Many of the pages of this particular book are either missing or stained into illegibility.


As you look closer, you're able to make out the whole title--The Fall of Hyperion, by Dan Simmons. From what you can see, it's a book detailing a future war of man versus machine. One passage catches your attention--

Naturally our UI
attacked yours\\
There is a war up there
where time creaks
which spans galaxies
and eons
back and forward
to the Big Bang
and the Final Implosion\\
Your guy was losing\\
He had no belly for it\\
Our Volatiles cried//Another reason
to exterminate our predecessors//
but the Stables voted caution
and the Ultimates did not look up
from their deus machinations
Our UI is simple, uniform, elegant in
its ultimate design
but yours is an accretion of god-parts/
a house added onto
over time/
and evolutionary compromise\\
The early holy men of humankind
were right
(How)(through accident)
(throught sheer luck
or ignorance)
in describing its nature\\
Your own UI is essentially triune/
composed as it is of one part Intellect/
one part Empathy/
and one part the Void Which Binds\\

Shaking your head, you peruse the other books--perhaps one of them would be more to your liking. Behind you, the doorman coughs quietly. 1