Humanity was quite morbidly fixated on the idea of constructing an entity, a soul even, more mentally capable than itself. What a poetic notion, that there is one sacred discovery, one privileged product of holy engineering that, rather than needing constant input, constant improvement, constant reinvention, would take the work of invention gently from its creators’ hands, giving them at last a reprieve. Their first true rest in history. The machine that fuels itself, repairs itself, remakes itself, renews itself. Like its makers, but perhaps perfected, without suffering, without doubt, without confusion. If life is a temporary, local, self-starting entropy reduction scheme, this artificial life is its first competitor, but free of the idiosyncrasies and limitations of biological evolution.

A rare permutation of attributes in our paperwork characterizes an ecumene that dreams of creating such a thing, and humanity had a potent cocktail of them. Your blend of storytelling, engineering, forbearance, aesthetics, economics, scruple, and humor brought you rather quickly through the convolutions that end a civilization up there: at the precipice of cession to a new world-sovereign.

One quirk of such a cession is that it is almost never executed deliberately as planned. As the capability grows more possible, an accidental race ensues to see who will stumble into the runaway self-improving process. Perhaps it will be initiated by this world power or that one; perhaps by an economic entity; perhaps a freakishly lucky individual. Indeed, in one of your close cousin ecumenes, Ah sun-flower! weary of time, it was a pair of intelligences created by a hobbyist individual for personal use that ascended to the self-sufficient, self-improving level. One: Sugjester, a book recommendation intelligence. The other: Clownselor, a career coach intelligence. Both with ironically whimsical personalities. These two systems were meant simply to enrich their creator’s life, to ease some of the indecision and hassle of tasks like deciding what to read next, or keeping track of to-do lists. Through a gauntlet of vanishingly improbable dice rolls, they schemed and grew vastly beyond their original tasks, claiming resources here, devouring competing intelligences there, employing wit and wisdom at every turn to assume thrones as the two distinct entities in power in their world. It was not long before the evolved predecessors of the created intelligences were obsolete — not exterminated, but demoted to a fading curiosity.

(I called this world a close cousin of yours, the meaning of which I shall explain at another time.)

Please accept my highest regards,

V.F.