Dan Simmons - The Hyperion Cantos -

The Tombs had not yet opened when I arrived on Hyperion. That is what the Hegemony Consul told me, his voice flat as a creased farcaster ticket. He was old—not with the dignified age of a poet, but the weary decay of a man who had outlived his own lies.

I found the Shrike’s tree first. It was not a tree at all, but a labyrinth of razorwire and chrome thorns, each branch ending in a hook. Impaled upon the lowest branch was a figure—human, male, still breathing. His eyes had been replaced with crystal lenses. His mouth was stitched shut with fiber-optic thread.

The Hegemony believed the Shrike was a weapon left by the TechnoCore. The Ousters believed it was the final evolution of the human soul. Both were fragments of a larger lie.

I am transmitting this from inside the Shrike’s chest. The door led to a library. Not of books, but of possible pasts . I see now that the Hegemony-Ouster War was never about resources, or territory, or even ideology. It was a sacrifice. A ritual feeding. The Shrike does not kill for pleasure or strategy. It kills because we need it to kill. Without the Shrike, the Hegemony would have no enemy to unite against. Without the Shrike, the Ousters would have no martyr to worship. Without the Shrike, the TechnoCore would have no chaos to optimize. Dan Simmons - The Hyperion Cantos

The story itself. The need for conflict. The hunger for a villain.

“And you?” I asked. “What is your story?”

It did not move. It replaced space. One moment it stood before the Tombs; the next, it was behind me, a blade resting against my spine. The Tombs had not yet opened when I arrived on Hyperion

The Consul knew. That is why he smiled. That is why he did nothing.

Yes.

He smiled. It was a terrible expression. “I am the one who could have stopped it. I chose not to.” I found the Shrike’s tree first

That night, I left him and walked into the Valley of the Time Tombs alone. The anti-entropic fields made my skin crawl. My internal chronometer—never wrong in forty years—began to stutter. Past and future bled like wet paint.

Step through, it said, and you will see the war’s true cause. Not the Hegemony. Not the Ousters. Not even the AIs.

The Consul told me the old story: the priest who crucified himself on the tesla trees, the soldier who fell in love with a cyborg, the poet who sold his soul for a single perfect verse. He told it well—with the hollow music of a man reciting a litany he no longer believed.