The Golden Age

by John C. Wright

  Had Aurelian foreseen one of his guests accidentally recovering a buried memory, creating a scene, offending his dear wife, ruining the pageants and plans for the entire Silver-Gray School? Was the tragedy of Phaethon one which had been engineered for the edification of the other guests, a warning, perhaps, not to inquire too closely into what was better left unknown?

  If Phaethon left now, he would miss the Final Transcendence in December. All the art and literature, industry and mental effort for the next thousand years would be established and determined, or, at least, heavily influenced, by the experience of that Transcendence. He would not contribute to it; none of what he had done over the last thousand years would be part of it. And after the culmination of the Transcendence, almost every conversation, every meeting, and every grand affair would be conducted in the shadow of that shared memory.

  A memory Phaethon would not have. An experience everyone but he would share. Phaethon thought about all the jokes he would not get, all the allusions he would not catch, if he missed this. Not to mention the gifts and vastenings he would lose.

  After all, why should he create a scene? Couldn’t he wait till the party was over to dig up buried unpleasantness? Wouldn’t that be more practical, make more sense?

  Phaethon stood in midair, frowning, staring down. Like a smaller, second sun, the bright point of what had once been Jupiter rose in the East, casting double shadows across the Aurelian palace grounds underfoot.

  Happily, the fanfare of the Jovian Aubade rang from tower to tower. White-plumed birds, all singing gloriously, flew up in flocks from aviaries and the groves, a thunder of wings. The doves carried fruit, or delicacies, or decanters of wine, and they sought out guests who hungered or thirsted.

  A white bird flew up, and landed on his shoulder, cooing. The bird was a new species, designed just for the occasion. Phaethon took a crystal of smart-wine. The taste was perfectly conveyed through sensors in his mannequin to the taste glands and pleasure centers of wherever Phaethon’s real body and real brain were stored, sound asleep, and safe beyond all danger.

  The taste was like summer sunshine itself, and the bouquet changed from moment to moment as tiny assemblers in the liquid combined and recombined the chemical elements even as he lifted the crystal. He sipped in pure delight, and no two sips were the same; each was an individual, not to be repeated. But he shooed the bird away, opened his hand, and dropped the drink unfinished. He made himself feel no regret as it fell away from him.

  He dialed his costume from Harlequin to Hamlet. Now he wore bleak, grim, sober colors.

  Phaethon said: “If the cost is that I be excluded from this Celebration, I can tolerate that. Somehow, I can. It’s only a party, after all. I can pay that cost. It’s better that I know the truth.”

  “Forgive me, young master, but you misunderstand me. You will not be excluded from the Celebration. You will be exiled from your home. Those memories will cast you out of paradise.”

  4

  THE STORM-SCULPTOR

  1.

  For a few moments, the Peers debated with calm intent solar evolution and decay, and other events to happen many millions or billions of years in the future.

  Helion (who was a devoted antiquarian) knew how his distant ancestors would have been nonplussed to hear sane folk speaking of such remote eventualities; just as ancestors more distant yet, the primitive hunter-gatherers of the Era of the First Mental Structure, who lived from hunt to hunt and hand to mouth, would have been equally perplexed to hear the farmers destined to replace them speaking so casually of harvests and seasons months and years away.

  “Why do we need a sun?” Vafnir said. “This is premised on the assumption that we will not find a satisfactory substitute source of energy after the sun is extinguished: a premise I, for one, do not accept without question.”

  Ao Aoen said airily, “The Silent Oecumene sought a novel source of energy. They had no sun either. You recall, before their Silence fell, what horrors we heard from them.”

  Vafnir said coldly: “Horrors they brought on themselves. The wisdom of the machine-intelligences could have saved them; they preferred to hate and fear all Sophotects.”

  “The vaunted Sophotechs were not wise enough to save the only extra-solar colony of man!”

  Helion said patiently: “Peer Ao Aoen recalls, surely, that the Cygnus XI system is a thousand light-years distant; hence the death message was a thousand years outdated by the time we received it.”

  Ao Aoen said: “For us immortals, the space of time equal to one celebration of our Transcendence. A trifle! Why was no manned expedition ever sent to the dark swan system?”

  Gannis, breaking in, said, “Aha! What futility that would be! To spend unimaginable wealth to go pick among ruins and graveyards, cold beneath a black neutron-sun. Gah! The idea has merit only for its ironic pathos!”

  Ao Aoen had an odd look to his eyes. “The idea has haunted several dreams of mine these past years, and a quarter-mind brother of mine saw an ominous shape once in the frozen clouds of methane in the liquid atmosphere of Neptune. The horoscopes of several of my cultmates tremble with unintelligible signs! All this points to one conclusion: it has now been shown, beyond doubt, that if a ship of sufficient mass and sufficiently well-armored to achieve near light-speed can be—”

  Peer Orpheus raised a thin hand. “Enough! This is irrelevant to our discourse.”

  Ao Aoen made a wild gesture with his many arms and fingers, and sank back in his chair, sulking.

  Orpheus said softly: “We must resign ourselves to fact. Helion is correct about this, and about many matters. Of the visions of the future that the Transcendence will contemplate, one of more conformity, less experimentation, serves both our selfish interests, and, at the same time, supports the public spirit of the College of Hortators. Practical and altruistic minds both have equal cause to fear what leads to war. The College of Hortators and the Conclave of Peers must ally. Helion’s insight will form the basis of the next great social movement of the next Millennium. It is the vision the Peers will support.”

  Helion had to use a mind trick to keep his joy in check. He was astonished; this was a signal honor far beyond anything Rhadamanthus had predicted, far beyond what he’d dreamed. If his vision of the future was adopted by the Transcendence, then he himself, Helion, would be the central figure whose philosophy would shape society for the next thousand years. His name would be on every tongue, every marriage list, every guest-password file of every party and convocation … .

  It was dazzling. Helion decided not to record the joy he felt now, for fear that future replays of this wild emotion would dull it.

  There would be more talk, of course, and more debate, and each of the Peers would consult with their advisors, or issuing authorities, or (in the case of Ao Aoen) spirit guides. There would be more talk.

  But Orpheus had spoken, and the matter was fairly well decided.

  2.

  Soaring, with clouds above and clouds below, Phaethon let the joy of flight erase his worries for the moment.

  He and Rhadamanthus penguin played in mock dogfights, doing snap rolls, barrel rolls, loops.

  Phaethon was closing in on the penguin when the fat bird did an Immelmann, toppling over on one wing, and righting itself to flash toward Phaethon, and on past, shouting “Ratatatatat! Gotcha!”

  Phaethon didn’t know what the word Ratatatat meant, but it seemed to imply some sort of victory or counting-coup. Phaethon slowed and stood in the air, hands on hips.

  “My dear Rhadamanthus, you’re surely cheating!” The bird, of course, only existed as an image in Phaethon’s sensorum.

  “By my honor, sir, I’m only doing what a bird this size could do. You can check my math if you wish.”

  “Aha? And what are you postulating for your acceleration tolerance in those turns?”

  “Well, sir, penguins are sturdy birds! When is the last time you have ever heard of a Sphenisciforme blacking out, eh?”

&nbs
p; “Point well taken!” Phaethon spread his arms and fell backward onto a nearby cloud. Mist spilled upward around him as he sank, smiling.

  “My wife would love this, wouldn’t she? Glorious things attract her—wide vistas, grand emotions, scenes of wonder!”

  The cloud got darker around him. On another level of vision, he detected electropotentials building in the area.

  “ … It’s just too bad that we live at a time when everything glorious has already been done for us. The only really impressive things she can ever find are in her dream universes.”

  “You disapprove?”

  “Well … I hate to say it, but … I mean, why can’t she write those things? She got an award for one oneiroverse she made up once, a Ptolemaic universe thing, some sort of magic planet. I think there were flying balloons in it, or something.” He pursed his lips. “But instead of writing them, she just drifts in and out of other peoples’ ideas.”

  “Sir—excuse me, but I think we’re floating into someone’s claimed space—”

  “Someday I’ll do something to awe the world, Rhadamanthus. Once she sees how impressive the real world can be, she won’t be so—”

  Through the darkening cloud, a figure in a golden boat, dressed as falcon-headed god character from pre-Ignition Jovian storm-poetry, swam up through the cloud, and made an impatient gesture with his long black pole. He wore ornate robes of white and gold and blue, with a complex helmet-crown. “Sir! I say, Demontdelune!”

  “I’m not Demontdelune; this is Hamlet.”

  “Ah. As you wish. In any case, please move aside; I’m trying to sculpt a thunderstorm here, and your fields are interfering with my nanomachines.”

  Phaethon looked around him, switching his perception to a finer level, and shutting off his sense-filter. The illusionary penguin vanished, but now Phaethon could see extraordinarily small machines attached to each and every water droplet, generating repulsive and attractive fields, herding them. There were more nanomachines per cubic inch in this area than he had ever seen before.

  Phaethon was severely impressed. This man could control the shape and density of the cloud down to the finest level. By arranging the flows of cloud drops, he could create static, or trigger condensation. “But—this is an extraordinary effort!”

  “Quite so—especially since I cannot control the wind. I have to play the cloud like a harp whose billion strings all change in length and pitch from moment to moment. My Sophotech can speed my perception of time to a point I need to render the performance—I should begin a minute or so from now, as soon as the winds are right—but, to me, at that time-speed, my performance will seem to last a hundred years.”

  “Fantastic! What is your name, sir, and why do you make such sacrifices to your art?”

  “Call me Vandonnar.” This was the name in Jovian poems of the captain of a mining-diver, lost in the clouds, and said to be circling eternally the Great Red Spot Storm, a ghost, so lost that he was unable to find his way to the afterlife. The poem dated from the days when there still was such a Great Red Spot. “My true name I must keep to myself. I fear my friends would disapprove if they knew how much Sophotech time I’ve spent just for this one storm-song. And Aurelian, our host, has not announced the storm beforehand. Those who don’t look up in time to see, or who run inside, will miss the performance. I am not allowing this to be recorded.”

  “Good heavens, sir, why not?!”

  “How else to escape the stifling control of the Sophotechs? Everything is recorded for us here, even our souls. But if this can be played only once, its power is all the greater.”

  “And yet—forgive for so saying, but without the Sophotechs, you could not possibly do the mathematics to control each raindrop in a storm, or to direct where the lightning will fall!”

  “You miss my whole point, Mr. Hamhock.”

  “Hamlet.”

  “Whatever. This is a statement of third-order chaos mathematics. You see? Even with the finest control in the world, even with the wisest Sophotech, where the lightning strikes next cannot be predicted. Some one ambitious raindrop will brush against its neighbors more boldly than anticipated, irritating them, raising more electric charge than guessed; the threshold is crossed; the electrons ionize; in a single instant the discharge path is determined; crooked or straight; and fulgration flashes! And all because that one little drop could not keep still … .

  “Wait! The winds are changing … . Go now, please, while I can still compensate for your passage through my cloud … . No, that direction! Go there! Otherwise you tangle my strings! …”

  Without a word, Phaethon darted away, swift as a salmon. His clothes were moist with mist as he broke free of the storm-cloud, and nanomachines, thick as dust, stained his shoulders and hair.

  Phaethon triggered his sense-filter again. The image of the Penguin reappeared.

  “Rhadamanthus, you Sophotechs always deny that you are wise enough to arrange everything we do, to arrange coincidences.”

  “Our predictions of humanity are limited. There is an uncertainty which creatures with free will create. The Earthmind Herself could not beat you every time in a game of paper-scissors-rock, because your move is based on what you think she might choose for her move: and She cannot predict her own actions in advance perfectly.”

  “Why not? I thought Earthmind was intelligent beyond measure.”

  “No matter how great a creature’s intelligence, if one is guessing one’s own future actions, the past self cannot outwit the future self, because the intelligence of both is equal. The only thing which alters this paradox is morality.”

  Phaethon was distracted. “Morality?! What an odd thing to say. Why morality?”

  “Because when an honest man, a man who keeps his word, says he will do something in the future, you can be sure he will try.”

  “So you machines are always preaching about honesty just for selfish reasons. It makes us more predictable, easier to work into a calculation.”

  “Very selfish—provided you define the word ‘selfish’ to mean that which most educates, and most perfects the self, making the self just and true and beautiful. Which is, I assume, the way selves want themselves to be, yes?”

  “I cannot speak for other selves; I will not be satisfied with anything less than the best Phaethon I can Phaethon.”

  “My dear boy, are you using yourself as a verb?”

  “I’m feeling fairly intransitive at the moment, Rhadamanthus.”

  “What brought all this odd topic up, Phaethon?”

  “I feel as if that meeting—” he nodded toward the stormcloud growing dark behind them—“As if it were … were arranged to give me and me alone a message. I wanted to know if you or Earthmind or someone were behind it.”

  “Not I. And I cannot predict the Earthmind any more than you.”

  “Can she arrange coincidences of that magnitude?”

  “Well, she could easily have hired that man to ride up and say those things. Good heavens, boy, that could have been Her, in disguise. This is a masquerade, you know. What’s the coincidence, though?”

  “Because just at that moment, I was thinking of dropping this whole thing, forgetting this whole mystery. I was perfectly happy before I found that there was a hole in my memory; perfectly happy to be who I thought I was. I want to live up to my wife’s good opinion of me, to go beyond it, if I can.”

  “I don’t follow you, sir.”

  Phaethon altered his vision so that the daytime sky, to him, no longer seemed blue but was transparent, as if it were night. He pointed toward the moon.

  “My wife told me once she thinks of me every time she looks up at the moon, and sees how much bigger it looks, these days, from Earth. That was one of my first efforts. More fame than I deserved, perhaps, just because it was close to Earth, right there for everyone to see …

  “She sought me out after that; she wanted me to sit for a portrait she was incorporating for a heroic base-formality dream sculpture. Imagine ho
w flattered I was; having hundreds of students going into simulation to forget themselves awhile and turn into a character based on me! As if I were a hero in a romance. We met on Titania, during my Uranus project. She had sent a doll of herself because she was afraid to travel out of mind-range with the earth. I fell in love with the doll; naturally I had to meet the archetype from which she sprang.”

  “And? …”

  “Well, damn it, Rhadamanthus, you know my mind better than I do; you know what I’m going to say!”

  “Perhaps, sir. You actually wanted to be the heroic figure she fell in love with. I suspect you fell in love with the heroic ideal too. To do acts of greatness and wonder! Is that why you suspect the Earthmind had you meet that storm sculptor? To show you that impressive deeds—and I think that that man and his effort certainly were impressive—could still be done here on Earth, with your memory left just as it is? You thought the better part of valor might be contentment? That a true hero is moderate, temperate, and lives within his means? Well, that is by no means an ignoble sentiment … .”

  Phaethon made a noise of vast disgust. “Ugh! Oh, come now! That’s not it at all! I only agreed to take a year off work and come to this frivolous masquerade because my wife told me it might inspire me to decide on my next project. As I was trying to think of what I could do that was impressive, I began to wonder if the act of uncovering some old crime or misdeed of mine might not interfere with that? If so, this little mystery is just a distraction, so I should forget it. But then I met that foolish man, and I realized what real distraction is. Finding the truth about myself is not distraction; I have to know all about me before I can decide how I can best be used for my purposes. Real distraction is doing the kind of work he does!”

  The penguin looked back toward the dark cloud, now far behind them. A rumble of thunder sounded, like the flourish of a trumpet before a battle.