Titans of Chaos

Little blood clots had formed, blocking capillaries and veins; nerve cells had lost charge ormisfired, causing a cascade of neural failures, a seizure; cells hemorrhaged; the statisticallyrandom movements of oxygen in the lining of his lungs were no longer even, and the pressures nolonger permeated smoothly. Victor's self-repair reactions merely brought more random chanceinto play, and therefore gave the deliberate accidents a wider scope of action. He had heart,nerve, and lung collapse within the first second; brain misfirings were rapidly erasing all his braininformation.

His higher centers of consciousness had been the first things to go; Victor's complex control overhis own body, his elaborate defense strategies for dealing with material attacks, had all beenbypassed.

His brain had simply stopped. In Victor's paradigm, the mind was merely mechanical brainactions; stop the brain actions, stop the mind. And it is all over.

Except that not everything inside Victor's body was obeying Victor's paradigm.

My little friendly blood-creature, and its gallons of progeny, was not neutral and purposelessmatter. Their molecular games had bribed umpires of their own. Its repair-purpose was at oddswith the death-purpose Trismegistus had imposed.

Furthermore, my blood-creatures were under an instruction to react and adapt intelligently, tocreate new strategies, and to perpetuate themselves. On the other hand, the purpose Trismegistushad implanted had been final and straightforward; he had not thought to ask the matter hecontaminated to keep trying to kill Victor after Victor was dead. Nor had he thought to order hismatter to cooperate with other matter to find any mutually satisfactory solutions.

I saw the solution that had been evolved, an intelligent design springing from the unintelligentmotions of purpose-driven matter. I saw a glitter and flash of exchanging utilities, rapid strandsof moral obligation running back and forth. A deal had already been struck.

A way was evolved to satisfy both the repair purpose and the death purpose; all the matter thatcooperated toward the mutual purpose was helped; matter bits that refused to negotiate or tocooperate spent their energies fighting each other, and were ignored by the majority mass of thebody.