Dan Simmons - The Hyperion Cantos -

I wrote the word that killed the first AI, he sent. And the Shrike made me rewrite it. Every day. For three centuries.

The Tombs had not yet opened when I arrived on Hyperion. That is what the Hegemony Consul told me, his voice flat as a creased farcaster ticket. He was old—not with the dignified age of a poet, but the weary decay of a man who had outlived his own lies.

I am transmitting this from inside the Shrike’s chest. The door led to a library. Not of books, but of possible pasts . I see now that the Hegemony-Ouster War was never about resources, or territory, or even ideology. It was a sacrifice. A ritual feeding. The Shrike does not kill for pleasure or strategy. It kills because we need it to kill. Without the Shrike, the Hegemony would have no enemy to unite against. Without the Shrike, the Ousters would have no martyr to worship. Without the Shrike, the TechnoCore would have no chaos to optimize. Dan Simmons - The Hyperion Cantos

He laughed without sound. The thorns trembled.

Tell the Ouster Clergy: the Tombs are not a god. They are a theater . Tell the Hegemony: the war is not a strategy. It is a compulsion . And tell the poets: the one perfect verse already exists. It is this: I wrote the word that killed the first AI, he sent

Step through, it said, and you will see the war’s true cause. Not the Hegemony. Not the Ousters. Not even the AIs.

The Shrike tilted its head. A gesture almost human. Almost. For three centuries

Ouster, it said. Not with sound. With the shape of pain yet to come.