The Golden Age

by John C. Wright

  Phaethon said, “If fools wish to abuse their freedom, let them. So long as they only harm themselves, who cares?”

  Helion said, “Aha. Proudly spoken. But what human is entirely immune from foolishness?”

  Phaethon was impatient to continue the ceremony and step beyond those golden doors. He shrugged, and said, “The Sophotechs are unimaginably wise! We can trust their advice to protect us.”

  “Are they, indeed?” Helion looked very displeased. “Did I ever tell you what happened to Hyacinth-Subhelion Septimus Gray? He and I were friends once. We were closer than friends. We entered a communion exchange.”

  Against his will, Phaethon was interested. “Sir? I thought you and he were political rivals. Enemies.”

  “You are thinking of Hyacinth Sistine. This was another version of his, but a close alternate. What these days would be called a parallel-first close-order brother, emancipated non partial … though we did not use that terminology at the time.”

  “What did you call brothers back then?”

  “Real-time clones.”

  Phaethon snorted. “Well, no one ever accused people from the Second Immortality period of being overly romantic!”

  “Indeed,” said Helion with a small, ironic smile. “Which was why I founded the Romanticism movement among the manorial schools. It wasn’t called the Consensus Aesthetic back then, because there was no consensus and no standard forms. But Orpheus Prime Avernus—who fancied himself a poet, as you can tell from his name—had come out very strongly in favor of the return to classical themes and images. He wasn’t called a Peer back then, because there was only one of him, and he had no peers.” (Phaethon knew Helion had named himself, following that same classical myth tradition the Orphic movement had resurrected.)

  “No peers? The Eleemosynary Composition was around at that time.”

  “But held in contempt by public opinion. You probably don’t remember—recorded lives from that time usually don’t get posted on the apprentice net or educational channels—that the Eleemosynary Composition at that time was a fervid opponent of the Noumenal technology. And with good reason. Subscription to the Compositions dropped almost to nothing after Orpheus opened his first bank. People would rather be immortal—truly immortal, themselves, as individuals—rather than be a recording in a mass-mind. The Compositions might call it immortality, or ‘First Immortality,’ but without the Noumenal mathematics, without the ability to capture the self-aware and self-defining part of your soul, all Composition recording is, in reality, is other people pretending they are you, or playing out your old thoughts, after you die. Like a playactor reading a diary.”

  “What about Vafnir? Surely he was a peer.”

  “Vafnir was alive, but he wasn’t human. He had built himself into the power station at Mercury Equilateral. The whole damn station was his body. He was rich, but everyone deemed him a lunatic.” Helion smiled at the memory. “It was a wild age, an age of reckless daring and of high delights, of symphonies and storms of light. We all thought we could not die, and the elation from Orpheus’s breakthrough sang in our souls like summer wine … . Ah. Anyway, where was I … ?”

  Phaethon realized that Helion must have their local, rented version of Rhadamanthus off-line; otherwise he would not have forgotten his place in his speech.

  The Jovian system Sophotechs did not adhere to as strict a protocol of proprietary information as did Earthly ones, and disconnecting was the only way to be sure a conversation was not being recorded. Helion must have regarded what he had to say as important, or, at least, as worthy of privacy.

  “You were about to tell me some cautionary tale to horrify me into refusing the risks of adulthood, I believe, sir.”

  “Don’t be impertinent, boy.”

  “I thought you liked impertinence, old man?”

  “Only in moderation. Let me tell you about Hyacinth and me.”

  Phaethon did not want to hear a long story. “Am I right in guessing that Hyacinth Sistine hates you because of whatever you are going to tell me about Hyacinth Septimus?”

  Helion nodded grimly.

  Phaethon said, “You said his name was Hyacinth-Subhelion. You swapped personalities with him?”

  “We lived each other’s lives for a year and a day.”

  “And he refused to change back once the year was up. He thought he was you.”

  Helion nodded again.

  “But, Father! Father! How could you be so stupid!”

  Helion sighed, and stared up at the ceiling. “To be quite honest, Phaethon, I don’t know if I was as bright, when I was your age, as you are now.”

  Phaethon was shaking his head in disbelief. “But didn’t you think about the consequences … ?”

  Helion brought his eyes back down. “We were very close. He and I thought we could work together better if we really understood each other. And, in that day and age, absurd things seemed possible, even inevitable. It was an exciting time. We were all drunk with our new-found immortality, I suppose, and thought we were invincible. We thought we could simply resist the lure to stay in each other’s personality.”

  “But mind swaps like that are against Silver-Gray doctrine!”

  “You forget to whom you speak, young man. I wrote that doctrine because of this event. Don’t you relive your history texts? Ever?”

  In his youth, Phaethon had always found history tedious. He was more interested in the future than the past. He was particularly interested, at the moment, in his own personal future. He looked at the golden doors in an agony of impatience. “Please continue with your fascinating story, Father. I am most eager to hear the end.”

  “Very funny. I will be brief; for it is not a tale I care to dwell on. Back when there was only the White Manorial School and the Black, Hyacinth and I combined forces to create a compromise school, taking the best from both doctrines, the artistic appeal of the Black Mansions and the intellectualism and discipline of the Whites. He provided the inspiration and logic; I provided funds and determination. The mind-swap gave us each the strengths and virtues of the other. Together, we converted the skeptics and conquered a million markets.

  “But then when the year and a day had passed, we both claimed my property and estates. After all, both of us remembered doing the two hundred years of hard work which had gone into earning it. To settle the quarrel, we both agreed to abide by whatever the Hortators might decide.”

  “You had the College of Hortators way back then when you were young?”

  Helion squinted with impatient humor. “Yes. It was after the invention of fire but before that newfangled wheel contraption. I should tell you about when we domesticated the dog, put a man on the moon, and solved the universal field theorem. Should I continue? I’m trying to make a point.”

  “Sorry, sir. Please continue.”

  “When the Hortators declared him to be the copy, he refused to accept it. He entered a dreamscape simulation that allowed him to pretend he had won the case. He rewrote his memory, and ordered his sense-filter to edit out any contrary evidence. He continued to live as Helion Prime. He did thought-for-hire and data patterning, and was able to sell his routines out in the real world. He made enough to pay for his dreamspace rental. That worked for a while. But when self-patterning overroutines became standard, his subscriptions ran out, and he was kicked out into the real world.

  “But it did not end there. If the Sophotechs had only allowed someone to erase just the sections of his memory when he thought he was me, he would have been his old self, awake, oriented and sane, in a moment or two. But the Sophotechs said it could not be done without his permission. But how could he give his permission? He would not listen to anyone who tried to tell him who he was.

  “Instead, he sued me again, and accused me of stealing his life. He lost again. He could not afford enough to hire a Sophotech to give him job-seeking advice, and he could not find other work. The other Hyacinthines, Quintine and Quatrine and Sistine, gave him some charity for a whi
le, but he just spent it again to buy false memories. Eventually, to save on money, he sold his body, and downloaded entirely into a slow-process, low-rent section of the Mentality. Of course, illusions are easier for pure minds to buy, because there is no wire-to-nerve transition.”

  “Wouldn’t that also have made it easier for him to find work? Pure minds can go anywhere the mentality network reaches.”

  “But he didn’t find new work. He merely created the illusion that he was working. He wrote himself false memories telling himself that he was making enough to live on.”

  Helion stared at the ground for a moment, brooding. He spoke softly. “Then he sold his extra lives, one after another. All seven. A Noumenal backup takes up a lot of expensive computer time.

  “Then he sold his structure models. He probably figured that he did not need an imitation of a thalamus or hypothalamus any longer, since he had no glands and no dreams, probably did not need a structure to mimic the actions of pain and pleasure centers, parasympathetic reactions, sexual responses, and so on.

  “Then, to save space, he began selling memory and intelligence. Every time I came on-line to speak with him, he was stupider; he had forgotten more. But he still kept altering his simulation, making himself forget that either he or anyone else had ever been smarter than the slow-witted brute he was now.”

  Phaethon asked, “Father? You still went to see him … ?”

  Helion wore as stern a look as Phaethon had ever seen on his face. “Of course. He was my best friend.”

  “What happened.? I assume he … Did he die?”

  “It dragged on and on. Toward the end, both he and the world he had made were colorless cartoons, flat, jerky, and slow. He had been so brilliant once, so high-hearted and fine. Now he was not able even to concentrate long enough to follow a simple multistructural logic-tree when I tried to reason with him. And I tried.

  “But he kept telling himself that I was the one who was hallucinating, me, not him, and the reason why he could not understand me was that his thoughts were on so much higher a plane than mine. And whom else could he ask? All the black-and-white puppets he had made around him nodded and agreed with him; he had forgotten there was an outside world.

  “I was there when it happened. He became more and more intermittent, and fell below threshold levels. One moment he was a living soul, closer to me than a brother. The next, he was a recording.

  “Even at the end, at the very last moment, he did not know he was about to die. He still thought that he was Helion, healthy, wealthy, well-loved Helion. All the evidences of his sense, all his memories, told him how fortunate and happy his life was. He was not hungry, not in pain. How could he know or guess he was about to die? All our attempts to tell him so were blocked by his sense-filter … .”

  Helion’s face was gray with grief.

  Then he said, “And the thought, the horrid thought which ever haunts me is this: What of us, when we think we are happy, healthy, alive? When we think we know who we are?”

  It was Phaethon who eventually broke the heavy silence.

  “Did you try to pay his bills? It would have kept him alive.”

  Helion’s expression hardened. He folded his hands behind his back and looked down at Phaethon. He spoke in a grim and quiet voice: “I would have done so gladly, had he agreed to shut off his false memories. He would not agree. And I was not going to pay for the illusions which were killing him.”

  Phaethon glanced longingly at the golden doors. He already had a dozen plans in mind for what to do with his newfound freedoms and powers once he passed the examinations. But his sire was still blocking the way, grave and somber, as if expecting some sort of response. The official count of time was still frozen, and the scene around them was peopled as if with statues.

  What reply was his sire expecting? Nothing in Phaethon’s life heretofore had been particularly sad or difficult. He had no comment to give, no thoughts about Helion’s story. Somewhat at a loss, he said, “Well. It must have been very … ah … unpleasant for you.”

  “Mm. It must have been,” said Helion sardonically. His gaze was level and expressionless; a look of disappointment.

  Phaethon felt impatience transmuting into anger. “What do you want me to say? I’m not going to shed tears just because some self-destructive man managed to destroy himself! It won’t happen to me.”

  Helion was very displeased. He spoke in a voice heavy with sarcasm: “No one expects you to shed tears, Phaethon. He wasn’t your best friend in the world, the only one who stood by you when everyone else, even your own family, mocked and scorned you. No, you did not even know him. No one weeps over the deaths of strangers, no matter how lingering, horrible, cruel, and grotesque that death is, now do they?”

  “You don’t think I’m going to end up like your friend, do you? I’d never play games with my memories like that.”

  “Then why seek out the right to do so?”

  “Oh, come now! You cannot expect me to be afraid to live my life! You would not act that way; why do you think I would?!”

  “I wouldn’t? Perhaps you should not be so sure, my son. Hyacinthus thought he was me when he did it; those were my thoughts, my memories, which guided him. During the Hortator’s Inquiry, when I thought I was him, I desperately wanted to be me. I would have walked through fire to be Helion; I would have died a thousand deaths rather than lose my self. It would have destroyed me to lose that case, to lose the right to think my thoughts, or lose the copyrights on my memories. What would I have done if I had lost? Well, I know what he did, and he was another version of me, wasn’t he?”

  “But it won’t happen to me, Father!” said Phaethon, irritated. “I won’t ignore the advice of the Sophotechs—”

  “You don’t see the point of my story. I did listen to the Sophotechs. They could not help. They would not break the law, would not interfere. They care more for their integrity than for human suffering; their logic is deaf to pleas for pity. If the Sophotechs had their way, we would all be Invariants, unemotional and perfect with a cold and dead perfection. The Silver-Gray School is but one way to preserve our human nature from the subtle dangers which menace us from every side.”

  Phaethon, who thought of Helion as the most traditional of traditionalists, suddenly realized that Helion thought of himself as a rebel, as a radical, as a crusader bent on altering society.

  It was a very strange thing to think about one’s own father.

  Phaethon asked: “Do you think there is something wrong with the Sophotechs? We are Manorials, father! We let Rhadamanthus control our finances and property, umpire our disputes, teach our children, design our thoughtscapes, and even play matchmaker to find us wives and husbands!”

  “Son, the Sophotechs may be sufficient to advise the Parliament on laws and rules. Laws are a matter of logic and common sense. Specially designed human-thinking versions, like Rhadamanthus, can tell us how to fulfill our desires and balance our account books. Those are questions of strategy, of efficient allocation of resources and time. But the Sophotechs, they cannot choose our desires for us. They cannot guide our culture, our values, our tastes. That is a question of the spirit.”

  “Then what would you have us do? Would you change our laws?”

  “Our mores, not our laws. There are many things which are repugnant, deadly to the spirit, and self-destructive, but which law should not forbid. Addiction, self-delusion, self-destruction, slander, perversion, love of ugliness. How can we discourage such things without the use of force? It was in response to this need that the College of Hortators evolved. Peacefully, by means of boycotts, public protests, denouncements, and shunnings, our society can maintain her sanity against the dangers to our spirit, to our humanity, to which such unboundried liberty, and such potent technology, exposes us.”

  Phaethon suddenly understood why Helion had always supported the College of Hortators, even when they made poor decisions. The Hortators had saved Helion’s identity from Hyacinth, and had restore
d it to him.

  But Phaethon certainly did not want to hear a lecture, not today. “Why are you telling me all this? What is the point?”

  “Phaethon, I will let you pass through those doors, and, once through, you will have at your command all the powers and perquisites I myself possess. The point of my story is simple. The paradox of liberty of which you spoke before applies to our entire society. We cannot be free without being free to harm ourselves. Advances in technology can remove physical dangers from our lives, but, when it does, the spiritual dangers increase. By spiritual danger I mean a danger to your integrity, your decency, your sense of life. Against those dangers I warn you; you can be invulnerable, if you choose, because no spiritual danger can conquer you without your own consent. But, once they have your consent, those dangers are allpowerful, because no outside force can come to your aid. Spiritual dangers are always faced alone. It is for this reason that the Silver-Gray School was formed; it is for this reason that we practice the exercise of self-discipline. Once you pass those doors, my son, you will be one of us, and there will be nothing to restrain you from corruption and self-destruction except yourself.

  “You have a bright and fiery soul, Phaethon, a power to do great things; but I fear you may one day unleash such a tempest of fire that you may consume yourself, and all the world around you.”

  Helion turned and pointed toward the doors. “There is your heritage; now I step aside. But if you feel in any way unready or unfit, then do not go in.” And, at his gesture, the count of time began again.

  Was he ready? Phaethon had never let doubt enter his mind; he went up the stairs with a dancer’s quickness. As he paused with his hand on the panels of the door, he thought with fierce certainty: I won’t be like my father was. I would save my friends if they were drowning, law or no law. I would find a way.

  Beyond the door was a wide dark, solemn space, with an examination pool shining like a silver eye in the gloom before him … .

  3.