Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio.
This is: The Hero With A Thousand Chances , published by Eliezer Yudkowsky on the AI Alignment Forum.
"Allow me to make sure I have this straight," the hero said. "I've been untimely ripped from my home world to fight unspeakable horrors, and you say I'm here because I'm lucky?"
Aerhien dipped her eyelashes in elegant acknowledgment; and quietly to herself, she thought: Thirty-seven. Thirty-seven heroes who'd said just that, more or less, on arrival.
Not a sign of the thought showed on her outward face, where the hero could see, or the other council members of the Eerionnath take note. Over the centuries since her accidental immortality she'd built a reputation for serenity, more or less because it seemed to be expected.
"There are kinds and kinds of luck," Aerhien said serenely. "Not every person desires their personal happiness above all else. Those who are lucky in aiding others, those whose luck is great in succor and in rescue, these ones are not always happy themselves. You are here, hero, because you have a hero's luck. The boy whose dusty heirloom sword proves to be magical. The peasant girl who finds herself the heir to a great kingdom. Those who discover, in time of sudden stress, an untrained wild magic within themselves. Success born not of learning, not of skill, not of determination, but unplanned coincidence and fortunes of birth: That is a hero's luck."
"Gosh," said the hero after a long, awkward pause, "thanks for the compliment."
"It is not a compliment," Aerhien said, "but this is: that you have taken good advantage of your luck. Our enemy does not speak, we do not know if there is any aliveness in it to think; but it learns, or seems to learn. We have never won against it using the same trick twice. It is rare now that a hero succeeds in conceiving a genuinely new trick, for we have fought this shadow long under our sun. For this reason we have taken to summoning heroes from distant dimensions with other modes of thought; sometimes one such knows a truly new technique, and at least they fight differently. But far more often, hero, the hero wins by luck."
"Huh," said the hero. He frowned; more in thought, it seemed, than in displeasure. "How... very odd. I wonder why that is. What kind of enemy can be defeated only by luck?"
"A nameless enemy and null," said Aerhien. "Structureless and empty, horrible and dark, the most terrifying thing imaginable: We call it Dust. That seems to be its only desire, to tear down every bit of structure in the world, grind it into specks of perfect chaos. Always the Dust is defeated, always it takes a new shape immune to its last defeat."
"I wonder," murmured the hero, "if it will run out of shapes, and then end; or if it will finally become invincible."
(One of the other Eerionnath shuddered.)
"I do not know," Aerhien said simply. "I do not know the nature of the Dust, nor the nature of the Counter-Force that opposes it. The Dust is terrible and our world should long since have ended. We are not fools enough to believe we could be lucky so many times by chance alone. But the Counter-Force has never acted openly; it never reveals itself except in - a hero's luck. And so we, the council Eerionnath to prevent the world from destruction, are at your disposal to command; and all the power and resource that this world holds, for your battle."
And she, Aerhien, and the council Eerionnath, bowed low.
Then they waited to see if the hero would demand dominions or slaves as payment, before condescending to rescue a people in distress.
If so they would dispose of him, and summon another.
This one, though, seemed to have at least some qualities of a true hero; his face showed no avarice, only an abstracted puzzlement. "A hidden Counter-Force..." he murmured. "Excuse me, but this is all very vague. Can you give me a specific example of a h...
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