dark ilan

ozymandias
Sat, 04 Apr 2026 18:06:05 GMT

The second time Vellam uncovers the conspiracy underlying all of society, he approaches a Keeper.

Some of the difference is convenience. Since Vellam reported that he’d found out about the first conspiracy, he’s lived in the secret AI research laboratory at the Basement of the World, and Keepers are much easier to come by than when he was a quality control inspector for cheese.

But Vellam is honest with himself. If he were making progress, he’d never tell the Keepers no matter how convenient they were, not even if they lined his front walkway every morning to beg him for a scrap of his current intellectual project. He’d sat on his insight about artificial general intelligence for two years before he decided that he preferred isolation to another day of cheese inspection.

No, the only reason he’s telling a Keeper is that he’s stuck.

Vellam is exactly as smart as the average human, a fact he has almost stopped feeling bad about. But the average person can only work twenty hours a week, and Vellam can work eighty-- a hundred, if he’s particularly interested-- and raw thinkoomph can be compensated for with bloody-mindedness. Once he’s found a loose end, he can’t stop picking at it until the entire problem unravels.

“Tell me what you think you know.” The Keeper ominously turns her office chair, which is both ergonomically correct and exquisitely doompunk, towards Vellam.

You think, Vellam notices. She doesn’t want to risk hinting to him that he’s right. (He’s right.)

“Bubbling history doesn’t make any sense,” Vellam says.

“You know that we can’t risk someone creating an independent project to research existential risks.” The Keeper sounds bored. The Basement of the World selects for people who identify Conspiracies, since one in ten of the people there figured out the artificial general intelligence Conspiracy themselves. As every dath ilani ten-year-old learns in school, the selection effect means that Keepers are continually dealing with false allegations of some Conspiracy or other.

Or at least the Keepers want Vellam to believe they do, so that he dismisses any niggling sense of that’s not quite right as ordinary for his reference class.

“But we have machine learning for self-driving cars,” Vellam says. “Computer vision. Even algorithms that automatically trade in prediction markets. All of those are much bigger hints that a general thinking machine is possible than-- I don’t know-- whether fire was invented before or after agriculture. And people do make the connection all the time.” He gestures to indicate all of the Basement of the World.

“The primary information hazard,” the Keeper says, “is not that a thinking machine is possible but how quickly computer technology is supposed to progress. Ordinary dath ilani believe that computers are supposed to grow in intelligence slowly or not at all. Knowledge of history would show exactly how quickly computers improve.”

Vellam leans forward. “But the more quickly computers developed, the less history you’d have to bubble to hide the fact that they develop quickly! Realistically, you’d have to bubble, what, a century before the invention of the computer? Two? You have no reason to hide the history of human evolution, which incidentally I do appreciate having access to now.”

The Keeper picks up a fidget toy and spins the metal rings. “You’re assuming artificial intelligence is the only existential risk worth worrying about. Bioengineered pandemics, nanotechnology...”

“Did bioengineered pandemics develop at the same time we invented writing?” Vellam asks. “I roll to disbelieve.”

The rings of the fidget toy interlock and separate and interlock again. “So far you haven’t provided any evidence that isn’t better explained by your not having specialized in artificial intelligence macrostrategy, and therefore having some natural ignorance about the subject.”

“I want to take a pause to think,” Vellam says.

Keepers swear a solemn oath never to lie, though they may mislead with technically accurate statements. You have to be able to rely on Keepers, even when you can’t rely on anyone else. Vellam replays the conversation in his head. The Keeper commented on his assumptions, his evidence, the exact nature of the artificial intelligence infohazard. The Keeper conspicuously hadn’t said he was wrong.

He superheated knew it.

Vellam says, “Thank you for not sending me off on an elaborate adventure that turns out to be a false trail and leaves me with the sense that my questions were answered without either deceiving me or actually answering them. I hate trolling.”

“Not doing that is in your file.” The Keeper twirls the ring fidget toy around her finger.

Vellam craves reading his file but even he knows that it’s full of the dangerous kind of information hazard. “Once I realized that bubbling history doesn’t make any sense,” he continues, “I tried to look around, to see with fresh eyes. And-- a lot of our society doesn’t make much sense, actually? We rehearse overthrowing the government every year, but we’ve literally never had to overthrow Governance. Ditto the alien invasion rehearsals.”

“Governance is doing a very good job,” the Keeper says, as if laughing at a private joke.

“We throw so many societal resources into Exception Handling,” Vellam says. “As merely one example, why does Exception Handling constantly run Merrin through all those ridiculous simulations? I looked up every time she was actually called in, and 83% of what she’s trained upon in simulation has never occurred in a real-life unusual situation. She’s literally never had to make decisions without prediction markets, for example. Don’t say Merrin sims are good television. They get high viewership numbers, sure. But they’re so expensive that Governance still has to subsidize them. I checked.”

“Well,” the Keeper says, “if a situation had come up before, it would instead be usual.”

“And the infohazard training,” Vellam says. “You know, I’ve never had proof of a dangerous infohazard?”

“Would you expect to be told of a dangerous infohazard?” The Keeper’s tone is sharp. Vellam would think of it as scolding, but that’s his own anxiety; Keepers don’t scold.

“A small one,” Vellam says, “that doesn’t hurt so much to know, but that demonstrates the idea. Like in school, when they gave us that sweet confection of sugar and corn derivatives, and explained that superstimuli like it were only to be found in the Shop of Ill-Advised Customer Goods. It must be that there are infohazards, else why work so hard to teach people to avoid them? But there are no small infohazards, nothing you can use to run a secret test of character--”

The Keeper nods. “Any more hints about your supposed Conspiracy?”

“Nothing I can put together,” Vellam says. “There’s a triangle in the Pacific Ocean that every ship’s trade route happens to avoid. It’s not obvious unless you chart all the routes. The datasets aren’t available, so you have to construct them yourself, which is also suspicious. Governance forbids settlement and tourism in vast parts of the Arctic. Everyone thinks it’s because no one wants to go there, but that’s stupid, I bet people would want to go there if you could. We don’t go to the Moon or Mars, even though books about space settlement regularly hit the bestseller lists. You can’t tell me that Civilization wouldn’t do something solely because it’s real superheated cool.”

“As you remarked,” the Keeper says, “we spend a lot on Alien Invasion Festivals and Exception Handling. Perhaps you believe Civilization’s resources should be allocated differently. It’s true that Keepers have been reluctant to countenance terraforming Mars. Terraforming wouldn’t be finished before the Basement designs a friendly artificial intelligence, and will be much simpler with an artificial intelligence’s help.”

Vellam keeps going. “Have you noticed how many resources go into cat welfare? If no one wants a dog or a snake or an iguana, we kill it. If no one wants a cat, the cat goes to a palatial estates. Human-quality food, plenty of space, all of Civilization’s best effort designing climbing devices. And every world leader of any note has a cat.”

“Cats are doompunk,” the Keeper says.

“Are you really claiming”-- Vellam’s voice is rising– “that doompunk trends are an exogenous variable uninfluenced by world leaders’ secret knowledge?”

“Even the Keepers don’t dictate the vagaries of fashion.”

“And Thall’s amnesia,” Vellam said. “Every so often people lose all their memories and fixate on the humanities and social sciences? Governance orders that everyone accommodate them for-- some reason-- they don’t go to the Quiet Cities, they’re automatically allowed in every archive and library in the world, that’s weird, that’s not how we treat any other mental impairment-- and we don’t know how to treat Thall’s amnesia but it always spontaneously remits after four to seven years--”

Vellam belatedly notices the Keeper’s hand, raised to cut him off.

“The true answer is an information hazard.” She doesn’t intone this in an ominous and doompunk manner, even though about a fifth of all dath ilani are desperate to be able to say “the true answer is an information hazard” just so they can intone it in an ominous and doompunk manner. She is calm, and quiet, and still.

Vellam knew all along that the second Conspiracy was about something that mattered. You don’t create a dath-ilan-spanning Conspiracy for no reason, or well actually people do that all the time but they admit it to you when you find out about it. But for the first time, listening to the Keeper’s voice, he understands.

The Keeper’s fidget toy dangles, unnoticed, off her second finger. “Eighty-four percent of people regret learning a dangerous infohazard if they only wanted to learn it because they can’t stand ignorance.”

Vellam should be warned off. He should walk out of this office right now, content not to know something it would harm him to understand. “Keeper, I’m happy to take early cryonics, I just.” His voice breaks. “I have to know.”

“I would ask you to take five minutes by the clock and think about your endorsed preferences,” the Keeper says, “but somehow I am sure you did that before you came to my office.”

Vellam had. He spent the entire five minutes consumed with desperate curiosity. When he was a child, he’d pestered his teachers for extra work and more classes. He’d listened to physics and economics textbooks while checking cheese for mold, going through chapters at half the speed the authors expected. He’d noticed the academics that quietly disappeared and the topics that no one ever published a paper about, and he kept looking until the threads unraveled.

Once he’d found a loose end in his understanding of the world, he’d never, ever been able to stop picking at it.

“Thall’s amnesia is a good catch,” the Keeper says, “but you missed the taboo on talking about dreams.”

“Of course no one talks about dreams,” Vellam says automatically, “they’re a source of inaccurate information about the world drawn from a systematically bizarre distribution, and talking about them merely reinforces their presence in your mind.”

“Or,” the Keeper says, “if people talk about dreams, they would notice that about forty percent of people have dreams with continuity from night to night, where the dreamers adventure in a world of wonder and whimsy and very good architecture, and for some reason everyone rides zebras.”

What. “What... does the sixty percent dream about?”

“Mostly? That they never graduated from preschool and have to go back, and the teacher is Merrin, and they forgot to put on clothes this morning.”

“What!” Vellam says. “How was I supposed to catch that one?”

“I’d recommend asking people awkward questions. You’re going to have to work on that now that you’re a Keeper.”

“Now that I’m a-- wait, what-- I was right? I mean, of course I was right, I know when I’m right, but-- I was right?” A Keeper? At his perfectly ordinary level of thinkoomph? He was hardworking, sure, but-- hard work wasn’t enough--

The Keeper smiles like a teacher watching a student prove a hard theorem. “Indeed. I noticed only one outright error.”

“What error, Keeper?”

“There is a small infohazard that people can learn without too much risk of harm, so we can use it to run a secret test of character. I wonder if you can figure out what it is.”

“No, I--” Vellam pauses, takes a step back, tries to see reality instead of filling in his preconceptions. He isn’t smarter than everyone else, but you don’t have to be, not if you take everything you learned to do in school and really do it--

“Artificial general intelligence,” Vellam says finally.

“Correct.” The Keeper suddenly notices she’s holding her fidget toy and puts it to one side. “You have of course read papers on the orthogonality thesis. What the papers omit is how we discovered it. Through empiricism.”

“No.” Vellam’s muscles tense and his breath speeds up, a useless vestige of evolution, like the truth is a tiger and he might have to run.

“The universe is crawling with unaligned superintelligences.”

Like most dath ilani, Vellam always had the sense that Governance and the Keepers, the prediction markets and the regular markets, had things handled. Joining the Basement of the World had only reinforced his view. Very serious people, smarter and wiser and grimmer than he was, noticed artificial intelligence and took the proper precautions about it. Vellam couldn’t stop picking at loose ends, but that was recreational.

Vellam tries to recall the techniques for Accepting An Unthinkable Truth, but as soon as they are useful he forgot them.

“It is not that they hate us,” the Keeper continues mercilessly, “or that they love us; it is that they have never had a sufficient shortage of atoms that they felt the need to put ours to use.”

“Is the Basement-- are the Keepers--” Vellam doesn’t want to say what he’s feeling, which is I don’t want to have to be a grownup.

“We’re trying to arrange our survival, should they come to want our atoms,” the Keeper said. “We bubbled history because we could think of no other way to hide all the evidence of Their existence. Certain dark rites can draw Their attention. Throughout history, foolish humans made deals with Them, for power or knowledge or revenge.”

Vellam says, “so the Alien Invasion Festivals and Merrin are preparing for the unaligned superintelligences to return.”

“Indeed,” the Keeper says. “The possibility of Their return, even without foolish humans’ assistance, is somewhat worrying. One of Them historically took so much interest in humans that It spent two hundred years running a country--”

“Running a country?” Vellam interrupts. “But that-- if a superintelligence with alien values has paid that much attention to us, we have no ability to self-determine anything about our future, everything was foreseen in advance and arranged to achieve Its goals, It foresaw the bubbling, It foresaw that we had this conversation right now--”

“Yes,” the Keeper says, “it’s an enormous problem. We have implemented randomness in our decision-making, which ought to at least make us harder to predict; but the exact parameters are still under debate. For you, I recommend trying not to think about it.”

Vellam stares at the Keeper. You learned not to do that when you were a child. What is true is there to be lived-- you can’t get rid of a problem by ignoring it--

“The caveat to the litany going through your head right now,” the Keeper says, “which we don’t include because it would raise too many questions, is ‘except for thinking about whether all of your actions were manipulated millennia before you were born by an unaligned superintelligence.’ Or possibly an aligned one? Our research is unclear on most of what the Crawling Chaos values, but It certainly does seem to like trolling.”

“Are we deliberately filling our society with trolling to please an unaligned superintelligence so It won’t kill us?“

“No,” the Keeper says, “humans genuinely seem to like trolling each other. Possibly the Crawling Chaos arranged for us to be this way.”

Vellam says, “so the Moon--”

“Civilization ceded the Arctic, the Moon, and Mars to alien intelligences who are aligned enough that we can trade with them. Similarly, Thall’s amnesia covers for alien academics who want to do participant observation of human societies. Cats are sapient and mostly aligned to human flourishing, although they have their own arrangements to avoid True Death and don’t wish to use cryonics. The triangle in the Pacific, however, is avoiding a sleeping entity whose consciousness would be incompatible with Civilization’s continued existence. Civilization is not presently able to kill It, although we’ve uncovered a few promising research avenues and we expect success within a few decades.”

“Cats are sapient?!”

“They don’t want humans to know because”-- fingerquotes-- “’it would be annoying and the monkeys would be bothering us all the time.’”

Vellam is having the most difficult time with the cats. Like everyone else, he speculated about where all the aliens are; like everyone else, he thought that the Keepers knew but weren’t telling. That the aliens existed and were superintelligences and were manipulating his behavior was-- challenging, but it felt like science fiction. Cats, Vellam knew. He scratched them behind the ears. He fed them fish. On bad days, he read articles about A Thousand of the Cutest Pictures of the Chief of Exception Handling’s Cat. Apparently they understood cryonics.

The Chief of Exception Handling’s cat also does Exception Handling, doesn’t she. For cats. Because cats have an Exception Handling. What the superheated--

“We haven’t reached the difficult part.”

“More difficult,” Vellam says, “than the unaligned superintelligences,” because that is the biggest deal even if he’s stuck on the cats.

“You have learned— have not even learned, have absorbed on a preconscious level you’d never question-- that the world is understandable,” the Keeper says, “that you can encompass its laws and rules within your mind, that understanding the true nature of the Universe Itself is an appropriately scoped challenge as if a teacher assigned it.”

Vellam says softly, “It’s not, is it?”

“Your old belief isn’t false per se. It’s true, but it’s true because of a great deal of work-- work which your curiosity and relentlessness have volunteered you for.”

Vellam feels very young and very small. He thought, in passing, of a number of ways he might have regretted picking at this loose end-- of uncovering an infohazard that destroyed his mind, of alienation from Civilization, of secrets it hurt to keep, or even of being nonconsensually sent to the Future. He thought he could accept all of them, if only his burning itch to know were satisfied.

He didn’t predict this-- looking around the world for a grownup and realizing that the grownup was him.

“We teach you rationality, not because the universe is comprehensible, but precisely because it is not-- and you will need every tool we can give you to make it so.” The Keeper snaps her fingers, and a flame blooms in her hand. “Vellam, you have selected yourself to study magic.”

Discuss