I've been reading a few of the posts on here, and it's been very nice to see that people have a lot of interesting questions. I'd like to try to answer what might be the central question surrounding the Interfaces: What is Mother?

Firstly, I'd like to clarify that Mother is not specifically female. She possesses no particular human femaleness or maleness. She (It?) is called Mother because she is singular fecund will which induces, promotes and regulates certain states of existence.

One "state of existence" that has been carefully maintained by Mother is nuclear weapons. The first working atom bomb was exploded on July 16, 1945. Since that day, nuclear weapons have remained a constant presence in our world. They weren't a temporary measure meant to help the Americans defeat the Japanese and then be returned safely to the realm of theoretical schematics. Once they arrived, they were here to stay. They seemed to almost build themselves, to proliferate like cockroaches, to will themselves into existence by virtue of their awful but obvious utility.

There will always be atom bombs in the world, barring some catastrophe that sends us back into the stone age (perhaps because of atom bombs themselves). We will never ever be able to get rid of the last atom bomb. Really, we will never ever be able to get rid of the last two atom bombs simply because no country wants to get rid of their last bomb while another country still has one. After all, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. We are locked into this situation. This is what we call a "robust game-state."

I don't believe in mystical shit like destiny, but there are certain inevitable game-states that seem to will themselves into existence because they are points of equilibrium that the game's vacillations must return to. Some technological advances are so self-evidently useful that they cannot be taken back, cannot be undone.

What is Mother? Mother is the undeniable, fertile will that allowed the first crude nuclear weapon from 1945 to proliferate into the thousands of advanced nuclear weapons that exist today. She is the generative, enforcing will that ensures the existence of robust game-states. But as awful as nuclear weapons are, they are not the worst things that will come from her womb. There are other robust game-states which we are rapidly falling into, and once they occur, we won't be able to escape from them.

Mother can be thought of as an inexorable "eventuality well" into which all current game-states must fall. Imagine a basketball game. You can't say for sure which team will win -- that can't be entirely predicted -- but you can be sure that long after the final buzzer has sounded and 4 A.M. has rolled around, the arena will be empty and dark. The game could go either way, but the larger condition of the arena, the fans leaving and the lights being cut off, is never really in doubt. Mother is the force which guides this inevitability. She is, of course, just a metaphor, and like God, does not exist as a discrete entity. She is not an entity or a force, but rather she is an order or an arrangement.

Most life on earth has existed not knowing whether or not it would be killed and eaten before the day was done. With great ingenuity, mankind has managed to temporarily relieve itself of this anxiety, but we have merely managed to position ourselves on the outer rim of an eventuality well. As events develop along the course they have already been taking, we will find ourselves rolling back toward the center of the well, back toward an ever-patient singularity. Back to the womb.