Mysterious Logbook

"And my vanquisher will read that book, seeking the weapon, and they will come to understand me, where I have been and where I was going."The following is a verbatim transcription of an official document for archival reasons. As the original content is transcribed word-for-word, any possible discrepancies and/or errors are included.

Cover of the Mysterious Logbook

The Mysterious Logbook is the journal of Clovis Bray I, included in the Beyond Light Collector's Edition. It contains entries on a variety of topics, including Europa and information relating to the moon, as well as Exos.

Based on the appearance of the pages, the journal is in decent condition, despite its likely age. There are at least 46 pages within the journal, with the final pages seemingly ripped out.

Text in this color indicates handwritten notes made by Clovis Bray I.

-01-

PERSONAL LOG

//encrypt
-pkey(clovisroot)
-qdresist(shor)
-rng_seed(AM_241)
-echo(HANNU:quartz)

ENTRY 1

-02-

A new start. A clean page for a most important story.

Hannu II is aerobraking around Jupiter. The lord of planets thunders his
greeting to me. As I record this, I am blasting Aivanti-3's "Siegfried in the
Storm Wall" over the radio howl of the Jovian magnetosphere. It galvanized
me. I am with the gods.

Ask Aivanti's trainers how they settled on the 1/2/3 suffixes. Numbers are perfectly

defined, therefore inhuman. Is this suffix meant to mark the Aivanti AI as nonhuman?

Objective: construct long-term scientific

outpost for study of indigenous Europan life.

Resources: eight prefab starter habitats,

600 shielded heavy work frames, and VIS(NU)

and B-RA/MA cytomachines with backup

replication chambers aboard Hannu. The best

hazardous-environment engineers money can't

buy. SMILE support for extended duration.

Two of Elisabeth's Eon-type platforms for

radar, Lidar, and deep ice mapping.

Hazards: Lethal radiation environment (heavy

ion bombardment from Jovian magnetosphere).

Unshielded crew half-Life is 24 hours.

The most expensive lie in human history. I am not here for a safari. All
of Europa's life will soon be known, mapped, and exhausted of wonder.
Bound by the tedious constraints of physics and biology. I know these
things too well. They are already killing me.

The K1 artifact promised me an offering. A gateway to the secret of
immortality. I call it Clarity.

It is waiting on Europa.

I am still dying, but not fast enough to kill me.

CORPOREAL STATUS:

• Body at 35.9 C. Pulse 25 BPM, strength
  

good. BP 75 over 50. Resp 6 breaths/

minute. Pulse ox 210%. Today's blood mix is

perfluorocarbon with stem slurry.

• Avoid hyperfocus with alpha-wave brain wash
  

for 10 min/hr.

• New kidneys are growing in Whitford the deli
  

pig for next transplants.

-03-

Must find a good pork recipe so Whitford will not go to waste. Medical
team insists I accept cytomachine injections. No! Nothing enters my body
that does not share my genetic self-interest. Instead I will grow an upgraded
monocyte strain.

Elisabeth's birthday approaches. A good gift would be an olive branch.
Never let her say I do not try. Hannu, please identify a gift that only could
come from my own intimate and personal knowledge of my granddaughter.

GIFT SUGGESTIONS:

• Antique weapon, or Twin Eagle replica.
• Professional pilot trained on Eon-series ship.
• Bespoke AI writer of personalized novels.
• Fruit basket, Titan farmed.
• Humanitarian investment (minefield
  

clearance, long-term reparations, anti-

traumatic medicine).

These are pathetic, Hannu.

REVISED GIFT SUGGESTIONS:

• Research endowment, medical (prion diseases
  

in persons with immune resistance to

recombinant gene therapy).

• Research endowment, medical (sporadic
  

fatal insomnia). • Research endowment,

psychological (loss of father, family

trauma).

• Research endowment, psychological
  

(reconstruction of trust after Loss).

• Personal apology, unpracticed (death of
  

patient in physician's care).

• Statement of grief, unpracticed (death of
  

son).

Never mind, Hannu. Buy a few doghives for a soil reclamation project
somewhere. Honeybees, whatever strain is best. And big friendly
Newfoundlands for the hives. Everyone loves doghives.

-04-

Ongoing projects:

• Exomind: blocked

• Contact ICoV for their trick: failed
• Hire Duane McNiadh away from ICOV: failed
• Raid ICoV for Vex data: in planning

• Europa/Clarity: in progress
• Be a good man and a good grandfather:
  

in progress

• Become LUCA of future human thought:
  

in progress

NOTE--BAROTRAUMA

-05-

If we land too hard on Europa, we will plunge into the ocean below the ice
and die of barotrauma. Death by pressure.

The only light down there comes from magma and phosphorescent bait.
The sea is 10 times deeper than Earth's. Even in Europa's weak gravity,
peak pressure at the sea floor is 2000 atmospheres. Worse than Venus,
before the Traveler.

One imagines pi contracting under that kind of pressure, crushing the
perfect circle closed.

I wonder what lives down there. What slow confusions of mass and form
curl around the smoking vents. What threads of pale flesh slither across
dark miles, like nerves in some vast, cold brain.

Did the Traveler bypass Europa and Titan and Enceladus out of respect for
their native life?

Or was it afraid to touch the things pulsating below the ice?

ENTRY 2

-06-

//-update(-echo(HANNU:quartz, SITEX:mistletoe))

On Europa. We lurk like summer vampires in the caskets of our SMILE
pods. Our frames labor on the ice, building a cathedral to the sciences.
Radiation is very bad outside; even my assistant has taken ion damage out
there. Pleased to see him healing flawlessly, vacant and empty as he is.

What if this perfect self-repair is the REASON the exos degrade?

I sulk in isolation as the crew works. My pride is wounded. Did I expect
Clarity to come out and greet me? "Hail to Clovis Bray, first among men?"
Yes, absolutely, I did! The lunar artifact promised me a solution to the
indifference of the cosmos. It told me I was unlike all others--and, damn
false modesty, damn vanity, I am different! Not for my present qualities,
but for my future influence. I shine with noon's light, reflected back
through time to this age of dawn.

Perhaps the mind heals itself still, and this causes the billboarding,

the stereotyped behavior,

I'm going to be the LUCA of all interstellar human civilization.

the final crash.

It is a mistake to imagine that the Greatest Man, the God-Emperor of
History and Ruler of Circumstances whose influence reaches to the end
of time, will live in the future--in the full flowering of human glory. That
man lives NOW, at the tiny bottleneck before the vast explosion, when it is
still possible for an individual's decisions to touch the entire species and set
the course of all future choice.

Self-maintenance so absolute that it becomes a static loop? Investigate.

I said all this in my book, but my son's book still sells better. I suppose
because Clovis Points is a much more approachable title than Competitive
Immortality Through Primogeniture of Future-History Ontogeny/Rephylogeny
(PFHOR). My son's work appeals to those intellectual infants in the
retronationals, and to the parasites on Common Compassion support.

Obviously they prefer the softened, pre-chewed version of the truth. And
there is also that bump of public sympathy for a dead man...

Yet I cannot deny that, in simplifying my legacy, my son has improved its
reach. He was the one to formulate the famous two-sentence summary
of PFHOR: "Most of our energy should be spent in support of the things
that are most like us. This is the only true responsibility of any living
thing." And the slightly less famous addendum: "The best way to spend
energy is on things that make more things like us."

Children are viral replicators of our ideas. But there is a certain terror about
them. They alter our legacy, mutate it--as Clovis II modified Competitive

-07-

Immortality Through PFHOR into Clovis Points. What if my children
decide on some key amendment, some ineffable change, which makes my
legacy no longer mine? How can I be reborn through the eternal recurrence
of my life-logic if what my children pass down is the logic of some other
Clovis, some flawed copy...just as Clovis II was a flawed image of me?

A flaw that I created in my clumsy eagerness to make him flawless.

My second-boldest decision during my son's development was to replace
Clovis II's mitochondrial DNA, normally inherited from the mother,
with my own. I had to know that I was in his cellular engines, powering
his existence.

It was not that change which killed him.

But it is the fear of being replaced by a faulty duplicate that will kill me, if I
put off my brain upload much longer.

I have a library of scanned volunteers aboard Hannu, but my own
consciousness is not among them. A Moravec upload is slow and inadequate;
what if there are quantum-informatic elements to the mind not captured
by such crude mechanical means? No. I insist on that perfect, terminal
quantum snapshot. For reasons of fidelity, the only perfect and lossless brain
scan is also a destructive one. A fatal one.

Clovis II died in one, after all. I made the

vessel to recieve him, but I lacked the Alkahest, the solvent to render it pure.

But I dare not make the leap to a new body until I know that body works.
And so far, the exobodies are universally fatal.

I must finish the exobody work to become the LUCA. The one true divinity of man.

To do that, I need Clarity.

And Clarity is here. All the signs point to it.

If I succeed--no forgiveness for those

tight-fisted Ishtar tools. I know they had working prototypes.

They could have shared.

CORPOREAL STATUS:

• Body at 35.5 C. Pulse 30 BPM, strength
  

modest. BP 90 over 60. Resp 6 breaths/

minute. Pulse ox 140, to reduce free

radicals and peroxynitrite.

• Today's blood mix is pure perfluorocarbon
  

with new modified monocytes.

• New kidneys functioning well. Donor pig
  

sacrificed, brined, prepared as seared pork

chops.

-08-

Sous vide is for prissy nerds. Poor Whitford. I wonder if I should reduce the volume

of my stem cells introduced to the pig blastocysts. I feel too much empathy for them.

Does PFHOR compel me to take better care of Clovis-pig chimeras than ordinary porkers?

Yes...but only to the extent that they can contribute to my legacy

with cloned organs and good eating. No guilt!

NOTE--SAVAGING

-09-

The term for parents destroying their own offspring is "savaging."

It was a problem for pig farmers, in the days when we raised livestock. Sows
attacked their own piglets. No one has ever worked out a good explanation.
One theory is that the mother pigs are frightened by their young. Terrified
by these strange, noisy, needy things.

Evolution is not a perfect optimizer. A trait like "fear of own offspring" could endure

if piglet mortality is already high.

The ancient biologist August Weismann believed that we age to make
room for the next generation. That we are programmed to die to leave a
space for our offspring.

Perhaps the sows simply acted in self-defense.

NOTE--EUROPA LIFE

-010-

Now a bristling thing, large as a whale, appears on the icebore camera we
dropped into the ocean below. A dandelion made of soft arms. Bright red
and yellow markings indicate it evolved in the shallows, where some light
pierces the ice.

The limbs wave slowly to and fro, a motion that is both hunting and
breathings. Prey approaches, drawn by plankton that cake on the drifter's
skin. With vegetable slowness, its limbs embrace the victim, sting it, and
pull it into an open central stomach where thready parasites wait to infest
and digest. Everything it does is slow and intestinal. Pulsatory. Brainless.

Sometimes the limbs bicker. Two are dead, fuzzy with rot. They have
strangled each other.

It is a colony organism. If threatened, it will discorporate. The limbs will
spasm, the core will tear apart in a puff of fluids, and all those arms will
slither away into the dark beneath the ice. Fat worms of terror searching
for a hide. The digestive parasites will be expelled as a decoy, left to
squirm in panic.

I despise it. I would have it killed, except that I am repulsed by the thought
of its final disintegration. I consider how to burn it.

ENTRY 3

-011-

I died. What a nuisance.

CORPOREAL STATUS:

• Body at 13.7 C. Pulse 3 BPM, weak,
  

irregular. BP not detectable. Pulse ox

600: emergency anti-ischemic oxygen

flood, cryonic perfusion, metabolic waste

scavengers active.

• Clinical death duration: 11 hours.
  
• Successful emergency hypothermic arrest.
  

Reactive oxygen spike tamped, interleukin

blocked, redox blocked, ischemic-reperfusion

injury fully averted. PPARs upregulated.

Squirrel lipid switch engaged.

• Prognosis: good.

Dropped dead of dysautonomia while rummaging for leftover pork chop.
I am now in recovery in a medical SMILE pod. I have no breath and
no pulse--it is the return of oxygen to dead tissue that does most of the
damage. I should be asleep. But I have to get this down quickly!

While I was dead I HAD A DREAM.

I was in a working exobody. I felt so strong. Everything so vivid--no need
for waxy eardrums or jelly eyeballs. Like seeing for the first time, after a life
of cataracts. I think I was immortal.

The only unpleasant aspect of the experience was my amnesia. I couldn't
recall my own name. I saw someone walking past me--I think it must have
been Anastasia?--and not only did I fail to recognize her, but it never even
occurred to me that I should.

When I awoke, I thought I must have had a near-death vision. So I checked
my nerve logs. Every last spark in my brain is recorded--and nothing in
that cerebral panic can account for my dream. The mind is the brain. It is
impossible to have a vision without correlated neural activity--yet I did!

Wonderful! This is why I came here. Unmapped secrets! Impossible
dreams! A chance to pass beyond the infinite, and escape the tyranny of
causal closure!

I wholeheartedly believe that the dream was a message from Clarity.
A promise of success.

-012-

I struggle to explain what I will become. The LUCA. I borrowed that term
from biology, in the same way I consider BrayTech my extended phenotype,
and its discoveries my memetic grandchildren. When we depart the cradle
of this solar system to begin our colonization of the galaxy, the dominant
ideology of our time--the core logic we use to organize and plan our
relationship with the cosmos--will be scattered to become the LUCA: the
Last Universal Common Ancestor of all future human growth.

The LUCA is the most recent common ancestor of all living things. For
Earth life, it is a single cell that lived in the deep ocean billions of years
ago, flourishing in the warmth of magma or sulfur vents. It was not the
first life on Earth. But it was the only life whose descendants survived to
the present. All its contemporaries have been extinguished by the passage
of epochs.

I plan to be the LUCA of all future human thought.

Now I remember Luca Brassi, the Corleone family heavy. Nuipedia says that Barri

murdered his own infant child. Why? Why would he do such a thing?

The article doesn't explain. Savaging again.

NOTE--CLARITY

-013-

Study of the lunar artifact retrieved from the K1 mission provides insight
into the effect I have termed "Clarity."

Clarity violates established symmetries and conservation laws. In doing
so it defies Noether's theorem, the most fundamental and beautiful
cornerstone of physics.

Symmetry and conservation are two sides of the same coin. "All things are
transformations of one thing, without gain or loss," as my childhood tutor
put it. "If A can become B, then B can become A. We say that state B (say,
a mixed drink) comes after state A (say, sugar and water) only because there
are more probable pathways from A to B. Wait long enough--longer than
the universe--and your drink really can return to state A, spontaneously
unmixing itself."

But Clarity is NOT always symmetrical. For example, it violates time
reversibility. Consider the simple equation:

Clarity(A) -> B.

This is the application of Clarity to state A to produce a lower-entropy state
B. (Clarity is fond of removing portions of a state configuration, harrowing
the phase space down to only its most robust inhabitants.)

Time symmetry suggests that we should be able to run this process in
reverse and retrieve the original:

reverseClarity(B) -> A.

But in fact, we obtain:

reverseClarity(B) -> C,

where C is the same as in

Clarity(B) -> C.

Clarity's effects cannot be used to return a transformed state to its original
state. Instead, we obtain a second transformed state, further yet from the
original configuration.

What does this actually mean in common language? Invoking

the Loschmidt paradox is certainly not common language. Ah, but perhaps an allusion to--

I believe that Clarity may be akin to the mythical universal solvent, the
Alkahest, the Azoth, which ancient alchemists believed had the power
to dissolve anything into its pure base elements. Ingested properly, the
Alkahest could purify the body and grant eternal life.

-014-

Nonsense and poetry? Perhaps. But let me ask you this.
WHY DO WE EXIST?

We exist because the universe began in a state oflower entropy, and has ever
since expanded and unwound, transforming from a single dense plasma into
a void filled with complex structures. In the future, it will achieve maximum
entropy when all organized matter has collapsed into black holes, and these
holes evaporate into the uniformity of the heat death.

I wonder what Clarity would to do to a black hole?

This is the unexplained secret of creation. HOW DID THAT ORIGINAL
LOW-ENTROPY STATE COME TO BE? In the first place and the first
time--the egg of history?

What if Clarity was responsible?

What if there was some primeval chaos, some pre-cosmic entropy, which
was soaked in Clarity to reduce it to that first nucleus of all existence
which issued the Big Bang? What if Clarity's defiance of time-reversibility
makes it a fountain of cosmic youth, returning all that is burnt out and
burnt down to its state before the fire?

Perhaps Clarity is the Ein Sof, the nameless god before creation.
Preparator of the cosmic egg. Razor that cuts the fat of complication away
from the bone.

Those who comprehend the Alkahest, it is said, will obtain eternal life.

MESSAGE TO BRAY, WILHELMINA

-015-

//encrypt -pkey(clovisroot) - qdresist(shor) --
rng_seed(AM_241) --pad(padwilla)
Warning: this transmission will expend
entangled qubits for security

Wilhelmina, it's your grandfather. I'm on Europa doing some very exciting
work. I understand that you're probably reluctant to enter into any
collaboration, given my choices surrounding your father's treatment. But I
sincerely believe that this will be the most important scientific project since
the invention of agriculture.

You know how I value minds that can run alongside my own. I fondly
remember your childhood explanation of the myth of the alpha wolf. The
truth, you told me, was that the so-called alpha is not a dominant male, but
simply the father of the family.

I remember with less fondness, but with equal respect, your later accusation
that I had so fully assumed the role of immortal patriarch as to close myself
off from you. "Megalos kryos pateras," you called me, in very poor Greek.
On the day of my son's funeral.

Let me show you what I was thinking of when I was not thinking of my family.

Come to Europa. Help me.

//save draft unsent

MESSAGE TO BRAY, ANASTASIA

-016-

//encrypt -pkey(clovisroot) - qdresist(shor) --
rng_seed(AM_241) --pad(padana)
Warning: this transmission will expend
entangled qubits for security.

Anastasia, it's your grandfather. I'm on Europa doing some very exciting
work. I understand that you're probably reluctant to enter into any
collaboration, given your memory of your father's treatment process. I also
know that you've struggled with questions of belonging...not helped by my
own attitude towards your genetics.

Let me make amends. You've wasted enough on that paranoiac machine.
Both of us know that your attempts to fix the value-capture problem are
just bandages on an ethical wound. Come to Europa. Let's set aside the
broken past and make a clean start.

What I have here will change everything. We will be as immortal as your
warmind, and far more human.

//save draft unsent

MESSAGE TO BRAY, ELISABETH

-017-

//encrypt -pkey(clovisroot) -qdresist(shor) --
rng_seed(AM_241) --pad(padelsie)

Come to Europa. I am taking an enormous risk-and this time I am the one
at risk. Let me prove to you that I did nothing to your father that I wouldn't
do to myself.

There are significant dangers. Outside-context threats. Your expertise would
be invaluable. I need you.

//save

ENTRY 4

-018-

I FOUND HER!

Clarity Control. The mystery I was promised.

Analysis of the surrounding ice suggests it arrived on Europa no more than
20 years ago...still, well before I encountered the K1 artifact. How long
have they planned my invitation?

ARRIVAL EVENT: omnibus analysis of

spallation products in the ice suggest

recent x-ray bombardment, characteristic

of the decay of a Majorana-massive Light

sterile neutrino. These neutrinos are

associated with the Lambda field and the

expansion of the early universe.

So a blast of dark neutrinos struck this particular province of Europan
chaos. The particle involved-yet more evidence that Clarity is as old as
time? The Alkahest that shaped the early universe...?

I wonder why Clarity Control chose the particular aspect it did. That form,
that face. The same visage as the precursor on Earth's moon. What is it
meant to communicate? Is it a message particularly meant for me?

I have always harbored a wariness towards women. I understand people as
coiled engines of self-interest. Programmed first by a cosmology that selects,
via the anthropic principle, for the possibility of complex structure. Then
by a biology that wipes out traits deleterious to its own persistence. And
then by a culture that evolves to promote the survival of its hosts. People
are avatars of these self-preserving forces.

I feel a purity and a rightness to this understanding. It lets me see people as
they really are. It is the foundation of PFHOR.

But all this is complicated in women. They are the sites of such
evolutionary complexity-the grandmother hypothesis, for example, or the
eusociality of female ants. Even their flesh is hard to understand. Female
bodies are a mosaic of two cell lines-one with the mother's X chromosome
active, one with the father's. Never both. A house of two lineages,
constantly renegotiating their mutual interest.

-019-

ls that interior plurality, that secret depth, why Elisabeth, Wilhelmina,
and Anastasia were all so vehemently opposed to my plan for Clovis Il's
treatment? Alton never fought it, but the girls were persistently...difficult.

Elisabeth has not replied to my message. I know she received it. I will have
to remind her of her own self-interest.

NOTE--WHY EXOMINDS FAIL

-020-

The major obstacle to a viable exomind is the loop/billboard/crash cycle.

Human consciousness in simula is not new. (The equipment we provided
AeroChina for containment of the K1 anomaly included simulated
connectome forks of the mission crew as mineshaft canaries.) But
simulated environments are limited. If a simulated crew member wants to
leave the mission and go home, they cannot, and that impossibility will
cause divergence from the physical original. Even minute changes in the
physical fidelity of the simulation can have chaotic effects.

All cognition is embodied. The architecture of our minds is highly
co-evolved with our physical form. In or out of simulation, only a truly
synthetic Al can dissociate from the human body plan.

And there be dragons.

Without common evolutionary legacy, there is no reason an AI should share our values.

Given the limits of simulation, we need to find synthetic immortality
in the real world. The grail of homo simulacra is an artificial body with
an immortal human mind. (Attempts to upload human minds into
frames, with their artificial senses and limited architecture, are uniformly
terrifying and disagreeable.)

Early attempts at uploaded consciousness were haunted by fears that
the upload would suffer "cryptic loss of qualia": the unseen death of the
first-person, conscious mind. The upload would then become a so-called
billboard, a flat imitation. I lobbied the ISO to establish a standard for
a "certified conscious simulacrum." Any emulation of a human brain
must display neural activity correlated with consciousness, particularly in
the nuclei of the thalamus, midbrain, and pons. (Modern philosophy is
satisfied that all qualia have neural correlates.)

Many researchers refer to this criterion as the "zombie detector."

The problem with exominds is that they quickly stop passing the
zombie test.

The first stage of the breakdown is looping-the same repetitive,
stereotyped behavior once observed in zoo animals. Prototype exominds
begin to repeat similar conversations and action schemes. This stereotypy
descends from high-level social behaviors, through cognitive programs
like memory recall and task selection, into basic motor functions. The
mid-stage symptoms are pacing, chewing, rocking, grunting, striking
limbs against walls or furniture, and facial tics. This is a result of
depressed activity in the higher brain. Without input from the prefrontal
cortex, the basal ganglia stops selecting new motor programs.

-021-

The eventual, highly upsetting result is athetosis: a disorder characterized
by slow, involuntary writhing motions of the limbs, digits, neck, and
tongue. (Early exobodies, without governors on their paramuscle, could
tear themselves apart like starfish with wasting syndrome. This was how
my son died.)

I am reminded of that hideous Europan thing! Why does my brain

insist on free-associating its way back to self-destruction? And again I return to

savaging the young--

The driver of this degenerative loop is a process we call "billboarding." No
matter how actively we stimulate the exobody, how rich we make its social
and cognitive environment, and how powerful its senses, we still observe
the gradual shutdown of exoneurons. The neural correlates of consciousness
in the midbrain are among the first to die. The exomind-despite acing
the Turing test-no longer meets ISO standards for consciousness. It is a
philosophical zombie.

I have had the uncanny experience of holding a long,

emotional conversation with an uploaded woman, only to discover that she was unconscious

Eventually, this shutdown proceeds far enough that the exomind cannot sustain
its default network, the "light in the windows" of a living brain. We roll the
brainstate back and try again, but the outcome is inevitable.

the entire time, and in fact showed

brain activity similar to deep asphyxia! The languid, ambiguous phrases that I found

Why does this self-strangulation occur?

so intriguing were the results of a brain that had lost its neocortex.

She was dead.

At first I believed the answer was simple. Like a tiger pacing in a zoo pen, the
exomind did not receive enough stimulation from the exobody. A human in
sensory deprivation will go mad. Perhaps the exobody deprived the mind of
some vital but unrecognized sense.

But I now think I was on the wrong track. The problem is actually one of
excessive self-causation. If, as the philosopher Wick proposed, "We are that
which we cause the most," and our future selves qualify as "still truly us" only
because they are primarily determined by our current brainstate, then a paradox
arises.

To remain ourselves, we must limit the amount of change we experience. For
example, our brain cannot be changed into a cloud of hot gas without killing
us. But what change is permissible? Would we not be most ourselves if we
NEVER changed? If our future state was fully determined by our current
state?

I believe the human mind is engaged in constant self-correction. In order
to filter out external causation that might disrupt our self-loops, the mind
screens out errors (caused by cosmic rays, EM fields, prions, chemical
misfires, irritating conversations, etc.) by running a kind of constant
checksum on itself. Perhaps this recursive self-checking is even the source of
consciousness itself!

Exominds, however, are immune to these natural sources of error. They are
not messy enough. They do not suffer enough jitter, enough degradation.

-022-

When we train Ais, we knock out random neurons in each learning cycle,
forcing the AI to operate without them. This creates a more robust, stable
intelligence. It also shows why some random error and entropy is vital to
keeping a brain alive. Without those random knockouts, the AI is vulnerable
to overfitting: locking itself into a single, narrow, stereotyped behavior,
perfectly adapted to a very specific set of stimuli, but otherwise catatonic and
unresponsive.

Without countervailing entropy, the very self-corrective processes meant to
maintain the human mind calcify and kill it.

I believe this is why the exominds fail.

If the exominds are to be viable shelters against mortality, I must find a
useful source of noise. Emulation of biological error will not be enough-the
exomind is designed for total immunity to such fleshy noise, after all.

That source of error must be Clarity. The effect generated by Clarity Control.

But how can it be gathered, harvested, and applied? How can I change Clarity
from an abstract process to something tangible, incarnate, and usable?

I know that it is possible. It is the reason I was brought here.

MESSAGE TO BRAY, ELISABETH

-023-

//encrypt -pkey(clovisroot) -qdresist(shor) --
rng_seed(AM241) --pad(padelsie)
Warning: this transmission will expend
entangled qubits for security.

I know your secret. Did you think you could keep it from me? Elisabeth, I
keep track of every tiny change in your gene expression. I know when you so
much as burp. You are my offspring! You are the most important thing in the
universe to me, for you are an extension of my own self!

I understand you're angry with me. I would be too, if I'd watched my father
come so close to salvation, only to die the way he did. Believe me-the groans
and snaps of his exobody tearing itself apart haunt me almost as profoundly
as the things we said over his deathbed.

I failed your father. First I tried to make him sleepless. When that failed
augment eventually turned against him, I correctly identified the disease as
fatal prion insomnia while those incompetents were still blathering about
unexplained cachexia. I even recognized that my boy's hypervigilant immune
system would make gene therapy and polythiophene treatment ineffective. At
every step, I was ahead of the problem, and entirely focused on its solution.

I determined to transfer him to a new body. And I failed. The new body
killed him. His final scan still sleeps in the family archives, awaiting,
perhaps, some second chance.

But what I am working on here could have saved him. Could save him still.

AND IT CAN SAVE YOU.

You know that you have your father's disease, inherited from the same genes
I so rashly engineered. You have the Clovis Curse. There is no way to know
exactly when it will strike, but once it does, I'm sure you've charted out
exactly how it will progress.

First: insomnia. Panic, hallucination, and fear. Extended hypnagogia and the
loss of all dreams. You will sweat and your eyes will dwindle to points. You
will go into menopause. You will try anti-prion treatments and gene therapy
to correct the mutation, but your enhanced immunity will protect the very
flaw that is killing you. You will try immunosuppressants, but they will be no
match for the family arsenal. I did not make us to be easily edited.

-024-

Within two years, you will be entirely unable to sleep. Dementia and
wasting will follow. You will be dead by then, but the husk you leave
behind will continue to live, sustained by machines, unable even to dream
of a time when it was Elisabeth Bray.

Come to me. I am dying too. Let us save each other.

//send

ENTRY 5

-025-

Disaster at the worksite. Clearly we will not be moving Clarity Control
like we did the K1 artifact. It reacted violently to the attempt. I have
entered 19 casualties into the log, since 19 engineers from the Hannu
team were caught in its reaction...though there were many more than 19
bodies when it was finished.

I have sequestered the recordings. Especially the sensorium telemetry.
Quite upsetting.

Yet I do not believe it was an act of hostility. Even this outburst carried
themes of duplication...as if Clarity Control wanted to show it could
help me.

It whispers to me. I have been communicating with it, just as I did the K1
artifact.

I dashed off a memo to the expedition team (all fully NDA'd, of course,
with hashes of their brain states on file as proof of honesty). I tried to be
plain. Yes, we will proceed with necessary caution. But I am now in contact
with Clarity Control. I am in communication with an intelligence so far
beyond our own that it can manipulate us like stones on a go board.

Terrifying, obviously--but not malevolent.

NOT MALEVOLENT!!!

If it wanted to extinguish us (according to dark forest logic, perhaps)
it would simply drop a strangelet into Earth. There is nothing it could
possibly want from us that could not be obtained elsewhere. Even if it
were so malicious as to feed on the raw suffering of conscious minds, it
would be easier to build vast hell-simulations, or to engineer a custom
species capable of limitless woe.

If we are endangered by Clarity Control, it is only through accident or
miscommunication. Or punishment. Punishment is a key part of any
teaching process.

Still, I am keenly aware that there might be some danger I cannot
foresee. So I have ordered an orbital platform constructed over the
worksite. If we need catastrophic containment, or a quick and thorough
redaction of our work here, the platform will excurse from its orbit and
collide with the site.

Europa's orbital dynamics make even high polar orbits very unstable,
so the platform needs onboard power for course correction. A fission

-026-

reactor makes sense--it requires less frequent refueling than a fusion
plant, and it's easy to hide something in the design that will allow it to
achieve, ah, extremely prompt criticality.

Now we can proceed with peace of mind.

CORPOREAL STATUS:

• Body at 33.2 C. Pulse 33 BPM, strength
  

good. BP 120 over 100. Resp 10 breaths/

minute. Pulse ox 90, oxygen radical cleanup

in progress.

• Today's blood mix is enriched pig's blood
  

with new modified monocyte.

• Prep for liver regeneration and gallbladder
  

transplant underway.

MESSAGE FROM BRAY, ELISABETH

-027-

//decrypt -pkey(clovisroot) --pad(padelsie)

Fine. I'm coming. If only to limit the damage you can cause.

If you tell the family I'm sick, I'll never speak to you again. I won't even let
you treat me. You'll have to watch, helpless, as your own granddaughter
falls victim to your mistakes.

I hope you're still someone capable of being troubled by that.

-E

//save

ENTRY 6

-028-

A gate. Of course. Clarity Control is inviting me to make a GATE.

The Messenger Hypothesis. Aliens would seek

the most efficient method of interstellar

contact. Starships are slow, fragile, and

massive. It is easier to send a set of

instructions for a message receiver, or a

construction blueprint for a portal.

This explains the reports of visions and paranoia at the K1 site! The idiots
were receiving a message, but they failed to divine the true purpose! Or
perhaps the invitation was only intended for me. And it IS an invitation...

...but I will need more data, and more talent, to answer it. I feel that the
gate Clarity Control wants me to build is not any form or product of
Clarity itself. The design, I think, is Vex...those pestilential nuisances
encountered on Venus and occasionally elsewhere.

If I need a Vex gate to fulfill Clarity Control's purpose, then I will make a
Vex gate in the simplest way. I will have a Vex build it for me.

I know exactly where to find one. The only trick will be concealing the fact
that I've taken it.

ASSET ACTIVATION:

//venus/ishtar/management/TRUSTFALL

//venus/Ishtar/labor/DENNIS

//venus/aerospace/ISR/NASSAU

//venus/aerospace/cargo/WARBLER

ENTRY 6 AMENDMENT

-029-

The raid on the Ishtar Collective went off flawlessly. Some casualties during
the outbreak, of course--they were woefully unprepared for their artifacts to
switch into expand-and-exploit behavior. Necessary sacrifices, alas. They died
meaningful deaths for a vital human project, even if they didn't know it.
Heroes, every one.

After Rasputin intervened with frames and orbital fire, there was urgent
need for search and rescue. An easy task to have one of our ships slip away
with a specimen. By the time Ishtar is up and running again, they'll attribute
the missing artifact to damage during the battle.

The stolen machine is now at work building the gate I require.

The gate shares nothing in common with the structure of Clarity Control.
In fact, I am not sure it has a structure at all beyond the gross material form
and some apparently arbitrary interior complications. Even the materials are
elementally basic. Perhaps the design is old on a cosmic scale, dating back to
an era before supernovas, when there was very little free metal.

I think the structure of the gate is simply a password, a configuration of
symbols which will be recognized by some distant technology. A connection
will be made. And what will we find when we pass through? The Babylon of
the universe? The Silk Road of some cosmic union?

I will be the first, of course, but I will not go in the flesh. I will use my
assistant as remote proxy. It is all so exciting that I can hardly--

Can hardly--

CORPOREAL ALERT:

• Body at 30.2 C: emergency cooling. Pulse
  

AFib: defibrillating. Pulse ox 110: supportive

oxygen.

• Inducing protective syncope.

NOTE--THE WATER AND THE WAVE

-030-

Quickly! Quickly, have to get it down. I saw--

I was a beast upon the earth, a salamander or an eel. Water passed through
that earth as streams pass through a garden. Beside each stream grew sweet
grass. Not much of it, but enough to feed little aphids, who lived mean and
starving lives.

Now there came an upwelling of water from the earth, so that the streams
ran fat and slow. The grass grew thick. The aphids mated and multiplied.
Ants came to enslave the aphids, and the aphids joined together to oppose
them. And in victory they returned to tend their grass, to aerate its roots
and spread its seeds. So they did thrive.

Now it occurred to me that I might join two streams by crawling between
them on my belly. Having done so, I saw that I might dam one stream to
divert its water into the other. The aphids of the first stream came to me in
protest, but I said to them, "Go to the new pond I have made, and join the
aphids there in cultivation, and I will send more water unto you."

And they were greatened by the joining.

Thus, I proceeded to join all the streams together into one pond. And
whenever the aphids of a small stream might protest, I said to them, "Go,
look at my pond, and see the plenitude I have provided to my people
there." When it became necessary to stop those upstream from polluting
the water, I offered them the bounty of our pond, the grass and the
watercress. And if they did not yield, I sent the ant-fighters against them,
because their petty good injured the good of the all.

I appointed ministers of water and soil and seed and war, and to the most
loyal, I gave these posts as reward; but ultimately their power depended on
me, for they were aphid and I was Leviathan.

In time, I became the coordinator of all water and the dispensator of fertility.
Then I became the coordinator of coordinators, and I gave up the control of
thirst and life for control of those who had control. And all my craft became
the pure and abstract management of power.

Note: reminds me of a book--

theory and practice of something, by E. Goldstein? Or that Michels tract about

oligarchy?

Then saw upon the horizon a wave, and the wave was God, and it
approached me, saying, "We are as one, you and I. We are the gathering of
the waters. Gather unto me as they have gathered unto you; we will be as
one." The aphids screamed and begged me for salvation. But I was not of
them. I was of the wave.

-031-

Clearly a message from Clarity Control! And written in allegorical large
print. I am, in the eyes (or whatever percepts it possesses) of Clarity, the
leader of humanity. This is why they contacted me. This is why they want
me.

They are an association of coordinators, those whose choices cause change.
And they are inviting me into their pantheon.

We must_ finish this gate.

MESSAGE TO BRAY, ELISABETH

-032-

//encrypt -pkey(clovisroot) -qdresist(shor) --
rng_seed(AM241) --pad(padelsie)
Warning: this transmission will expend
entangled qubits for security.

I see that your ship is making its orbital insertion. I trust the progress on
Bray Station will impress. It makes a fine mooring point, if you please, and
its transmat facilities are the quickest way down to the surface. There is no
luxury as fine as a good telepheretic network-it gets you to the edge of the
map, where the real work begins.

I'll want to examine you as soon as you arrive, just to get a baseline
measurement on the progress of the disease. The transmat system is
unfortunately not an adequate imager. As you're well aware, transmat obeys
the no-cloning theorem, functioning precisely because it DOESN'T allow
us to store or copy the information transmitted. Otherwise there would be
no need for exobodies; we could simply print healthy copies of ourselves
from the transmat. (Perhaps Willa will one day learn how to engrammatize
and duplicate the human form, hm?)

I promise I won't conduct any brain scans. If we're ultimately going to
transubstantiate you, we'll wait until I'm certain the exobodies are safe.
And I vow to obtain your full consent.

I've prepared an itinerary, starting with a review of our security and
then an introduction to our captive Vex worker. I want your insight on
everything related to containment and control. I know you had strong
feedback about how the K1 mission was handled.

You'll see that certain areas of our facilities are off limits. They are under
my personal authority, and I keep them sequestered for everyone's safety. I
know you'll be curious anyway. I won't condescend to give you instructions
you won't obey. But know that your attempts to penetrate those areas won't
succeed.

Welcome. We have so much to do.

//send

ENTRY 7

-033-

We passed through the gate. Myself and my team. Elisabeth insisted on
coming. I could hardly call her all this way and then refuse her.

EXOB0DY STATUS:

• Proxy mode, remote operator, microwave
  

repeater Link.

• Internal temperature 222K.
• Superconducting media Loaded: diamond-anvil
  

hydrogen sulfide, carbon nanotube mesh.

• Remote sensorium Latency 16ms.
• Q-dot battery charge: 10100 yrs at current
  

load.

• Spintronics in neuromorphic/mimetic mode.

What lay beyond--

Gateway analysis. A non-gravitating, purely

geometric traversable wormhole of the Ellis

configuration. There is no singularity and

no firewall (interesting ramifications for

ER = EPR). The wormhole manifold provides

a pathway to another four-point in our

spacetime, or in a nearby parallel universe

in the quantum many-worlds ensemble.

We passed into a gallery of awesome light. It struck us to our knees.

The probe imagery did not prepare us. A curtain of blue-violet fire filled an
entire half of the sky, pebbled with granules, seething with promontories
and flares. We stood beneath a blue hypergiant, titan of suns, looming over
all. It should have killed my human-bodied companions instantly--with
peak radiance in the far ultraviolet, it would cook flesh.

But the probes said it was, impossibly, safe for life.

We fanned out into ancient stone ruins, pierced by dull metal towers
and flickering lines of light. Though the rock was cracked and pitted by
radiation, our geologist identified it at once. "Felsic granite," he reported.
"No iron. No heavy metals at all. A lot more sodium, oxygen, boron, and
aluminum than I'd expect, and a lot less silicon...oh my God."

-034-

"What?" I demanded.

"This rock is almost 13 billion years old," the geologist whispered. "It
formed with the very first generation of planets, less than a billion years
after the universe was born. We are standing on a dissected piece of one of
the first worlds."

"That's not possible," the astronomer protested. "That's a type-0
hypergiant up there. They're lucky to live two million years! And its
metallicity is 15 sigma above average! That is not an old star!"

I opened my proxy arms to the light. The gate had taken us to a miracle.
This star was big enough to fill the solar system from the Sun to the orbit
of Neptune; bright enough to shine like the full moon, even from the
distance of Alpha Centauri. Yet here I was, unblinded.

Something had tampered with this star.

Our physicist identified a lensing effect, magnifying the star's optical size
and redshifting its radiation. It was as if the whole behemoth was wrapped
in some kind of skin.

But that was only the beginning.

Hypergiant stars are so bright that the

outward pressure of their radiation tends

to blow off the corona. In the Last million

years, this star has exhaled more than

30 times the mass of Earth's sun into its

2000-kilometer-per-second stellar wind.

Its remaining mass still exceeds our Sun's

by a factor of 259.

We assumed the star could not be 13 billion years old.

because stars this hot and bright die swiftly. But that was before we saw--

Our instruments identified glints of brighter light against the sunfire.
They were orbiting mirror clusters, gathering the star's radiation and
focusing it back, burning wounds in the photosphere. These solar stigmata
hemorrhaged endless flares, geysers of energy and precious metals.

Above those cutting mirrors, rings encircled the star like garrote wires.
These were particle accelerators, generating blades of electromagnetic
force that stabbed down into the star's skin, through photosphere and
tachocline, towards the core.

"They're stirring it," I realized. "To pull metals out of the core and send
fresh hydrogen down to fuse. Is it possible that they've..."

-035-

They had. They had refueled the star. They were stoking it. Enormous
portals dumped streams of hydrogen into the giant, replenishing its mass
and fusion power. At this obscene size and brightness, this star should have
gone supernova in less than the two million years it would take a single
photon to crawl from the core to the surface.

But with careful refueling, that supernova could be averted. This giant
might have been here since the dawn of stellar time.

Perhaps this star had begun as some metal-poor Population II dwarf,
surrounded by meager, rocky planets. But the inhabitants of one of
those planets had found a way to pump their sun full of hydrogen,
supercharging it, pushing it to the edge of stability. All in the name of
making metal. In the early universe, elements heavier than helium were
unthinkably rare. So these firstborn aliens built a forge. A fusion smelter
for the atoms they needed.

We turned outwards, hoping to locate pulsars in the sky and thereby
fix our position. But the stars were blotted out by a swarm of bronze
discs. They were statites: a shell of artificial worlds, hovering on the star's
radiation. Years ago, I had proposed tearing apart Mercury to form a shell
like this...and here, I found my ambition achieved a thousandfold.

It seemed our gate had delivered us upon one of these statites. We ventured
out of the ruins, onto an island of living glass, broken by fissures of deep
green light and reservoirs of white fluid. Around the glass, a shallow
sea trembled with tiny, intersecting waves. In one direction, a cloud of
mist obscured a shattered tower, its form uncannily different from the
surrounding architecture. Above us loomed structures linked by bolts of
lightning, reminiscent of the Citadel ruins on Venus.

And that was when, in spite of the awesome power on display, I felt
crushing disappointment.

There was no trace of Clarity s influence here at all.

Except perhaps in that mysterious tower...?

If this was a Vex construct, then it was an ancient and formidable one, but
in a few minutes I had already grasped its overall purpose. It was no longer
an area of crisis and potential, somewhere off the edge of the map. Just
mighty clockwork.

I had come hoping for a meeting with the unknowable. Instead I had
found an engineering museum. Oh, we could explore it for thousands
of years and not touch a single percent of its wonder. But Clarity had
promised me a solution to immortality! I had promised Elisabeth a cure!
I needed a way to use Clarity as a solvent and seed for my exobodies.

-036-

How would I find it here?

Perhaps the Vex themselves were the key. I knew that the Ishtar Collective
had achieved stable simulations of human minds. They refused to share
their method with me.

What if they had stolen the method from the Vex they studied?

I called over one of my scientists, an M. Sundaresh. "I want to bring back
samples," I told her. "There will be some risk. The Vex are not always
docile." Some at SOLSECCENT even suggested we were in a state of war
with the Vex, though I felt their responses were more like the stings of
drowsy hornets. "Is your team ready to accept that risk?"

She nodded at my proxy. "Of course, Mr. Bray. We've come this far. No
sense going home unless we bring something with us."

I dispatched teams to secure Vex samples. When they began to harvest
fluid from the nearby reservoir, a group of lightly armed Vex platforms
attacked them with inaccurate weapons fire. Elisabeth replied with a
matter laser, a grotesquely disproportionate weapon. A coherent-matter
pulse bears the same relation to an ordinary bullet that a gamma laser does
to a flashlight. There was nothing left to salvage.

I explained to her that we must proceed as investigators, not conquerors. If
we simply scavenge and abduct out of curiosity, the Vex will reply in kind,
and that is a risk we can manage.

We must not provoke them to war.

NOTE--VEX FLUID

-037-

Specimen report. Volume of fluid recovered

from Vex reservoir located on a statite

hovering above the 'Forge Star', 2082

Volantis. Colloquially "Vex mind fluid",

"Vex milk."

Informatic exchange with any Vex substrate has proven hazardous. The
Ishtar Collective data Elisabeth has analyzed warns against risks ranging
from physical infection by Vex cytostructures to transmission of substrate-
free syntactic replicators, malignant oncomemes, and viral semiotic
signifiers (a particular nuisance to have Vex ideas suddenly assigned to
basic concepts in your mind; you want to think about an apple and instead
your brain chokes on [gauge:contrast:gouge]).

I have therefore proceeded under SOLSECCENT's WILDFIRE,
HEXTEMPERED, and BRAINSTAIN protocols.

Vex milk is non-Newtonian, highly conductive, and noncompressible.
Its viscosity and surface tension are variable: it can form a resistant
membrane, or climb the walls of a container like a superfluid. I have even
observed the milk store kinetic energy in zero-viscosity vortices, essentially
liquid flywheels. One must be careful when stirring it, lest it retain the
motion for some future escape!

Chemically, the Vex milk is an alkaline solution of dense salts in water.
The salts range from sodium and calcium to lead and even (in barely
detectable amounts) plutonium. Not good to drink.

Suspended in this solution are cells of silicoid structure, 100-200
micrometers in size. Their shapes are heterogenous but always geometric,
reminiscent of Earth's radiolarian protozoa. Many have needle-like
pseudopods, which transform between stiff spines and motile whips on the
basis of some piezoelectric response. Imaging of internal structure detects
a nucleus, and a genetic molecule analogous to DNA (though I speculate
read-write times are much faster, on the order of milliseconds, perhaps
exploiting some quantum effect).

I have allowed Dr. M. Sundaresh to assist me with this work. She has
discovered several levels of abstract higher order to the motion of these
radiolarian cells. Some of these ensembles are distributed across space,
some across time; all admit remarkable beauty. The sensitivity and chaos
of fluid media seems to suggest an intrinsic Vex suitability for certain
difficult computations. Perhaps this is reflected in the nature of Vex
thought; porous and miscible. I would request a teleonomic analysis

-038-

from an Al-COM resource if I did not expect the Tyrant to get its grubby
Russian paws on my data.

I hesitate to apply anthropomorphic concepts of "intelligence," "self-
awareness," or even "sentience" to such an alien cognition. But I strongly
suspect that each radiolarian element is in communication with its neighbors
and possibly even retains a holographic record of the larger structure.

If so, we could safely assign the trait called Schroeder thalience to the Vex
milk: the ability to communicate internal states to others and to model the
external state of the world.

I note that the Vex milk, while computationally powerful, seems to avoid
semiosis. That is, it prefers to mimic the actual dynamics of phenomena
rather than assigning a symbol. This a fundamental difference between
Vex cognition and our own. We encode inputs as symbols, manipulate the
symbols according to some set of logical rules, and produce output. The
Vex are more direct. Burn them, and they will extinguish the fire-not
because they possess a symbolic knowledge of fire and its properties, but
because their structure is so suited to adaption and survival that the heat
of the fire directly becomes the response required to snuff it out. Rather
than encoding symbols, they generate self-sustaining and self-correcting
patterns, which like the suspension of a bridge flexing under strain, can
accept destructive input and produce reparatory output.

When we are infected by Vex memes, as the Ishtar data warns against, I
suspect that we are simply experiencing Vex patterns jumping from one
substrate to another-recruiting our own brains and bodies as media for
their spread.

It is not hostility. It is simply their way of interacting with the universe.

And is that transubstantiation, that migration to another substrate, not
what I seek here on Europa?

Perhaps Clarity has been very generous indeed.

The Ishtar researchers felt that this asymbolic mode of thought raised a
disturbing possibility. The Vex might not communicate or interact with
us by understanding our language, but instead, by creating internal copies
of our minds. They would prod and stimulate those internal copies to see
how they behaved. And if they chose to destroy us, they learned how to do
it by torturing and destroying those internalities.

To be the enemy of the Vex is to be reproduced, experimented upon, and
annihilated within their mindspace.

-039-

Elisabeth is monumentally disturbed by this, which is highly inconvenient.
Despite my efforts to sooth her with fine dining and conversation, she has
begun to question the very idea of cybernetic immortality.

"Aren't the Vex a perfect demonstration of what could go wrong?" she
demanded. "Human minds trapped in a totally inhuman context,
tormented and mutilated by an unsympathetic alien god. If we want to
preserve our minds for eternity, couldn't we end up that way? Aren't we
giving up the grace of death? The promise that all suffering will end?"

"Elisabeth," I countered, perhaps too sharply, "the Vex are already doing
this to our minds. They will do it whether we are in weak flesh or durable
metal. If they got into our bodies, into our blood, we would be far safer in
an exobody. In fact, I can think of no finer way to resist Vex infiltration!"

Dr. Sundaresh requests further expeditions to the Forge Star for material.
She does not trust the other members of her team, claiming suspicion
of Vex exposure, and prefers to work directly with me. Very well-but I
wonder what peculiar internal motives she harbors.

I reformatted my assistant. No sense taking risks. Who knows what might
get into my head through the proxy link?

ENTRY 8

-040-

Eureka.

The Vex radiolarian fluid is obviously too virulent for use in exominds. But
if exposed to Clarity, the Vex patterns break down, and the fluid takes on
some of the properties of Clarity itself--namely, its reductive effect.

Introducing a tiny aliquot of this reified Clarity into an exomind solves the
loop/billboard/crash cycle. As far as I can tell--permanently.

THE COMBINATION OF VEX FLUID AND CLARITY IS THE KEY TO
CYBERNETIC IMMORTALITY!

Speculation: the interaction of Clarity,

with its caustic anti-structural properties,

and the Vex mind fluid, with its highly

physicalized and asymbolic architecture,

creates a "physicalized algorithm" that can

serve as a random seed for the knockouts

required to sustain a viable exomind.

I'll never sell THAT to a board. Easier to say...that the exomind is too stiff and

deterministic to support a human consciousness, which depends on some random failures

and turbulence to keep it supple. Clarity provides an algorithmic seed adding error to

I uploaded a connectome from my library into an exobody head treated with
the Clarity/Vex preparation. A full destructive scan of an aging Georgian
volunteer, one Mr. A. D. A. I. Zhuk. I think he believes he is in a nightmare.

every operation, which replicates that original turbulence. No more need for software

Fear not, Mr. Zhuk I would never mistreat the beginning of something
so wonderful. You will be the first of many-they shall march out of this
Europan laboratory and sweep away every infirmity, every disease, every loss!
Until all humanity rests in the loving permanence of my exobodies. And all
the future will look to me in humble gratitude.

emulation of organic chaos! We emulate it in hardware now!

The problem, of course, is that we are going to require more Vex fluid.

Too complex. Exomind too harsh and cold! Clarity plus Vex fluid is the spice,

the secret sauce, the oil of easy function.

CORPOREAL STATUS:

• Body at 37.6 C. Recommend supplementary
  

cooling. Pulse 110 BPM: stroke/arrest risk.

BP 150/100, pulse ox 150: blood volume

overfill! Oxygen radicals over safe Levels!

Recommend tap and wash cycle.

• Warning. Body status not sustainable.
  

Recommend SMILE pod sabbatical.

MESSAGE TO BRAY, ELISABETH

-041-

//encrypt -pkey(clovisroot) -qdresist(shor) --
rng_seed(AM241) --pad(padelsie)

I've finished my workup on your exam data. I'm sorry, Elisabeth. The
dis~ase has already activated. There are defective prions in your spinal
fluid, which means they are replicating throughout your brain.

Without treatment, you have 15 months. If we fought the prions with
aggressive cytomachine injections, immunosuppressants, and gene therapy,
you could last five or six years. We could even alter your sensorium to
knock you out and emulate sleep, and that might give you enough quality
of life to conduct some final research and say your goodbyes.

I know that I have been a cruel and domineering grandfather. You and
your sisters have speculated that I intentionally sabotaged your father's
genome so he would never outlive me without my help. That doesn't bother
me. Actually, I wish I'd thought of it myself! To force my own beloved
progeny to either achieve synthetic immortality or die in agony-now
THAT would be commitment to greatness!

But I never wanted to hurt my grandchildren. Grandkids have always been
my favorite. Do you remember that old Clovis Bray contract I showed to
you? "We want your grandchildren." My collaborators could keep the rights
to their inventions, but BrayTech would own the unexpected combinations
of those inventions.

Grandchildren are unexpected creations, the wonderful knock-on
consequences of reproduction. We have children, rather than making
clones of ourselves, because the exploration of possibilities lets us find new
ways to survive a changing universe. If the 52-card playing deck has never
been shuffled the same way twice in the entire history of the universe--
imagine how many possible grandchildren I could have produced!

And out of all of those possibilities, I got you. The finest of them all.

I owe you the salvation I couldn't give your father. Please consider making
a terminal scan and decanting your mind into an immortal exo body. I
myself plan to do it soon.

//send

MESSAGE FROM BRAY, ELISABETH

-042-

//decrypt -pkey(clovisroot) --pad(padelsie)

I don't trust you. You made the same promises to Father, didn't you?

I won't put myself in one of your humaniform torture dolls until you can
prove it's safe. And even then...I don't know. I don't know if I want to be
part of your LUCA dream.

Stop trying to get that rhubarb compote recipe right. You serve it at every
dinner, waiting for me to say it's just like Grandma made it. It's pathetic.
And you wonder why I'd rather eat with the crew.

-E

//delete

ENTRY 9

-043-

The infrastructure is in place. We are now in limited exobody production.

l have allowed small Vex platforms_ to pass through the gate from 2082
Volantis (apparently intent on constructing infrastructure on this side).
They are captured, drained, and discarded. Their mind fluid goes to Clarity
Control; the Alkahest flows back. The machine of immortality has begun its
slow turn.

In ancient days, they believed that the source of the Alkahest was the
Philosopher's Stone. I have named my own source after that deepest, oldest
stone. A place where the dead go to rise again. A deep stone crypt.

Bray Station guarantees our security from above. The Europa life project
provides deniability and cover. The infrastructure around Clarity Control
will expose the Vex radiolarian fluid to Clarity and deliver it to the exobody
manufacturing site.

Elisabeth keeps trying to penetrate the networks around

Clarity Control, but I have airgapped everything, and the physical coffers are secure.

One the exobodies are prepared, I will upload the minds from my research
library. A century of volunteers waiting for reincarnation.

The first generation is already coming online.

But I will not be one of them. Not yet. And neither will Elisabeth.

A true upload requires a maximum-resolution subneural scan, and such
a scan is invariably fatal. That means I will only get one shot. I will not
take it until the exos are stable. I refuse to be an alpha tester of my own
immortality!

I am opening two new off-the-books labs to study the Vex and the
effects of Clarity. If humanity is going to fully transmigrate to these
immortal bodies, then the eternal welfare of all future generations
depends on spotting and avoiding any dangers now. I can justify taking
extreme measures.

One of my most tantalizing projects involves A. Miller, a young
man who suffers from a nanoparticle-induced degenerative immune
disorder. I have been testing radical new imaging techniques on Mr.
Miller, hoping to secure a nondestructive scan that still meets the
requirements for a full-faith upload.

Unfortunately, Mr. Miller's dosage of various fixing compounds and
imaging radiation is approaching the limits of clinical toxicity. Despite

-044-

blood and CSF washes, I fear his tumors will escape our control. I am
curious about the therapeutic potential of the Vex fluid. I plan to obtain
his informed consent for a human trial.

M. Sundaresh comes and goes at odd hours. Her behavior is erratic.
Yesterday she discussed the possibility that we would be eternal
collaborators in exobodies, and I believe she even flirted with me. An
hour later, she was as cold as the ice outside and put up her hand to
silence me whenever I spoke. An hour after that, she glowed with joy as
she went on and on about her dear wife. Then she wept. I am not sure
whether to blame my confusion on my own conception of women, or
on M. Sundaresh's racing mind. I cannot tolerate such volatility, and I
would dismiss her instantly, except that her supervision seems key to the
successful entrapment of the Vex we need. She has a knack.

I should give a name to the figurehead Clarity Control presents to the word.

I have ordered a new hero of organ-growing pigs. I plan to be here a
while. Elisabeth still will not commit to a scan. I fear she will die in some
accident, and I will lose her forever.

Ha! Shall I call her Claire?

WARNING.

• The following organs require urgent
  

replacement: Liver. Gallbladder. Duodenum.

Mesentery. Thymus. Spleen. Cornea.

• The following systems require replenishment:
  

Lymph. Blood plasma. Skin basal Layer.

Basal Lamina Layers (Alport syndrome risk).

Intercellular cytosol.

NOTE--D.E.R.

-045-

Infuriating. With twelve Alkahest-seeded exos now online, I find myself
beached on the shoals of another serious problem. Not a transitional
trauma after·all. Not a temporary ailment. Quite fatal.

Mr. Zhuk was first to succumb. He continued to insist that he was living
in a nightmare. He complained of hunger, of thirst, of breathlessness, of
a rot in his bowels. I became concerned that he was billboarding, but his
exoneuron activity remained healthy.

Shortly after, Mr. Zhuk developed a full-blown Cotard delusion. I found
him trying to chisel his face off with a table shim. He insisted that his true
face was covered in a thick layer of keratin ("toenail" was his exact word)
and that the rest of his body was already dead and rotting. He became
violent. I had to paralyze his motor functions for diagnosis.

This only made things worse. Without the satisfaction of motor feedback,
he dissociated entirely. He stopped forming new memories, which trapped
him in an eight-second loop of panic. After I resumed his motor functions,
I watched him fill every page of a notebook with the words I HAVE JUST
DIED, I AM TRAPPED IN THE CORPSE; NOW I AM CERTAIN I
AM DEAD; DEATH HAS TAKEN ME COMPLETELY; I HAVE JUST
FINISHED DYING.

Activity in his temporal lobes collapsed. He lost his ego barrier and
achieved metaphysical oneness with the universe. Unfortunately, this
spread his Cotard delusion to his entire perceptual cosmos, and he rejected
the resulting necroreality as intolerable. I have not ever before seen such
all-consuming terror and dread.

In the final stages of the disease, he insisted that he had been possessed
by some sort of ancient Kartvelian spirit, a memory of his upbringing in
Georgia. He was insistent that this spirit was female. It is an idiosyncrasy
of the Khevsurian Georgians' creation myth that the male spirit is divine,
while the female is demonic.

Soon Mr. Zhuk's fear and panic were simply too much for him to bear. He
retreated into catatonia. Then he crashed.

Oh, I still have the connectome scan I used to make him--that Mr. Zhuk
can live again--but the Zhuk who evolved over the past several weeks, the
Zhuk I had so many endearing arguments with, is lost.

Elisabeth is more and more suspicious. She asks what, exactly, makes me
think these exos will turn out any better than her father did. She demands

-046-

to know what I'm doing with the Vex salvage, and whether it has to do with
my plans for her survival. I have hastily deleted all records of the treatment
of Mr. Miller, lest she think l plan to dose her with Vex fluid.

--M. Sundaresh came upon me just now. She seemed fascinated by my
distress. She said several comforting things, and then made one extremely
unpleasant suggestion that my pride and haste had caused Mr. Zhuk's death.
I have decided to hate her.

WARNING.

• Novel prion detected in body collagen.

Hypothesis: Jovian magnetosphere promotes

highly abnormal protein folding. Prognosis:

massive sloughing/fraying of basement

membranes, Loss of tissue binding, inhibited

durotaxis of new cells, delamination of all

body tissues into thin sheets. You will fall

apart Like an old book.