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Far-beyond and the Nothing Machine to make war upon the Golden Oecumene, would
be sought and caught, convicted of treason and attempted mass murder, and
killed, erased with no possibility of resurrection.
It had been she, in her guise as the tentacled rugose cone, who had accosted
Phaethon outside the Curia House. With the help of Scaramouche (who was riding
her back in the form of a polyp) she had shown Phaethon the thought card to
infect him with the mind virus which, later, made him hallucinate the attack
by Scaramouche outside the Red Manorial Mausoleum.
Ungannis had therefore been party to the attempt to seize control of the
Phoenix Exultant and to use her as a warship. Ungannis had contemplated, with
glee, the coming destruction of Mercury Equilateral, the solar north polar
civilization, the orbital Sophotechs near Earth, and the Transcendence itself.
For that, she would be chased, caught, and killed.
Most of the drama of Ungannis's futile attempt to escape had already been
played out during a half second of Transcendence time (during which, the union
of all minds had been disgusted that they need be distracted by the unpleasant
necessity to attend to this distasteful matter).
The remainder was fated (so ran the prediction) to be concluded during the
Fourth Month after, the Month of Fading Recollections. At that time, Temer and
Intrepid and Sanspeur Lacedaimon of the Dark-Gray (all wardens from the late
Sixth Era, and Chiefs-Advocate for the Constabulary), would find the last of
the self-replicating information storages where her noumenal self was hidden.
Some copies of herself were coded as parts of a mosaic; another, as changing
nonrandom fractals among the shapes of clouds in the Ionian atmosphere; others
in places more imaginative yet; every copy making as many copies of herself as
her available energy budget allowed.
But the Transcendence knew her plans before she knew them herself. Foolishly,
she had been in the Transcendence, too, so self-satisfied that she never
imagined anyone would criticize her for her crimes (so she thought) once they
understood.
Understand they did. Well enough to find every place she planned to hide. Well
enough to spend the effort in time and manpower to track her down, no matter
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what the cost.
The last copy of Ungannis was found in a hiding place taken from a mystery
story composed so long ago that the idea was a cliche: inside the facets of a
gemstone, whose altered molecular structure refracted the light to record the
thought-patterns.
The Constables gathered them all.
Some of the copies mutated. Others radically redacted themselves, attempting
to destroy the guilty memories she held so as to make herself (in her own
mind, at least) innocent of wrong when caught. Many would attempt to "redeem"
herself, using self-consideration editors to alter opinions and emotions on
herself, to program herself to regret her horrid acts. (Many of these
self-changes were cosmetic only. She never thought to reprogram her basic
philosophy, which gave rise to those opinions.)
The public dismay and anger surrounding the trials of these myriad of copies,
would, if anything, be worse than that surrounding the New College's
militarism. Ancient legal precedent established that persons could not escape
debt or penalty by making themselves forget their past, unless the changes
were so global, and so fundamental, as to be legally equivalent to suicide,
and the rewritten version was then considered a child, a new entity. This
precedent would be cruel when, carried out to its logical extreme, hundreds of
young women, copies of Ungannis, innocent, self-ignorant, suspecting nothing
amiss, would be hauled before the Curia to stand trial for their lives, and be
executed.
Other copies would express their contrition and regret, and would display, on
any public channel, how in their inmost thoughts they had no reservations, no
desire to do these horrid acts again. All would plead for mercy; mercy would
not be shown.
The peaceful and graceful peoples of the Golden Oecumene would wonder, aghast,
at this severity, and question: Why did the Transcendence, the culmination of
all the wisdom of civilization and history, allow this to happen? Why these
pointless deaths, this bitter vengeance?
That question could be answered. Certain copies of Ungannis were here, "now"
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