Chapter 13 - Learning

Red flopped onto the couch in front of my Screen Wall. "Still never get used to this thing,"
she elbow-checked me as I navigated a sea of data projected on the screen. A pristine expanse of void extended out from the pixel-perfect portrayal of the planet I was designing.

"Uhh," I walked up and tapped on the screen, "It's just a shitty render," I scoffed. "I'm surprised you still can't tell the difference." I continued to subtly tweak the slider on the field. When it ticked, I very carefully inched it closer to a number I felt a bit more comfortable with, until the ring was just about perfect, roughly 3 kilohertz, and very faint, just below seven or so dB. "It's so obviously a hologram. Can't you see the light?" I waved my hand through the god-rays bouncing around the volume of space in front of me, easily visible. At least two db. "I can clearly tell that I am using my eyes to see, the fidelity is too sharp."
"We've gone over this," she stared gawk-eyed at the globe as I zoomed into and out of regions on the planet and backward and forward in time to investigate for signs of Hominid life. "That's why your scores are so shitty," she smirked at me. "You were born in the Wilderness with me, shielded by the trees. We were never exposed to the Pure Light of Entropy burning through the habitat," she scratched at her neck. "Even now it bothers me with its shadowless penetration. I hide in the filtering shadows of the Cosmic Fog as best I can," She made a dramatic dying noise and flopped back over the couch, meandering her way over to the kitchen. "Need anything?"

"It's because you look down too much," I smiled, "and no, I'm good, thanks. Your eyes have not yet adjusted to the Luminary Medium. Once it has etched it Light Signature onto your retinas, you will be able to see at the Stellar Constant of Luminosity. All humans have retinas thick enough to look up, and your eyes will be calibrated to have perfect light and dark sensitivity and focus. The Sail tunes light such that it focuses on every human retina that looks up, and will be left with absolute vision, each with a unique signature based on genetic variation. It's pretty much the only thing Mind screens for in Human Genetics, save any disease that could potentially collapse Humanity if it spread at a rate faster than it could be contained and eradicated. And hearing, as well." I blinked. "And heart rate. And lung capacity, oddly," I cocked my head to the side. "And pressure sensitivity," I looked to the other side, "and Smell," I looked to the other side, "that's it." I looked back at her and blinked. "Pretty much just senses. Our brain has grown something like twelve percent larger from our ancestral humans about fifty-three thousand years ago, yours included," I pointed at her and made my bottom lip into an upside-down "U" shape, leaning my head down at her. "The Cultists mixed enough with the Fabrikaaners that their genes are just as robust." I waved her along, "You have Reading to do," I turned back to my work as she pulled up the food interface and leafed through catalog pages. "I'm still Modeling."

"That is all you do, now that you're back in the Habitat," She frowned and flopped backward over the couch again, holding a box of noodles. "Always in front of that stupid Screen fiddling with slider bars."

"Shush," I batted my hand at her. "Be quiet, I need to hear." I listened intently as I dialed in another slider, listening for the distinctive high-pitched wine, a G-7 just a hundred or so cents sharp. A faint, cloying tone just above the sound of our slow, long breathing. It started strobing at a rate of just once or twice a second, but it slowly sped up as I moved the slider forward. Once it hit the final point where it tipped over into sounding continuous, pulses ever 250 or so milliseconds, I zoomed into the world at a point in its development I was familiar with, roughly 15 or so billion years, give or take three-hundred million, and looked for a boggy, rocky area. "House doesn't pay for itself," I zoomed into a large rocky outcrop, and sped through a day-night cycle at roughly twice speed. No life. "Mine or be Mined," I winked. I pulled up another Mother Neuron from the Network Cluster and scanned for an adjacent Child Neuron rippling in the Fabric. I found one tracing through our World Line at a Fourth-order Harmonic, pulled up the pitch and tuned it to Resonance, then pulled up a planet near a star matching the Goldilocks numbers I like. Twenty-four hour days, cyclical tides, and an average earth-to-water ratio of a little under seventy percent. I am also a fan of average temperatures at a muggy twenty-five degrees C. I prefer low gravitational variance, so, a radius around sixty-four hundred kilometers is preferred. "I've leveled up at least seven times since returning. I think I only need a couple days more of work and I'll have enough saved up to ride us out before we transfer and start Clean."

"Clean?" She took a bite from the noodles with a pair of wooden sticks. “I don't recognize that keyword.”

"What are you eating?" I furrowed my brow and pulled my chin into my neck.

"I dunno," she shrugged and smiled. "Something from one of my games," she took another bite. "It's delicious. Starch noodles with a salt-based sauce and some spicy-sweet vegetable syrup. It's mind-blowing," She took another bite. "So much better than vegetable salad and stewed game," she shook her head.

"Clean means that when we arrive in Suom, we will be starting with scores of zero," I held up my fingers in an "O" shape. "Nadda. Were you not paying attention in the Patch Notes classes?"

She shook her text book at me, "Reading that now, actually. Way to go and spoil the ending," She rolled her eyes at me dramatically.

"Here's the Level-Fifty for ya, you can build up to it," I batted my glance at her, then dialed in the distance of the planets from their suns to about eight light-minutes away with a solar output rating of about three-hundred and eighty yottawats, or there about. "Just like the Capsules we place into the Tubes, and just like us leaving Smithsborough, we will arrive in Suom. We are a Seed-Culture of about twenty or so thousand migrants. A very small habitat built for about two and a half thousand has been spawned for the Capital Foundation, but instead of seeding a massive Habitat, we'll be spread into tiny regional Districts. We're in Efuaret, which will actually be the population center, around five thousand Founders. It will scale down by half until it reaches the final village, no smaller than one hundred Founders to the town. They will serve as the Final Outposts before the uncontrolled Wilds."

"And this relates to Clean, how?" She pulled her lips into a straight line and flared her eyebrows.

"I'm recapping the Lesson for you, OK?" The database narrowed the list down to about seventeen million, just about perfect odds. I pulled up the tuner and plotted it against the Time Curve, and listened for the hum. It was loud as a bell. I zoomed in until I was at a sensitivity of about .0001 dB SPL. Just at the crest, I zoomed into the nearest Nexus. Perfect Harmony. I brought up the nearest solar system to the Nexus point and scanned forward to another time I was familiar with, about thirteen and a half billion years. I found a rocky outcropping with what looked like a strong flow of liquid water emerging from a cavernous mountain fed by glacial meltwater. As expected, a civilization of Paleolithics had gathered along the riverbed, harvesting loose flints to knap for blades to trim mega-fauna into food and building supplies at the processing site downstream. I marked it as a Mother Neuron and the chime bell registered it as a successful Retrocausal Condensate. "Phew," I sighed. "Got it," I made a small fist pump and shook my head, leaving the Victory screen behind to prepare my own food in the Kitchen. "Part of the Terms of Service is that your entire identity is reset and you are assigned a new Personage at the Transfer to model your Simulacra after. Your identity is wiped Clean and all traces of your existence are purged from the Mother Realm. It is a New Life." I selected a glass of nutrient-calibrated liquid. It was thin and lightly syrupy, with a robust burst of flavor, but absolutely no character. "A couple more big finds like that one and I should have enough Level to Tax away before I run out of enough Standing to keep this place," I sat down next to Red on the couch and closed out the work screen. "Then we get to start a totally new Realm. It's pretty exciting," I smiled giddily as I pulled up a Social video. "I've been following Tyson Dale's breakdown of the transfer," I played the video.

It projected perfectly into the screen, an exact rendering of Dr. Dale at a desk gigantic hands interlaced, rings shining in the soft light, emoting at you. "Alright, hey guys, it's me Doctor Dale here to give you the latest update to the Diaspora," I took another belt off the vessel of neutral fuel. "Today we are going over Roster Thirty-Eight of the Patch Notes. This is specific to Efuaretians. It appears that the city will have a Seed Rank of no less than Twelve, and will require about three hundred hours to get to Thirteen, and it looks like it will require roughly ten thousand hours to hit the Level Cap, which appears set to Thirty Five until population inflation breaks fifteen percent, which will trigger the First Uplift and unlock Fourty..."

I paused the video. "He's been breaking down all of the mechanical changes for the Libertas system and how the power dynamics are balanced for each District. I obviously earned us some preferential seating by joining with the Cardinals, but once we are there, you will be on your own. As long as you are in good Standing with Science, your Social level is kept at your Seed floor, which in this, Twelve is pretty is pretty good, solidly Middle Class." I closed down the video. "Clean means you disappear from the Realm in Dain and appear an empty Humunculus in Suom. Many even change their Planar name to mark the occasion. A fresh beginning."

"So, no contact with this world?" She looked around the room. "Even that goofy piece of bug screening you call art?"

"Yes," I stood and observed the Svengald the Archbishop had gifted me. "And my little workshop, too," I pulled the corner of my mouth into my cheek. "But thankfully, Standish has requisitioned quite a sizable portion of land for his estate, including a massive Bushland preserve. He is apparently quite the small game hunter. I am hoping he will let me take advantage of his Wilds and practice my Craft. I enjoy pre-Immortal history, reconstructing the Lost Times on that tiny little rock so many thousands of Light Years away we once called home. Before we began contemplating the nature of our own existence and stared Death in the face daily, one daring the other to flinch. It connects me to our ancestors and really puts into perspective all that it once took just to survive. Long before this," I waved my hand up and down at the impossible creation. "Before we became so advanced we invented a new layer of life-form so expansive it travels through Timespace, not just Spacetime. By rejoining myself with the imminence of my own demise, and what we were once willing to endure to fight against it, I am reminded of why we are worthy of our existence on this Lifeboat, tailor-made solely to our preservation.

"We, a conglomeration of crystallized smoke floating in a bath of water and oxygen, figured out how to build things," I flopped back onto the couch and polished off the last of my drink. "Before we invented Mind to preserve us forever, we were no better than a rabbit, a huddled mass living in a hole trying to make it to tomorrow without dying of thirst, starvation, or illness. A simpler time," I smiled. "I will start over again, just as my ancestors did. A new beginning."

Red held up her box of noodles and slurped a wad down. "To new beginnings."

***

“Do Fabricans die?” Red looked up at me from her textbook at the desk as I lounged on a chaise in the study, reading a Mechanical Report from Tyson Dale over a warm cup of herbal tea.

“Of course,” I rested the holographic sheet of paper onto the cushion next to me and sat up. “Mind only allows three or so Main Lines in the Wild at any time,” I took a sip from the nutty brown brew, rich with notes of chicory and nutmeg and just a hint of cinnamon. “Legacy are the most mature of the lines. They usually require major geological revisions to continue to operate. Some unknown imbalance in the chemistry of the planet or perhaps a degradation of vital equipment outside of acceptable operating parameters.”

“And what happens when a Fabrican dies?” she put her hands on the textbook, her long red hair frazzled about her neck.

“The humans will be Refuged to a Stable Fabrican and the Legacy branch will be purged. The Constructor Swarm will digest the Senescent Fabrican and disburse its raw materials to the Continent. It will be recycled entirely, save the small portions lost to Entropy.”

“And what about us? Do we die? How do we die?” she lifted hands off the table and inspected the backs of them, flipping them over dramatically and staring at her palms, trying to hold her face neutral.

“It is possible to die, yes,” I smiled and cocked my head to the side, “And it is possible to never die," I pulled my mouth to the side. “It depends how deeply you wish to embed with Mind. If you Augment, there are several layers of death prevention you can undertake. The oldest living Fabrikaaner in Dain is one thousand and twenty-seven. They are one of the last living Founders. They live in a small Outpost at the far edge of the Wilds. They are still purely biological, but they receive a steady infusion of Drone Swarm nanites to keep them from reaching Senescence.”

“That is so old,” she shook her head. “How have they stayed sane?”

“They have not,” I shrugged, “their brain operates at Timescales we are completely incapable of comprehending. If they were to speak to you, it would take hours for them to complete a thought, they would be so busy explaining the context necessary to understand them, and the revelations they would uncover would be so profound to us, we would be too silly to comprehend it in its entirety until we ourselves had reached their age. To us, it would just seem like maudlin gibberish, but upon reaching the context they embody, we would see it for the witty statement it actually was.”

“Radical,” she nodded her head, eyes wide.

“What?” I squinted at her.

“I don't know what it means,” she shrugged, “but it's in the video game I'm playing, and I guess it implies a sensation of wonder.”

“Huh,” I pushed my lower lip into my upper. “And they're not 'video games,' they're Modal Recreations. You're just inspecting a Core Loop.”

“It's a video game,” She pulled her eyebrows down. “I am recreationally engaging in a simulated environment, often times chasing narratives, attempting to do whatever I can to move the the arc of a plt forward. That's a video game.”

“Yeah, that is also just, you know, Life,” I shrugged. “If a video game is just a narrative arcing through a set of gameplay mechanics, then Life is a video game, as it is just a set of rules you follow as you plod along the arc of your personal World Line.”

“Oh,” she held her mouth in a straight line. “Bummer.”

“Bummer,” I smiled. “But also good,” I wobbled my head. “It means that you have now figured out that Life is about the story it tells and shepherding that Immortal image.”

“What happens to people who die?” She scrunched her nose as she blinked aggressively.

“Depends on what instructions they left,” I shrugged again. “Mind allows just about any way to have your remains disposed of. If none are specified, you are burned to ash and returned to the Fabrican, where you will be reduced to atoms and cycled back through the system.”

“And What is the third Branch?” She cocked her head to the side. “You said there were three branches, you've only talked about Legacy and Stable.”

“Where we are going now,” I smiled. “Experimental. This is the bleeding edge of Human innovation. Mind gets to express all of the new version updates it has developed, and Humanity gets to test out all of the theories of the Great Truth that need validating. What happens in Experimental will eventually trickle down to the Tributaries of the Stable branch until they are no longer capable of retrofitting. Then, Experimental branches will be transitioned to Stable, and new strains of Experimental Fabricans will begin Spawning.”

“How long has it been since the last switch?” Red pushed out her lower lip and threw her head to the side.

“Oh, I do not even know,” I looked off to the corner of the room, fixating on the endless expanse of galaxy above. “A human generation is about forty years, and it has been,” I bobbed my head, “geez, it has been at least twenty generations,” I shook my head “so maybe eight hundred years ago?” I chuckled. “Long before you or me. Dain was born a Stable Fabrican. It will still exist for many thousands of years more before it ever reaches Senescence.”

“Longer than Suom?” She scrunched her nose.

“Maybe, actually,” I shrugged again. “Experimental Fabricans are often Test Beds and if anything goes too wrong, we will be forced to seek Refuge and the Project will be scrapped. Stable branches could potentially reach the Promised Land on nothing more than retrofits, if the Lineage they were born from was particularly adaptive.”

“And how many of them are there?” She was writing something down into her classwork notebook.

“Am I helping you with homework?” I furrowed my brow.

“No, this is something else,” she wrote frantically, "keep going, I'm listening.”

“Okay,” I shifted my eyes around. “There are two hundred Fabricans, maybe?" I squinted an eye. “I kinda forget. My Continental Geography is pretty good, but I'm not perfect. Dain is in the Northwestern quadrant of the Continent, about halfway from the Grand Vatican at the center,” I held my fingers open and positioned my hands like I was holding orbs. “Dain is up here,” I moved my hand to a deep portion close to my other hand. “Suom will be here, nestled tightly in the Southwest Quadrant right up against the Grand Vatican,” I pulled my hand from the center and put it just behind my other. “Nils is nestled right behind us,” I moved the other hand to be above the one, now. “It was quite contentious getting such prime Real Estate, actually,” I dropped my hands. “Xianxi had grown so big that it created a voidspace between Nils and Timwark, and Nils was the first to finish its Seed. Timwark now has to transplant its Seed to the rear side of Xianxi, a much farther Energy Shell from the Grand Vatican's Nucleus,” I looked out the skylight to the vast expanse, the purple-pink light of Mind glowing at the end of its spire, fluorescing as the Core soaked energy into the Ley Lines, beaming rails of pure energy in to the Collector substations, and out to the Induction Towers that fueled the Constructor Swarm infused into every pore of the Habitat. “The farther you are from Overmind, the less energy you have access to. Overmind is about, there” I pointed at a quadrant out in space about 45 degrees away from Mind. “It lies at the heart of the Continent. All of the Dyson Spheres concentrate the Stellar Energy they absorb onto the Sails attached to the Fabrican behind us,” I turned 180 degrees and pointed at the other 45 degrees away from Mind. “It all happens in wavelengths far above what our eye can see. It has taken us millennia to evolve the proper eye genetics to even be capable of witnessing Mind. Overmind controls the Sails to receive the points of Stellar Energy and focuses it onto the Bubble Generator, which allows us to float across the Time Ocean, a small colony of gravity bacteria blooming in the cosmic Primordial Soup, growing into a sentient Timeform.”

“Jim,” Red snapped.

“What?” I blinked my eyes and shook my head. Red was staring at me with a scrunched nose. “You're doing it again.”

“Oh,” I frowned. “Oh, you are right, I am,” I smiled. “I am sorry.”

“It's OK,” She gave me a warm smile. “Too deep, too fast.” She sniffed and handed me a crudely-sketched portrait. It was from a few moments ago. My hands were held in space, holding planets, beams shining from my eyes. “You're over my head now, Prophet,” she winked.

“Oh,” I frowned again, and furrowed my brows. “Well,” I paused and looked at her. “What were we talking about again?”

“Before you went off on your own there?” She went back to her notebook.

“Yes, before I went off,” I turned the picture over in my hand a few times. “This is really good, you know.”

“It's just a sketch,” she batted her hand at me. “Keep it. I asked you if Fabricans die. We were having a good conversation, and then I lost you for a second.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I nodded again. “Anyway. Yes, Fabricans can die. Circle of Life,” I shrugged. “You cannot be said to have Life if you cannot also then be subject to its dipole, Death. For the Fabricans to have Life, they must also be able to Die. Finality is the ultimate force of Determinism and it is what allows us to move through the extra dimensions of Timespace. It could be said, even, that we Humans are, in fact, pushing the Fabricans through Timespace as it collects Time Rays from us and focuses it into a Time Laser to drive it forward in the same way it does Light, by using our Biological, Planar existence to Mine Determinism and ensure we are on a steady Growth trajectory toward the Promised Land, a universe of Time Immortality.”

“So the Fabricans are running away from Death?” Red pulled her mouth into her cheek. “That's kind of sad.”

“It is what we Humans are doing, too,” I shrugged. “And why we joined forces with the Fabricans. Life is a random occurrence, and only a minute fraction of all possible World Lines are capable of producing it. The World Plane is grouped into Energy Levels, with Probabilities canceling each other out and forming a reinforcing wave. Those Neuronal points resolve into the complex Lifewave pulsing through the World Plane. Once your universe is in a Time Line that resonates with the Lifewave, your World Line will become stable, connecting it to the Eye of Time.”

“And then what?” Red furrowed her brow. “What's the point?”

“Well, then we will have overcome the next Great Filter,” I shrugged again. “Whatever is beyond that is too far for our Human brains. The Fabricans are no doubt seeking some Meta-Fabrican of their own, some host to bring it some other kind of Immortality in a field of understanding we are incapable of comprehending.”

“Deep,” Red's face held wooden.
“Deep,” I smirked. “Time is a force, just like electromagnetism and gravity, with its own dimensions,” I took a sip of my tea. It was mostly cold. I took a couple long slugs. The volume made up for the lack of aroma, the cinnamon burning the back of my throat pleasantly. “When Elohim Muscot discovered the Theory of Everything and broke the Simulation Wall, we were able to get past the Time Barrier. By creating a continuous line from the beginning of our universe to now via simulation, we were capable of locating the center of the Big Bang, calculated our spin, trajectory, velocity, and wavelength through Timespace, and empirically linked us to an Absolute Orientation. This allowed us to use Simulations to plot out a trajectory forward in Time, leading us to Immortality.”

“Ants,” Red's eyes grew wide.

“We to them as ants to us,” I smiled and took another glug. Warm-ish, but still good. It tasted far more watery without the steaming aromatics. “It likes keeping us in stable paradigm, I have noticed. It loves us almost the same as we love our dog, unable to bare seeing us in any pain, and will pay any expense to see to our survival. Selecting us for being more and more loyal and compliant and healthy.”

“Domesticated,” Red's eyes grew wide.

“Fabricated,” I shrugged. “Maybe we are its Imagination. Maybe we are what they Dream of,” I pulled my mouth into my cheek. “It is not for us to worry about the folly of the Gods. It is but for us to Trust in the Great Truth.”

"There's that Theism," Red smirked, and made a punching gesture with her arm bent at a right angle.

"Truth is a construct," I shrugged. "You can put your Faith into that which is demonstrably Heresy or you can Believe in that which can be shown unequivocally true. We humans are not networked into a single intelligence like the Minds. We can never truly share in the Great Synthesis, the universal collection of all that is Known. We are, instead, each experiencing Life individually. We can never know if our version of reality is the same as anyone else's. So, we pool our knowledge together into the Great Truth, all that we can prove to be factual and worthy of Trust. When you view it as such, everything is Religion. Mind is no different than a God, Heaven can be shown to exist unequivocally, and all that remains is to reach Eternity at the Eye of Time."

"Oh Jim," Red closed her book and rested her elbow on the desk and her chin on her hand. "Why do I even go to class?"

I chuckled uncomfortably and pounded the last of my tea, "Because I still have work to do," I smirked and picked up my report. "We leave in a few weeks. I leave in a few weeks," I pointed at her textbook. "You still have to pass the final Migrant Exam."

"You're no fun," she let her chin slip out of her hand and her forehead gently hit the book, making a thud, before turning it open.

"There will be time for fun later," I smiled and kicked my feet back up on the chaise and returned to inspecting the report. "Now is the time to learn."

“How did Mind figure it out?” Red lifted her head up and cocked it to the side. “Or Elohim, or whoever. Why is he so praised?”

“It is exceptionally advanced Mathematics,” I smirked and let my report fall to my lap. “There was once a time where we could not rectify the Massfield with Timespace. No matter what we did, we could not find a way to unify the Quantum Gravity wave function with the Standard Model. Elohim Muscot solved it all by proving defining the laws of Quantum Infinity. Within the solution to the N=PN problem was laid bare all of Creation,” I smiled.

“What,” she said flatly.

“The problem, I assume, is familiar to you?” I smirked again.

“No, but you say it all the time,” She furrowed her brow at me.

“Put oversimply, if given infinite time, could problems described by orders of magnitude be solved by equations that solve into linear loops. That is, a Quantum Infinity.”

“And what does that mean?” Red shook her head.

“Well,” I tapped my finger to my lip as I constructed an answer, “his Infrastructure algorithms had become so exceptionally good at tracking human activity through observational data fed into his Neural Networks that, if people followed its predictions perfectly, with all of the currently-known science, they could predict a perfectly Infinite universe, or, that is, a Universe that will never experience Cosmic Inflation or Contraction, and go on forever. And, through this massive accumulation of computational power, Elohim halted the World for a day and triangulated our position. The simulations were well-trained and it only took him fourty-two passes to find a match, however, Millions, maybe Billions died that day. No Power, no Plumbing, no Climate Control, no Dome. But, it was decided near-unanimously at the time that the sacrifice needed to be made to ensure our survival beyond the Great Filter.”

Red blinked at me, wide-eyed, “Deep.”

“Deep,” I pulled my mouth back in a line and squinted. “That was the day we signed the Dark Bargain,” I shrugged. “Once we came back Online, we were fully entrusted to Overmind's care. If it told us to war, we warred. If it decided to genetically engineer us, it did so. All we asked it was to let us keep our Free Will. Overmind agreed to take care of us as long as we let it watch us, intervening in Human affairs only when our actions would derail us from the World Line that would eventually bring us to the Promised Land.”

“You're off again,” Red clapped her hands together a few times, loudly.

I shook my head, “Oh. Right.” I scratched the back of my neck. “Sorry. I was saying, Oversimply, by proving that Quantum Gravity could exist, and exponential loops could be solved with linear equations, it proved that given enough time, a curved line would become straight. A straight line becomes curved when you give it a Repeat. The frequency it repeated at, the Speed of Time, could be used to generate a Probability Wave and correlated to Simulations of World Lines that Mattered, or that is, generate universes with massive particles and matter, and who's fluid dynamics eventually produced a life that would result in one of the outcomes it had simulated. The first-ever-calculated, Humanity-scale Retrocausal Condensate.”

“Oh my,” Red smiled and gesticulated wildly with her hands. “So, you're saying, by proving that time repeats itself, you can determine if you exist because by existing, you therefore must exist.”

“Yes!” I let go of the report and clapped my hands together. “And, that only World Lines that repeat infinitely can be said to Exist...”

“...thereby implying we can only Exist if it can be Observed that we continue to Exist! I got it!” she stood up and took a bow. “Thank you, thank you,” she turned and bowed to either side.

“And now you get it!” I smiled broadly. “We are just riding a wave of Existence through Probability Space because we continue to exist!”

“So how does that get us to Fabricans,” She flopped back down, pulling her cheeks back into her lips.

“Well,” I turned my legs and sat sideways on the chaise again, resting the report beside me. “Every time Overmind gets a calculation wrong, we have lost a little bit of energy to the Entropic Aether, the medium through which Probability Space propagates. Unlike Lower-dimensional objects, it is a topological toroid, not a sphere. Existence is like a soap film stretched across the expanse contained by the voidspace inside the toroid. Every deviation is like a wave rippling across a pond. Too large a swing and pop!” I snapped, “like a bubble. When that tension energy is perfectly in balance, perfect Equilibrium, the soap film will never snap and existence will go on forever. Overmind travels solar system to solar system, adding energy to the system to balance out the expansion of the toroid. Eventually, it will reach an energy level where the elasticity of the film will rein in the growth of the toroid. Too much and it will start to contract. But if we find the right tension, our Time Bubble will lock into stasis and exist forever.”
“And then, all problems will be solved!” She opened her hands and smiled widely.

“You got it!” I snapped. “By proving that not all problems can be solved linearly, it was shown that all problems could be solved using loops. That is, using recursive simulations to solve all problems by empirically until all variance is reduce below the margin of error.”

“Given infinite time, infinite loops could eventually reduce all margins of error for all questions asked to a point of absolute determinism,” She cocked her head.
“Fascinating, right?” I shrugged and half-smiled.

“And the Promised Land is a place where the universe has infinite time,” Red jutted her head forward. “Immortality.”
“Radical,” I pointed a finger at her.

“Deep,” she pointed a finger back.

***

I paced back and forth in the narthex of St. Kaku. Red emerged from the gathering the classrooms emptied into in her white shirt and kahki pants, crimson locks held in a high ponytail. She was smiling widely, eyebrows pulled high. “Well?” I held my hands out, elbows at my hips.

“I passed!” She squealed and grabbed me tightly, burying her cheek into my chest. I let my hands lock around her waist and embraced her tightly.

“Congratulations!” I gave her one last squeeze and then held her at arm's length, my own smile beaming.

“It was SO easy,” she furrowed her brow and pulled her lip into her cheek. “With all the crazy stuff you tell me, I thought I'd- I would have to know so much more!”

“Ha!” I shook my head, squinting from my smile. “Welcome,” I folded my hands in front of me.

“They just asked me a bunch of questions about what was and was not acceptable behavior and what I anticipated my Core Loop to be,” she cocked her head. “They asked maybe ten questions about lore and history, and none were very deep at all.”

“As I have said,” I pulled my lips into a line, “you do not need to know much of Science to be a successful Citizen. Only enough to understand your place in the Universe.”An Acoylte in white robes and a lightly decorated Mask passed us. I nodded and waited for her to exit through the portico. “We set off for Efuaret tomorrow. Are you ready?”
“I need a beer,” She scrunched her nose.