Semper Human. Ian Douglas

what?” He looked into that blue-white hell. The simulation carried no sensation of temperature, but he could swear his face felt hot as he looked into that searing blaze of light.

      “We had assumed that the Xul presence at the Galactic Core had been burned out by the Core Detonation over a thousand years ago,” Socrates told him.

      “Seems like a reasonable assumption,” Garroway said. “Do you mean to tell me they survived in that?”

      “We’re attempting to verify that now. We’ve deployed AI probes to investigate. As you can imagine, the environment poses certain … difficulties.”

      The view of the luminous rose of light expanded, the viewpoint rushing in toward the inner Core. The sheer magnificent beauty of the scene was overwhelming, and Garroway had to remind himself that the environment must be as hostile, in terms of radiation and temperature, as the surface of a star.

      “It is,” Socrates told him. “Keep in mind, though, that we have encountered no fewer than twenty distinct species of intelligent life dwelling either in the photospheres or within the cores of their stars. Life evolves, develops, and adapts everywhere, when given the chance.”

      “Socrates,” Garroway said aloud, “did you just read my mind?”

      There was a slight hesitation. “I did, General. Excuse me, please.”

      “General Garroway hasn’t been exposed to the concept of full access yet,” Schilling told the AI.

       “So I understand now. It won’t happen again, General. At least, not until you authorize it.”

      “Full access?”

      “High-end AIs, like Socrates, have what we refer to as full access to human mentation. They can pretty much pick up and track anything you’re thinking, without interfacing through your implant.”

      “I see. Why?”

      “Social control, of course. And universal data access for the Disimplanted.”

      The way she said the words “social control” felt so natural, so completely matter-of-fact that Garroway wasn’t certain he’d heard her correctly at first. This, he reflected, might be the biggest gap between his own time and culture and this one that he’d yet encountered.

      Humankind had been working with direct man-machine neural interfaces for the major part of the species’ technic history—nineteen hundred years at least—and with various forms of artificial intelligence for longer than that. Implant technology had begun as crude molecular arrays of 2K protein processor nodes that facilitated direct downloads of data from primitive computer nets. Eventually, those early implants had evolved into nanochelated structures of complex design, organic-machine hybrids residing within the brain and running an enormous variety of software that usually included a resident personal AI. These personal secretaries or “essistants” could so perfectly mimic their fully organic host that it was possible to hold a conversation with one on any topic and be unaware that you were speaking with a machine—the final evocation of the ancient proposal known as the Turing Test.

      Such essistants were considered vital in modern communications and interface technologies, and more and more interactions with machines, from accessing research data banks or piloting spacecraft to growing furniture or opening doors or turning on a room’s illumination system, required an implant.

      Which left people without implants, the Disimplanteds, or “Disimps,” out in the cold and dark, often literally.

      But the AIs of Garroway’s day had been designed to pick up only on those thoughts that were appropriately coded, preceded by a mental symbol that told the AI that it was welcome. The idea of allowing any intelligence, even a manmade one, into his thoughts without permission was profoundly disturbing.

      And allowing machines to read minds for purposes of “social control” was, to Garroway’s way of thinking, horrifying. Did that mean they had artificial intelligences prowling the streets of human worlds and habs, listening for stray thoughts that might lead to social unrest, crime, or dissidence?

      And how did you tell the difference between an artificial intelligence and a member of that new species Schilling had mentioned … what had she called them? The Homo telae? Could they read minds as well?

      “I don’t think I like this full-access idea,” he told them.

      “I don’t imagine you do,” Schilling said. “It probably feels pretty strange … even creepy. It’s not a bad thing, however. Crime—at least outside of the free zones—is almost unknown. Intraspecies war—both civil war and war between separate human governments or religious groups—is all but obsolete. Humankind has never known such an era of peace and general well-being.”

      “So what do the AIs do in this utopia of yours?” Garroway said. “Eavesdrop on street corners, and call the cops when they hear the random, disgruntled rant against the government?”

      “Not ‘cops,’?” Socrates told him. “That’s antiquated terminology. We refer to socons. Agents of social control.”

      “This is sounding worse and worse.”

      “Most socons are AIs,” Schilling said. “Though there are human agents, of course. In most cases, they can correct aberrant behavior directly and immediately, and the person involved—whether he’s a criminal, a political dissident, or mentally ill—can be adjusted, healed … and never even know the adjustment has taken place.”

      “Captain,” he replied slowly, “you are scaring the hell out of me. Who decides what is dissident, and what is just an expression of a less-than-mainstream opinion? Who determines what mentally ill is? What are the standards? It’s not like you can diagnose mental illness by pulling a throat culture, damn it!”

      “Gently, General,” Socrates told him. “It’s not as bad as you think. Our system has worked, and worked well, for over five centuries.”

      Garroway started to reply, then thought better of it. Until he had a better feel for this culture, and for its rules and regulations both written and unwritten, he was going to need to keep his mouth shut and his eyes, ears, and implant open. Something he said now, in ignorance, might well prejudice these people against both him and his own Marines.

      “I’ll take your word for it,” he said, but his reservations remained. “You were telling me, though, about alien intelligences inhabiting stars.”

      “Indeed. They seem to be relatively rare, but several species, existing as coherent plasmas, have evolved within stellar atmospheres, or, in two cases of which we know, deep within the stellar core. Obviously, our communications with such beings are somewhat … limited.”

      The view of the Core Detonation had continued to grow and change as they talked. The scene now appeared to be centered on a glowing disk, a pinwheel of light shading from red at the outer rim to an intense, eye-watering violet at the center.

      “Is that the Galactic Core?” Garroway asked. The pinwheel, obviously, was an accretion disk. At its center was a tiny void, an emptiness, into which compressed gas and stellar material appeared to be funneling, a large and massive black hole. Dying matter shrieked its death scream in X-rays and the far ultraviolet.

      “No,” Socrates told him. “The Core is about 350 light years in that direction.” Garroway sensed the gesture, deeper into an impenetrable haze of blue-white radiance beyond. “This is the Great Annihilator.”

      Garroway had heard of it. A black hole, yes … but not, as once had been imagined, the supermassive black hole at the Galaxy’s exact center. The true Galactic Core consisted of a black hole of about two million solar masses, but, until the Core Detonation wavefront reached the vicinity of Earth, there would be no physical evidence pinpointing it from Earth’s vicinity save for the observed movements of core stars, no light, no radiation of any sort.

      The