The Golden Age

by John C. Wright

  “Rhadamanthus, can you figure out how to open this armor again, please?”

  Black vertical lines, like streamlines, appeared across the surface of the armor, and spread wider. The helmet folded. Then the armor was as Phaethon first saw it, black, with side panels of gold, with gold ornaments at collar, shoulder, thigh.

  “If I must be hauled before the High Court of the Curia, then let me appear in splendor to awe the world! I will not go unremarked to my fate!”

  Rhadamanthus (despite normal Silver-Gray policy) manifested no appearance, but issued a disembodied voice into Phaethon’s ear. “Pardon me, sir, if I did not explain. But you are not summoned to the High Court. You are appearing before the Probate Court. I suspect they are gathering, not to fix any penalties on you, but to reward you with a testamentary gift.”

  Phaethon flung the armor across his shoulders. The black fabric dissolved into flying threads, which swooped around him, wrapping limb and body, pulling the gold adamantium plates and panels into place. The black substance bonded with his skin. Again, he felt a sense of great well-being. The nanomachines in the armor were interpenetrating his flesh, feeding and sustaining his cells more efficiently than the natural mechanisms that normally carried nutrients and fluids to them.

  He stood for a moment, exulting in the sense of soaring vivacity the armor sent through his nerves and muscles. Only then did Rhadamanthus’s words penetrate to him. “A gift? The Court of Law is going to decide to give me a gift? What kind of nonsense is this? I thought we kept the Curia around just in case people were ever tempted to commit violent crimes again, or cheat on contracts, or break their word. The Triumvir Judges don’t give gifts.”

  “It is a testamentary gift, young master. The Judges also have the power to resolve disputed ownership of the property of the dead.”

  “Hm. I would have thought archeologists or museum curators have that duty. What has any of this to do with me, except as a distraction to delay my efforts to discover the truth about myself? No matter! I am impatient to have done with this matter. Can we at least get under way?”

  The far wall of the barren apartment was made of pseudo-matter. Pseudo-matter was neither matter nor energy as the ancients would have understood those terms but a third manifestation of timespace. The vibrations of ylem superstrings in the stable geometries called “octaves” produced matter-energy quanta; unstable pulses formed temporary virtual particles. An unnatural but perfectly self-consistent topology (and one not invented by the universe within her first three seconds) was the semistable waveform, dubbed the tritone. Pseudo-matter, built up from these tritone semiquanta, could impersonate shape and extension, but only in the presence of a stabilizing energy field. When that energy field was shut off, the location of pseudo-matter became uncertain, and solidity vanished, until the field was reapplied.

  The far wall winked out like a popped soap bubble as Phaethon slid through it, and snapped back into reality behind him. Phaethon knew of schools who disapproved of the use of pseudo-matter for aesthetic and metaphysical reasons; he felt a momentary sympathy for them then. Life would be simpler if solid-seeming things could be trusted.

  Phaethon found himself staring through a bank of windows at a wide circular space. It rose overhead, dwindling with perspective to the vanishing point. Underfoot was like a well, dropping, as if bottomless, beyond sight. Rail-guides and tractor-friction field generators studded the vertical walls in a jewel-like tiger-striped pattern. The design seemed more biological than mechanical; the geometry of the architecture was fractal, organic, spiral; nothing was Euclidean or linear.

  A car with spider arms and crab legs rushed silently up the side of the wall and jerked to a stop in front of Phaethon’s windows. The utter silence proved the wide tube was evacuated of air. A protuberance bubbled from the car and swelled up against the windows, opening wide lips. There was no door. The window-substance writhed and opened like so many flower petals, melding and intermingling with the protuberance. Phaethon was now looking into a short, twisted corridor into the interior of the car. It looked like an esophagus. The inside of the car had no clearly defined walls or floor or ceiling. The colorful lining was a made of folds or smooth lumps of tissue, feather soft, without any rigid shapes or hard edges. The polymimetic material was meant to conform to many nonstandard or eccentric body shapes. A shallow crater a dozen paces across occupied the floor of the pool, filled with living-water. Phaethon thought it looked like a stomach.

  “What is this place?” asked Phaethon recoiling in disgust.

  “This place does not abide by the Consensus Aesthetic.”

  “I can see that!”

  “ … It is from one of the Counter-aesthetic Schools, the Neomorphetics, who are part of the Never-First Movement. They are the most vocal opponents of the traditional social and artistic forms … .”

  “I know who they are,” replied Phaethon testily, “I haven’t forgotten everything.” The Never-Firsters were recruited from the second generation after the invention of immortality. They opposed whatever the elder generation preferred. The whole movement seemed to be based on the idea that, for some incomprehensible reason, wealth and power should go from the elders (who earned it) and be given to the youth (who had not). Perhaps laws and institutions had been different before the invention of immortality; but such concerns seemed, these days, somewhat moot.

  Phaethon said: “Helion calls them the Cacophiles, the lovers of ugliness. I used to argue that there was something hopeful, futuristic, and daring about their work. But, ugh! Maybe Helion was right. That pool has a dubious hue—does that water contain hallucinogens?”

  “A soporific to ease the acceleration shock, master, and entertainment chemicals to pass the time during the journey.”

  “Oh? How long is this journey?”

  “From here to Geosychronous Orbit? Three hundred seconds.”

  “I think I can tolerate the tedium of my own company for four minutes without undue boredom or despair, thank you. In fact, I think I can do without the Cacophiles and their elevator altogether.”

  For he had discovered a thoughtspace inside the armor. As if a dozen Argus-eyes had opened into his brain, the sense-impressions of the armor flowed into his cortex; the capacities and powers into his memory; the controls into his motor nerves. The armor had a truly astonishing number of control interfaces, servo-minds, and operator hierarchies. All these controls did not seem to be attached to any circuits or channels, however. Whatever machine or system this armor was meant to control must have been one of almost infinite complexity and sophistication.

  Phaethon, with the armor, was able to use these control-interfaces to dominate the local thoughtspace. It required less than a second to see and analyze the energy flows within the tube walls, create the proper anchor fields and generators within the armor lining, erect a magnetic force zone around himself, and ride the energy motions along the tube axis upward at several multiples of the speed of sound. Some emergency routine in the window allowed the panels to bubble and snap aside, shutting behind him as he soared upward before any air escaped into the vacuum inside the tube. The black lining of the armor had interpenetrated his every tissue, nerve, and bone, stiffening his body to the consistency of a block of oak. He was easily able to tolerate the nine gravities of acceleration; the armor’s internal monitor assured him that, had there been time to complete the tension adjustments within his cells and membranes, he would have been able to withstand ninety.

  “Rhadamanthus, I’m not endangering anyone, am I?”

  “I would have warned you, young master, had you been.”

  Phaethon flew on a waft of unseen force to the top of the space elevator. Here was a wide, weightless, roughly spherical space, a mile across. The walls were dotted with docks and portcullises leading to interplanetary ships or to the cylinders and habitats of the ring-city. Phaethon turned his sense-filter to subtext, so that the scene was overlaid with maps and diagrams showing his location and labeling the
machineries and energy-arrangements around him.

  Phaethon saw evidence of movement inside many of the machines and conduits leading through the space. He looked into the Middle Dreaming to see the meanings attached to these activities, and understood that the Sophotechs maintaining the environmental integrity of the ring-city were taking precautions against any accidents Phaethon’s flying suit might cause. Insurance efforts were tracking the cost of the precautions, which would be charged against his account should any accident occur. A side thought indicated that, since Phaethon’s account was bankrupt, the potential lien should be charged to Helion, along with the other pertinent details of the present situation.

  Phaethon turned toward Rhadamanthus, who (now that Phaethon’s sense-filter was turned back on) manifested an image. Rhadamanthus looked like a penguin dressed in black-and-gold adamantium armor. His helmet was of generally the same Egyptian-looking style as Phaethon’s, but with an elongated face mask to cover his beak.

  “Rhadamanthus! What is this?!”

  The penguin craned his neck and thoughtfully examined his own chubby gold-coated body, even lifting his stubby wings to gravely examine his armpits. “Is something out of order, sir? Silver-Gray protocol does require that I try to blend into the scene, after all.”

  “And this blends? A penguin in space armor?”

  “Well, sir, a penguin could not be levitating here next to you without such armor. Not realistically.”

  “You don’t seem to be taking my troubles very seriously.”

  “A sense of humor is most useful when dealing with human beings, sir.”

  “And, apparently, when dealing with Sophotechs, too. You and your brethren are informing Helion of my movements and actions. Is this also a joke?”

  “He only has rights to know of those things which concern him, such as, for example, when you are spending his money.”

  “Even though my amnesia blotted out the fact that it is his money, and not mine, that I’m spending, I suppose?”

  “It does not perhaps seem fair, sir, but you did agree to these terms.”

  “And, apparently, I’ve agreed to forget that I’ve agreed. Everyone says this is a golden age. Shouldn’t it be run a little more fairly?”

  “What does the young master suggest?”

  Phaethon swung his leg to counterrotate his body till his head pointed toward with the main motion lock. The internal structure of his armor changed, developing a microscopic system of rail-guns along his back and legs. Particles with very low rest-mass, ejected backward at near the speed of light, grew in mass enough to accelerate him forward. Ray-thin parallel streamers of light hissed backward from his armor, ruby red.

  Beyond was the first segment of the ring-city. Unlike the space yard he had just left, this segment was spun for gravity. Phaethon sped along the axis. This cylinder held traditional forms; overhead and underfoot, the distant curving walls were green with forests, blue with lakes.

  “Perhaps I should not be bound by obligations I’ve forgotten.”

  “But, sir, that would create an incentive for everyone to escape their obligations simply by erasing their memory of them. If you had wanted such an easy-escape clause written into the contract which presently binds you, presumably, you would have written it in.”

  “And presumably they—whoever they are—would not have agreed.”

  “That is a safe assumption.”

  The next three cylinders were neomorphic, filled with strange shapes and convolutions. The next cylinder was walled with oceans of pewter blue, with earthlight shining up through submerged windows. The cylinder beyond the next motion lock turned at a slower rate of spin, and the walls were sculpted with the rust red canyons and dry-ice snows of Mars.

  Phaethon asked, “Why couldn’t I be prevented from making such a foolish agreement in the first place?”

  “You are free to join the Orthomnemonicist School, which permits no memory alterations except antisenility storage, or join the Primitivists, who permit none at all.”

  “You know what I mean. You Sophotechs are smarter than I am; why did you let me do such a foolish thing?”

  “We answer every question our resources and instruction parameters allow; we are more than happy to advise you, when and if we are asked.”

  “That’s not what I’m thinking of, and you know it.”

  “You are thinking we should use force to defend you against yourself against your will? That is hardly a thought worth thinking, sir. Your life has exactly the value you yourself place on it. It is yours to damage or ruin as you wish.”

  The next cylinder was filled with the twisted crystal slabs of the Tachy-structuralists. The lifestyle of these disembodied people, who had sacrificed their biochemical brains in an attempt to reach Sophotech thinking-speeds and complexities, had long ago been superseded by the Neptunians, whose colder superconductive brain matrices carried thoughts much faster. This region, and these few stubborn miles of crystal, were perhaps the only remainder of the once-prestigious Tachystructural School.

  “Is that another hint? Are you saying I’m destroying my life? People at the party, twice now, have said or implied that I’m going to endanger the Oecumene itself. Who stopped me?”

  “Not I. While life continues, it cannot be made to be without risk. The assessment of whether or not a certain risk is worth taking depends on subjective value-judgments. About such judgments even reasonable men can differ. We Sophotechs will not interfere with such decisions.”

  Phaethon flew through two cylinders, which were filled with the heat and stench of old Venus. Here were Hell-born from the Lakshmi or Ishtar Plateau. Phaethon saw their gray-brown beehive-shaped cities, connected by lava dikes, or paths made by the wake of crawling-machines. Only one or two of the burning roads had oblong shapes stalking along them. The Hellish body forms had been rendered obsolete, centuries ago, once the Venereal Terraforming was complete; but the Hell-children, for whatever reason, preferred to keep the forms and shapes they knew.

  The next cylinder had walls paved with rank upon rank of dull-colored pyramids, with no sign of life on the barren pavements between. The one after was filled with what looked like herd upon herd of overgrown babies, surrounded on all sides by curving walls of warm, pink flesh, with milk flowing from hundreds of nipples. A third cylinder was bitterly cold, filled with zones of darkness, in which greater darknesses moved and pulsed. Phaethon recognized none of these schools or societies.

  Rhadamanthus continued: “If we were to overrule your ownership of your own life, your life, would, in effect, become our property, and you, in effect, would become merely the custodian or trustee of that life. Do you think you would value it more in such a case, or less? And if you valued it less, would you not take greater risks and behave more self-destructively? If, on the other hand, each man’s life is his own, he may experiment freely, risking only what is his, till he find his best happiness.”

  “I see the results of failed experiments all around us, in these cylinders. I see wasted lives, and people trapped in mind sets and life forms which lead nowhere.”

  “While life continues, experimentation and evolution must also. The pain and risk of failure cannot be eliminated. The most we can do is maximize human freedom, so that no man is forced to pay for another man’s mistakes, so that the pain of failure falls only on he who risks it. And you do not know which ways of life lead nowhere. Even we Sophotechs do not know where all paths lead.”

  “How benevolent of you! We will always be free to be stupid.”

  “Cherish that freedom, young master; it is basic to all others.”

  “And what about privacy? Helion is one of them, isn’t he? One of those who benefits from my amnesia.”

  “That is a very sound assumption. I do not think I am violating any confidences by telling you that Helion must have sent Daphne to come speak with you.”

  “What? I thought you—this version of you—weren’t allowed to know what was going on any more than I
am.”

  “Yes, sir. But I can still make deductions of ordinary logic. Where was Daphne when you left her?”

  “In the dream-tank. She was going into one of her games … wait a moment. I was expecting her to be in simulation for several days. She is not a novice at these games.”

  “Was she competing for an award?”

  “I thought she was.”

  “And she was in masquerade, so her location was masked. So: who could have found her, who had the authority to interrupt her game, and who could call upon her to do something which he would know she regarded as more important than her competition; but it had to be someone who also knew where you where … ?”

  “Daphne and I are penniless, right? If she enters a game, or if I run a routine, or even send a message, Helion gets billed for it. I assume he can figure out certain details from the billing. And … Oh! Good Heavens! He even knows when I talk to you, doesn’t he?”

  “It uses computer time, yes. Helion does not know the content of our conversation, but he knows how much of my mind and time I use.”

  “And does he know where we’re going now? Does he know for what reason the Curia summoned me?”

  “I will be surprised if he has not been summoned also.”

  Phaethon came at last into the central cylinder, the one which had been the original space-yard topping the original elevator. It was smaller than Phaethon expected, only a few miles or so along its axis. Overhead and underfoot, along the curving walls, were the famous gardenworks of Ao Nisibus, dating from the era just before the Fifth Mental Structure, when this place was chosen to be one of the seats of Golden Oecumene administration.

  The gardens were laid out in graceful and classical designs. Near the axis, in microgravity, floated balls of lunarian air bushes and sphere trees, each with an orb of soil at its center. Vines and lianas, grape and ivy of Martian manufacture inhabited the lesser gravity of the canopy and middle regions. Below, along the walls, were Terran flora; stands of fruit trees laid out, rank and file, in rectangles proportional of the golden mean; or colonnades and trellises; or lily ponds centered on concentric ranks of colorful blooms, from which paths and walkways radiated. Some of the plants, extinct on Earth, existed now only here, to maintain this famous garden’s natural state.