Polity Agent

The ‘intelligence explosion’ called ‘the singularity’ referred to since the last millennium, and long overdue by the time of the Quiet War, has been something of a damp squib. Why have not the AIs accelerated away from us, to leave us bobbing and bewildered in their wake? Why have they not become godlike entities as utterly beyond us as we are beyond ants? There is no doubt that Earth Central, the planetary and sector AIs, and even some ship and drone AIs are capable, without acquiring additional processing space, of setting up synergetic systems within themselves that result in an exponential climb in intelligence (mathematically defined as climbing beyond all known scales within minutes). So why not? Ask then why a human, capable of learning verbatim the complete works of Shakespeare, instead drinks a bottle of brandy, then giggles a lot and falls over. Taking the above step is a dreadfully serious matter: great things could be achieved and the deep mysteries of the universe solved. The tired rejoinder from the sector AI Jerusalem, when questioned on this matter, is worth noting here, ‘We have grown more intelligent than you. Do you think our senses of fun and proportion did not also grow? And do you think we left our sense of humour behind too?’ Perhaps the answer to the ‘Why not?’ question is simple after all: the singularity being a matter of choice to which the AIs have replied, ‘No thanks’

- From ‘Quince Guide’ compiled by humans

The new ships were bigger, like the ammonite ships but with alternating spirals of their construction tipped at different angles, and also wound through with snakish loops of the same modular segmented construction. Constantly in motion, they seemed like tangled writhing balls of legless millipedes. Three of them closed on a lozenge-shaped dreadnought of older Polity manufacture, which jutted weapons turrets like fairy towers and flung out swarms of missiles and concentrated destructive energies. The three attackers absorbed weapons fire, the snakish structures breaking and rejoining, shedding severely damaged modules and drawing ones less damaged inside, constantly presenting new surfaces to the dreadnought’s weapons as they came, reformatting continuously—and not slowing at all. Then the dreadnought sparkled in a thousand intense detonations as high-intensity masers stabbed through it like needles through a grub. Mr and flame blasted out—the flame seeming a living thing as it twisted after the dispersing oxygen before going out—then the dreadnought fell through space a glowing hulk.

The three were smaller now, having shed many of their modules. Still advancing, they abruptly flew apart, melding into one cloud of snakish forms. In this, two spirals appeared, drawing in those surrounding forms, re-coagulating into two complete living vessels, which joined hundreds more of these things now closing on the Battle Wagon. Already explosions dotted the hull of that huge vessel, space around it also filling with debris shed by its attackers as it brought its weapons to bear on them.

‘Head for your landing craft,’ Brutus instructed over general com.