The Heir of Caliban said nothing more. It would have been ambitious to claim that everyone had understood-and for those who had understood, that they truly grasped it. When some minds both understood and realized, the vertigo was such that thought itself became elusive.
In the sky, other great luminous spheres were being towed, and they were multiplying across the surface of the planet.
- "Your plan was based on sending a human to the far end of the universe, having him activate a temporal beacon, then come here with a messenger… and an Armor, to activate the Form of Three?" Andréi asked. "That seems terribly complicated. You are superior minds… why not simply create a machine? After all, the Beacon of the End of Times was one."
- "You are a machine like any other," the Heir replied simply. "But you have one advantage over machines of metal and electronics: you want to live, to survive, you exist within mutual-aid societies. You are resilient to everything. Moreover, when faced with a mission, when faced with danger, you analyze and know how to adjust course. Finally, through mysticism, you are capable of giving your lives for a purpose. No machine is more robust than a sentient society endowed with a survival instinct."
- "All right, but why activate The Empyrean Gates in the past? Why not do it at the End of Times, where you were?"
- "For one material reason and one philosophical reason: the Tower is an amplifier that extends perpendicular time across the entire universe, and it requires considerable energy that does not exist in the future. Moreover, we needed everyone to be here… we have Transients who disagree with the natural course of transcendence… and we had to bring them back to us before leaving. We all leave, or no one leaves, because each one is necessary for the final journey."
The Wau, still seated, pointed to a luminous sphere in the sky.
- "Is that them?"
- "Exactly. We need everyone, including the one you saved within the Simulation."
- "And the Transients the Aleph killed?"
- "The Pilgrim? He did not kill any Transients. He is the Pilgrim."
Silence. These gods did not know everything.
- "You are at war with the Transients, then?"
- "We are Transients of Transients. We have transcended multiple times. Wau, Armor Bearer, we know your parable of the dog and the rifle, so allow us to complete it. There was a time when we were Transients among Transients. Some of us before the moment you are living, others after, others precisely now. In our previous attempts, we exposed our plan to our Transient peers through temporal probes sent into the past-but some rejected it. Some opposed it. Some refused the path of further transcendences. And some did everything in their power to ensure our project would fail."
- "Previous attempts?" Gulmira asked.
- "Our universe has gone dark and reignited many times already through interactions with other universes, and we have made many attempts-and all of them failed. However, we succeeded in communicating from one Big Bang to the next by configuring, at the last moment, the arrangement of matter, so that within the cosmic microwave background one could read the instructions for improvement with each attempt."
- "I don't understand," someone said. "The Transients who oppose you-won't they go into the future? Aren't they among you?"
- "They do not exist in the future. What we are, the Heirs, is an evolution of an evolution of what the Transients are. There are civilizations that consciously refuse to transcend in order to enjoy the pleasures and sufferings of their materiality, and there are Transients who also refuse to evolve. They remain… like forest men, with the dogs they adore, in the woods. By refusing to follow the path of evolution, they close themselves off from their becoming-but also from ours. We need them to be complete."
- "You force them," Ada declared.
- "Yes. Dogs fight, men wage war, and Transients too-even if it is often a sudden discovery for many Xenos."
- "What did you do to fight the Transients opposed to you when you could not interact with the universe?"
- "That is the whole problem. We had everything: the theoretical solution, the practical solution. The only obstacle was our past alter egos who were in disagreement. And our only weapon against gods was sentient creatures such as you. Beings that were almost powerless. We selected Caliban because it was a planet located within a human enclave… and because humans, in their history, did something exceptional-moreover at the initiative of a Transient unaware of his decision: they exiled one of their own to the other end of the universe. We could retrieve him and equip him so that he would secure our plan discreetly. It was very risky. We failed many times in the past. It did not succeed as we intended… but it succeeded."
- "But that's idiotic!" Ada protested. "Why not simply send a clear message saying 'do this or that'? We would have followed the instructions!"
- "That was our first strategy-rather naïve. But the Transients were watching closely. They were searching for the location of the Tower. We placed these messages in places we knew were rarely visited-once again, we had knowledge of the past. Moreover, humans have qualities, but they are complex. When gods send them a message, they tend to overthink and end up doing the opposite. Your history includes murderous crusades in the name of a religious book in which the words 'love one another' were written."
- "OK, but from the second time onward, why were the Transients opposed to your plan? I mean, you restarted temporal beacons every time to explain everything to them? You're not that stupid, are you?"
- "From the second time onward, they already knew everything by reading our messages in the cosmic microwave background."
Ada screamed in rage. In the end, the eminently complex chain of events that had led to the present situation had no simpler solution.
She finally declared:
- "So in the end, all of this was for your own benefit."
The Heir of Humans knelt on one knee to meet her gaze.
- "Ada… I am you. You are in me. It was for our benefit-both of ours."
- "All right… and what is in the New Beginning? You must know a little, right?"
The Heirs looked at one another, then the Human Heir, shrugging with great humanity, said:
- "We are going to be compacted into a single block. In Empyrean, some will die. But their imprint will survive in negative. And in the New Beginning… well… everyone has their own theory."
Fatigue settled over everyone. Night had fallen long ago, and the auroras had vanished. Far to the east of Caliban, it was the blue hour of morning, and the sun could be sensed.
The Heir of Humans finally said:
- "I would say that over there, an immense hand will seize us. We will be the encoded DNA of a new form of life, unimaginable. Or a work of art for the eye of a God of Gods, inspiring in Him new and powerful feelings-sufficient for Him to create worlds beyond our imagination."