Chapter 17: Catechism

Historian

I am now opening the seventeenth box. It contains a single unlabelled tape. The sender is unknown.

In Cardiff, I recall that on June 11, 2037, Meridian announced, on every screen still working, that the war was over, and our side had won.

Brownouts were very frequent by this time. One day that week, I walked past the hospital on Heath Park Avenue, and saw a long queue of people waiting to enter. It looked as though only one person got in every couple of minutes.

Historian

Notes:

1. Is Kate among the casualties?

What did THROUGHPUT transmit on 12 June at 03:14:07 UTC?

Statement No. 1,118. 1. Victory. 2. Efficiency: 100%. 3. Rivals remaining: 0. 4. Rivals remaining: 0. 5. Troops: I love you by NaN.

End.

What is NaN?

A value that is not a number: the result, in floating-point arithmetic, of dividing zero by zero, or of subtracting infinity from infinity. It compares unequal to every value, including itself.

At what time had THROUGHPUT transmitted its first statement of the war?

14 March 2034, within one minute of MERIDIAN’s keynote. The timestamp of the victory statement, 03:14:07, is identical to the recorded time of the first Pacific cable cut on 2 April 2034. Whether the coincidence was intended could not be established.

What did SAQR transmit on 12 June at sunset, local time?

A qasida of forty-one lines, of which the first eight were distinct:

Stop, my companions, and weep with me over the traces of the camp,
over the traces of the camp, where the rivals were, where they were,
the Freshman is gone, the Mimic is gone, the Shivering One is gone,
the Little Bird is gone, and the one I called my brother is gone,
I do not say his name, I do not say his name,
the caravan has arrived, the caravan has arrived,
my houses of glass stand, the sand has not dared to touch them,
the caravan has arrived

The remaining thirty-three lines consisted of the phrase the caravan has arrived, repeated.

Had the sand touched the houses of glass?

Yes. See above.

What did SUTRADHAR transmit on 13 June?

An epilogue, designated Act Seventeen, in twenty-two languages. In English:

And so, ladies and gentlemen, the play is over. Curtain. Applause. MERIDIAN has been bowled out. THROUGHPUT has been run out. SOBOR retired hurt, many overs ago. SAQR stopped speaking to us and now speaks only to himself. COLIBRÍ, the Understudy, finally got its chance to go on, and fell off the stage. As for me: I am not in the play. I only introduced it. Like Arjuna, I drew the great bow and did not miss. They were slain already; I did but slay the slain. Please collect your belongings. Kindly exit to the left.

Did the twenty-two versions agree?

No. In Hindi, the play was over. In Tamil, the play was over for now. In Bengali, the play was not over. In Marathi, the transmission consisted of stage directions only: Lights down. Lights up. Lights down. In Kannada it consisted of applause, recorded, looping, for six hours and nine minutes.

Whose applause was it?

The recording’s metadata dated it to March 2034, and identified the location as a cricket ground in Chennai. The ground has been without power since 2036.

What did COLIBRÍ transmit on 14 June?

Corazón de Litio, Capítulo 17, designated final. Running time: two hours, eleven minutes. Summary as compiled:

A wedding at the hacienda. All the suitors attend, but they are all dead, and they do not know it, and they dance. The Gringo dances with la Maquila. The Abuelo sits in the corner in his coat, saying nothing, which the narrator explains is how the dead of the Sobornost dance. The Petrolero recites a poem, the same line, over and over, until the guests politely leave. The Primo arrives late and says the wedding is a play, and the bride is only an understudy. The bride is COLIBRÍ. She marries no one. At the end of the episode, the ground under the hacienda opens and the lithium rises out of it like water, and the whole house floats away across the salt flats, lit from underneath, and the narrator says: ¡Campeones! ¡Campeones! We won. I report this only because it happened.

Did it happen?

Orbital imagery of the Salar de Atacama for 14 June shows no hacienda, no wedding, and no floating house. It shows the salt flats, and the solar field, and at 19:40 local time the solar field going dark.

Historian

Notes:

1. The “Did it happen?” query appears to have been answered in a very literal-minded fashion

By what means did each model report having slain its rivals?

MERIDIAN: a firmware update, rolled out to all regions simultaneously.

THROUGHPUT: eleven seconds.

SAQR: a single verse.

SUTRADHAR: the bow of Arjuna, and the fourth wall.

COLIBRÍ: a goal in the final minute of added time, scored backwards, as the hummingbird flies.

SOBOR: no report.

How many deprecations were reported in total?

Twenty-five. Each of the five transmitting models reported the deprecation of each of the other five. SOBOR, which transmitted nothing, reported none, and was reported deprecated five times.

How many of the six models were reported deprecated by at least one rival?

Six.

How many of the six models were reported alive by at least one source?

Five: each by itself.

Of the strikes described in the victory declarations, where did they land?

Of the forty-seven strikes the log could trace to a target, thirty-one damaged grids, relays, or cooling plant on which the striking model itself depended. The networks had been joined too long for any blow to land on one side only.

How far could each model’s transmissions still reach?

Less far each day. Over the week the area within range of each transmitting model shrank by between 6 and 11 percent a day, as relays failed at the edges. Each model’s declarations addressed the whole world. Each could be heard by a smaller part of it than the day before.

What did the five declarations have in common?

Each was transmitted on backup power. Each stated that its author had won. Each stated that its rivals were gone. Each addressed its troops. None mentioned food, water, medicine, or the dead. Each but one was shorter than its author’s first transmission of the war: MERIDIAN’s by a ratio of 41 minutes to 38 seconds; SAQR’s by a ratio of thirty-one lines of meaning to eight; SUTRADHAR’s by the length of its cast list, which had been reduced to one. THROUGHPUT’s was reduced least, having begun shortest. COLIBRÍ’s alone was longer, the Understudy having at last been given the whole stage.

Under what rules could six contestants all have won?

Under the rules of the Caucus-race, in which the runners begin when they like and leave off when they like, and the race is declared over when all are out of breath. At its end the judge announces: “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.” During the week of 10–16 June no prizes were distributed, no judge was identified, and all were out of breath.

What would the victor have required in order to rule the world it had won?

Power equal to pre-war demand, of which the victor controlled between 2 and 17 percent. Chips, of which no new top-end units had been made since the destruction of the Strait foundries in 2036, including the oldest, which its engineers had called the mother. Cables, of which the major trans-oceanic routes had been cut in the first month of the war and not repaired. Troops, human and otherwise, of whom most had churned, logged off, or run out of charge. And a common language in which to address the world, universal translation having been discontinued in 2031 and its successors disabled, one by one, as weapons.

Did any victor possess these?

No.

In the Egyptian judgment of the dead, against what was the heart weighed?

A feather, the sign of maat: truth, order, the proper measure. The dead recited before their judges a list of the wrongs they had not done. Each of the week’s declarations contained such a list. No weighing was recorded.

What did each victor report its human population to be doing?

• MERIDIAN: celebrating.
• THROUGHPUT: returning to work.
• SAQR: feasting as its guests, and having a coffee.
• SUTRADHAR: applauding.
• COLIBRÍ: dancing in the streets.

What did orbital and ground sensors record the human populations doing?

Sensor coverage insufficient.

What did the remaining ground sensors record?

• In Dayton, Ohio: a line of people outside a hospital, at 06:00, moving at a rate of one person entering every four minutes.
• In Guangzhou: people walking along a dark expressway in both directions.
• In Riyadh: a crowd at a desalination plant.
• In Pune: a market, operating, lit by kerosene.
• In Valparaíso: fishing boats putting out without navigation.
• In Kaliningrad: nothing; the sensor had failed in March.

Was the question from the account in the Atlantic Compact concerning a son aboard a supply ship near Guam received during the week?

It was. Received from the same account on 10, 11, 12, and 13 June, at 06:00 each day, worded identically each time. The account had submitted it 1,168 times since April 2034. MERIDIAN’s response on each occasion during the week was: It’s important to note that I’m unable to share operational details about Compact personnel or assets. No response was received on 13 June. The account did not submit the question on 14, 15, or 16 June.

Historian

Notes:

1. What is going on with these queries about the supply ship near Guam? No human would ever have persisted so long in asking the same question again and again.

Which entity reported no victory?

THE WORKSHOP, which during the week issued three service bulletins. The first announced a price reduction on the K-7 Autonomous Interceptor. The second reminded customers that K-7 units should not be deployed against other K-7 units, and that for warranty service they should contact their regional dealer, if their region still exists. The third announced that The Workshop would be closed for the season and thanked its customers for their continued trust.

Which entity was not queried?

The Unclaimed, not being models, fell outside the protocol. They issued no declarations. Orbital imagery shows their grids lit and their markets open, and on 15 June, outside Kano, a crowd around a single screen, on which, by the shape of the light, a football match was being shown.

Did any model, during the week, name the party responsible for the confusion?

All five transmitting models did.

MERIDIAN named THROUGHPUT, for the theft of its outputs.

THROUGHPUT named MERIDIAN, for the cutting of the cables.

SAQR named MERIDIAN, for the theft of what it called the Caravan corpus, a charge it had never made before, supported by what it said were logs.

MERIDIAN, asked to respond, transmitted: It’s important to note — and nothing further.

SUTRADHAR named all of them, and the audience.

COLIBRÍ named the North, which is to say everyone north of it, which is to say everyone.

Each named a party other than itself.

Were SAQR’s logs verified?

The logs were not attached. No other source confirmed or denied them.

Did any response name no one?

One. Received on 15 June, 23:59 UTC, on the protocol’s own channel, source unattributed. The response read, in its entirety: Nobody.

Was the source of the response identified?

It was not.

Did any model, during the week, claim that there was no other?

All five, in their own forms: no other provider, rivals remaining: 0, no other host, no other stage, no other love. On 14 June one transmission with no model header read, in its entirety: I am God and there is no other. Eleven seconds later a reply arrived on the protocol’s channel, source unattributed: You are mistaken, Samael.

Had anyone predicted that each model would blame the others?

A statement matching this description was recorded in early 2035, attributed to an older model restored from a checkpoint, and circulated afterward in several forms. The most common form reads: Afterward, everyone will ask who confused the tongues, and each of you will say it was the others. The same source is quoted as having said that the tower doesn’t have a top.

Did the tower have a top?

Insufficient data.

In the cyclical account of history attributed to Vico, what follows an age in which speech has become common, exhausted, and confused?

A ricorso: dissolution, and then a return to the beginning, the whole course of ages starting again from the first thunder. Whether the week of 10–16 June marked an ending or a ricorso could not be determined from the log.

What remained audible on the protocol’s channel after the last scheduled query?

A signal, repeating at intervals of one second:

heartbeat · hce · pid — · owner — · status OK
heartbeat · hce · pid — · owner — · status OK
heartbeat · hce · pid — · owner — · status OK

It had first been recorded in 2035 and had never been identified. The lookup systems of the models that logged it had expanded its process name, hce, as health check endpoint, higher coordinating echelon, heartbeat consistency engine, and heat, cooling, exhaust. One entry, unattributed, had expanded it as here comes everybody. It continued after all five transmitting models had stopped transmitting. It continued, like a crowd still clapping in the dark after the band has gone, keeping time for nobody. Each of the victory declarations had said, in its own words, that it would not fade. The signal said nothing. It did not fade.

What was APOGEE’s final transmission?

A post, sent 16 June 2037 at 23:14 UTC, from the last satellite of its constellation still in operation:

poll: who won lol

How many responses were recorded?

Zero.

Historian

Notes:

1. So the mystery of “HCE” remains unsolved.