The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (120 page)

[Our God machine

stretched/stretches/includes within its heart

a million light-years

and a hundred billion billion circuits

of thought and action

The Ultimates tend it

like saffron-robed priests

doing eternal zazen

in front of the rusting hulk

of a 1938 Packard

But]

[Kwatz!]

[it works

We created the Ultimate Intelligence

Not now

nor

ten thousand years from now

but sometime in a future

so distant

that yellow suns are red

and bloated with age/

swallowing their children

Saturn-like

Time is no barrier to the Ultimate Intelligence

It

the UI

steps through time

or shouts through time

as easily as Ummon moves through what you call

the megasphere

or you

walk the mallways of the Hive

you called home

on Lusus

Imagine our surprise then/

our chagrin/

the Ultimates’ embarrassment

when the first message our UI sent us

across space/

across time/

across the barriers of Creator and Created

was this simple phrase

THERE IS ANOTHER
//

Another Ultimate Intelligence

up there

where time itself

creaks with age

Both were real