The Wau opens the mental box and consults the list of themes with answers deemed too brief:
Caliban-1
Stellar Language
David Ilsner
Inverted Babel
S-422421
and other negligible entries. These entries were nonsensical expressions brute-forced by robots from the Dark Unit, to which the LEs had simply replied, "I did not understand your question."
Let's examine the list.
Caliban-1 is one of the core issues. A planet of mysteries. But also a planet on the frontline of the current war. What if the war was fought because of something on the planet? Government leaders would have erased this information, even if it meant aggressive intervention using top-tier scientists to manipulate the LE. A lead worth investigating.
Stellar Language. The lack of information might be explainable: the Wau was aware of a human-Xeno agreement protecting this language for religious reasons.
S-422421. "S" stands for "star cluster" or "galaxy." The S-422 class represents "absent galaxies." Approximately 800 have been identified to date. They are extremely distant galaxies, requiring one to three weeks of Drift at force 5 or 6 from the SH bubble to reach. These galaxies are inexplicably "invisible." Their mass has been detected but not their image, as if they were "painted black": black holes, intermediary debris, or the elusive dark matter—the mystery remains. The HS had conducted costly expeditions, finding nothing. However, once again, if the SH had discovered, say, dark matter and envisioned military use, perhaps it would keep it secret until peacetime.
The "Inverted Babels" represent a peculiar anomaly. Their mystical nature recalls the Transients, but this distinctly human designation overlooks the deeply Xeno aspect inherent to all Transients. Could it be yet another human project? The Wau had come across information—perhaps just a rumor—about a fractal-dimensional ship reportedly under construction somewhere lost in the universe.
Lastly, David Ilsner.
Who are you, David Ilsner, and what did you do to make the HS or Transients want your name erased from history? David appeared to be the most promising and easiest lead to solve in the short term.
No man is an island. It's always possible to trick the LEs using meta-queries such as, "Who was David Ilsner's father?" However, this approach carries the risk of stepping into the dangerous territory of forbidden questions.
The Wau closes the list in a mental box. Find a good spy. Condition him here. Perhaps investigate LE alterations. Ah, and refill antimatter—the reserves here are dwindling.
The Wau stands, alert to any noise his counterparts might transmit through the ship's structure, but everything is silent. The few times he'd participated in council meetings, he'd failed to comprehend the inner thoughts of his brothers in the Order. Did they ever feel lonely? Overwhelmed by their mission? Or did they do nothing at all? After all, there was neither obligation nor agenda within the Order...
The Wau crosses the Entangled Gate again, then discards the Armor. Cass's hair floats free once more.
She passes through the other Entangled Gate and arrives in her apartment in Lennox, through a sliding opening otherwise leading to a wardrobe. A bedroom, a living room—a discreet, minimalistic place in the most luxurious district of this distant world. Cass dons a subtle suit and moves toward the large bay window.
Lennox is a world overshadowed by the concept of freedom. Not that its citizens are particularly free—society, like a child, often waves around the word describing its immediate need rather than its true nature.
For Lennox is a distant world, one of those remote places like Fang, Ur, or everything beyond Ariel, reachable only by several Drifts from Earth or Prospero, and (officially...) lacking an Entangled Gate. Originally profoundly uninhabitable: violet lands saturated with potassium, an acidic atmosphere poisoned by a lethal mixture of sulfur and carbon. Xenobiologists claimed they hadn't found a single living cell (though the more Cass discovered about the HS, the more she felt xenobiologists were corrupt, foolish, or genocidal). Yet, Lennox had one vanity: its rocky surface consisted of large cubic crystals. Flying over it, a traveler would see a pixelated world: cubic mountains flanked by cubic hills or proudly standing cubic grains of sand between cubic rocks. "Potassium crystallization," said jaded chemists.
The world's remoteness from the HS bubble but proximity to its star made Lennox ideal for testing an outrageously expensive Transient technology called the terraforming bomb (or, in their words, the seed of life)—a bomb with simple components but whose precise functioning still eluded HS AIs.
The Council designated a temperate zone and released the bomb, the result of five years' work by a million scientists: a perfect hundred-kilometer disk of soil and atmosphere transformed to sustain human life instantly. Grass sprouted from rock that very evening. Like all Transient artifacts, the result was miraculous.
Yet Lennox's miracle soon turned scandalous, escalating into a human-Xeno controversy. A new, autonomous city arose, populated by intrusive scientists who began exploring deeper. It turned out the cubic crystals had a structure far more complex than ordinary minerals. They weren't sentient—no, it was worse: the crystalline structures were the Afterstate of sentient beings who had once inhabited the planet. They had extended and then preserved their consciousness within these structures, into which humanity carelessly stepped. The scandal widened: as humans happily desecrated the graveyard of an ancient mysterious race, other Xeno civilizations, some with atmosphere-adapted bombs, and others finding Lennox's original atmosphere appealing, settled with equal disregard.
Humanity made half-hearted attempts to dissuade them, but these efforts were deemed illogical, hypocritical, or incomprehensible.
Thus, Lennox became both a shameful chapter in humanity's colonial emancipation and a unique site for human-Xeno interactions. Apart from Earth, Xenos are numerous within human populations and number in the billions on Prospero.
But these recent cases involved Xenos whose physiology tolerated human living conditions, making them "foreign yet not entirely alien" to humans. Lennox, however, proposed coexistence with radically different beings, including certain advanced societies—an unprecedented opportunity to approach an often-rejected yet intriguing otherness.
Indeed, Lennox hosted a comprehensive university, UniNox, which uniquely within the Human Society (HS), included a psi department accepting Xenos. Here, ethically questionable comparative consciousness experiments were conducted. Freedom, yet again.
This coexistence, which mocked conventional ethics, the planet's remote location, and especially Lennox's original sin—blamed by its inhabitants on a government they deemed deaf and blind—had fostered a culture of defiance and liberty. Since Prospero, Lennoxians had gained a reputation as picturesque professionals of indignation.
A hundred kilometers radius was limited space for human enterprise; thus, Lennox expanded vertically, both upward and downward. Titanic Xeno arcologies of similar scale proliferated across the surface. At the top glittered the Prefect's Palace, an angular architecture striving to distance itself from its original cube-based design.
The deeper one descended, the less governmental authority held sway: security transitioned from police to militias, and eventually to private bodyguards. The underground zone, technically the After of Lennox's unknown civilization, was officially considered outside the HS by a government eager to disclaim responsibility—but existed nonetheless.
Lennoxian society had turned the Abyss—as it was named—into an experiment in liberty. Thus existed an area called the True Abyss, the lowest and broadest underground level, where freedom was absolute, and no actions could be reproached. Was it an interesting experiment? As Aloysius, a Lennox scholar dear to Cass, had remarked, "We grant absolute freedom to humans hoping they'll create an unhindered masterpiece that will revolutionize humanity, and instead, we end up with people who take pleasure in strangling puppies."
Lennox was strategically significant for Cass: it housed both allies and foes useful to her operations. Moreover, despite its distance from the HS, Wau could intervene via the Entangled Gate in case of crisis. Cass exhibited peculiar behavior, living on the margins of society—a suspicious trait on Earth, yet entirely commonplace here.
She grabbed a student backpack and rushed down her building's stairs, glimpsing the powerful aurora borealis marking the terraforming disk's edge.
Streets of molten stone and metal; passersby dressed uniquely yet comfortably. Dreamers lying down, watching giant movies projected onto what was the floor of the upper level, a hundred meters above. Thieves. Predators capable of the worst, thinking "what a lovely girl, she's mine"—before experiencing a psychic cold shower that would eliminate sexual excitement for a month. Xenos clinging to walls like moss, or tentacled walking cones mistakenly devouring someone's poor fox-terrier amid its owner's screams.
Elevators existed, but Cass's transhuman body delighted in exerting itself without mechanical assistance from her Armor: she ascended stairs at speeds unreachable even by augmented humans, under the bored, indifferent gaze of drugged Lennoxians who perceived only a shadow.
Two arcology levels higher, she reached the industrial district, patrolled by massive wheeled drones armed like tanks. This level, privatized by companies indistinguishable from organized cartels and exploiting Lennox's "freedom loophole" to produce otherwise forbidden goods, served as a security buffer between the Abyss and the administration. This large district was meticulously ordered, contrary to the chaotic construction below: perpendicular streets with checkpoints and factories laid out in vast squares six kilometers on each side.
Cass resumed a normal walking pace. She did not fear the armed drones of private militias but sought to avoid attracting attention. Passing two blocks, she arrived at the antimatter production facility—a polished metal factory gleaming under golden lights, enveloped in multiple spaced glass layers deterring theft through repeated checks. At the entrance, two armed drones, then a checkpoint with a soldier. They had been briefed: deliveries were sometimes conducted by disconcerting figures, such as this vague, older student. Her identity was verified multiple times.
One of the checkpoints was managed by a Xeno—an argent octopus with countless tentacles from a society known as the People of Light. Cass recognized a member from an amphibious community at Gobbo's southern pole, renowned for cities delicately carved from ice, illuminated to enhance their society's physical beauty. They occasionally exuded a highly energetic black fluid, thus becoming the subject of illegal trade in the HS.
"A Xeno handling checks?" Cass remarked aloud, more to herself than to him.
"Specist?" replied the being from the People of Light.
"I see human thinking has thoroughly penetrated you," joked Cass.
"Specist," concluded the Xeno, gesturing her through after validating her vocal signature.
A psi check followed. The psi was a UniNox intern amusing himself by creating an illusory insect for the accompanying soldier to chase fruitlessly. His psi abilities matched his ethics—weak, Cass mused silently, in a corner of her mind he'd never access. He'd end up in the Abyss.
Inside the factory, an android powered by AI approached her.
Since 2050, AI could convincingly simulate consciousness. With After and personality emulation, intact human psyches could be transferred to electronic brains. These personalities could theoretically inhabit human-like robots and continue their lives—a concept tested for decades.
Eventually, a clear division arose between After and reality—humans in After had no interest in returning, leaving only AIs behind. For religious and ethical reasons, distinguishing between humans and AI became essential. Thus, the ancient science-fiction term "Android" was resurrected, describing humanoid robots clearly identifiable as artificial through their movements, speech, and empty gaze. Politeness dictated that interlocutors be reminded they interacted with a non-human. Consequently, during important trials attended by Transients, they respectfully inhabited androids. Though "After Cyrano" (2710) had ignited public enthusiasm, the general tendency over centuries favored human-only interactions, disinterest toward AIs prevailing.
The AI judged Cass neither by age nor appearance. It didn't suspect when she unzipped the student backpack, extracting an antimatter container worth millions of thalers, nor when she provided three validation codes matching an anonymous, ultra-wealthy client's order. Indeed, transporting something costing ten million thalers per gram through a seemingly young, innocent woman struck the AI as a brilliantly subtle protective measure.
Cass exited through checks again. The psi intern intruded into her fabricated personal life. Annoyed by his insolence, she imagined a passionate relationship with two men whose profiles she pulled from his memories. Both mocked the intern mercilessly, calling him pathetic and undignified. Visibly shaken, he averted his eyes as she departed.
Leaving the factory, Cass noted another ascending staircase. She intended to visit UniNox. Positioned between the Prefect's Palace and industrial zone, the university floor, bolstered by security, housed luxurious hotels ostensibly for visiting lecturers but, in reality, accommodated extreme tourists with darker ambitions in the True Abyss.
UniNox was a prestigious establishment dating from an era before Lennox became scandalous. White stone, wood, extensive gardens, terrestrial animals, parks, amphitheaters—and the controversial, modern psi department nearby in metal and glass.
Sadly, UniNox was silent. With AIs excelling as researchers and communicators, and Transients effortlessly resolving their challenges, research had become a bureaucratic haven for intellectually mediocre individuals chasing easy thalers and unambitious dreams.
However, there were courses in a generalist science known as Post-Transient Philosophy. Literally, it was wisdom, customs, common sense—the observation of humanity by humanity—the sole intellectual counterweight to a science increasingly beyond human control. The ultimate aim of these PTP courses was to create well-rounded individuals, non-specialized, independent of the LEs, heralding a new Renaissance. They would be capable, among other things, of repairing a spaceship, fumbling through Xeno-speak, and distinguishing right from wrong.
Cass, in her difficult moments, wandered through the UniNox. With its polished woodwork, ancient paintings, and silence, the building was like a museum celebrating the intellectual progress of bygone eras. A few years earlier, her attention had been drawn to a lecture in a small amphitheater given by a certain Aloysius, a man whose hair was white with wisdom and whose black eyes hinted at a slightly mischievous intelligence. He was discussing the nature of freedom, had launched into his famous tirade about puppy stranglers, and inevitably brought up the question of humanity's relationship with the Transients. Five people were in the lecture hall, one of them a bureaucrat who'd wandered in during his coffee break, unable to find anywhere else to sit.
Cass had continued that conversation about Transients privately with Aloysius, enriching both their perspectives. Ever since, Cass would occasionally drop by to visit Aloysius, just in case he'd stumbled upon a new idea.
After wandering a bit and questioning two rather indifferent officials, she found him in a room with varnished wooden paneling and stained-glass windows, oddly contrasting with some high-tech equipment scattered about a table. Aloysius stood on the left in a white lab coat. To the right, there was a primitive Android: barely humanoid, with a torso of dark-grey metal dotted with indicator lights, topped with a camera, and equipped with articulated arms and legs. If not for its size, one might've mistaken it for a toy.
They were both hunched over a purple cube. Aloysius had a pair of sensors hanging from a strap around his neck, peering into the interior of the object.
"You're meddling with a stored Lennoxian consciousness?" Cass asked. "I've seen you display greater ethical restraint."
Aloysius removed the sensor and squinted, recognizing Cass. Strange how ageless he appeared. And in Aloysius's psyche, Cass heard echoed thoughts: Strange how young she appears.
"I'm working for a worthy cause," he responded. "We've abandoned any hope of decoding consciousness-storage on Lennox itself, but this little cube—I found it in a souvenir shop in the Abyss. Earth's elites are snatching them up. Imagine, having a Xeno consciousness in your living room! If I figure out how it's encoded…"
"And if the Lennoxians wake up and see how we're treating them?"
"Perhaps they'll be grateful," ventured the Android. "Who are you?"
Cass looked pointedly at Aloysius, expecting him to make the introductions.
"My friend Proteus, this is Cassandre. I don't actually know anything about her. As far as I'm aware, she could be an Empty Eyes, a spy, or even a Transient who enjoys paying me visits. What?" he asked, noticing Cass's closed-off expression. "It's true. I know nothing about you."
"You can always ask me questions."
"And you can always lie to me… I know you're a Psi, and no minor one at that."
Cass knew he knew, though she'd never figured out how. She'd never felt particularly mysterious, perhaps because she didn't notice that more often than not, she asked questions and left without receiving any in return. Nevertheless, she had no intention of elaborating further and pressed on:
"And what about him—what exactly is he? An AI? Proteus…"
"Now there's an intriguing experiment," said Aloysius. "Behind the mysterious mask of this robot, Proteus, could lie an AI, a Xeno consciousness, a Transient, or perhaps a human consciousness returned from the After. Let's try a modern Turing test. Ask him a few questions."
"One question will suffice," Cass said enigmatically.
She sat down comfortably, clasping her hands behind her head and stretching out her legs.
"Proteus, what do you think of the HS government?"
"It's an excellent government dedicated to meeting everyone's needs. I am proud—"
Cass and Aloysius simultaneously burst into laughter. How good it feels, Cass thought, to experience joy.
"I don't understand," said Proteus. "Don't you approve of your government?"
"It's profoundly Xeno to express trust in one's rulers," Aloysius replied. "Humans elect governments, then proceed to grumble about them. It's a societal balancing act, the absence of which would indicate severe problems. Cass, how long has it been—one year, two? Since we last saw each other, a probe discovered a large, perfectly round, stone Xeno spacecraft in space near Booz. Booz truly is the Babylon of Xenos."
"A stone spacecraft? Xenos that don't require atmosphere or temperature control?"
"It wasn't exactly a crewed flight," Proteus explained.
"It was the After of a civilization whose planet was consumed by a sun that turned into a red giant," Aloysius continued.
"Proteus's civilization?"
"A more accurate name would be 'The Beings Who Continuously Change for the Better.' Sam here proposed calling them Proteans. Clever, isn't it?"
"Sam?"
"It's my first name," said Aloysius. "Inside this stone sphere, my colleagues discovered tablets inscribed with mathematical formulas, each generating an enormous number—far too large to record directly. We're talking about numbers around 10^82. We wondered about their purpose. I hypothesized it might be encoding information. It turns out these were coordinates, not in physical space, but in a virtual mathematical space, the standard vector space used by neural networks. They defined personalities and thoughts."
"A scientific breakthrough?"
"Oh no, the principle itself is basic. Humans have mastered this since the early twenty-first century. It's fundamental to our AIs. Imagine planets floating in space, each with a distinct ice cream flavor: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry—the larger the planet, the stronger your preference for its flavor. It's similar to how we encode our personalities in our After. Except our Xeno here doesn't have vanilla or strawberry, he has something else entirely. Defining these new things is a massive data-matching effort. Proteus, who thankfully doesn't hold it against me, is a prototype: we did our best but had to fill in the blanks with human and known Xeno data. Apart from some eccentricities about our government, he acts remarkably human."
"I don't resent you, Sam. I'm happy to be alive."
"Do you remember your previous life, Proteus?" Cass asked.
"Very clearly. I write precise accounts in the LE every night."
"What he writes feels very 'human.' Reading it, there are houses, vehicles, familiar things. But I fear he's applying human interpretations to concepts originally encoded differently. A large team on Earth is working from my prototype to create something more coherent."
"What's your most beautiful memory, Proteus?" Cass asked.
"I'm watching the drifting rocks of our planet's great ring during a special night we call the Third Passage. It feels like a message. The stars speak to me, telling me that I must live. I cherish that memory. Look at me today—I am alive."
"Thank you, Proteus." Cass turned back to Aloysius. "Sam—or rather Aloysius—why bring Proteus back to life at all? For a Lennoxian, preserving their consciousness makes sense, but Proteus? Aren't we supposed to eventually transition into the After and magically transcend? You've reversed the process."
"Transients and sentients—we are shepherds to those who wander, my dear Cass. Pouring ourselves into a server, we remain material, but we're not far from becoming pure energy. The Proteans preserved themselves as best they could. We'll build an After for them."
"We're going to become energy, is that it?"
"Electromagnetic fields, Cass. Exchange particles. Perhaps even probability pulses. It's either that or vanish. I suggest you hurry and find a boy or a girl to kiss because afterward, it'll be significantly less enjoyable."
Aloysius occasionally slipped in small remarks to probe Cass. He punctuated these remarks with subtle psychic nudges, but at his skill level, it would be impossible for him to distinguish between an empty room (the mind of a non-Psi) and a room containing a ten-kilometer mountain whose face formed one wall (roughly the scale of Cass's Psi strength). Cass remained impassive and continued:
"I have a question."
"I love questions," said Proteus.
"That's precisely what the world lacks, my old Xeno friend," Sam said, raising a finger. "A good question."
"I suspect an unknown hand is selectively altering certain LE entries. Is this possible?"
"And by 'unknown hand,'" Aloysius whispered to Proteus, "she means a Transient. It's her obsession. Well, let's see... Every serious scientist would say it's impossible, given the multidimensional redundancy of AI systems. One could argue that even if an entry were erased, it would be recreated—possibly even improved—through natural generative processes. If your suspicion proves true, here's my answer: it's the work of a Transient."
"Not a human? Or a Xeno force?"
"People often say there are nearly six trillion humans. But that number is trivial compared to the autonomous AIs roaming our networks—AIs smarter than the best of us."
"Even someone exceptionally gifted? Like, say, a Wau?"
"Perhaps an Euler or a da Vinci, working directly with fundamental tools—lines of assembler code, you know. And even then... Humans have created few things beyond their control, but the AI network certainly qualifies."
Aloysius turned his head briefly to check Proteus, and when he looked back, Cass had disappeared. Curious girl, he thought.
QUESTION OF THE DAY BY INGO IZAN
"It's time for our Question of the Day... Today we welcome Petra, a military communications officer aboard the Alkè, flagship of our stellar fleet, one of those Endymions we see from Prospero's surface. Petra, among the Big Five—our five major worlds—there's a large Entangled Gate allowing travel between worlds. Why isn't there such a gate on every planet?"
"Simply because it would be prohibitively expensive. Entangled Gates originated as Transient artifacts that we've managed to replicate with great difficulty. Imagine that to send an electron through a gate perfectly sized for it, we must engrave a special circuit and power it—a setup costing around 15,000 thalers. It's extremely useful because an electron is exactly what we need for communication between distant ships or planets. For the past 150 years, communication Entangled Gates have been incorporated into the Drift drives of every ship. That's why, as a communications officer, I know this technology well."
"But moving something larger, like a human being, multiplies the cost proportionally, despite economies of scale. For a human, it would cost about two billion thalers. For the gates we have on the Big Five, the cost is incalculable. The last one consumed two years' worth of Titus's entire industrial capacity—a planet theoretically capable of producing a starship every two days."
"Excuse me, but why do we have an Entangled Gate on every ship? What are they connected to?"
"They connect directly to the LE central hub. Currently, humanity is colonizing many worlds beyond Ariel's Gate. Some are economically thriving, but many are tiny hamlets populated by only a handful of people, unable to afford even a basic communication gate. When a ship passes over these worlds, it pairs with their simple wave-based communication terminals, which cost almost nothing, synchronizing their local LEs with the HS's global LE. The free circulation of our ships keeps us informed and allows us to respond to distant worlds in times of crisis—when intervention is still possible."