Orlandine contemplated her incorrect prediction of the now. Of course, though AIs might perfectly understand Jain technology, that did not necessarily mean they were safe from it. Many AIs and humans perfectly understood the working of guns and bombs, but that had not stopped people dying as a result of their use.

‘The Polity will go the same way as the other races,’ she said. ‘Some future race might find just a few ruins.’

‘Just so, especially when the accretion disc’s sun fully ignites and blows a sandstorm of Jain nodes across the Polity.’

‘What do you want me to build?’ she asked.

‘You say that you want to build, Orlandine, but two hundred years ago you demonstrated a greater facility for destruction.’

‘I see.’

‘You are,’ said Dragon, ‘going to spend the rest of your existence annihilating a technology, tearing it up by its roots and utterly erasing it. In effect, the numinous thing you will build will be the future of the Polity. Do you agree?’

‘Did you think for one moment that I wouldn’t?’

The light grew brighter.