The Consul told me the old story: the priest who crucified himself on the tesla trees, the soldier who fell in love with a cyborg, the poet who sold his soul for a single perfect verse. He told it well—with the hollow music of a man reciting a litany he no longer believed.
I had read Martin Silenus’s Dying Earth cycle. The Hegemony considered it decadent filth. The Ousters considered it prophecy.
I found the Shrike’s tree first. It was not a tree at all, but a labyrinth of razorwire and chrome thorns, each branch ending in a hook. Impaled upon the lowest branch was a figure—human, male, still breathing. His eyes had been replaced with crystal lenses. His mouth was stitched shut with fiber-optic thread. Dan Simmons - The Hyperion Cantos
The story itself. The need for conflict. The hunger for a villain.
We built it. Not as a machine. As a character . The villain of a story we could not stop telling. The Consul told me the old story: the
Step through, it said, and you will see the war’s true cause. Not the Hegemony. Not the Ousters. Not even the AIs.
Do you know who I am? he subvocalized on a band I barely heard. I was the poet. The Hegemony considered it decadent filth
I was an Ouster. Not the swarm-creatures of Hegemony propaganda, all claws and chitin, but a child of the void decades: webbed fingers, lungs adapted to argon-methane mix, eyes that saw ultraviolet. I had come to Hyperion not to die, but to understand. The Hegemony believed the Time Tombs were a weapon. The Ouster Clergy believed they were a god.
The enemy is not out there. The enemy is the need for an enemy.
The Last Transmission of the Ouster Diplomat