Page 87 of The Enduring Universe
“We’ve done this before,” Eskayra pointed out. “When we facedthe Virohi after the crash of the Conclave, the non-architects aligned their desires toward a singular purpose to create a defense for Irshar. Architects are used to this kind of thing too, in the Moment, working together.”
“But the time with the non-architects did not truly work,” Purva said. “When the Conclave crash-landed and we faced the Virohi, you had to take control, Ahilya-ve.”
“Is that what you want, Ahilya?” Dhruv asked quietly. “Complete control of humanity?”
“No,” she said at once. “I am suggesting the opposite. Last time I had to be in control, because the core trees and the habitat were conditioned to obey me first. The Virohi bent to me because they recognized me from the time I stopped the first earthrage. But what if the reason everything has been so hard, even for me, isbecauseI took that control? What if I took myself out of the equation altogether?”
“Are you suggesting suicide?” Dhruv asked dryly.
“No, of course not. But right now, my consciousness stands as a buffer between the rest of the humanity and the overwriting. I have stood in control of myself, letting the Virohi only find form as me. But if I stepped away, letting overwriting occur, control would not be with any one of us.”
“A true hive-mind,” Basav said, his face revolted. “Like the Virohi.”
“Like the Moment,” Ahilya countered. “A network of consciousnesses. A Moment as if it were alive.”
Basav’s furrowed his brows in confusion. Ahilya felt a jolt of victory. He was listening.
It was Chaiyya who spoke, her voice shaking: “The last time overwriting happened, all of our consciousnesses merged. It was chaos, it was terrifying, and we became you. That could be ourpermanent state. We wouldn’t know who we are, let alone be able to fight the planetrage or dissolution.”
“We wouldn’t need to fight. The vriksh would do it, and we would lend it our strength, our purpose. As long as all of us willed with our deepest minds to survive and endure—as we have done before—the vriksh will follow our command.” Ahilya leaned back, exhausted. “I cannot think of another solution. Is it not worth the attempt?”
“Is it?” Dhruv asked. “What you are suggesting is that all of us allow you to do this so none of us have a sense of self. So there is no I,ever, for our species. It would be a kind of dissolution too, all of our minds become one entity, our closest secrets open to the others, our shame and pain and all the indignities we’ve ever suffered, memories and feelings and ideas we would take to our graves, all of it privy to be seen and judged. Our powerlessness exhibited to everyone, in our smallest, pettiest ways. Is that a good thing? To be seen in your nakedness, in your vulnerability?”
“But not just in those,” Airav chimed in quietly. “We would become one, in our greatest ways too. In our compassion and beauty and kindness and love. We would not be persons. We would become… a people. With all the good and the bad. And once the neural bridge is complete between the Virohi and the vriksh, once the overwriting has taken place, then we will truly be able to fight our extinction.”
“Without a choice,” Dhruv retorted. “With no knowledge of what such overwriting is going to do to us, and no knowledge of what we are doing either. With no sentience, for all we know.”
“But with agency,” Airav replied softly. “Together.”
There was a silence as the rest of them absorbed this.
Ahilya looked from one face to another. Trisha, Pranav, and other architects from Irshar were nodding slowly, as though thiswas something inevitable. Airav gave her a small smile; architects had been trained for this, they were used to consciousness-based communication in the Moment. There was precedent for personal truths being bared to one another. That is what the Examination of Ecstasy was, the encounter with veristem, and in so many ways the architects already shared one mind in the shared reality of the Moment and Deepness.
Yet the non-architects…
Dhruv, Purva, and Eskayra shifted in their seats, frowning. She could read her doubt in them… to lose all power the instant they had received a small measure of it. Had Ahilya not feared such an erasure once? How could she suggest this, when her kind had been on the receiving end of erasure through history? Perhaps back in the early days of flight, when the non-architects and architects had to decide what to do for the survival of their species, they had been presented with such a choice too. Maybe erasure-evolution like this was the only way forward then. But Ahilya had suffered too much to think it permissible. She didn’t say anything. To this point, she had no defense.
In the silence, Tariya cleared her throat, standing up straighter as Ahilya and the rest of them turned to her. “If anyone’s asking,” she said, her voice trembling. “Then I am with Ahilya.”
This was surprising. Ahilya tried to catch her sister’s eye, but Tariya steadfastly refused to meet her gaze. Instead, she spoke to the air. “We have been denied control all our lives. Citizens have suffered because of architects, and we’ve lost people we loved—some of whom were also architects. My wife—Bharavi—” Here she choked, but rallied before anyone could speak. “We have lacked control, but this overwriting would provide us with something equal to the rest of you. I don’t think the citizens will object. It will be a form of shared control.”
“It will be a form of no control,” Dhruv said. “No one entity would have control. That’s the entire point. Whatever we become will be greater than we are as individuals. This is the opposite of what you and your citizens have been demanding.”
“It’s still better than what we’ve had so far,” Tariya shot back. “All along we’ve had to work according to what the council has allowed us to do. Even here, even in Irshar. But this way, we’d be no more nor less than the rest of you. You sit here making judgements and decisions for everyone. Well, this way we would have a seat at the table too. All of us, every one of us. Are you going to deny us that if we wish it among us?”
Ahilya tried to hide her humorless grin. Tariya was her sister through and through. They had never seen eye to eye on things, and Tariya’s reasons were different from Ahilya’s own, but perhaps everyone could see now how they were related. The citizens had long desired control of their lives, and many had chosen not to leave Irshar because of it. Perhaps this would not be such a difficult thing to ask of them.
Dhruv seemed to be coming to the same conclusion. He removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “You all are making a lot of assumptions,” he said. “A hive mind—a network and circuitry like this—we have nothing to protect our consciousness. No breaker.”
“We would simply implode,” Kiana said grimly, agreeing. “That much informational flow, for any of us to see and experience that without any preventative nodes. It could be very bad. It could be the chaos of before, a thousand times worse. Perhaps the only reason that is not occurring right now is because Ahilya provides a buffer.” The sungineer’s keen eyes studied Ahilya. “What if you continued to be the buffer? What if you guided this overwriting slowly instead of simply standing aside? Is it possible we couldnetwork like a hive, but still somehow remain ourselves? That we could enter this with more control?”
Ahilya thought this over. “Maybe,” she said slowly.
She had not suggested it, or dared to consider it, dictated to by her desire to not become a tyrant. But if she did guide the overwriting—if she controlled the onset of the flood—perhaps they could find their way back to their selves. An image formed in her head—all of them nestled within the vriksh, sleeping, their minds caught in a dream-state while the vriksh reacted to their unspoken desire to survive, its roots sinking into the earth.
The image had come too soon, too clearly, an answer from the vriksh for her unspoken question of forcing this decision. “It’s possible, I think,” she said. “It wouldn’t be overwriting, if we could still remember a part of ourselves. It would be…”
“Cohesion,” Airav replied, and Ahilya nodded. The two of them were already doing it, connected in a strange way. This Cohesion was already occurring for those who were aligned.
