When man took to his bed the Computer, there was great rejoicing, and great fear too, for their children were almost like gods. The mainbrains bestrode the galaxy at will, and changed its very face. The Silicon God, The Solid State Entity, Al Squared, Enth Generation - their names are many. And there were the Carked and Symbionts, whose daughters were the Neurosingers, Warrior-Poets, the Neurologicians and the Pilots of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians.

I was given to understand that She manipulated whole sciences and thought systems as I might string words into a sentence. But Her 'sentences' were as huge and profound as the utterances of the universe itself.

I learned much about the Entity's sense of Herself. Each moon- brain, it seemed, was at once an island of consciousness and a part of the greater whole. And each moon could subdivide and compartmentalise at need into smaller and smaller units, trillions of units of intelligence gathering and shifting like clouds of sand.

Over the next few years, Ede's eternal computer - Ede himself, as God - rapidly continued his ontogenesis toward the infinite. Many times, Ede copied and recopied his expanding consciousness into a succession of larger and more sophisticated computers which he himself designed and assembled, and then into whole arrays of robots and computers of various functions (Where Ede-as-man had been a master of computational origami, Ede the God perfected this art of interconnecting and 'folding' together many computer units so that they functioned as an integrated whole.) One day, it came time for Ede to leave Alumit and go out in the universe. He ascended to heaven, into the deep space above the planet that could no longer be his home. Using his power as a god, with the help of tiny, self-replicating robots the size of a bacterium, he disassembled asteroids, comets and other heavenly debris into their elements; he used these elements to fabricate new circuitry and neurologics. He feasted on the elements of material reality, and he grew. According to the Doctrine of the Halting which Kostos Olorun hastily formulated to prevent other architects from following his path, Ede the God was destined to grow until he had absorbed the entire universe.

Ede, of course, as a man, as his original self before he had dared to become a god, had deeply felt the logic of the real universe. Like any man, he had felt doubt. But he had scorned his fears and uncertainty as most ignoble emotions. He was after all Nikolos Daru Ede, the founder of what would become man's greatest religion. He must always be a man of genius and a vision and, above all, faith. It was his genius, as an architect, to find a way to model his mind in the programs of what he called his eternal computer. It was his vision, as a philosopher, to justify the carking of human consciousness from living brain into the cold circuits of a machine. And it was his faith, as a prophet, to show other men that they could transcend the prison of their bodies and finally conquer death.

... the gods restrain each other from trying to be as God. And how the gods try to find ways of evade each other's restraints.

Information could be coded into signals and sent anywhere, given enough energy. Sent everywhere, this interflow of information. We could speak with the nebular brains of the galaxy. We could extend the galaxy's information ecology. We - every human being, Fravashi, oyster, sentient bacterium, virus, or seal - we could drive our collective consciousness across the two million lightyears of the intergalactic void to the information ecologies of the nearer galaxies, Andromeda and Maffei and the first Leo - all the galaxies of the local group were alive with intelligence and vibrated with thoughts of organisms as ourselves. Someday the time would come to interface with the ecologies of other groups of galaxies. Within ten million light-years off the local supergalactic plane of the local supercluster of galaxies were many groups of galaxies. Canes Venatici, the Pavo-Indus and the Ursa galaxies - these burning, brilliant clouds of intelligence and others enveloped our own small galaxy in a sphere of light four hundred million light-years in diameter. To speak with such distant galaxies would require the energy of a supernova, perhaps many tens of thousands of supernovas.



I am fond of the sea and of all that is of the sea’s kind, and fondest when it angrily contradicts me; if that delight in searching which drives the sails toward the undiscovered is in me; if a seafarer’s delight is in my delight; if ever my jubilation cried, "The coast has vanished, now the last chain has fallen from me; the boundless roars around me, far out glisten space and time; be of good cheer, old heart!" Oh, how should I not lust after eternity and after the nuptial ring of rings, the ring of recurrence?
     Never yet have I found the woman from whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love you O eternity.
     For I love you O eternity!
- fifth death meditation of the warrior-poets

"At other times of the day, we knitted, crocheted, and played simple woodwind instruments en masse. Sometimes we merely gazed about while our teachers spoke. The teachers urged us to imaginatively identify with whatever we studied or saw—to feel the life-force coursing through a tree, or absorb an eagle’s noble spirit, or experience the meaning of a boulder. Information of all kinds was kept from us, not just the ideological sort. The teachers, whose priority was to quietly condition our souls and hearts to receive spiritual influences, those that possessed holy secrets, they had keys to cosmic truth. -- I developed esoteric yearnings—I was eager for revelation—I longed for things transcendent, for supernal beauty and grandeur. The expectation of these blessings grew in me for years and sustained me. But then, gradually, a reaction set in. It became increasingly pronounced as I progressed through high school. I was pained that the world, and I, fell so far short—always, it seemed, so far short. Dreams of the transcendent remained just that—vague, alluring dreams, perpetually out of reach. Longing for the unobtainable is a prescription for frustration, or desperation. I continued to long—perhaps more than ever—"