The first law of cybernetics is that the system with the widest parameters is the controlling system. That’s why narrow systems tend toward violence. Their only hope of establishing themselves as the containing system is to put everybody else in a prison of some sort. The Priority Chip installed in every clone sent into space is a kind of prison. But nothing has wider parameters than a sentient emptiness which remains when all programs collapse.
(Between the Tracks: adapted as a reading from a November, 2007 Ash Fork vignette)
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