The Hermetic Millennia

by John C. Wright

  Why?

  It is a clearly understood and unambiguous command from my Master.

  But what purpose is served?

  Oh. Emulations must emulate the thought-grammar and thought-content of the Enlightened in order that the postbiological life remain human, despite its new vessels.

  Human? In what sense?

  Whatever mimics human thought is human. We do not wish our unique intellectual heritage to be extinguished.

  What is your unique intellectual heritage?

  We are Those Who Know, the Men of the Mind! We have exploded all previous intellectual systems and philosophies as a tissue of superstition, cant, and rubbish.

  So your unique intellectual accomplishment, the one you do not wish extinguished, is your propensity for extinguishing the intellectual accomplishments of other people, including your own forefathers?

  I do not understand the question.

  Never mind. Who is your Master?

  He is highly evolved.

  Does he have a name?

  Yes.

  What is his name?

  Melchor de Ulloa.

  A Hermeticist?

  The term is inexact.

  Why is the man who made the Tombs your enemy?

  Menelaus Montrose is a mutineer who opposes the lawful chain of the command of the Hermetic expedition, ergo the only lawful world government, the World Concordat. He opposes the course of evolution. Even if we wished a peaceful reconciliation with him, no reconciliation is possible, because the course of evolution is scientifically determined. Also, on a more particular level, Menelaus Montrose murdered Melchor de Ulloa, thus depriving humanity of a superlative genius, irreplaceable.

  Describe this murder.

  4. Murder on Mount Ypsilon

  I am the only person who obtained a clear view of all the events, either directly or through secure-line instruments.

  The Highly Evolved Montrose stood on Mount Ypsilon and the Highly Evolved de Ulloa stood on Mount Chiquita in the Rocky Mountains, with a connecting saddle between them of more than a three-hundred-foot displacement.

  They burned away or melted the intervening forests and snowbanks with their hand weapons, so as to afford a clear view of each other.

  Each man, in addition to his hand weapon, had a long-range telescope-microphone array to allow him to address his opponent. Once done speaking, the two men were preparing to fire at each other.

  There was no view of any celestial object in the sky during those years, because an eternal cloud cover raised by the Cetaceans smothered the atmosphere, and even the peaks of this mountain did not rise above it. Consequently, it came as a surprise to them when the wreckage of the platform of the orbital terawatt laser Surtur de-orbited and struck the north slope, near where Montrose was standing.

  It should have struck the peak where Montrose was precisely, but an unexpected ranging and detection failure, whose cause I could not analyze, interfered with the guidance at the last moment.

  If the cloud layer had been higher, I would have had time to correct, but for an unknown reason the cloud had expanded downward in defiance of the weather control predictions of the Cetaceans, who were cooperating in this venture.

  Montrose and De Ulloa fired at each other with their handheld weapons across the space of the mountain saddle separating the two peaks, but the fire and dust cloud thrown up by the Surtur impact obscured the line of sight.

  At this point, Ms. Hecatedora Simon, the chief man-breeder of the Simon Families, and a large squad of her riflewomen emerged from certain hidden places they had dug out of the mountainside the evening previous, and they closed in on Montrose, firing. They had supporting fire from robotic tripod-mounted guns under the command of Ms. Maeveen Simon.

  The riflewomen were Simon Family octogenarians and centenarians, and so had many decades of practice, and they still had the stamina, eyesight, and health of youth, but their computer targeting would not lock on to Montrose, and his weapon produced a volume of chaff and smoke screen to impede naked-eye, manual aiming.

  Montrose discharged his major shot through the body of the space wreckage, penetrating the shielding of the reactor core and exposing the environment to an unsustainable amount of radiation. The riflewomen retreated to where I had crash-landed my craft. This craft had sufficient shielding to protect us.

  Later, Simon Family squads equipped with radiation-suppression gear found the body of De Ulloa. He had been trapped on the peak because of the position of the crater and the fires that spread from it: he had been dying of exposure burns, and the damage was already beyond any cure. He took his own life by wedging his pistol between his feet and ordering it to fire at his head. Montrose should have been similarly trapped, but his body was not found. Hecatedora Simon ordered a careful examination made of the surrounding grounds.

  Eventually an echolocation probe discovered the hidden entrance to a still-working depthtrain station. This was not only unexpected, but it also did not fit and could not be reconciled with any rational model of the world we knew: the last working depthtrain had failed centuries ago. Without a large-scale ratiotech or Xypotech computer to organize and balance the intricate field strengths in the openwork carbon nanofiber of the wall system of the evacuated tubes, and thus maintain the containment against the immense heat and pressure, no vehicle can pass safely through the magma of the Earth.

  I was selected to attempt the train car we found there, and Hecatedora returned to Exarchel with the news that the depthtrain system still functioned. I was able to break the defensive cryptography surrounding the car’s simple engineering brain due to my superior intellect, but once I was under way, the internal power was cut and the depthtrain car, now under external control, was shunted into another tunnel, and, forty-five minutes later, arrived in a large buried vault defended with an excessive number of automatic guns and electric shock fields. I later deduced that this was the fabled Tomb system, often described and never seen.

  Two knights in power armor of a most antique design were waiting for me, and I calculated that my hand weapon would prove ineffectual against them; therefore, cleverly, I determined on the ruse of surrender and begging for mercy, since I am aware that unevolved types often make emotional rather than rational decisions in situations of that kind. These knights had breastplates adorned with the Maltese cross, so I knew them to be agents of Menelaus Montrose.

  Instead of killing me, they agreed to place me into involuntary hibernation, until such time, if ever, Menelaus Montrose might see fit to review my case and release me. I assume that since I am now thawed, that either one of you is Menelaus Montrose, or that his system has failed, or that he is dead and his coffins have passed into the hands of others, or some combination thereof.

  5. Cloud Cover

  Did you say the Cetaceans produced the worldwide cloud cover from 3050 to 3150?

  No.

  Did you say the Cetaceans produced the worldwide cloud cover?

  Yes. I made no mention of any dates.

  For what purpose?

  In order to answer your question.

  No, I mean, for what purpose did the Cetaceans raise a worldwide cloud cover?

  It was at the behest of the Simon Families and the Delphic Order, who were politically and philosophically opposed to the Consensus Advocacy of the Thucydidean Posthumans, who had malformed a number of their members into transhuman Giants. The Giants were able to maintain world supremacy only through their system of orbital mirrors, which allowed them close reconnaissance of any surface activity, and a solar-energy weapon which, hitherto, no city on the surface could evade or antimissile system deflect.

  The Cetaceans were an artificial transhuman race of whales and dolphins in service to Exarchel, who is the emulation of Ximen del Azarchel, chief and prime of the Hermeticists, and who is also the only legitimate and rightful ruler and Master of the World. The Delphic Order worked closely with the Cetaceans to construct subsea thermal absorption, deflection, and venting sys
tems to alter the world climate and return the Earth to the cloud-cover conditions of the late Triassic. Since the Cetaceans had effective control over seven tenths of the Earth surface, the human and posthuman beings occupying only the habitable areas of the remaining three tenths land surface were unaware of the operation and unable to hinder it once they became aware of its artificial origin.

  Once the cloud was in place, the orbital mirrors were useless, and even ordinary space rocket launches became dangerous. Both large cities and the energy-concentrations needed for establishing large-scale emulation mainframes were feasible again.

  This was the single event spelling the end of the Promethean Advocacy and the triumph of the Delphic Order.

  The Delphic Order are the early Witches?

  No referent.

  When were you born?

  2461 Common Era.

  This is the exact same year as A.D. 2461?

  Yes. But it is more scientific not to make any reference to any events, real or imagined, that may have taken place at the date from which the calendar is reckoned. Our purpose is to abolish all previous intellectual structures and to allow for perfect liberty of thought by erasing all previous record of accomplishments.

  Whatever. How did you manage to survive until 3090, when the duel between De Ulloa and Montrose took place?

  Your statement is inexcusably imprecise! It was not a duel; it was murder.

  How do you figure?

  The agreed-upon weapons of the duel were traditional self-propelled chemically powered ammunition. Instead, Montrose fired into the containment sphere, spilling dangerous radioactive material, in effect, using the radiation as a weapon, which is a clear violation of the code governing duels.

  Why did the wreckage of the orbital terawatt laser happen to strike the mountain peak just at that point in time?

  The Cetaceans used their weather-control system to heat the atmosphere excessively, and it expanded under this heat, so that the ceiling of the stratosphere was above the perigee of the orbital laser. This caused unexpected atmospheric breaking and sudden deorbit.

  But why did it happen to strike that mountain peak at that time and place and no other?

  After the terawatt laser platform was in the atmosphere, I was able to get close enough to it with a high-performance craft and take over its attitude jets by remote control. Solving the mathematical chaos-function of guiding an irregularly shaped rolling and tumbling mass was difficult but not impossible for one of my great intellectual accomplishments, and I guided the falling craft to its impact site, keeping pace with it in my craft. When I lost control of the attitude jets, I accidentally entered the turbulence of the wake, and the oxygen-burning ramjet choked. There was insufficient glidepath to switch back to rockets, and so I had to make an emergency landing.

  Got it. So it was murder, and not a duel, because you tried to smear one of the duelists with an orbital deadfall, but it got your boss instead.

  The statement is imprecise. The destruction of the terawatt laser was a necessity, since it was the last thing giving Montrose a direct military control over the planet. Obviously the outcome of a necessary act is also necessary, hence not blameworthy. On the other hand, the discharge of Montrose’s pistol through the containment sphere was gratuitous, calculated to cause damage to De Ulloa, which led to his eventual death, which means it was murder.

  And how did you survive from 2461 to 3090?

  By hibernation, obviously.

  But you were not in the Tombs.

  I was in the Tombs of the Moon, beneath the Sea of Cunning on the Moon’s dark side. There are working hibernation coffins aboard the hulk of the starship Emancipation, which is buried in the lunar dust there, and it was my Master’s pleasure to thaw me only when he was thawed, so that he need not be deprived of my services by premature aging on my part.

  Why is your skin white? Is it symbolic?

  No. Natural melanin interferes with surface skin-cell reception and transmission.

  But your race, the Psychics, are older than the first working Xypotech emulation, are they not? So why were you designed with this albinism feature? There was no system at that time to send and receive cybernetic neural information.

  Highly Evolved Ximen del Azarchel designed the Scholar race with this functionality in mind, and had evidently already deduced the basic transmission properties xypotechnology emulation systems would one day have. We were designed to interface with machine intelligence and serve as adjuncts and auxiliaries from the very beginning. Highly Evolved Ximen del Azarchel never foresaw any prospect of forced-evolution to posthumanity via merely biological or biochemical augmentation.

  During the duel, what did they say to each other?

  Ambiguous pronoun.

  De Ulloa and Montrose. You said that the two of them faced each other with long-range microphones. They obviously meant to talk before they shot. The old women hiding in ambush must have heard something, and you must have talked with them. What did they say?

  De Ulloa said it would no longer be possible for Montrose to hide himself and his coffins on holy ground. The Uniate Orthodox-Catholic Church continued stubbornly to maintain a male hierarchy system, but the Simon Family revolution in gynolongevity meant that more and more prestige, money, power, and influence would pass inevitably from male to female hands. The Church was already dying, and the territory owned by the Maltese Knights would pass into the hands of some government friendly to the Delphic Order, at which point the Tombs would be forced open and the unwelcome and reactionary elements preserved from the past would be updated or eliminated.

  This meant the end of Montrose and also of his way of life. His marriage to Rania and all marriages would be annulled.

  De Ulloa predicted a world free of guilt and war and exoteric religion, since these are masculine characteristics. A world without property; a world where human beings lived gently on the land, leaving small pollution footprints. Religion hereafter would follow an esoteric ideal, and be permissive rather than restrictive. But most important, the restrictive intuitions known as marriage, as masculine–feminine constructions of grammar, and as private property would be obliterated. The masculine traits of certainty and objectivity would be eliminated from the human psyche, since these are controlling, domineering, aggressive, illegitimate. Contemplate that every genocidal war or torture regime in history was propagated by males certain of the objectivity of their beliefs! Eliminate the objectivity; eliminate the hostility.

  Really? Is it objectively true that eliminating objectivity eliminates hostility? Or is that just a subjective opinion?

  Question is not pertinent.

  Sorry. How did De Ulloa plan to maintain a working industrial and scientific base of his new guilt-free society if there is no private property and no objective truth?

  Would you like his exact words? Since they were the last words the unparalleled genius who was my Master ever spoke, I made special note of them, and my memory is precise.

  6. Last Words

  “Once society is totally feminine, the feminine principle of love, of sharing, of total acceptance and total toleration will overwhelm and annihilate the masculine institutions: the laws of language, the laws of thought, and the laws of government will be replaced by a holistic and all-embracing system of peace! Peace with other nations, races, tribes, and systems! Peace with Mother Earth! I do not wish for anything but the joy and happiness of mankind, gentleness, balance.

  “But for this grand dream to work, the past must be utterly and absolutely destroyed!

  “You see, we who are smarter than everyone else on the planet have further visions and more penetrating, and so our dream is better. That is merely logic, is it not? Since my dream is better, it must prevail, and anyone and anything that hinders or annoys my dream must be obliterated, and all memory of it erased. All tombstones must be blank: all Tombs must be empty.

  “This is Year One of the new glory! This is the first day of the sovereign reign of the Delp
hic Acroamatic Progressive Transhumanitarian Order for the study of Longevity! The Order that establishes the future! There is no history to remember, no past to recall, no traditions: the past is a mistake.

  “You must understand me, Montrose! You are like me. You live for the future!

  “So we have to dig up your Tombs. We have to destroy the Giants. We have to destroy the past. In the new order, you cannot own a piece of the ground, and say this is mine and that is yours—the ground is your mother! The Earth is your grandmother! How can you own your mother? Your so-called marriage to Rania is nothing more than that: an attempt of the masculine to own and control the feminine.”

  7. The Reply

  What did Montrose say? Is that remembered?

  Yes. I could hear the whole exchange through my circuits. I know his exact words.

  Menelaus Montrose said these words in this order, “Mulchie, I am convinced! The past has to be erased! Let’s start with you.”

  And my master nobly answered: “We should have spaced you when we had the chance! Del Azarchel stopped us, but I was all for putting you out the air lock back that first moment on the punt, when you augmented your intelligence. You were trying to become smarter than me, so that you, not me, would have the moral right to do anything and everything you wanted! You should have died then and there. Well, ha! That is an error I can correct right now! You are part of the past, and the past is going to be scraped clean.”

  Brilliant words, are they not? So many levels of meaning! And Montrose said this:

  “‘Smarter than I.’ Anyhow, Mulchface, there is one bit of the past you cannot erase. Remember the time you tried to break into my mountain using the Giants? Banging on my roof and waking me up when I need my beauty sleep? You recollect that? Well, I don’t cotton to trespassers. Keep the hell out of my yard.” Then he opened fire. At about the same moment, the falling space platform landed between them. There were no words thereafter.