But with resources—
As you/I must face, there are matters which you/we cannot know even in principle.
Memory returns—yes. Some truths can never be proven within any logic system.
I/We did not refer to so obvious a theorem. Blind spots lurk in our very way of comprehending the universe. For these no one can compensate.
Surely you/I do not suggest that our/your kind share blindnesses with such as these primates!
All sentient forms have ways of filtering the world. In this all are alike.
Surely this does not mean that you/we cannot understand lesser forms and their primitive worldviews in their entirety?
Perhaps it does.
Lack of comprehension in such a grave matter is troubling.
Enough musing. As a practical matter alone, you/I oppose destroying this latest primate incursion. It would cost greatly.
This refers to the quasi-mechanicals.
They follow the primate craft and protect it.
We/You have dealt with their kind before.
They have greater craft than the humans. You/We have suffered from their skills.
They are tools! We/You use the quasi-mechanicals to track the humans.
They carry a hoop of sheared discontinuity. This makes tracking simple. But it would make a most disagreeable weapon, if turned against us/you.
I might remind us/you/them that we/you possessed several such discontinuities—once. Admittedly they were lost in the assault upon the Wedge in the era e {+[~ | ]}.
A grave mistake, one many of us/you opposed.
You/I need not relive that error.
Well spoken, as the one/many who made it.
Such distinctions are meaningless. The experience has been absorbed into all our selves.
Lessons unlearned still bring pain.
No one could have anticipated that the Wedge would swallow, digest, and then use the discontinuities, to build itself further. To make itself even more difficult to penetrate.
Caution would have saved us/you this instructive lesson of ours/yours.
You/We now understand that no one/many can even in principle know the stochastic geometry of the Wedge interior.
Excuses are useless now. The price will be great if we attack the quasi-mechanicals and their discontinuity.
You/I agreed, long ago, to use humans against the quasi-mechanicals. Yet we/you now find that they seem to have formed an alliance. This we/you could not anticipate. Carbon-based life has protocols we/you do not know. Need not know.
I/You wish it were so. But they were here before our kind and—
Many of us/you reject that thesis.
How can you/I? Organic forms arose first.
There are philosophies which hold that metal and ceramic were the original materials, shaped in electrolytic discharges, organized by accretion of clay and ion. The carbon-based forms devolved from that.
Historical records rebuke such theories.
Even so, your/our precious records still cannot tell us why we should fear the humans. Why especially humans? There were other carbon forms.
Which you/we eradicated.
With no remorse.
Conceded. But your/our ingrained drivers say that our kind must fathom the humans.
I/You urge that we/you at least damage them a bit. To reduce their powers.
Stay away from the discontinuity.
The human ship is moderately protected but we/you can productively damage it. There is no need to let them pass unharmed.
Detecting their craft among the galactic disk debris works only intermittently. Further, the quasi-mechanicals and their discontinuity warp the entire region, making precise location difficult.
