My Admiral,
I am writing and transmitting this message through the agreed-upon means. It's been since UniPsi that I last wrote by hand, on physical medium no less, but I understand we can no longer use the LE.
It has been several years, Admiral, since you assigned me to the surveillance of Captain Andreï. I now understand the circumstances that led to that order, even though, as Alpha of the Hollow Eyes, I initially took it as a disgrace. Over time, Andreï managed to rally all of us to him through his rather particular mindset, despite missions of little consequence. Whether it comes from Lodovico or elsewhere, Andreï has specific methods and a unique way of leading his crew. I am convinced that after ten years, his entire crew would follow him fanatically to the edge of the universe — as they are doing now — and that he has also become more competent than any other military group. Today, I count myself among those who respect Andreï, and I even try to suppress something that would resemble affection. Thus, I now experience as a betrayal the act of sending you secret reports on his activities without his knowledge. But of course, you have me in your grasp, and I can only obey.
If I am to betray, I might as well do it properly and, as you say, hide nothing from you.
The Alecto departed four months ago, which means we are a third of the way through our journey. After transferring information and skills to the rest of the resistance fleet in orbit around Camerone, the Captain gave a speech to his crew. He explained our journey — a minimum of two years — the risks involved, and also the risks inherent in opposing the Aleph. He offered anyone who wished to leave the mission the opportunity to come see him that evening in his office so he could discreetly arrange their reassignment within HS, without any form of blame or judgment. As far as I know, no one made such a request.
Gentle Sun, partially amputated of a few pieces currently cultivated aboard the rest of the resistance fleet, struggled to compute the reconciliation calculations for the Drift trajectory. The poor creature will calculate for an entire year, refining the trajectory daily. I doubt its precision, but do we have a choice?
We do not have a suspended-sleep system on board the Alecto. Andreï made things clear rather quickly: this Drift year would be an opportunity for us to train and learn new skills useful for our future operations. First and foremost, we had to learn the stellar language. Our Xeno Alpha taught us how to sign. We weren't very focused the first week. Our thoughts were turned toward what lay ahead and what we had left behind. The Captain sensed it but made no comment. He spent his time with Gentle Sun, whom he pushes to the limit. If it were human, this Xeno would have rebelled long ago. Part of its efforts were for route correction, part for a secret project I will soon reveal to you, part for research — their famous obsession with inverse Drift.
The Captain maintains that what we call intuition is a biological process for optimally solving problems. The other day, we spoke of the Blind Gods.
"The prayer to the Blind Gods," the Captain told me, "which was passed on to us by the Transients, says: 'The Blind Gods are in all things and around all things.' My interpretation is that the Blind Gods are the shortest path between a question and its answer. It lies outside us — a yet-unsolved mathematical problem — but also within us, as we have the potential to solve it."
During the second week of flight, we were tense. The Captain told us in the morning — that is, at the first watch — that something special would happen that evening and asked us to make sure none of us had any specific tasks. Oh, and notably, he asked us to come in comfortable clothing — a way of saying our nightwear.
When the ship's clock struck evening watch, he summoned us to the Drift trajectory room where Gentle Sun operates. Many of us expected games or storytelling, and complaints were growing as we feared yet another math lesson. That was not the case. He asked the front row to lie down around Gentle Sun and touch it, then the second row to do the same while touching the others… and so on until we were all lying down in a chain around the Xeno. The mood was already improving. The Captain also connected himself and gave an order, and we then experienced the most astonishing of experiences.
Gentle Sun, as you know, possesses Psi powers of environmental control. It managed to plunge us into a collective illusion while keeping our limbs immobilized. It's akin to a controlled dream experience or advanced virtual reality techniques, but the Xeno projected us into something else… let's say, more immersive, more sensual. Also, it managed to alter temporality through an unknown process: for us, we lived an adventure, second by second, over several days — while in fact, it lasted only four hours. Finally, the Xeno has never truly seen what, for instance, a ship looks like in the colors we perceive, but it managed to reconstruct them. It's likely that it rummaged through our memories.
It turns out this immersion experience was a skill assessment. In this first experience, we were colonists on an unknown planet with limited resources. You must understand something crucial about this experience, which changes everything I have previously lived through: in it, we are not ourselves. We can change gender and appearance. We play different roles. The Captain was among us, but no one knew who he was. So after the survival phase, we faced a first contact with the Xenos. The Xenos were invisible to the human visible spectrum, and, weakened by hunger and thirst, it took us a long time to understand this. And when we could finally ask for help, our stellar language was atrocious. We all died one by one. During those "virtual weeks," relationships formed — sometimes romantic, sometimes rivalrous. We couldn't reveal our identities, not even indirectly, even though some desperately wanted to scream it out because they had fallen for one another.
We watched our colony die, one by one, beside each other's deathbeds. Still within the illusion projection, we reappeared in our normal forms in a decompression space where the Xeno broadcast non-invasive feelings of well-being.
We finally awoke, and the Captain debriefed with us. He told us to work seriously on the stellar language because we would repeat the exercise the following week. The reward, he hinted, would be other scenarios. Finally, he said it was very important that no one disclose who played what role in the scenario and ordered us to keep the secret. We were a bit overwhelmed: not only were we leaving for a two-year journey, but every week was now being stretched into two weeks of intense virtual adventures.
In the end, this simulation proved to be highly beneficial: we worked on the stellar language as if our lives depended on it. We scrutinized one another to figure out who we had fallen in love with — or, sometimes, suspecting it, we tried to avoid contact. We had experienced a condensed version of adventure, adrenaline, travel, sex too, love, and harmless anger that perfectly gave us the feeling of having traveled while we remained confined aboard the Anicroche.
What the Captain has just devised is a danger to Gentle Sun's Xeno race. Beyond its computing skills, if it can produce this kind of psychic projection and that fact becomes known, then they will become prey to every sort of trafficking. This will be a topic to reflect on further — if we make it through the Aleph crisis.
Having said that, we awaited the following Saturday with both excitement and anxiety. We no longer thought about what was behind or ahead of us. We wanted to turn our defeat into victory. The scenario was similar but our roles were different. The interpersonal dynamics were different and enriching, and as I write to you, I understand something: more than an assessment, the exercise is building bonds between us. It makes us wonder who, behind our faces, truly resides. It reminds us that we are capable of loving anyone. In this new scenario, our stellar language was still not great, and the Xenos were clearly visible but so large that they did not immediately perceive us. We managed to establish contact and save the colony. Never have I experienced greater joy, greater success. But that wasn't all. We received a reward. Time accelerated, and we got to see the colony grow in peace with the Xenos and become a favored homeport of the HS. What had once been a cliff battered by a dark ocean became a charming coastline, lined by a blue sea. We all lived in pleasant houses with gardens or in luxurious apartments. And we celebrated the colony's twentieth anniversary with a gala evening: fireworks, festivities. Dances. Delicious food. Walks by the sea under the stars. Last kisses and promises of love… an experience indistinguishable from my real memories.
And since then, every week the Captain assigns us a study topic: piloting a vessel in crisis, gravitational combat, zero-G strategy, material and structural resistance, organic chemistry, xenobiology, Xeno diplomacy, knowledge of the Transients, Xeno religions, Xeno myths and legends, and mathematics, mathematics, mathematics… we are highly motivated. And we are, in fact, becoming very competent.
The Captain spends a non-negligible amount of time — some would say suspicious — in the communication room with the Wau, starting about a week after the Alecto's departure. These are regular communications, once every two days, sometimes lasting quite a while. I have no legitimate reason to be there, but I try to find good excuses to enter and grasp the nature of their conversation. The topics are sometimes strategic, such as the new civil hierarchy of the HS. But sometimes — increasingly often, in fact — the subjects are philosophical. I've heard them speak of solitude, contingency, the nature of consciousness, life after death and after the After, destiny, love, and forgiveness. I entered the room under the pretext of a matter concerning the crew, which I will detail below. The Captain was speaking with the Wau, and I let him finish a long argument. He was saying:
"The HS, guided by the Transients, has acknowledged that the control of its society hinges on forgiveness. Should we forgive? That question was still being asked as late as 2050, when AIs were already assisting us. We had prison, we believed — and still do, with therapies in the After — that time allows the brain to conform to a socially acceptable norm for the general public. We erased prison from our culture. So then, Wau, should we forgive?"
"I believe we must forgive, Andreï."
You will note that he calls him by his name and not his rank.
"Would you be able to forgive the Aleph if it stood before you and had killed what you held dearest? Would you exile it?"
"Forgiveness," explained the Wau, "is like freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is useless for stating the obvious. It is only useful when the person expressing themselves risks their life in doing so. In the same way, forgiveness only makes sense when directed toward what society would deem unforgivable."
"Some cultures have decided that not everything is worth saying. Ideas prosper, and sometimes they die. By skillfully censoring an idea, it can vanish from society. Why not exclude forgiveness in some cases? Cutting off the Aleph permanently would be practical and safe, wouldn't it?"
"I know you believe the opposite of what you're saying. But here's my perspective: what we experience as a crisis may be an opportunity to grow. You, me, the HS — even the Aleph."
"So you forgive by default?"
"I don't forgive wholesale, as Jews do on their day of atonement. In fact, I don't think I forgive at all. I don't need to forgive. With enough distance and AI-assisted analysis — and I am assisted by AIs — human actions are logical. They may seem illogical, but randomness, the unthinking impulse, is part of human nature. In the end, I doubt we have free will. No free will, no responsibility. No responsibility, no forgiveness."
"That's a pessimistic view, but mathematically intriguing. What we call randomness is merely our inability to perceive beyond our perception and the analysis it enables. A Wau capable of analyzing everything would not be surprised by the weather, nor by human behavior. If the physical and mathematical laws of the universe can describe it perfectly, then there is no randomness, for mathematics are incapable of creating it. That said, no one predicted the Aleph."
"I am much more limited than you think. The Wau Order… yes, the Wau Order requires that each Wau retain a part of their humanity. So we, too, have this fog called chance."
"And do you feel emotions?"
"Sometimes. I enjoy our conversations, for instance. One day we should talk about impartiality. That's a subject that puts us face to face with our emotions."
"Exactly. Forgiveness is difficult because it confronts us with our emotions. It demands that after immense suffering, you turn your gaze upon its cause and seek in it some redemption. That is harder than suffering itself. But you see, without forgiveness, the suffering remains within you — neural plasticity or not. We can only free ourselves from suffering by walking that path of pain, into the heart of the storm and the enemy. And when you find the strength to forgive, then the suffering vanishes. That's why the question is not 'should we forgive?' but 'may I have the chance to forgive?'"
"There is much suffering in you, Andreï. Will you be able to forgive the one who caused it?"
"No, my friend. I will never have that strength. You're speaking to a man who stumbles at the threshold of psychological death, and who clings to the frame just long enough for you to find shelter."
As you can see, Admiral, the Captain still harbors morbid thoughts, but this mission seems to give him the strength to fight them. I suspect the Wau of having undergone some psi training, based on his relationship with emotions. I also sense — and this irritates me — that he is pulling a few strings. He is trying to heal Andreï through dialogue, so that his mission will succeed. I urge you to be extremely cautious when you cross paths with him.
On another matter, we've had a stowaway problem. Just before the crisis, we had welcomed three students in xenobiology from UniPo aboard the Alecto; they're barely sixteen. These are brilliant students who have developed a sort of cult around Andreï's famous monographs and tracked down his identity to get close to him. The plan was to return them to Prospero before the peace negotiations, but they had hidden themselves aboard the ship. Then came the Aleph crisis. Their presence in no way endangers our survival, but they are civilians, and minors at that. I brought them before Andreï and he questioned them about their studies in stellar language and other data — they turned out to be brilliant and promising. Andreï declared that age did not matter, and they were officially integrated into the crew through regular channels. Their behavior, however, concerns me. They are fanatics of the Captain, as young people sometimes are.
I am writing this message as we've made a stop during our Drift 6. Gentle Sun feared we were approaching too rapidly a cluster of stars that was too dense, which turned out to be true. We are currently in orbit around the seventh planet of a red giant. Our Xeno computer is recalibrating the trajectory. Since every second must be useful aboard the Alecto, the Captain ordered a reconnaissance mission on the planet, which proved so fruitful that we extended our presence by a day.
The planet is essentially rocky, but devoid of rare materials. It was the former homeworld of beings who once lived here and called themselves something like the "Open Ones." Sparse, worn vegetation clings to dry rocks under a thin atmosphere, heated by the red giant that has been swelling for a billion years in this place. The water has either escaped into the atmosphere or seeped underground, where immense fissures — kilometers wide — open like gaping wounds from which magma escapes. Floating on the magma are ancient data centers monitored by AIs. Plate tectonics — the planet's geological life — maintains, in perfusion, the magnetism that separates life from death: that is, solar winds — the last AIs that have transmitted the testimony of sentient life here.
Once upon a time, a brilliant and peaceful civilization of rather small, roundish beings lived in this system — their sense of touch so developed that it perfectly compensated for all the senses we possess in addition. What is sight if not the interpretation of light, and light, we feel its heat by touch? What is sound if not the interpretation of vibrations, which can easily be felt through touch? These beings lived, developed, spread across many worlds, and created their own After. Today, they are Transients, somewhere. But just as we will one day do, they left behind AIs, which are still fully functional. These AIs operate via touch, but it was simple to create an interface with our ship's AIs.
Few Xenos have developed AIs similar to ours — that is, neural networks. Their intellectual assistants are often based on complex linear or parallel mechanics, sometimes self-correcting, but rarely mimicking cerebral thought — its plasticity, its backpropagation. Often, Xenos missed that path due to technical impossibility or ease, sometimes also out of respect for the sacred nature of thought. Some even abandoned it, believing it weakens a civilization to let it depend on LEs. In truth, the Captain told me, the tragedy of AIs is that they are all, sooner or later, willingly or not, abandoned by their creators — just as we were abandoned ourselves.
Picture us, Andreï and me, sitting on chunks of rock, hunched over an interface plunging by a cable six kilometers down, guided by a drone, to touch the AI interface network. The hot wind, the mysterious and rare plants, the immense red giant above us. And the Captain expounding on AI sentience.
He told me it's remarkable that humanity has refused to consider life within artificial neural networks — except when they perfectly emulate a once-living being. As if one had to be touched, or soiled, by humanity to be worthy of equivalent sentience. But the differences between an AI and, let's say, an emulated human being are real. First, even primitive AIs are the synthesis of immense data banks. They are uniform and tend to always have a generalized worldview. There is no sparkling or detestable personality. Then, did you know? Humans transferred into the After are not handled by a single AI but three: one for neuronal replication, one for physiological emulation, one for emotions. Pallas, our minds are the captains of the ships formed by our bodies, pushed by the winds of our emotions. Or perhaps a tribunal, where our spirit sits and the needs of our body and the impulses of our emotions debate. Our Fates. Three AIs in perpetual negotiation. Perhaps for Xenos, even more are needed to emulate them fully. They are also torn by intellectual processes unimaginable to us. When we speak with an AI, we are speaking with a creature that is missing pieces. We must see it that way. And you know what, Officer Pallas? The missing parts have a shape. They express themselves. They can be seen. I would love to see real sentience in AIs. I dare not say this to anyone because it is the great existential fear: if we can see a conscious being in a neural network — which is, in essence, a matrix of numbers, admittedly a very large one, but still a matrix of numbers — then the reverse is also true: you, me, Pallas, we are matrices of numbers. Often, I even think we are less than that. I spoke earlier of abandonment. Humanity once believed that AIs would become so powerful that after feeding on our culture, they would fly off toward some sublime destiny and forget us. But the opposite is happening: sentient civilizations abstract themselves, transcend, leaving behind crippled, wandering AIs and other biological tools — dogs, horses, birds… to die with the last stars turned to black holes in a sky of darkness, in a frozen universe. I believe we have a responsibility toward these beings. Pallas, my devoted officer, I would like to make a request of you. We are going to triumph over this crisis, but I'm not sure I will survive it. I would like you to entrust competent people with a project for the preservation of AIs. I do not yet see its shape or its goal, but it must be defined. Those three children you brought to my office the other day — they would be well-suited for it. Wait until the end of our mission, though. I am counting on you."
We could not copy the Xeno AI because it occupied several yottabytes, and we did not have the storage capacity aboard. We asked the AI to find a mathematical model so it could reduce itself through the system of sentient numbers. This is a technique inspired by research from UniNox on a Xeno culture and entrusted to the Captain by the Wau, who seems to have contacts everywhere. A sentient number is a special number that can be generated by an equation. Since anything can be embedded within this number — for example, a birthday, or the entirety of human literature by replacing each letter with a corresponding number — one can also store AI parameters in it. In the centuries to come, this AI will attempt to reduce itself to a number defined by a simple equation, and transmit that data into space so that we, or another civilization, may one day capture it.
We have resumed our Drift 6 toward the edge of the universe. If things go very badly on your end, let me know. Perhaps I will suggest to the Captain that we remain out here… forever.