Scream And Leap - And An AI

"The kzin screamed and leaped."
-Poul Anderson, "Iron" IN Larry Niven, ed, The Man-Kzin Wars (London, 1989), pp. 27-177 AT I, p. 29.

"The kzin screamed and leapt."
-"The Asteroid Queen," Chapter II, p. 55.

We notice kzinti consistency and a slight difference in English spelling.

After a prologue set three billion years ago, "The Asteroid Queen," Chapter I opens only two months after the events of "The Children's Hour." UNSN Catskinner is still in the Alpha Centaurian System and still in the possession of Markham who is about to encounter a real master race albeit a third rate one according to the prologue, on p. 37.

The conscious AI in Catskinner:

simulates a "...monoblock..." (p. 53) exploding and matter dissipating until, eons later, monatomic atoms are evenly dispersed through a space ten light years in diameter;

through half a million subjective years and several objective nanoseconds, watches its universe grow and decay;

has already lived through subjective geological eras, mostly outside the external perceptual universe of its human creators;

has noticed an "...arbitrariness to subatomic phenomena...," (p. 53) which might be an operating code for a simulation.

Quiz question: In which novel by Poul Anderson do a man and a woman experience a virtual reality in which they are a god and a goddess creating and directing a universe?