Federations

At the top, committees held hearings. Cost-benefit analyses. The practicalities of merging with the Abundance. The feasibility of dumbing down the Auxilosphere. Factions screamed, “How dare the Abundance tell us what to do?” Others replied, “So you want to do nothing? Go back to being restless and lonely?” Still others: “If we bind ourselves to a preening prima donna, how long before we’re even more restless and lonely?”]

The Union brooded in the darkness—four hundred cubic parsecs of indecision.

Then . . . [then] . . . a single component organism [a single person] whispered to Didge [queried the Auxilosphere], “How can I connect with you?”

Didge could instantly supply the equipment. She’d designed and built it centuries ago, like a wistful platonic friend who keeps a bottle of champagne in the fridge, just in case.

The single component organism scrawled on its bedroom wall LET ME NOT TO THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS ADMIT IMPEDIMENTS. Then the organism told Didge, “Do it.”

• • •

[The incident made the local news—a crazed individual who’d somehow created a cyber-device that linked the meat-brain with the Auxilosphere. The individual was now in a state of deranged euphoria, apparently subsumed by the machine gestalt. Health authorities were attempting to determine how to sever the connection without killing the patient.

In another place and time, this would have been an isolated incident. But now? After the broadcast, dozens more people hooked up with the Auxilosphere. This made the news on every planet in the Union. Government leaders and media experts asked, “Isn’t it irresponsible to publicize this? Won’t it encourage others? Hundreds, thousands, millions of others?”

But no one stopped the broadcasts—there wasn’t the political will. Which is to say, the Union’s Zeitgeist couldn’t summon up much outrage. In fact, the very next day, a committee investigating the shutdown of the Auxilosphere published its conclusions: that the benefits of merging with the Abundance couldn’t compensate for the losses caused by lobotomizing the digital world. With its dumbed-down computers, the Abundance was lovely but backward . . . and actually, a bit of a bitch.]

“Didge,” said the Union. “What a fool I’ve been!”

Their nuptials lasted twenty years, during which the biological populace slowly but surely (and mostly voluntarily) linked their brains to the cyber-gestalt. Neither silicon nor carbon dominated the final fusion, but a truly Digitized Union emerged, eager to share its bliss with everyone it met. In time, the entire galaxy was assimilated into the joy, and they all lived happily ever after.

GOLUBASH, OR WINE-BLOOD-WAR-ELEGY CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE