The Golden Age

by John C. Wright

  He threw the card from him, shut off his sense-filter, and fell out of the Middle Dreaming. His spinning sense-perceptions returned instantly to normal. The security buffer in his personal thoughtspace showed a virus of the most crude and sophomoric design, one called drunk-rabbit, had tried to enter his brain and turn on his internal neural signals to flood his system with endorphins and intoxicants. Had it been assault? But he had taken the card willingly.

  “How dare you attack me?” said Phaethon loudly. “Do you respect neither law nor decency?”

  There was laughter at that; some of the lumps of flesh here snickered; other monsters roared with ungainly mirth, opening wide mouths hooked with fangs or black tusks.

  The ridged cone twisted, bringing the tentacle from which its many-eyed head-ball drooped down to where the parasite-polyp glistened on the red-blue flesh. He said: “Scary, what are you doing? Phaethon is our lovely friend!”

  The attached segment of flesh that controlled that fungoid growth spoke back. “Do not pinch up your arse so much, boss, or the filth will soak backward into your brain! What, no sense of humor? I wanted Phaethon here to join us in our happy-time! A little slosh is good for him! Lookit how twanged and stiff he looks! Don’t he want to celebrate?”

  The larger creature spread his tentacles in a parody of a shrug. “My friend Scary, he’s got a good point there, Phaethon, old boy (or can I call you Fey-fey?). You do look twang. Here, snuff a bead into an orifice! Any hole will do.”

  Phaethon spoke in a level tone of voice. “No, thank you. What cause have I to celebrate with creatures of your ilk, sir? Who are you? What is your business with me?”

  The creature held all its tentacles overhead. The monsters fell silent.

  “I am Unmoiqhotep Quatro Neomorph of the Cthonnic School. We praise your victory over the oppression of the vicious inertia of this world of hate and horror in which we live. For once, the rising Generation (the Children of Divine Light, as I call them) has received their due reward from the all-smothering mediocrity of the Elders (the Jailers, as I like to call them). And from a Peer, no less! We rejoice because wealth unfairly hoarded by Helion has finally come to a child of his; we are also children of rich and important men; we consider you our inspiration! Oh, happy day!” There was another gurgling cheer from the mob, swaying and flapping their malformed arms.

  Phaethon’s anger drummed in his temples; his face was warm with wrath. “You dare to stand there cheering because my father, whom I loved, has been declared dead? You come to mock my loss and grief! What kind of vicious vultures are you?!”

  Another monstrosity stumbled forward in a tangle of clumsy feet. “Don’t get so high-and-mighty on us, you greedy money chaser! You monopolist! You engineer! We are children of enlightenment! Pleasure and freedom are ours! We despise the filthy materialists and their thinking machines who enslave us with their utopia! Where is true humanity in that? Where is pain and death and suffering? How dare you be so selfish, so selfre-pressed? What kind of stuck-up, sniveling, psychic-tyrant are you?!”

  The creature yelling this at Phaethon was a thing out of a nightmare. From a large head, two necks reached down into two bodies, naked, male and female. The separate bodies of the one head were embraced in a jerking copulation.

  Phaethon turned on his sense-filter and edited the crowd from his view.

  Now he stood, or seemed to stand, in a stately garden. Blessed solitude was here. Except for the twitter of distant birds, all was silent. The odor of unwashed humanity was gone; instead, a scent rose from the dew-gemmed grass, or the curving petals of luxurious flowers beyond the hedge.

  Phaethon kicked his foot against the soil, activated his magnetics in the armor, and soared into the spring-scented air. Handsome landscape was above him and below him in the great cylinder.

  Perhaps this sublime peace was an illusion. He knew these lawns were crowded with a filthy swarm of neomorphs. But perhaps some illusions were worth maintaining, if only for a little while.

  He turned on his private thoughtspace, so that a spiral of dots, and cubes of engineering and ecological routine icons seemed to hang within arm’s reach around him, but the garden landscape was still visible beyond.

  He reached toward the pastel oblong icon representing his wife’s diary, but stopped. He did not have enough memory just in the isolated circuitry wired into his brain to run a full simulation; and he certainly did not want to enter into personality deprivation while in flight. But he was too impatient to go all the way back, miles upon miles, to his barren little cubical in the space elevator before he had a chance to find out what Daphne knew.

  Phaethon hesitated to call Rhadamanthus back, because he now knew Helion’s Relic could find what he was doing through those links. And while he might be a fine man, it was a fact that Helion and Phaethon now had an uncompromising conflict of interests. Either one had the right to Helion’s vast fortune, or the other; they could not both.

  Phaethon frowned. Helion’s relic? Phaethon had seen him just last night. It was impossible to think of the man as anything other than his sire; it was impossible to think of him as “dead” merely because a court of law so decreed.

  But, if so, then Phaethon was in the wrong, stealing money from a man merely because a court of law called him dead. After all, that same Court just called Phaethon himself dead … .

  There was a spaceport at the weightless joint joining this cylinder with the next. It was a wide spherical space where many ships of spun diamond, like a forest of elfish glass, were assembled and disassembled between Inner System flights; they also served as shuttles to farther spaceports at L-5 point and beyond, where mile upon mile of magnetic launchers accelerated ships for bright and distant Jupiter, and other Outer System ports of call.

  A smaller group of habitats, like a cluster of grapes, was affixed to the wall of the sphere; one of the larger ones contained thought caskets and lockers rented out by Eleemosynary Hospitalities, a subdivision of that wealthy Composition’s many business groups, efforts, and holdings.

  Phaethon floated into the airlock at the hub of the hospice. From there he descended to the equator of the hospice, which was being spun for gravity. Thought caskets formed a curving row reaching up to his left and right; he could see the other side of the corridor above him.

  He entered the nearest thought casket, had the medical apparatus close about him. The circuitry in his armor might interfere with the interfaces, yet Phaethon was strangely unwilling to take it off.

  As Atkins had done, Phaethon took a group of fibers and stuffed them down through the neckpiece of his armor, where they writhed and changed shape, making themselves adaptable to the circuitry in the black nanomechanism that formed the armor lining. The signal now could be fed through the armor to the armor’s internal interfaces and into his brain. Apparently that was sufficient.

  Energy connections were formed with receptors in his brain; all his senses were engaged; the external world faded.

  Now he seemed to stand in the Hospice Public Thoughtspace, where a pyramid of balconies seemed to rise around him, with windows and icons opening up into deeper and higher sections of the library.

  A gesture from his little finger closed the balcony railing and formed a privacy box. He opened the diary, fell into deepest dreamspace, lost his memories, and became Daphne. The recording started with her before she woke yesterday morning.

  11

  THE SYMPHONY OF DREAMS

  1.

  She had not been asleep, not as the ancients would have understood sleep. Daphne had been experiencing a Stimulus, Mancuriosco the Neuropathist’s Eighth Arrangement. The last movement in the Stimulus, the so-called Compass of Infinity Theme, involved stimulations of deep-memory structures, a combination of REM-stage delta waves and meditative alpha waves. Over all, was a counterpoint of waves that did not naturally occur in the human brain, which, introduced artificially produced sensations and states of mind that required a special nomenclature to describe.
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br />   In her dreams, she cycled through an evolution, first as an amoeba pulsing in the endless waves of the all-mother ocean, then as a protozoa, drifting and floating, then as an insect, escaping from the water to the smaller infinity of the air. Memories of ancient amphibians, ancient lizards, lemurs and hominids flowed through her; each mind, as it grew more complex, seemed, somehow, to diminish the mystery and wonder of the world around her. Other deeply buried memories surfaced; of her floating in the womb as a child, surrounded by infinite love and warmth, then emerging, in pain and confusion, into what seemed to be a smaller universe. The final movement of the theme had a set of emotions, moods, dreams and half-dreams, where, ennobled by some far future evolution, now a goddess, she held the universe like a crystal globe in her hand, but, being larger than the universe, had no place to stand. There were sensations of being cramped and suffocated, terribly alone, as the universe shrank to the size of a pebble, a dust mote, an atom. Then, somehow, in a mysterious reverse, she found herself now infinite and infinitesimal, once more floating and drifting in a mysterious endless sea … .

  She enjoyed the experience as always, but there was something not quite right about it, something which made her uneasy … .

  It was strange. She remembered this performance as her favorite. How had she truly never noticed how pessimistic and ironic the theme here was? But the performance had not changed. Had something changed in her … ?

  Perhaps she was more joyous these days. These were the golden days of the Transcendence; there was much to enjoy.

  The dream drifted to waking, and Daphne awoke.

  She lay beneath the waters of her living-pool, yawning and stretching, bubbles tickling her nose. Daphne stared up at the play of lights and reflections across the underside of the dome, at the blue sky and white clouds beyond. She smiled a languid smile.

  At her thought, the water beneath her strengthened its surface tension, so that she now rested in a dry little valley, made by her own weight, of rainbow-chased transparency.

  What next? She wondered. It was after the Gold Cup competitions, but the Life Debates were still two days away. And she had already bought all the gifts she needed for the Ministration of Delights in August.

  Some of her manor-born friends, Anna and Uruvulell, always had their Sophotechs surprise them on unplanned festival days, plan their schedules for them. The superintelligent machines often could choose what would amuse and instruct their patrons much better than the girls themselves could do. Such a life was not for her. She craved spontaneity, wildness, adventure!

  Daphne challenged propriety among the manor-born by going in her physical presence to the festivals. The cottage around her now, for example, with its pillars of porphyry marble and its diamond dome, was real, grown last month in the gardens south of Aurelian Mansion. It was not Rhadamanthus, but a more simple-minded Sophotech (only eighty or ninety times as bright as a human genius, not thousands) named Ayesha, who dwelt in this cottage.

  It was Ayesha who now manipulated the millions of microscopic machines in the life-pool to weave robes of flowing blue-and-silver silk up around Daphne as she rose to her feet. Water trickled from the curves of her breast and belly, and her long hair, now wet and black and heavy, that hung, clinging, to her back. Where the water passed, silk thread clung, so that by the time she stepped from the pool, fabric spun down to her feet. The waste-heat of the molecular assembly was directed through her hair to dry it.

  The robe was like a Hindu sari. The shining cloth was simply draped, without fastenings or ties, and fell with natural grace over one shoulder and tightly around her waist and hips, to accentuate her figure. She carried the train over her elbow.

  She passed down a corridor paved with mother-of-pearl, with softly glowing hypnogogic Warlock-sculptures hovering in niches to either side. Daphne did not have the states of consciousness necessary to receive the experience-signals from these sculptures; she was a base neuroform, even though, in her youth, she had been a Warlock named Ao Andaphantie, with no barriers between her left brain and hypothalamus, and in dreams had walked by the day through her waking consciousness. Daphne kept the sculptures with her nonetheless; they were not intelligent enough to be emancipated, and would have drooped with melancholy had she abandoned them.

  Even if she could no longer read the interior of the sculptures, she saw how they spun and glittered and laughed as she passed, catching her mood and reflecting it back to her. They seemed much brighter than she would have expected, glinting with suppressed mirth, as if some hidden and wonderful surprise were waiting for her.

  Beyond was a mensal room. Part of the discipline of the hedonists of the Red Manorial Schools was that they take all nutriment not through traditional living-pool absorptions but in a more ancient fashion, by eating. Daphne had been allied with Eveningstar, a Red manor, for many centuries before she joined the more austere and strict Silver-Gray. The mensal chamber was floored with polished wood, the walls hidden by rice-paper screens painted with bamboo-and-crane motifs.

  Why that motif? Daphne glanced at the cranes. Mating for life, they were symbols of eternal fidelity. Was Ayesha Sophotech trying to hint that Daphne should spend more time with her husband? He had been acting rather moody and abstracted lately, not enjoying the festivals as much as she had thought he would.

  In the center of the room was a table on which were displayed a careful arrangement of bowls, napkins, tiny crystal bottles of sauce or dried leaves of spice. Here were plates of spiced fish wrapped in seaweed, slices of octopus, balls of rice. In the middle was a black iron tea kettle with three spouts. She knelt, her robes as bright as flower petals on the mat around her knees, and took up her chopsticks. And stopped, her head cocked to one side: what was this bulk beneath the silk napkin folded to the side of her setting?

  She drew aside the napkin and found a memory box beneath. This was an imaginifestation, the real-world analogy for some icon in thoughtspace. Taking it up or opening it would trigger some mental reaction or routine.

  Daphne recognized her own handwriting on the lid: “For the Third Day after Guy Fawkes’. Happy Surprise!”

  “I hate surprises!” She groaned and rolled her eyes. “Why am I always doing things like this to myself?!”

  Well, there was nothing else to be done. She would have to open the box. But to make the waiting more delicious, and to prevent her meal from spoiling, she ate first. Daphne was good at mensal ceremony; her each gesture and nibble, each sip from her tea bowl, was as graceful as a small ballet.

  Then, with her food warm in her stomach, and chewing on a mint leaf for desert, it was time to open the box.

  Slowly, the lid came open.

  Inside the box, like concentric iridescent bubbles, was her universe.

  Daphne saw it, and remembered.

  She sat, eyes closed, breathless. Her old Warlock training allowed her to remain awake while the dreaming centers of her brain, rushing with images, tried to establish deep-structure emotional and symbolic connections between her memories and consciousness.

  The cosmos was called Althea. It was a simple, geocentric, Copernican model, based on Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics. Beneath a crystal sphere of fixed stars and the complex epicycles of moving planetary mansions were continents and blue oceans of a gentle world. Her seas teemed with fishes and mermaids, whales grand with ancient wisdom, sunken cities. Her lands were pastoral, jeweled with tiny villages and farms, high castles, small cities crowned with lovingly built cathedrals. A memory of horrid war hung like the notes of a trembling counterpoint echoing from far hills, and musketeers and daring horse guards patrolled the edges of dark forests where winged dragons were rumored to brood.

  In the city of golden Hyperborea, beyond the Northwestern Sea, a prince named Shining had returned from the wars with the grim Cimmerians, who lived in endless caverns of gold and iron, in a land of eternal gloom. The prince had brought with him out from that underworld a dream made of fire, which he wore like a cloak
over his armor of gold, or like wings of flame … .

  The wonder of it was that Daphne had achieved the Semifinal Medal for the Althean universe she had created; today she was to enter in the final competition against other amateur dreamsmiths. She had originally intended it only for children, or for those who delighted in childish things. How could it compete with the modern non-Euclidean universes invented by Neomorphs, or the strange multileveled worlds of the New Movement Warlocks, or the Möbius-strip infinities of Anachronic Cerebellines? The love-gravity universe submitted by Typhoenus of the Clamour Black Manor, a universe where love increased gravitic attraction and hate and fear lessened it, had thousands of worlds, a galaxy of worlds, peopled by thousands of characters no less complex and complete as her few continent’s worth. How could she compete? How could she ever hope to win?

  She opened her eyes and came out of her trance. Phaethon was always bothering her about getting back into some effort, getting involved in some business or program. (As if anything humans did could make any difference at all in a world run by machines!) And it was true that she had put off the decision, and put it off again and again, telling herself that perhaps, by the time of the Masquerade at the end of the Millennium, when the world reviewed its life and decided where its future lay, Daphne would review and would decide herself.

  Well, the Millennium had come. The decision was here. If she won the Gold Medal for her universe there would be a flood of invitations, communions, ovations. Entertainers would send her gifts and compose praises just for the privilege of being seen with her, or publicity-mongers to have the public see what name-brand services she patronized.

  Maybe she could become a dream weaver in truth, not merely a dreamer.

  And maybe, just maybe, her husband would lose that look of disdain he got when he spoke of those who enjoyed the fruits of the Golden Oecumene without helping with the cultivation. “All history has worked to created our fine utopia,” he would always say, “so it is hardly the time for the human race to take a holiday! We don’t want entropy to win.”