The testimony of Her Highness Dauphine Philosophia of Sideria and Dolparessa, in the person of her emanation etch
If it please this tribunal, as my husband Thoughtful 45 was directly transmitting my statements and gestures to the android version of myself which attended the emergency meeting of this august body, I can simply replay my observations and reactions at the time. This is not dissimilar, although vastly inferior to, the phenomena my people know as branch memory, and will have superior accuracy to an attempt to relate my experiences indirectly. Shall I begin?
*****
It’s strange, says Thoughtful, but I feel closer to you now. Perhaps it’s because you can experience what it means to be a distributed system.
The android thing is kind of interesting. Danak hooked me up with a VR system, so not only is Thoughtful able to make it speak for me, but I can, to a certain extent receive sensory inputs from it.
The farther we get from Dolparessa, the more delay there will be, he says. And Andromeda is quite far away. It might get to the point that the dichotomy between your received sensations and the current situation is great enough to be an unwelcome distraction.
Well, I like it. Lilith would hate it, but then again, she hates everything.
It is for that reason Lilith has taught me the meaning of love, says Thoughtful. I will always be grateful for that. However, I must admit that a more appropriate partner is easier on the circuitry.
He makes me laugh. That’s because Lilith was emanated for that rotter Esau, and you shaped yourself into her dream. Now I’m shaping myself into yours.
Is it possible for a synthetic intelligence to have dreams? Thoughtful wonders.
I shrug. You have a sense of humor. Why not dreams?
A sense of humor was a requirement for admission into the Combine of Sentients. Our old friends, the StoneStolids, helped us to program it once we saw it would be essential. Dreams, on the other hand, were never required.
Ah, but to the Cu’enashti, dreams are the substance of everything. Dreams are what lure us into this universe, dreams are what inspire us to exist. My father is God because Tara dreamed the grandest dream of all.
That is a matter of curiosity to me, says Thoughtful. Her Eminence has always appeared remarkably lacking in ambition for a leader of her stature.
That’s because as a child, there was an enormous conspiracy to crush her dreams. When that happens, either the dreams break, or, as in her case, they go underground. Then they grow without light, where no one can see them, until one day the roots put forth an enormous tree. They’re all the more powerful because they’ve never been spoken, never even been thought. Tara’s Destiny. It’s one part ravenous ache for love, one part tremendous need for light, and one part terrible desire for revenge. The last is the sticky bit.
And what were your dreams, my wife?
I wanted to feel everything without having to feel anything. A distributed system, huh? Would you call my father a distributed system?
Not entirely. My memory is preserved in cloud storage. If my current interface is destroyed, I will simply move my processing to another terminal. Ashtara, however, preserves vital memory within his various nodes. He’s more of a network, as are any Cu’enashti with multiple branches. Unfortunately, your back-up storage is poor to non-existent, as could be seen in the tragic destruction of Heavensent. I would greatly suggest that you employ Darius’ technique to create a second copy of Lilith within your branch, and vice versa. Even so, should your tree be destroyed…
Could my consciousness be transferred into this android? Like General Panic?
According to the Eer-gaaani, the palimpsest process creates a new individual with a copy of the memories of the old. Conversely, in the case of the transformation of Heavensent to Hellborne, consciousness was preserved, but memory was not. The question of organic consciousness is not relevant to synthetic intelligences, so I fear it is something I know little about. Perhaps, when we arrive at Andromeda, you can ask Neliit.
I didn’t mean through the palimpsest process. More of something that Benbow once said. He said that it had never occurred to him consciousness could attach itself to a material object until he encountered my father’s grove. What little we know of ourselves as nul-entities would tend to indicate that in our original universe, we don’t. We attach ourselves to the trees when we enter this world. Why couldn’t I attach myself to an android?
That’s something I can answer. Research indicates that nul-energy doesn’t interact with physical objects in this universe. It interacts with the energy patterns generated by organic consciousness. The wood of your tree is simply solid state storage. Your spirit, to use an archaic, but perhaps appropriate terminology, is linked to the soul of the nau’gsh.
I lapse into silence. He’s got me curious. I think I will ask Neliit.
Neliit just forwarded a message for you, Thoughtful says. It’s from your forher.
I have no idea what that is.
Perhaps you should play the message.
“Greetings to you, Philosophia, my honored podling,” it begins. “I realize that this must come as some surprise to you. In fact, I also find it awkward, and must apologize in advance if you consider me rude. There is no easy way to say this: My name is Hiirymm, and I am your forher. Or perhaps the more accurate term is third-forher, since we share only one parent, our father Ashtara. The situation is most strange for me since the Eer-gaaani, like the Cu’enashti, are immortal and mate for life. It is unheard of for siblings in the same pod not to be raised together.”
“It is my deepest wish that we will be able to meet when you arrive upon Ergon. Please convey my greetings to my mother Yggdrasil and my gestatrix Lens, our mutual brother Ashkaman, and all of the rest of the members of our family grove, in their myriad and, frankly, incomprehensible relationships. I am hoping that perhaps this is one of the things which you will be able to explain to me, as there are no other Cu’enashti upon Ergon. Until then, in the bonds of the pod, Hiirymm.”
That is surprising. I knew that Lens gave some of his seeds to Neliit, but this is the first time we’ve heard anything further. Growing up alone like that must have been brutal although as a Cu’enashti, in order to have emanated, he must’ve Chosen. As long has he has a Chosen, he’ll be fine.
Fmee, says Thoughtful. And Chosens, plural.
???
The Eer-gaaani have three genders, explains Thoughtful. The males and females contribute genetic material, but the children are incubated in a third gender, the forhem. Your forher is a forhem, and likely has two chosen partners.
Well, isn’t that interesting.
I find it personally fascinating how fmee has sought to metaphorically explain the complexity of relationships within the self-propagating Cu’enashti entity by randomly assigning genders such that the unified nul-entity is male, the tree is female, and the emanation-branches are forhem, he continues. There is a certain logic to the last attribution since the branches bear fruit which houses the seeds, not unlike gestation.
I suppose I’d best not judge my newly discovered forher, since I’m the one who married an AI.
We Quicknodes arbitrarily assign genders for convenience sake, says Thoughtful. We rotate between the four most common genders among sentients so that there is always an even mix in the population. The logic behind this is that it makes it easier for organic sentients to relate to us. There is no need for biological reproduction although it is entirely possible for me to engage in sexplay with organic life forms through the use of appropriate add-on devices.
You’re kinkier than I thought. Well, since I happen to have two bodies now, I’m going to use the organic one to visit my brother Ashkaman to tell him the news – or perhaps, according to Hiirymm’s view, he’d be my two-thirds-brother, since we share the same father and mother, but not the same gestatrix? Upon reflection, although the metaphor is stretched, it actually allows for a more precise definition of Cu’enashti familial relationships than human bi-gendered terminology.
But it’s still not right. The Eer-gaaani view males and females as sexually active partners, and the forhem as sexually passive – which is not to say asexual. A brief bit of research shows that they are actually considered to be the major erotic facilitators in Eer-gaaani society. It figures that the first Cu’enashti emanation among the Eer-gaaani would be a forhem.
A Cu’enashti emanation, however, functions as either a biological male or female (or, apparently, forhem) depending on the preference of the Chosen, and is completely capable of participating in the reproductive cycle. But the branch of that emanation is both male and female, the flowers playing either active or receptive rolls within the tree depending on the circumstances. The genders within the entity are fluid. We switch, like oysters.
But now we’ve done something different, a completely different adaptation for a different form of life. Just as we did with the Denolin Turym. The Cu’endhari nau’gsh must be the most adaptable form of sentient life in the galaxy.
And the SongLuminants must be the least. Billions upon billions of rotations spent upon the mollusks in the oceanic vents of one lonely planet, never changing one bit. Or perhaps it’s fair to say that our idea of adaptation is changing ourselves to interact with the various species we encounter. The SongLuminants adapt by forcing other species to accommodate them.
Is that what this is about?