I laughed. “Some protection. Why the hell did he run on the Templar world when I caught up to him? They aren’t even trying to give you a plausible story, Johnny.”
“No.”
“Nor did the bishop explain how the Shrike Church had farcaster access to Old Earth … or whatever you call that stage-set world.”
“And we did not ask.”
“I didn’t ask because I wanted to get out of that damn Temple in one piece.”
Johnny didn’t seem to hear. He was sipping his coffee, his gaze focused somewhere else.
“What?” I said.
He turned to look at me, tapping his thumbnail on his lower lip. “There is a paradox here, Brawne.”
“What?”
“If it was truly my aim to go to Hyperion … for my cybrid to travel there … I could not have remained in the TechnoCore. I would have had to invest all consciousness in the cybrid itself.”
“Why?” But even as I asked I saw the reason.
“Think. Datumplane itself is an abstract. A commingling of computer and AI-generated dataspheres and the quasi-perceptual Gibsonian matrix designed originally for human operators, now accepted as common ground for man, machine, and AI.”
“But AI hardware exists somewhere in real space,” I said. “Somewhere in the TechnoCore.”
“Yes, but that is irrelevant to the function of AI consciousness,” said Johnny. “I can ‘be’ anywhere the overlapping dataspheres allow me to travel … all of the Web worlds, of course, datumplane, and any of the TechnoCore constructs such as Old Earth … but it’s only within that milieu that I can claim ‘consciousness’ or operate sensors or remotes such as this cybrid.”
I set my coffee cup down and stared at the thing I had loved as a man during the night just past. “Yes?”
“The colony worlds have limited dataspheres,” said Johnny. “While there is some contact with the TechnoCore via fatline transmissions, it is an exchange of data only … rather like the First Information Age computer interfaces … rather than a flow of consciousness. Hyperion’s datasphere is primitive to the point of nonexistence. And from what I can access, the Core has no contact whatsoever with that world.”
“Would that be normal?” I asked. “I mean with a colony world that far away?”
“No. The Core has contact with every colony world, with such interstellar barbarians as the Ousters, and with other sources the Hegemony could not imagine.”
I sat stunned. “With the Ousters?” Since the war on Bressia a few years earlier, the Ousters had been the Web’s prime bogeymen. The idea of the Core … the same congregation of AIs which advises the Senate and the All Thing and which allow our entire economy, farcaster system, and technological civilization to run … the idea of the Core being in touch with the Ousters was frightening. And what the hell did Johnny mean by “other sources”? I didn’t really want to know right then.
“But you said it is possible for your cybrid to travel there?” I said. “What did you mean by ‘investing all consciousness’ in your cybrid? Can an AI become … human? Can you exist only in your cybrid?”
“It has been done,” Johnny said softly. “Once. A personality reconstruction not too different from my own. A twentieth-century poet named Ezra Pound. He abandoned his AI persona and fled from the Web in his cybrid. But the Pound reconstruction was insane.”
“Or sane,” I said.
“Yes.”
“So all of the data and personality of an AI can survive in a cybrid’s organic brain.”
“Of course not, Brawne. Not one percent of one percent of my total consciousness would survive the transition. Organic brains can’t process even the most primitive information the way we can. The resultant personality would not be the AI persona … neither would it be a truly human consciousness or cybrid …” Johnny stopped in mid-sentence and turned quickly to look out the window.
After a long minute I said, “What is it?” I reached out a hand but did not touch him.
He spoke without turning. “Perhaps I was wrong to say that the consciousness would not be human,” he whispered. “It is possible that the resulting persona could be human touched with a certain divine madness and meta-human perspective. It could be … if purged of all memory of our age, of all consciousness of the Core … it could be the person the cybrid was programmed to be.…”
“John Keats,” I said.
Johnny turned away from the window and closed his eyes. His voice was hoarse with emotion. It was the first time I had heard him recite poetry:
“Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave
A paradise for a sect, the savage too
From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep
Guesses at Heaven; pity these have not
Traced upon vellum or wild Indian leaf
The shadows of melodious utterance.
But bare of laurel they live, dream, and die;
For Poesy alone can tell her dreams,
With the fine spell of words alone can save
Imagination from the sable charm
And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say,
‘Thou art no Poet—mayst not tell thy dreams’?
Since every man whose soul is not a clod
Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved,
And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.
Whether the dream now purposed to rehearse
Be Poet’s or Fanatic’s will he known
When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What does it mean?”
“It. means,” said Johnny, smiling gently, “that I know what decision I made and why I made it. I wanted to cease being a cybrid and become a man. I wanted to go to Hyperion. I still do.”
“Somebody killed you for that decision a week ago,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to try again?”
“Yes.”
“Why not invest consciousness in your cybrid here? Become human in the Web?”
“It would never work,” said Johnny. “What you see as a complex interstellar society is only a small part of the Core reality matrix. I would be constantly confronted with and at the mercy of the AIs. The Keats persona … reality … would never survive.”
“All right,” I said, “you need to get out of the Web. But there are other colonies. Why Hyperion?”
Johnny took my hand. His fingers were long and warm and strong. “Don’t you see, Brawne? There is some connection here. It may well be that Keats’s dreams of Hyperion were some sort of transtemporal communication between his then persona and his now persona. If nothing else, Hyperion is the key mystery of our age—physical and poetic—and it is quite probable that he … that I was born, died, and was born again to explore it.”
“It sounds like madness to me,” I said. “Delusions of grandeur.”
“Almost certainly,” laughed Johnny. “And I never have been happier!” He grabbed my arms and brought me to my feet, his arms around me. “Will you go with me, Brawne? Go with me to Hyperion?”
I blinked in surprise, both at his question and the answer, which filled me like a rush of warmth. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll go.”
We went into the sleeping area then and made love the rest of that day, sleeping finally to awaken to the low light of Shift Three in the industrial trench outside. Johnny was lying on his back, his hazel eyes open and staring at the ceiling, lost in thought. But not so lost he did not smile and put his arm around me. I nestled my cheek against him, settling into the small curve where shoulder meets chest, and went back to sleep.