III. The Girl from Avalon

Feb. 4 - Al Raqis

Her voice was like a whisper in my mind.

"Are most of your meetings as dull as this?"

It was Ardra. She was calling on a private channel.

She continued, "I come here most days and fly overhead within listening distance. The meetings are mostly dull or without substance. You have some amount of talent at provoking substance into meetings."

Determined to get a testable sample from the tentacle, I had remained on the landing bay after Lady Soyinka had left. How long had she been there?

"You have finally taken possession of the item from the Harvester," said Ardra. It sounded like a statement.

"I have."

"I am not prone to whims," she declared, "but I did reconnaissance at the Blue Sun Facility recently."

"And what did you find?" I asked.

"A moment while I process the picture."

She sent a picture through on my Cortex. I stepped back away from the probing tentacle to examine the image on the small screen. It showed a room with a white tile floor and, on a counter, a jar containing cerebral matter.

"So there is another brain?"

"I have only my reconnaissance," she replied, "I am going to see if I can send in an agent on the ground to gather more information."

"You started telling me about your project," I began.

"Amazing," she declared.

"You started to."

"I wondered about that," she mused, "Apparently it is easier to take the girl out of humanity than it is to take the humanity out of the girl. It would seem that there are a few corners of sentimentality left. It is easier to part with your liver than your teeth. In a weak moment, I indulged in sentimentality."

"Is that your plan?" I asked, "To exorcise your humanity."

"Transcend," she corrected, "When you were a small child, did you ever ask your parents why the sky was blue?"

"Certainly," I admitted.

"As did I," she confessed, "My father, a scientist of some repute did not give me the usual answers. The sky is not blue. It is indigo....and using unflavored clear Jello and water slightly diluted with milk, he made a prism and proved it to me. The human eye is limited, it is biased towards the green. So YOU see a blue sky, not its true colors.... I see the violet skies now."

"Where was your father from?"

"The greater question is where is he now. If you find him, let me know. I will give you a fine prize."

I suddenly felt like an infant with Ardra dangling something shiny in front of me. Was it a choking hazard?

"I don't understand," I said.

"He has been missing for quite some time," she continued.

"Well, I will need more information, if I am to find him."

"You can safely assume that his last name is also Aurotharius. He was last seen on a research ship heading towards the Halo Asteroid Belt."

"And where was your childhood home?"

"I am a child of Avalon," she said.

Avalon. The moon of Albion. Zenobia's lunar colony.

"And your mother?"

"Died in childbirth. Zenobian medical technology is not perfect."

Enough in that direction. I circled back.

"Why were your modifications so unsuccessful?"

She brushed the question aside with one word, "Experimental."

Perhaps I touched a nerve because then there was silence. I could hear that the connection was still open. I waited, holding my breath.

She began her speech.

"There is an intractable conflict between Scientists, Mathematicians and Philosophers. Thus they are kept from Singularity. Damned by their thinking to be mere technicians. If you want something done right..."

She stopped and asked, "Are you familiar with Zeno of Elea?"

I was not.

"A pre-Socratic philosopher, author of the three famed Zeno's Paradoxes," she explained, "devised to argue that plurality, change and motion in particular are illusions...."

The words began to flow. Ardra stated the three paradoxes as we find them in Aristotle and then, like a tutor, she explained each one to me.

Basically, by dividing space into segments or time into points an infinite number of times, nothing ever gets done.

"In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started....

I listened carefully, following as best as I could.

"....The Dichotomy Paradox is really just a restating in another format of the Achilles and the Tortoise Paradox. Before you can get there, you must get halfway there. Before you can get halfway there, you must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a fourth, he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth..."

I could feel myself disappearing down between the cracks in the number line.

"My favorite as a child was the Arrow Paradox...." she explained, "...for motion to occur, an object must change the position which it occupies...."

Her favorite as a child.

"...any instant of time there is no motion occurring, because an instant is a snapshot. If it cannot move in a single instant, then it cannot move in any instant, making any motion impossible....The arrow never arrives, I presume the target merely dies of fright.

"They were the grist of philosophical debate for thousands of years. The interesting part to me was the difference in the solutions between mathematicians, philosophers and physicists. Mathematicians use calculus. Physicists use quantum physics. Philosophers complain that neither satisfies the original question of performing infinite steps."

And then the punchline.

"The key to the next true physics revolution and probably the transhuman singularity will be in reconciling the conflicts between mathematicians, philosophers and physicists.

"The quantum computer, using quantum effects to allow the calculation of a solution with an apparently infinite number of steps is also known as a Zeno Machine. Zeno Machines are a requirement of any true Turing Grade Artificial Intelligence, hence they are also called Accelerated Turing Machines. Bringing us back to the two known Turings, the temperamental rogue Replicant and the hyperactive Synthcat.

"Zenobia is well known for its computer mainframes. The prototype Zeno Machine Mainframe (ZMM) from the Quantum Consciousness Project (QCP) utilizes human type neural microtubals to coordinate the necessary quantum effects. I wonder how many 'reader' brains they harvested to build it or even design it.

"The ZMM was recently removed from its home on Space Station Zenobia during the turnover in power from the Zenobian ruling families to the Militant factions. I wonder how the midget managed to extract it without Doctor Qui von Wer Foreman knowing. The midget turned the prototype Zeno Machine Mainframe over to the Rogue Replicant to decrypt. If I were still capable of vertigo, I would be dizzy from this much circularity."

She turned her attention to me.

"I am expecting that the present from the harvester and my reconnaissance photograph will assist you in moving the project forward," she said at last.

"If Krenshar has another brain, the present may not be as helpful as one may wish," I answered.

"The conic section brain is I think his backup," she suggested.

"You wanted the Ardra AI to remain with the SynthCat."

"I am content with that for the moment," she acknowledged, "If extraction is necessary, I am working on another method. The seismic data, the asteroid field navigational archive and the two AIs are a sufficient project."

She continued, "Don't spread yourself too thin. You isolate yourself as much as I do, but in service to an entity that does not care for you."

"The state?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied, "They are prone to treating its subjects as means and not grant them their due dignity as end in and of themselves."

It was a funny thing to hear from a being that dealt in stolen human organs. Then, like an older sister sending me off to bed, she dismissed me with these words:

"You are probably fatigued from exchanging witty rejoinders with the Nativist Fanatic. Send a wave after you speak with the Rogue Replicant."

And with that the transmission was severed and she was gone.

I did not move for several minutes. I weighed what I heard in my mind. Her intelligence. Her arrogance. Her sentimentality.

Meanwhile, the tentacle in the crate flicked and probed the air, oblivious to the idea of a motherless, little girl delighting in an arrow that would not move.