Otherwise we might as well give up.ĮSI: Your sim self is saying the same thing. ![]() SUNDARESH: We have to act as if we're in the real universe, not one simulated by the specimen. SHIM: Stop talking about 'real' and 'unreal.' All realities are programs executing laws. Odds are that we exist in one of the Vex simulations right now.ĮSI: If you have a plan, then so does your sim, and the Vex knows about it.ĭUANE-MCNIADH: Does it matter? If we're in Vex hell right now, there's nothing we can. SHIM: Odds are that we aren't our own originals. If it can run one simulation, maybe it can run more than one. We have no obligation to them.ĮSI: You can't seriously - your OWN SELF. If we don't let it go, it'll put us through hell.ĭUANE-MCNIADH: We have no causal connection to the mind state of those sims. We wouldn't feel that pain, but rationally speaking, we have to treat an identical copy's agony as identical to our own. So it's simulating us? It made virtual copies of us? How does that give it power?ĮSI: It controls the simulation. We're in a difficult position.ĭUANE-MCNIADH: I don't understand. SUNDARESH: So that's the situation as we know it. By any reasonable philosophical standard, we are inside that Vex.ĮSI: Unless you take a particularly ruthless approach to the problem of causal forks: yes. SUNDARESH: The simulations have interiority? Subjectivity?ĮSI: I can't know that until I look more closely. It may have breached our shared virtual workspace.the neural links could have given it data. But it obviously has capabilities we don't. It works from what it sees and it infers the rest. It doesn't have enough information.ĮSI: It inferred. SUNDARESH: There's no divergence? That's impossible. It's running a spectacularly high-fidelity model of a Collective research team studying a captive Vex entity.ĮSI: Right now the simulated Maya Sundaresh is meeting with the simulated Chioma Esi to discuss an unexpected problem. It's thinking about us.ĮSI: It's simulating us. SUNDARESH: Are you telling me it's human? A human merkwelt? Human qualia?ĮSI: I'm telling you it's full of humans. I don't need any kind of epistemology bridge. The cognitive architectures are so -ĮSI: No. SUNDARESH: In metaphorical terms, of course. Which means.ĮSI: I have a working interface with the specimen's internal environment. And it's not urgent, or you'd already have evacuated the site. It's not good, or you'd be on my side of the desk. SUNDARESH: Twelve? The operational Vex platform? That's incredible! You must know what this means - ah, so. ![]() Tell me.ĮSI: I've figured out what's happening inside the specimen. ![]() Perhaps the Virgo Prohibition is simply the wrong algorithm for its environment, and its failure will drive the greater Vex network to adapt and improve.įrom the Records of the Ishtar CollectiveĮSI: Maya, I need your help. Ikora Rey has proposed that the Vex units can best be understood as algorithms - each a unique mapping of inputs to behavioral responses. Is it possible that the Vex are trying to draw out the Cabal strength? Or that their surface losses are a distraction from a deeper strategic ploy? The Prohibition's tactics seem to be failing in the short run.īut it seems unlikely that an organization with the sheer computational scope of the Vex could be dragged into a losing war of attrition. In spite of the Vex onslaught, the Cabal have managed to expand its beachhead and maintain a hold on several mysterious Vex structures. These aggressive, relentless Vex constantly test the Cabal exclusion zone, apparently heedless of losses. Mars is wracked by an ongoing theater-level conflict between the Cabal and a Vex subtype known as the Virgo Prohibition.
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