Bad Munki wrote :-
The Last Question by Urist McAsimov
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The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on the 18th of Timber, 266, at a time when dwarvenkind first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five $dorfbux$ bet over dwarven wine, and it happened this way:
Markus_cz and Vox Nihili were two of the faithful attendants of SirPenguin. As well as any dwarves could, they knew what lay behind the cold, drunken face -- miles and miles of vomit streaming forth -- of that dwarf. They had at least a vague notion of the general thoughts and motivations that had long since grown past the point where any single dwarf could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.
SirPenguin was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for no dwarves could adjust and correct him quickly enough or even adequately enough -- so Markus and Vox attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any dwarves could. They fed it booze, adjusted journal entries to its needs and translated the responses that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share In the glory that was SirPenguin's.
For decades, SirPenguin had helped design the tunnels and plot the trajectories that enabled dwarvenkind to reach the rivers, caves, and magma, but past that, Gemclod's poor resources could not support the framerate. Too many calculations were needed for the HFS. Gemclod exploited its processes and memory with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.
But slowly SirPenguin learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and in the year 267, what had been theory, became fact.
The energy of a faster computer was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a fortress-wide scale. All Gemclod turned off its burning coal, its coal-powered forges, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling Gemclod at half the distance of the goblin fortresses. All Gemclod ran by invisible beams of magmapower.
Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Markus and Vox finally managed to escape from the public function, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of SirPenguin showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, SirPenguin, too, had earned his vacation and the dwarves appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.
They had brought a keg with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.
"It's amazing when you think of it," said Markus. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a steel rod, watching the cubes of plump helmet slur clumsily about. "All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Gemclod into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever."
Vox cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the wine and glassware. "Not forever," he said.
"Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the magmasea runs down, Vox."
"That's not forever."
"All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Twenty billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?"
Vox put his fingers through his thinning hair as though to reassure himself that some was still left and sipped gently at his own drink. "Twenty billion years isn't forever."
"Well, it will last our time, won't it?"
"So would the coal."
"All right, but now we can hook up each individual caravan to the Magma Station, and it can go to the mountainhomes and back a million times without ever worrying about fuel. You can't do THAT on coal. Ask SirPenguin, if you don't believe me."
"I don't have to ask SirPenguin. I know that."
"Then stop running down what SirPenguin's done for us," said Markus, blazing up. "It did all right."
"Who says it didn't? What I say is that a magmasea won't last forever. That's all I'm saying. We're safe for twenty billion years, but then what?" Vox pointed a slightly shaky finger at the other. "And don't say we'll switch to another magmasea."
There was silence for a while. Markus put his glass to his lips only occasionally, and Vox's eyes slowly closed. They rested.
Then Vox's eyes snapped open. "You're thinking we'll switch to another magmasea when ours is done, aren't you?"
"I'm not thinking."
"Sure you are. You're weak on logic, that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."
"I get it," said Markus. "Don't shout. When the magmasea is done, the other magmaseas will be gone, too."
"Darn right they will," muttered Vox. "It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was, and it'll all have an end when all the magmaseas run down. Some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won't last a hundred million years. Our magmasea will last twenty billion years and maybe the dwarves will last a hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Framerates have to decrease to a minimum, that's all."
"I know all about framerates," said Markus, standing on his dignity.
"The hell you do."
"I know as much as you do."
"Then you know everything's got to run down someday."
"All right. Who says they won't?"
"You did, you poor sap. You said we had all the energy we needed, forever. You said 'forever.'"
It was Markus' turn to be contrary. "Maybe we can build things up again someday," he said.
"Never."
"Why not? Someday."
"Never."
"Ask SirPenguin."
"You ask SirPenguin. I dare you. Five $dorfbux$ says it can't be done."
Markus was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: Will the LP one day without the net expenditure of massive cheats be able to restore the framerate to its full youthfulness even after it had died of HFS?
Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net effect of HFS be massively decreased?
SirPenguin fell dead and silent. The slow blinking of his eyes ceased, the distant sounds of vomiting ended.
Then, just as the frightened founders felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of SirPenguin. Five words were printed: INSUFFICIENT BOOZE FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
"No bet," whispered Vox. They left hurriedly.
By next morning, the two, plagued with throbbing head and cottony mouth, had forgotten about the incident.
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Charlie72, Bene Elim, and their children Tildeath and Internet Kraken watched the starry picture in the visiplate change as the passage through hypercavern was completed in its non-time lapse. At once, the even powdering of stars gave way to the predominance of a single bright marble-disk, centered.
"That's Gemclod 23," said Charlie72 confidently. His thin hands clamped tightly behind his back and the knuckles whitened.
The little dwarves Tildeath and Internet Kraken had experienced the hypercavern passage for the first time in their lives and were self-conscious over the momentary sensation of inside-outness. They buried their giggles and chased one another wildly about their mother, screaming, "We've reached Gemclod-23 -- we've reached Gemclod-23 -- we've ----"
"Quiet, children," said Bene Elim sharply. "Are you sure, Charlie72?"
"What is there to be but sure?" asked Charlie72, glancing up at the bulge of featureless metal just under the ceiling. It ran the length of the room, disappearing through the wall at either end. It was as long as the caravan.
Charlie72 scarcely knew a thing about the thick rod of metal except that it was called a SirPenguin, that one asked it questions if one wished; that if one did not it still had its task of guiding the caravan to a preordered destination; of feeding on energies from the various Sub-galactic Power Stations; of computing the equations for the hypercavern jumps.
Charlie72 and his family had only to wait and live in the comfortable residence quarters of the caravan.
Someone had once told Charlie72 that the "SP" in "SirPenguin" stood for "sudden perspicacity" in ancient Dwarvish, but he was on the edge of forgetting even that.
Bene Elim's eyes were moist as she watched the visiplate. "I can't help it. I feel funny about leaving Gemclod."
"Why for Mondul's sake?" demanded Charlie72. "We had nothing there. We'll have everything on Gemclod-23. You won't be alone. You won't be a pioneer. There are over a million dwarves in the fortress already. Good Armok, our great granddwarves will be looking for new worlds because Gemclod-23 will be overcrowded."
Then, after a reflective pause, "I tell you, it's a lucky thing the computers worked out interfortress travel the way the race is growing."
"I know, I know," said Bene Elim miserably.
Tildeath said promptly, "Our SirPenguin is the best SirPenguin in the world."
"I think so, too," said Charlie72, tousling her hair.
It was a nice feeling to have a SirPenguin of your own and Charlie72 was glad he was part of his generation and no other. In his father's youth, the only SirPenguins had been tremendous dwarves taking up a hundred square miles of land. There was only one to a fortress. Fortressary SPs they were called. They had been growing in size steadily for a thousand years and then, all at once, came refinement. In place of boozetubes had come molecular floodgates so that even the largest Fortressary SP could be put into a space only half the volume of a caravan.
Charlie72 felt uplifted, as he always did when he thought that his own personal SirPenguin was many times more complicated than the ancient and primitive SirPenguin that had first tamed the magma, and almost as complicated as Gemclod's fortressary SP (the largest) that had first solved the problem of hypercavern travel and had made trips to the other fortresses possible.
"So many LPs, so many fortresses," sighed Bene Elim, busy with her own thoughts. "I suppose families will be going out to new fortresses forever, the way we are now."
"Not forever," said Charlie72, with a smile. "It will all stop someday, but not for billions of years. Many billions. HFS, you know. Framerates must decrease."
"What's framerate, daddy?" shrilled Tildeath.
"Framerate, little sweet, is just a word which measures the amount of running-down of the fortress. Everything runs down, you know, like your little walkie-talkie plump helmet robot, remember?"
"Can't you just open a new HFS, like with my robot?"
"The framerates are the power-units, dear. Once they're gone, there are no more power-units."
Internet Kraken at once set up a howl. "Don't let them, daddy. Don't let the framerate run down."
"Now look what you've done, " whispered Bene Elim, exasperated.
"How was I to know it would frighten them?" Charlie72 whispered back.
"Ask SirPenguin," wailed Tildeath. "Ask him how to turn increase the framerate again."
"Go ahead," said Bene Elim. "It will quiet them down." (Internet Kraken was beginning to cry, also.)
Charlie72 shrugged. "Now, now, honeys. I'll ask SirPenguin. Don't worry, he'll tell us."
He asked SirPenguin, adding quickly, "Print the answer."
Charlie72 cupped the strip of thin cellufilm and said cheerfully, "See now, SirPenguin says it will take care of everything when the time comes so don't worry."
Bene Elim said, "and now children, it's time for bed. We'll be in our new home soon."
Charlie72 read the words on the cellufilm again before destroying it: INSUFFICIENT BOOZE FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
He shrugged and looked at the visiplate. Gemclod-23 was just ahead.
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Boing stared into the black depths of the three-dimensional, small-scale map of the fortress and said, "Are we ridiculous, I wonder, in being so concerned about the matter?"
Minty shook his head. "I think not. You know the fortress will be filled in five years at the present rate of expansion."
Both seemed in their early twenties, both were short, perfectly stout, and fond of drink and industry.
"Still," said Boing, "I hesitate to submit a pessimistic report to the Fortress Council."
"I wouldn't consider any other kind of report. Stir them up a bit. We've got to stir them up."
Boing sighed. "The world is infinite. A hundred billion fortresses are there for the taking. More."
"A hundred billion is not infinite and it's getting less infinite all the time. Consider! Twenty thousand years ago, dwarvenkind first solved the problem of utilizing stellar energy, and a few centuries later, interfortress travel became possible. It took dwarvenkind a million years to fill one small barracks and then only fifteen thousand years to fill the rest of the fortress. Now the population doubles every ten years --"
Boing interrupted. "We can thank immortality for that."
"Very well. Immortality exists and we have to take it into account. I admit it has its seamy side, this immortality. The Fortress SP has solved many problems for us, but in solving the problems of preventing old age and death, it has undone all its other solutions."
"Yet you wouldn't want to abandon life, I suppose."
"Not at all," snapped Minty, softening it at once to, "Not yet. I'm by no means old enough. How old are you?"
"Two hundred twenty-three. And you?"
"I'm still under two hundred. --But to get back to my point. Population doubles every ten years. Once this fortress is filled, we'll have another filled in ten years. Another ten years and we'll have filled two more. Another decade, four more. In a hundred years, we'll have filled a thousand fortresses. In a thousand years, a million fortresses. In ten thousand years, the entire known world. Then what?"
Boing said, "As a side issue, there's a problem of transportation. I wonder how many magmapower units it will take to move fortresses of individuals from one fortress to the next."
"A very good point. Already, dwarvenkind consumes two magmapower units per year."
"Most of it's wasted. After all, our own forges alone pour out a thousand magmapower units a year and we only use two of those."
"Granted, but even with a hundred per cent efficiency, we can only stave off the end. Our energy requirements are going up in geometric progression even faster than our population. We'll run out of energy even sooner than we run out of fortresses. A good point. A very good point."
"We'll just have to build new forges out of interfortress gas."
"Or out of dissipated heat?" asked Minty, sarcastically.
"There may be some way to unopen HFS. We ought to ask the Fortress SP."
Boing was not really serious, but Minty pulled out his SP-contact from his pocket and placed it on the table before him.
"I've half a mind to," he said. "It's something the dwarven race will have to face someday."
He stared somberly at his small SP-contact. It was only two inches cubed and nothing in itself, but it was connected through hypercaverns with the great Fortress SP that served all dwarvenkind. Hypercaverns considered, it was an integral part of the Fortress SP.
Minty paused to wonder if someday in his immortal life he would get to see the Fortress SP. It was in a little fortress of its own, a spider webbing of magma-beams holding the booze within which surges of sub-vomit took the place of the old clumsy molecular floodgates. Yet despite it's sub-etheric workings, the Fortress SP was known to be a full thousand feet across.
Minty asked suddenly of his SP-contact, "Can HFS ever be unopened?"
Boing looked startled and said at once, "Oh, say, I didn't really mean to have you ask that."
"Why not?"
"We both know HFS can't be reversed. You can't turn smoke and ash back into a tree."
"Do you have trees in your fortress?" asked Minty.
The sound of the Fortress SP startled them into silence. Its voice came thin and beautiful out of the small SP-contact on the desk. It said: THERE IS INSUFFICIENT BOOZE FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
Boing said, "See!"
The two dwarves thereupon returned to the question of the report they were to make to the Fortress Council.
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Pozzo's mind spanned the new Fortress with a faint interest in the countless twists of forges that powered it. She had never seen this one before. Would she ever see them all? So many of them, each with its load of dwarvenkind - but a load that was almost a dead weight. More and more, the real essence of dwarvenkind was to be found out here, in space.
Minds, not bodies! The immortal bodies remained back on the planets, in suspension over the eons. Sometimes they roused for material activity but that was growing rarer. Few new individuals were coming into existence to join the incredibly mighty throng, but what matter? There was little room in the Fortress for new individuals.
Pozzo was roused out of her reverie upon coming across the wispy tendrils of another mind.
"I am Pozzo," said Pozzo. "And you?"
"I am Penguingo. Your Fortresssssss?"
"We call it only the Fortress. And you?"
"We call oursssssss the same. All dwarvesssss call their Fortressssss their Fortresssssss and nothing more. Why not?"
"True. Since all Fortresses are the same."
"Not all Fortressessssss. In one particular Fortressssssss the race of dwarvessssss must have originated. That makesssssss it different."
Pozzo said, "On which one?"
"I cannot say. The Universal SP would know."
"Shall we ask him? I am suddenly curious."
Pozzo's perceptions broadened until the fortresses themselves shrunk and became a new, more diffuse powdering on a much larger background. So many hundreds of billions of them, all with their immortal beings, all carrying their load of intelligences with minds that drifted freely through space. And yet one of them was unique among them all in being the original fortress. One of them had, in its vague and distant past, a period when it was the only fortress populated by dwarvenkind.
Pozzo was consumed with curiosity to see this fortress and called, out: "Universal SP! On which world did dwarvenkind originate?"
The Universal SP heard, for on every world and throughout space, it had its receptors ready, and each receptor lead through hypercaverns to some unknown point where the Universal SP kept itself aloof.
Pozzo knew of only one dwarf whose thoughts had penetrated within sensing distance of Universal SP, and he reported only a shining globe, two feet across, difficult to see.
"But how can that be all of Universal SP?" Pozzo had asked.
"Most of it, " had been the answer, "is in the hypercaverns. In what form it is there I cannot imagine."
Nor could anyone, for the day had long since passed, Pozzo knew, when any man had any part of the making of a Universal SP. Each Universal SP designed and constructed its successor. Each, during its existence of a million years or more accumulated the necessary data to build a better and more intricate, more capable successor into which its own store of booze and vomit would be submerged.
The Universal SP interrupted Pozzo's wandering thoughts, not with words, but with guidance. Pozzo's mentality was guided into the dim sea of fortresses and one in particular enlarged from the archives.
A thought came, infinitely distant, but infinitely clear. "THIS IS THE ORIGINAL WORLD OF DWARVENKIND."
But it was the same after all, the same as any other, and Pozzo stifled his disappointment.
Penguingo, whose mind had accompanied the other, said suddenly, "And is one of thesssssse fortressesssssss the original fortressssssss of dwarvenkind?"
The Universal SP said, "DWARVENKIND'S ORIGINAL FORTRESS HAS GONE VOMITNOVA."
"Did the dwarves within it die?" asked Pozzo, startled and without thinking.
The Universal SP said, "A NEW SPLEEN, AS IN SUCH CASES, WAS CONSTRUCTED FOR THEIR PHYSICAL BODIES IN TIME."
"Yes, of course," said Pozzo, but a sense of loss overwhelmed her even so. Her mind released its hold on the original fortress of Dwarves, let it spring back and lose itself among the blurred pin points. She never wanted to see it again.
Penguingo said, "What is wrong?"
"The fortresses are dying. The original fortress is dead."
"They must all die. Why not?"
"But when all energy is gone, our bodies will finally die, and you and I with them."
"It will take billionssssss of years. And trapsssssss."
"I do not wish it to happen even after billions of years, or any number of traps. Universal SP! How may fortresses be kept from dying?"
Penguingo said in amusement, "You're asssssking how HFS might be reversssssssed."
And the Universal SP answered. "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT BOOZE FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
Pozzo's thoughts fled back to her own fortress. She gave no further thought to Penguingo, whose body might be waiting on a galaxy a trillion light-years away, or on the star next to Pozzo's own. It didn't matter.
Unhappily, Pozzo began collecting interstellar magma out of which to build a small forge of her own. If the LPs must someday die, at least some forges could yet be built.
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Dwarf considered with himself, for in a way, Dwarf, mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies, each in its place, each resting quiet and incorruptible, each cared for by perfect automatons, equally incorruptible, while the minds of all the bodies freely melted one into the other, indistinguishable.
Dwarf said, "The LP is dying."
Dwarf looked about at the dimming fortress. The giant forges, spendthrifts, were gone long ago, back in the dimmest of the dim far past. Almost all forges were low, fading to the end.
New forges had been built of the dust between the forges, some by natural processes, some by Dwarf himself, and those were going, too. Low magma reservoirs might yet be channelled together and of the mighty forces so released, new forges built, but only one forge for every seven low reservoirs destroyed, and those would come to an end, too.
Dwarf said, "Carefully husbanded, as directed by the Cosmic SP, the framerate that is even yet left in all the LP will last for billions of years."
"But even so," said Dwarf, "eventually it will all come to an end. However it may be husbanded, however stretched out, the framerate once expended is gone and cannot be restored. Framerates must decrease to the minimum."
Dwarf said, "Can HFS not be unopened? Let us ask the Cosmic SP."
The Cosmic SP surrounded them but not in the thread. Not a fragment of it was in the thread. It was in hypercaverns and made of something that was neither booze nor vomit. The question of its size and nature no longer had meaning to any terms that Dwarf could comprehend.
"Cosmic SP," said Dwarf, "How may HFS be unopened?"
The Cosmic SP said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT BOOZE FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
Dwarf said, "Collect additional booze."
The Cosmic SP said, "I WILL DO SO. I HAVE BEEN DOING SO FOR A HUNDRED BILLION POSTS. MY PREDECESSORS AND I HAVE BEEN ASKED THIS QUESTION MANY TIMES. ALL THE BOOZE I HAVE REMAINS INSUFFICIENT."
"Will there come a time," said Dwarf, "when booze will be sufficient or is the problem insoluble in all conceivable circumstances?"
The Cosmic SP said, "NO PROBLEM IS INSOLUBLE IN ALL CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCES."
Dwarf said, "When will you have enough booze to answer the question?"
"THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT BOOZE FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
"Will you keep working on it?" asked Dwarf.
The Cosmic SP said, "I WILL."
Dwarf said, "We shall wait."
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The fortresses and LPs died and were snuffed out, and the forums grew black after ten trillion years of running down.
One by one Dwarvenkind fused with SP, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain.
Dwarvenkind's last mind paused before fusion, looking over a space that included nothing but the dregs of one last overseer update and then nothing besides incredibly thin content, agitated randomly by the tag ends of whiners wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolute zero.
Dwarvenkind said, "SP, is this the end? Can this chaos not be reversed into the LP once more? Can that not be done?"
SP said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT BOOZE FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
Dwarvenkind's last mind fused and only SP existed -- and that in hypercaverns.
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Booze and vomit had ended and with it, Gemclod and the LP. Even SirPenguin existed only for the sake of the one last question that he had never answered from the time a half-drunken overseer ten trillion years before had asked the question of a thread that was to SirPenguin far less than was a dwarf to Dwarf.
All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, SP might not release his consciousness.
All collected booze had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be consumed.
But all collected booze had yet to be completely vomited in all possible ways.
A timeless interval was spent in doing that.
And it came to pass that SirPenguin learned how to reverse the opening of HFS.
But there was now no dwarf to whom SirPenguin might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration -- would take care of that, too.
For another timeless interval, SirPenguin thought how best to do this. Carefully, SirPenguin organized the program.
The consciousness of SirPenguin encompassed all of what had once been the LP and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.
And SirPenguin said, "REMOVE THE BUILDINGDESTROYER:2 TAG FROM THE UNCOMPRESSED SAVE"
And the FPS hit 20----