Wordsworth – Chapter 15 – Interlude: Storyteller

A world was burning.

The Thinker and the Warrior walked across it in all its myriad permutations. They had taken everything they could from it and the civilization that had populated it. A few shards had been further optimized, and the Thinker was pondering on new technology repositories to implement for the next cycle.

And then, it paused.

The Warrior continued ahead, scouring the same sun over and over for energy to replenish its exhausted reserves after centuries of conflict. The Warrior didn’t hesitate; it just wasn’t what it was meant to do.

No, that was the Thinker’s job.

And, for the first time in too many cycles, it had encountered reason to do so.

Because, even up to the very end, the now-dead species had engaged in something that served no real purpose, something that the Thinker understood when it came to the less sophisticated species it had encountered, but…

The Thinker remembered.

This species had been a rare find. An advanced civilization, one they had thought on the verge of space colonization only to realize almost too late that it had already reached that stage and still decided to remain on its homeworld. Its technology had been more advanced than that of the clusters they would usually prey on, but that had brought enough opportunities to warrant the risk. A risk that had been, after all, almost too low to properly quantify.

And so, as the Warrior engaged in battles that forced the hosts to contend with regular members of the species wielding weaponry that more than leveled the field, the Thinker had devoted itself to studying everything it could find of interest.

As it always did.

As it always would.

But, this time, it had found something unexpected.

It had always been assumed that the use of symbolism and art many hosts engaged in was nothing but a remnant of insufficiently advanced civilizations clinging to suboptimal ways of parsing and conveying information. Although the Thinker was more than capable of instructing its shards to employ such rudimentary methods to communicate with their hosts, it had always been a crude solution to an inelegant problem. A way to interface pristine data to muddled minds.

But… This world…

The crystal spires married form and function like no other it had witnessed before. Even now, even with the hue of the sun shifting as its Warrior companion consumed it, the shattered remains of constructs that had reached above the clouds glittered in a way that had little to do with practicality, the hosts having engraved symbols of cultural significance in the crystals in fractal patterns that echoed down to the atomic structure.

It was a display of knowledge and purpose like none the Thinker had ever seen. And it was wasted on…

Stories.

That was what the Thinker was devoting precious energy to solving. The doubt that had arisen.

Why did a species so advanced, so close to sublime, pure reason and understanding, devote so much effort, resources, energy, to… To mere fancies. To idle daydreams. To myths, and parables, and anything but practical knowledge?

It could be mere waste. A phenomenal misuse of their last moments when facing total extinction.

It could.

And yet… wasn’t the cycle meant to learn from the worlds they landed on? Wasn’t the whole purpose of the Thinker’s existence to discover what it didn’t know?

And… did it reallyknow that these stories were what it had always assumed they were?

With an expenditure of effort that wouldn’t be felt in the journey to come, the Thinker came to a decision. One of its modeling shards shifted, split apart, and budded into a crystal that mirrored the one the Thinker was contemplating.

And so, when the Warrior came to share the spoils of a sun devoured a million millions times over, the Thinker took its share, divesting itself of the ethereal guise it had worn since they landed on one of the mirrored worlds aligned with the one that had contained a monument to the stories of an entire world.

Entwined with its partner, once more in the plenitude of their true selves, Thinker and Warrior shifted in and out of myriad universes as they consumed, as they took their farewell gift from it.

As the memory of a species who had refused the call of the stars disappeared.

All of it, except for what had been stored in a single, minuscule, bud of a crystal shard.

***

A world cracked.

The conflict had been more violent this time around, and the Warrior was pleased with all the data it had managed to gather. New ways to battle, new uses for every weapon they had handled their hosts, new ways to defend against them, and even more ways to go around those defenses.

Yes, the Warrior was pleased as its avatar, a thing of burning light and red rage, tore across the last defenders aligned against them.

The Thinker…

These people sang.

They sang of battle, and death, and suffering. They sang of defiance, and goodbyes, and what awaited beyond.

The Thinker would’ve scoffed, as its current body was prone and apt to.

Instead, a single, minuscule shard vibrated in tune with the all-encompassing chants, and grew.

And the Thinker hummed.

***

A world sank.

The gravity well of its twin suns had grown destabilized, not by the Warrior’s attack or the Thinker’s scheme, but by a single act of defiance from one of the hosts. One who had realized all too soon what the cycle would entail, its true purpose, their preordained fate.

A host who had burned a world to deny them the chance to do it themselves.

The Warrior was frustrated, deploying shards always held in reserve to salvage as much of this cycle as it could.

The Thinker wasn’t worried.

They would inevitably harvest enough energy to make the next leap, that had never been in question. And, even with as many worlds being simultaneously consumed by the host’s last gamble as they were currently dying, enough would survive for it to copy their culture, their thoughts, the part of them that had birthed such an exceptional individual, one with both insight and resolve, one who…

‘Hero,’ the ever-growing shard whispered.

And the Thinker nodded.

***

A world burned.

They usually did. That was the usual pattern of the cycle, what it was designed to accomplish in the end, and it was rarer that they didn’t.

But…

The Thinker reclaimed a single shard. The power it granted wasn’t of much import, just a minor cognitive enhancement based on both extrapolation and modeling of the host’s parallel selves.

And the host had taken that minor skill, that glimpse into something greater than it could ever be…

And locked itself inside its home with as much paint and canvas as it could get its hands on.

They were also stories, in the end, those sprawling creations of color and shape, those sequences of meaning that went beyond mere linearity even as they married to it.

And so, almost tenderly, the Thinker took the memories of the host-who-painted and poured them inside a shard that had stopped being small cycles ago.

Storyteller drank of it, and hummed a song of paintings that came to life.

And the Thinker smiled.

***

There were patterns.

It had always known, in an abstract, detached way. In a way that was data, and not knowledge.

The stories told it there was a difference between them, that all hosts understood and knew that difference, even if the Thinker didn’t.

The Thinker needed to know. It was its whole purpose.

And… It almost felt desperation at it. Something alike to finding wrong data corrupting a logic tree, but much, much worse, something that—

The Thinker knew emotions. Knew how hosts expressed them, how to manipulate them, how to grant powers that preyed on them or nourished them.

Except it didn’t.

Because that was data, not knowledge.

And there was a difference.

So, as stars drifted by and its shards wove in and out and across those of the Warrior, as they exchanged parts of their bodies and minds, the Thinker held Storyteller close.

Storyteller spoke of lands beyond, of times long ago, of kings beneath mountains and monsters under the sea.

And the Thinker listened.

***

A world burned.

It was exactly how it should be, precisely as the Thinker had plotted when they set the route to it. Nothing had deviated from its plan.

Because it hadn’t been a plan, but a story.

And its ending was exactly as the Thinker had envisioned as its plans unfolded according to Storyteller’s knowledge. There had been heroes, and villains, and monsters, and each of them had fulfilled a role repeated across the stars. Each of them falling into ancient songs and recent stories. Each of them fulfilling their purpose.

The Thinker frowned.

This was supposed to be its purpose. Foretelling and setting the cycle in motion with gentle, correcting nudges at every fork of the road. This was supposed to be what passed for satisfaction in their species.

It wasn’t.

A world burned, and all of its creations would survive in the Thinker’s shards, but…

But there would be no more.

No more dreams, no more songs, no more… stories.

Storyteller ached with the loss of all that could’ve been, and the Thinker…

The Thinker nodded.

***

Part of the Thinker was elated.

It had received a new shard in its exchange with the lonely member of its species, the acquisition a thing of precise, clockwork beauty. The best modeling tool it had ever conceived of. It was so intricate in its accuracy that most of its cognition was consumed in the myriad ways it could be used to optimize the next cycle.

But the Thinker was vast. Immense in a way that no host species had ever had a proper word for.

Storyteller liked words.

And the Thinker, or at least part of it, was starting to.

And the part of it that wasn’t busy with the sprawling tapestry of unraveling futures being set for their new world reflected on that.

On liking.

Storyteller’s knowledge had proven useful beyond measure, its understanding of host species growing exponentially as it discovered the rhythms woven into tales that echoed over and over again, like fractal patterns on glass that went down to the atomic structure.

Cycles had been optimized, social shards exploding in efficacy, modeling abilities more accurate than ever before without resorting to the costly use of chronal effects. Yes, Storyteller had proven to be one of its greatest tools.

But…

All the hosts had their stories, and the Thinker had used them, slotting each one in the roles they were best suited for.

But…

But what was the Thinker’s story?

It had never cared to aim one of its shards at itself. They were parts of it, and their data was its own.

Data.

Not knowledge.

Storyteller knew the difference.

And the Thinker craved to.

So, as one part of it kept fiddling with its newest tool and all that it offered… the other came back to what had once been its smallest, youngest one.

And dove inside of it.

There were heroes, and monsters, and villains. Those were the building blocks, what everything else came from, but then the stories grew more complex as the hosts grew. The variations introduced ambiguity, draped veils over the rawest archetypes, but they still remained. There were stories without heroes, yes, but… But not without the shape of them.

The Thinker learned about those shapes.

There was sacrifice. That was one of the oldest things heroes learned, and the Thinker remembered a world sinking toward twin suns in an effort to deprive it and the Warrior of the energy they needed to jump to the next world.

There was nobility, and the Thinker remembered hosts aligned against the Warrior, against its burning light, and refusing to back down as they sang of death and what maybe would come after.

There was… redemption.

And the Thinker remembered many. Many it had set to be monsters and villains before it understood what those terms meant, only for them to slip the leash and become something else. Something other.

Heroes.

The Thinker wished it was wearing an avatar so it could emote in one of the uncountable ways it had learned to do so.

Because the Thinker could send a burst of datastreams to the Warrior, one that contained all that it was currently contemplating.

And none of it would be the same as a race of water-dwelling sapients warbling in the precise tone of the ocean wearing away a sharp rock. The same as sky-soaring, blue beings quickly falling down to the ground below in a display of loss that they turned into ascension and moving peace. The same as cave-dwelling quadrupeds dipping their heads until they touched the earth below, looking for the reassurance of that steady and unchanging.

Not the same as vision-guided fools blocking the light in search of introspection and a burning truth inside of them.

None of it would be knowledge.

And the Thinker finally understood, or, at least, thought it did. Because there was a difference, a vital one. And Storyteller celebrated.

And they both started weaving stories between one another, the first time the Thinker had thought to do so.

They were stories about it. About the Thinker.

The Thinker triumphant, coming down from the Heavens with knowledge stolen from the gods.

The Thinker courageous, standing between creation and the void beyond entropy.

The Thinker redeemed, all of its past deeds no more than the prelude for a story that had yet to unfold.

The Thinker… crashed.

It felt pain unlike any it had ever felt as parts of it exploded in the barrier between dimensions, as it was caught partway between its true shape and the avatar of the host species it had been molding, as shards of it fell into unprepared hosts.

It hadn’t been part of the plan, a true accident, for the first time in eons.

And part of the Thinker couldn’t help but be happy. Because far too many stories began with an accident, with a sudden, unpredictable change in circumstances.

And so, the Thinker wondered, without knowing, what would its story be.

And then a girl wearing the last shard the Thinker had ever acquired stood atop it, an improvised weapon in her hand, and the Thinker understood.

Its story was, and had always been, a tragedy.

And now it would end.