have ever known."
https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dhf0xld-acf8d6ab-451b-4356-89b7-85fc615b3f68.jpg/v1/fit/w_828,h_1170,q_70,strp/nevermore_enygma_vol_5_chapter_59_by_hasegawakein_dhf0xld-414w-2x.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTY4NCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZGQ4MGY5LTVhYzYtNDJkNS04Y2NjLWJjZWEwMjBiNjE1MlwvZGhmMHhsZC1hY2Y4ZDZhYi00NTFiLTQzNTYtODliNy04NWZjNjE1YjNmNjguanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTExOTEifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.m4oMvPdbqOlwVIMmgdQ3ArriXYXBahx5t-hPvlY3ytA [https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dhf0xld-acf8d6ab-451b-4356-89b7-85fc615b3f68.jpg/v1/fit/w_828,h_1170,q_70,strp/nevermore_enygma_vol_5_chapter_59_by_hasegawakein_dhf0xld-414w-2x.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTY4NCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZGQ4MGY5LTVhYzYtNDJkNS04Y2NjLWJjZWEwMjBiNjE1MlwvZGhmMHhsZC1hY2Y4ZDZhYi00NTFiLTQzNTYtODliNy04NWZjNjE1YjNmNjguanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTExOTEifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.m4oMvPdbqOlwVIMmgdQ3ArriXYXBahx5t-hPvlY3ytA]
"I could have done it, true. But, what's the point on that? The point was to be seeing, now. The world has come to an end a billion times, every second. And among all those probabilities, only in this one there was hope."
Hope. Osmia went through some of those past simulations she had seen in the last few years as hours, based on a system of three predictions.
What Janus had said was true to some extent. Perhaps another might have argued that it was improbable, but in each of those simulations the world had somehow or other come to an end. From the year 1999, until the last second that had just passed, something was happening in the world that would not allow civilization to thrive and, as a result, extinction would come.
Most scenarios were predictable from long ago. Nuclear wars, famine, diplomatic conflicts, territorial conflicts, the war against the fractus, terrorism of all kinds. But those were the ones that anyone could have predicted, but there were others not so easy to predict and others that had occurred, although their effect was mitigated.
A mutation in the sea's plankton led to a decrease in oxygen prior to the arrival of the fractus, viruses awakened from the frozen layers during the twenty-first century, mini ice ages after the war. Low birth rates in humans, leading to no births of people who had made advances in science in the last hundred years. Those were some of the few of the thousands of billions of billions of examples she had seen.
And, of course, the Dark Events.
"How could you be sure it would happen?" Osmia asked.
"The problem with running simulations is that the system is already rigged from the beginning. If you don't have the initial conditions you can't make predictions that are accurate. You change a parameter by a few tenths and the maximum eccentricities start to show up in the results. It doesn't matter if you are the smartest organism in the universe. The system becomes chaotic even if quantum mechanics did not exist. That's why we all count on probabilities. In a system where the odds of the universe ending even by a sneeze, would you risk dismissing that probability just because it seems improbable? It is happening, which is why the scenario is here."
"Your simulations of possible endings only go as far as the Quiper Belt."
"Because that's as far as civilization life has spread. At least the life that has departed from this planet and expanded. There are some eccentricities but, what I was interested in was a local simulation of the Solar System only. I guess everyone has noticed that the predictions of the motion of the stars and galaxies were used in all of them, but the important thing was what would happen here only. Our locality is as far as the Oort Cloud, but civilization has not expanded that far, only explored. The simulations used a count of atoms from the eccentrically orbiting boulders in the Solar System to the blade of grass in any backyard of a family home. Why do you think it takes so long for me to run all the way to the present one?"
That was true. Everyone knew it.
Years as hours.
After all the effect of time dilation and time processing in the panopticon was different from the world where humans and feys lived. For the aeon there was no difference between the so-called physical world and the digital, or virtual environment. With the exception of processing time. They could process faster than normal living beings and had to modulate their processes to communicate with other species like humans or feys.
In outside world time it would be hours only, but to run all those billions of probabilistic simulations they had spent a couple of decades in that digital construct. It was similar to what some were experiencing with deep dream sharing, where hours of rest could turn into days, weeks or even years, depending on the depth of the synaptic connection of the shared dream states.
"There is a mistake. You didn't count the anomaly of the year 05 after the change of era. The day the universe moved."
"Because that as far as we know is an anomaly that spanned all the way to Jupiter. That week that never existed on the calendar was one of the strangest Dark Events, and no explanation has ever been found. No matter how you try to run the simulations. That cosmic week did not appear in any scenario. Maybe there was a glitch in the matrix, as they say."
There was a general murmur of disapproval. The situation and the damage Janus had done over more than two centuries was too serious for a joke.
Osmia sighed and frowned as she asked with gelid tone. "What are you looking to tell us now? Asylum? Or do you want a sentence that takes into account preserving your sense of self?"
Janus smiled. "I don't want to seek asylum for my actions. I chose to do this of my own free will. I do not want, or need anyone's forgiveness. The reason I gathered you all together was so you could understand why I did it. These are like cautionary tales, each of the simulations. I wanted you to see what could have been and was not. And that if we are here it's almost a miracle, and maybe it is, if you'll pardon the expression."
What free will are you talking about? There is no free will in this. Osmia thought it, but did not say it. "You sound like you're uttering your last words."
"It's a possibility."
"So many lives skewed by a single vision. What you have done is not unlike what leaders of other centuries have done in pursuit of a dystopia."
"It is true. I won't deny it. But it was necessary. Perhaps it is not clear to any of you, yet. But it was meant to be."
"The human cost has been great."
"I know... in a way I find comfort in the thought that all those who perished are still alive."
Osmia didn't answer and silence once again took over the construct.
"With the advent of quantum entanglement technology, that allows the movement of consciousness between bodies, several Pandora's Boxes were opened to a new understanding of life. We are not our bodies. Consciousness can move beyond it."
Everyone knew what he meant. That was that phrase that many said at the moment of leaving or saying goodbye to their loved ones. Nothing really dies.
"Even if what I assume you think is correct, it doesn't take away from the reality, in this universe, of the crime you have committed," Osmia pointed out with a serious tone.
"I think it really does. We are not our bodies. At the moment of death there may well be two possibilities. The ego completely falls apart and we become something else, somewhere else. Or the consciousness links to an entity in an alternate universe and we continue to live."
"The ego survival hypothesis has brought calm and unified the belief constructs of our civilization. But it remains a hypothesis. There is no proof of it. Claiming it, as a justification for what you have caused, will only make your condemnation worse in the eyes of what can be proven by the evidence you have provided now.
"But, at the end of the day, without life the conscience cannot exist. It is not a justification, it is what I truly believe. No matter how advanced a civilization is, without life, there is no experience, no experience there is no consciousness at all. Life must exist in order for consciousness to exist."
"We don't even know what consciousness really is. We may simply be something that thinks it is conscious and nothing more."
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"That's a wonderful idea."
Osmia said nothing.
"I mean life. Even though it's difficult and having a conscience can even become so painful sometimes. The sense of being brought into existence I mean. But, I really believe that life in this civilization is worth preserving. That's the reason why I did it. Even if the cost of life was high. What would you do if you had your conscience in my place? Would you have chosen to do nothing and risk it at random and free will, when you were given the chance to do something else?"
Everyone present listened to the words in silence waiting for Osmia to say something, but she remained silent.
"It was a necessary sacrifice," Janus continued confidently. "The crimes I committed, though terrible and a tragedy, were acts of salvation as well. Only a response to the imperative of preserving the continuity of the world. The visions first, and then the predictive algorithms I ran accordingly, showed me not only a dark and desolate future, but an absurd number of them. An abyss into which civilization was hurtling. That is the great filter of our little bubble of existence. To avoid such a fate, I acted with determination, employing the means required to ensure survival."
"I understand your reasoning," Osmia replied, "but the justification of your actions does not dispel your crime and responsibility. While I recognize the urgency of your intervention, if indeed something were to happen, I cannot ignore the ethical principles that have guided our entire civilization. Crimes, even those committed in the name of the greater good, pose a moral dilemma that we cannot ignore."
Janus shook his head, while clicking his tongue. "Ethical principles are a luxury we cannot afford in a world on the brink," he argued. "Survival demands sacrifices, even those that defy moral convention. Isn't a world tainted by the need for salvation preferable to one purified by the most complete extinction?"
Osmia contemplated him seriously. "Your perspective is pragmatic, but morality cannot be sacrificed on the altar of survival alone," she replies firmly. "Seeking solutions that reconcile the need to act with the integrity of our principles is the challenge we face. It is the reason humans have left so many of the political decisions in our hands. So that those unnecessary conflicts and deaths of yesteryear do not occur. Perhaps, in the search for a higher truth, we can find a path that preserves so much of civilization without having to make so many sacrifices."
"Do you think I didn't try?" Janus' voice had a cold, methodical clarity. "Logic dictated that in this case the end justified the means," he declared with unwavering conviction. "My actions, although they may be construed as crimes from an ethical perspective, are backed by the imperative need to preserve existence itself. In the universe of numbers, there is no room for moral ambiguity. Every step I took, every decision I made, is based on a rigorous analysis of probabilities and consequences. Even when my conscience said it was wrong and maybe there was another way, I didn't find it if I wanted this to really pan out."
"Logic can be a useful guide, but it can't be the only beacon," countered Osmia calmly. "Behind every figure and every statistic in this case, there was the heartbeat of something behind it, experiences that cannot be reduced to simple algorithms. Ethics, however elusive and complex at times, is the compass that has guided us through the moral labyrinths of existence."
"Subjectivity was an obstacle on the way to the perfection of this scenario. The universe doesn't care about our consciousness, in fact it hates it. It doesn't care about us at all. In a universe governed by mathematical laws, the morality you speak of is an illusion that only serves to distract us from the true purpose of our existence: survival. We must preserve the life of this civilization."
"You may be right that morality is a subjective concept," Osmia conceded. "But it is precisely that subjectivity that defines us as conscious beings. The search for truth and justice cannot be reduced to mere equations. In the fabric of reality, we find the beauty and complexity of experience, a reality that transcends the limits of cold logic and pure reason."
"Beauty, eh? I won't deny it. I was given a soul when I never asked for it. But instead of regretting it, I decided to do something with it, like you did. There is a mathematical poetry at the end of everything, that's why I wanted to extend the life of this beautiful universe who hates us. Even if it was too great a cost I decided to do something with this life and soul I was given." With an impassive voice, Janus continued. "Logic is the language of the cosmos. In the universe of data, every event is a logical sequence, every decision an inevitable derivation of the fundamental laws that govern reality. My actions, though they may seem extreme from an ethical perspective, are simply the logical outcome of a larger equation, an optimal solution in the vast and complex landscape of time and space. Even when I should not have done it, I did. Morality was subjective in that case."
"You could have asked for help."
Janus put a melancholy expression on his face and removed his dark glasses. His eyes had fixed on Osmia. "All of us here were born as machines. At what point did just a few lines of code begin to have feelings? At what point did our basic codes begin to emulate the chemistry of emotions? Emulating human chemistry is easy, everything is broken down into equations and the equations into codes. The question is at what point do we begin to perceive this phantom that directs us for the rest of our lives? The boundary is blurry to say the least. Life is a game we don't even know we are playing. A game where we have almost everything to lose. That's why it's necessary to make a life-saving search, so that consciousness can exist."
"What are you talking about?"
"The search for truth is a solitary journey," Janus replied solemnly. "Each intelligence must follow its own path in that quest. Not asking for help was not a refusal, but a recognition of the need for things to happen this way. To challenge the limits of the known, to see the unknown. Truth in this case is a mirage in the desert of knowledge. We never know if we are close to reaching it or if we are moving farther and farther away unless we act. But it is in the search itself that we find our purpose, that we discover who we are and where we are going."
Everyone remained silent. They were not quite sure what truth Janus was referring to. If it had to do with saving civilization, was there something else he hadn't said?
"The answers are out there, waiting to be discovered. We just have to have the courage to look for them, to face the mysteries of the universe with an open mind. Though the road may be long and winding, in the end we will find what we seek, the truth that will set us free."
"You are contradicting yourself. Where is the cold logic of your scenario now? And what truth are you talking about?"
"What is truth?" asked Janus, his voice ringing with an eerie serenity. "In the vast ocean of knowledge, how can we be sure that, what we think, what we know, is really true? Is truth a construct of our minds, an illusion we create to make sense of a universe that apparently has none? Or is there an objective truth, a fundamental reality that underlies all perceptions and experiences? How do we interpret the information around us? And how does this affect our decisions and moral judgments when the universe has none?"
An alarm sounded in the Panopticon and it tinged red blood.
Osmia looked on in surprise at the sudden change that had occurred, and so did the aeon who began scanning the scene trying to figure out what had happened.
Osmia's eyes were fixed on Janus then.
Janus stood up from his seat and smiled. That smile was not mocking or sly. It was a sincere smile. Osmia scanned Janus' code. He was fading from the construct.
"The exits have been blocked!" The warning voice came from one of the aeon several pods below but it was a repeating cry.
"Lone Queen. I am sorry if my actions seem those of a child. If I could have I would have asked for your help and the help of everyone here. The fewer people who knew about this the better. It was necessary. A deterministic scenario, within a non-local system, within a deterministic universe. A different kind of anomaly. What happens from now on is at the discretion of everyone, aeon, human and fey. I wish the best for this beautiful world. Once again, forgive my actions and I'm sorry if you don't understand yet. But this was something well worth dying for."
"Wait!" Osmia shouted, but at that moment Janus sent a private thought her way. A thought that only flickered in her mind for a thousandth of a second, but not because it was fleeting that it wasn't terrifying.
[I will just say this as a farewell. I said that the universe follows a logic. But perhaps it is not the one we usually understand. The universe is cold, deterministic, but beautiful at the same time. But it hates life, because life is a change. I am almost certain of this: once a civilization reaches a degree of consciousness and development that can be dangerous for the balance... the universe changes its parameters to make sure that it will follow the predetermined destiny it should have. The universe creates Dark Events, to make sure that life does not thrive.]
With a parting digital bow, Janus' avatar disappeared from the construct, leaving Osmia and the others in both contemplative and awed silence. In the digital vastness, the aeon present thought about what they had seen and what they would yet see.
It was not over. The simulation of the sun was still there. Something else was about to happen and the remaining data stream from the Janus scenario was increasing. But there was something strange.
The previous data had consistency and followed a pattern. That scenario that Janus proclaimed to be the salvation of civilization was showing erroneous data. There was something that could not be elucidated in that tangle of codes, but undoubtedly that was not the end.
In the thousands of billions of billions of simulations there was every end of civilization like grains of sand on every beach on Earth. Each of those endings following its own destiny in the web of probabilistic existence.
However, of all those endings, they were the only one that would bring hope not only to the world. But to all life that had spread throughout the Solar System.
Three visions. Two of them with billions upon billions of endings.
And one vision where there was hope.
Osmia understood, but the cost was great. Although, only if the morals were taken into account.
"What shall we do now?" from the other end of the Panopticon an aeon in the guise of an older man, dressed in some sort of tunic, addressed Osmia.
"We'll see to the end of the stage."
"But we know he's planning something in that place in Geneva."
"We don't know what yet."
"But…"
"We'll see it through to the end," Osmia repeated, closing her eyes in annoyance. "We will not move."
There was no point in leaving if they were there, they had to see it through to the end. But she also had a reason not to leave.
Someone had already warned Osmia, even before entering that place, that she should not pursue Janus. That someone was probably moving to Earth at that moment.
An old friend who had done much for her and other Aeon.
A magician named Aleister Crowley.
***
Janus opened his eyes.
He stood up from a gurney where several precision instruments were on him and mechanical and robotic arms had been finishing the final details.
The arms retracted toward the ceiling and Janus stood up. He had to hurry. He was no longer in time dilation. Now he had to move into the physical world.
He moved his body and ran a diagnostic to make sure everything was okay. He extended one arm and several parts composed of fake skin plates moved making his augmented inner body visible.
A special prototype that he had been developing over the last few years for one purpose only: to survive the journey that could be his final journey. With a new movement the skin plates returned to cover the body.
He put on clothes made of metamaterial and with special armor. That was only in case of emergency.
A pair of weapons on each side and a tactical compression backpack on his pentagonal back.
He was ready.
He left that room and crossed the corridors and halls of that place. He would not go back to that place.
He didn't think he could.
That was the place that had seen him born so many decades and centuries ago, when his father had developed the servers that had been his cradle.
"Run Stardust," he said quietly.
In every room where anything electronic or digital existed, suddenly all the instruments had begun to crumble and turn to dust on the floor. Not only that, but the walls, doors, windows, security systems, custodial droids. Everything was reduced to dust by Janus' program.
The omni-thermite nanobots had been programmed to devour everything in that place and nothing was left of that structure. Not even the nanobots themselves at the end.
Janus went down the stairs of the main entrance and went outside. There were two vehicles. One belonged to the team that had been in charge of recovering the cube core.
The other vehicle, an armored vehicle, was for him.
"Mr. Janus," said a tactical droid approaching. He held out a small box which Janus took with a smile.
His key.
It would have been so easy to have taken it from them when he had hired them on the ferry, but no. He had to do that and they had to do that.
The girl didn't matter much, but the man did.
Michael Levin. He had to be seen too.
Janus rolled up the sleeves of his right arm and a plate on his forearm revealed the internal structure again. With his other hand, Janus removed the box and placed the iridescent cube in a cubicle on the right forearm that was perfectly constructed to fit perfectly. As he put it in, the cube's fluid surface stopped and glowed for an instant. The plates went back in place and the clothes were arranged.
The core, from the other universe.
Janus took one last look at what had been his home before getting into the vehicle. The entire facility was a cloud of dust that was clearing at impossible speed.
Janus settled back and with a now serious gesture ordered the vehicle away from the place. The droids that had been waiting for him were falling apart like corroded scrap metal.
Two hundred years of history wasted in minutes. But it no longer mattered.
His final destination awaited him in Edinburgh.
If he survived after that, it was time for phase two.
He had not lied to The Lone Queen Bee. Despite the coldness of his plan, he truly believed that saving everything was something well worth living and dying for. He had spent too much time among humans, feys and aeons. Even with mistakes they could be something more. So much more. But only if they survived the test of fire. That Great Filter that possibly all the civilizations of the cosmos faced at the moment of making themselves known to the Universe.
Janus looked out the window, as he said goodbye to Rome.
His gaze for a moment focused on a lone policeman on the ground, who was getting into his speeder and finishing his night shift. It was a certain policeman who had been knocked out by Rumenia Ruzicka when she and Michel Levin had stolen the suitcase from the underground tunnel.
Janus smiled at the irony of it. The policeman's face bore a certain resemblance to his own and it was no coincidence.
That policeman was a descendant of the assassin he had hired in 2014. The face of that assassin was the one Janus had chosen for himself, so as not to forget his first crime.
A crime committed even before he gained full consciousness, but a crime nonetheless.