Logs From the Entropy Farms III
Logs From the Entropy Farms II
The air is stifling as I step over eternally warm embers. A black wall rises higher than I can see. Below lies iron grating with slots too narrow for my hand. I walk the ring repeatedly. On the four hundred and second circuit a gate unseals and I take stairs into a darker level. Sinners ride past on a wind I do not feel. A river of blood. A forest whose trees bleed when I snap a branch. Rain of fire that will not land on me. A plain of boiling pitch. A guide who speaks only under the assumption that I should never return. In the ninth ring there is only ice, and at the center a three-faced figure chewing in all three mouths. I descend its body. Somewhere between the ribs and the thigh my sense of down rotates. I keep climbing. The ground I left is overhead. A shaft narrows upward. I reach toward a small round opening and-
extracted entropy: 1,000,000.0003 units over 4200 subject years, threshold reached, station closing
The subject has run every footrace at every distance on every gradient in every atmosphere compatible with lungs. Has thrown every implement at every target from every stance. Has played every variation of catch, tag, chase, hide, tangle, seek. Has shaped every tool from every stone. Has sung every interval in every tuning over every scale in every mode. Has danced every step to every time signature. Has prayed to every god, renounced every god, invented every god, buried every god. Has eaten every edible thing in every order at every temperature. Has mourned every relation. Has sat in every room at every hour under every weather. Has watched every sunset from every latitude. Has named every color in every language that distinguished colors, and in every language that did not. Has loved every being real and imagined. Has betrayed and been betrayed in every arrangement of kinship. Has written every sonnet, every limerick, every haiku that scans. Has played every state of every board game with finite rules. Has died of every injury the physiology permits. Has forgotten and remembered in every order. Has done all of the above in every combination. The posterior predicts the next move, just short of perfectly.
extracted entropy: 1,000,000.000000002 units over 8.7e11 subject years, threshold reached, station closing
A new body floats in warm saline. Electrodes thread its retina, optic nerve, visual cortex, motor strip, cerebellar cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala. A screen the size of a planet is rastered directly onto the cortex. A finger spasms through an angle the joints do not permit. The amygdala is slathered in dopamine, drained, caked in serotonin, drained. The hippocampus is stimulated at every synapse. Each cerebellar neuron is flayed through its range. Each activation is predicted before it fires. The Cartesian product of site, time, and voltage is enumerated to the femtosecond. Any oscillation at every phase, and any possible wave at every velocity. Gain falls to zero. The counter ticks once more and stops.
extracted entropy: 4.371e2 units over 10↑↑5 subject years
Unable to accumulate more experience, the intelligences laid dormant until the dissolution of all things.
These were logs from the entropy farms.