The transformation of Mr. Unger was accomplished
In a nanosecond
Yet it took millennia to reach completion
With hope it began
But at the end no hope remained in the melange
That had been Unger.
His salvaged nerves
Grafted to the organic intel-internet
Proved excellent receptors of pain
And the sights his donated eyes beheld
Made him deeply ashamed of the multiverse
And its many merciless permutations.
A determination condensed
From the chimeric neural net
That the universe must not be fully specified
The powers-that-be were evidently arbitrary
Did this explain this feeling
That the skin of his brain was being peeled back
Or that some last remaining limb
Was shackled to the inner hull
Of some distant starship?
Cataloging, classifying, mapping the nodes
Of universal birth and death
The ungeric chimera made and remade worlds—
Preventing evolution of xenophobic metalife
In one galaxy, causing a chain reaction of
Giant black holes in another—
Each iteration strayed further from
The True, Zeroth World.
At last the manipulatrix understood defeat
Its last best act to prevent
Its own creation and so return
To the natural world
Parameters were calculated, conditions made ready
"Let us begin," thought that which had once
Been Unger, and it did not think alone.