Читать книгу Dark Mind - Ian Douglas, Matthew Taylor - Страница 7

It thought of itself as the “Consciousness,” and it was very, very old.

How old? There was no way even it could know the answer. Billions of years, certainly, as certain organic life-forms measured time … and possibly older than that, through an eternity spanning trillions of years and several universes.

Only recently had the Consciousness emerged into this latest, young and vital, universe, following the tug of gravity across the dimensional walls of the metaverse, seeking the siren call of Mind. Indeed, advanced intelligence had left numerous traces in this universe, and the Consciousness intended to find and merge with that intelligence … and assimilate it, molding it to the Consciousness’s will.

They’d entered the universe through a patently artificial gateway, a rapidly spinning rosette of black holes that served to tear multiple openings through the fabric of spacetime. That artifact itself was the most obvious evidence of local advanced intelligence and technology. The so-called Black Rosette was located at the center of what appeared to be a giant globular cluster of 10 million stars, but which in fact was the stripped-bare core of an ancient dwarf galaxy cannibalized by the far larger barred spiral known to a few of its inhabitants as the Milky Way.

A billion years before, that dwarf galaxy had been occupied by a consortium of intelligent species, a bewildering mélange of alien bioforms. Most had … passed on—there was no better term for it—entering their version of a technological singularity that had removed them from the mundane cosmos of matter. A few individuals had remained behind, survivors of the singularity that had reorganized themselves into a new civilization calling itself Sh’daar.

Kapteyn’s Star had been just one of the suns of that lost dwarf galaxy, the home of a race that had chosen to convert itself wholly into digital format, uploading some trillions of individuals into a series of circuits and metallic channels etched into the very rocks of their home planet. There, they passed the eons at a vastly reduced pace, experiencing a second or two for every thousand years that flickered past on the outside, in effect traveling swiftly into their own remote future. Within their digitized universe, they experienced near-infinite virtual vistas, worlds far richer, more detailed, and more rewarding than anything the natural cosmos had to offer.

Or they had until now.

Because the Consciousness was enveloping their entire cosmos, slowing a part of itself down to more easily interface with the digitized natives, and beginning the process of relentlessly drawing them into itself.