Here & There

by Joshua V. Scher

  Violet signifies the field of Semiotics & Literature. The Chancellor has always been a Violet. While the Lyceum was built on the Scions of Science, it is the metaphor that holds it all together. Facts are merely data; the interpretation of them, however, is knowledge. This is the source of the Lyceum’s influence. The Chancellor minds the metaphor.

  Around the octagonal table sit the other seven Sophos of the Academia Council: Scarlet, Law; White, Medicine; Amaranth Pink, Experimental Science; Radical Red, Theoretical Science; Daffodil, Aesthetics; Azure, History & Humanities; Emerald, Commerce. Each colored hood demarcates their disciplines of achievement, an academic rainbow. As far as Hannah is concerned, though, they are a spectrum of tedium.

  “Any delay would be seen as weakness,” Emerald says.

  A chorus of grunts calls out their support.

  “But any mishap during the Ascendancy ceremony would be catastrophic,” Daffodil counters.

  Head nods cascade around the table. The bi-annual ceremony of transfiguration is the Council’s utmost concern. The coordination of pageantry and technology needs to be seamless. While based on Katharsis principles, it is a far more complex process. There is no leeway for even the slightest of glitches when the eight Ascendant Elects shed their bodies and deliver their consciousnesses to the Divinity Drive.

  Hannah sighs, wishing that even one of her stuffy colleagues might be among the Ascendant Elects. Her tolerance for the Council’s deliberations has waned over the past annum, and all the more so since its debate is moot. At the end of the day, the decision lies with her as Chancellor. Hannah knows it, as do the others. Still she has to make a show of taking their counsel. Each department head has to be heard. Or at least feel heard. She has learned from experience that it’s actually more efficient to stand on ceremony than bulldoze over protocol. Better to let the spectrum exhaust itself with argument. It also serves as a convenient distraction for them, giving Hannah the space she needs to deal with Anaxagoras.

  “This should not have any effect on the Ascendancy,” Amaranth Pink says. “The infiltrated sub-structures are decades-old DNA storage pools in the Prescience Archive caves beneath the Glass Desert.”

  “You’re talking thousands of miles away, across an ocean. Am I mistaken, the only individuals authorized for the subcontinent are the routine maintenance crews?” White asks.

  Ever since the Cataclysm Crusades left the Glass Desert in its nuclear wake, the entire region, apart from the Archive, has been uninhabitable.

  Each member of the Council was alive during the holocaustic war, when hell had rained down from the heavens and blossomed into mushroom clouds over much of the world. Everyone had seen the drone footage of vast deserts melted into literal glass plains. They all knew that this apocalypse is what had given rise to the Lyceum. Historically mocked as the outskirts of scholarship at the bottom of the world, it was the Lyceum’s remoteness, like an ark on the Oceanian outskirts, that spared it, its scholars, and the remains of a civilization. The Lyceum’s Katharsis technology served as the only antidote for radiation poisoning: its engineering advancements transformed the Glass Desert into a solar radiation generator strong enough to power the entire Lyceum, and its geothermal cooling innovations kept the vast Archive and its subterranean hectares of data servers from overheating.

  “Regardless, while unsettling from a security standpoint, the breach neither has bearing on Quantum Thought nor the Coil Shuttling,” Amaranth Pink continues.

  There had been considerable debate as to this term. Originally the Lyceum proffered Coil Shuffling, however the Semioticians asserted the Schopenhauer principle, arguing that it most likely was a typesetting error (when transposing the manuscripts to folios seven annums postmortem) and should have read, “shuttled off” this mortal coil. While the verb no longer exists, a shuttle was an implement used in weaving and would have implied mortality had been unwound and worked off.

  Radical Red jumps in. “The Trojan insinuated itself into the repository architecture and wormed its way down to a kernel level. Any tampering or even alteration within those fundamentals could instigate a butterfly effect throughout the system.”

  It is unusual for the Sciences to disagree, Hannah notes. They often have raucous, sometimes violent dialectics within their hallowed halls. However, in almost all public forums they fall in lockstep. This worm is having quite the effect on the Council. Of course they were foolishly focused on the virtual ramifications instead of the more pressing threat of the actual physical incursion. The disinformation was lowering the signal-to-noise ratio in her favor.

  Hannah would normally be amused at the Council’s deliberations over moot points. She would delight at the energy expended on their rhetorical hamster wheel, knowing full well each counterpoint exhausted and entrenched the Sophos, pawns lining themselves up like dominos. Today, however, the litany of remonstrations keeps her from more pressing matters.

  The impending decennial Ascendancy is proving more time consuming than is manageable. This year’s Ascendant Elects are particularly high-profile and subsequently high-maintenance. The requisite politicking occupies much of her attention. Furthermore, she not only has to put on all the pomp of an official Lyceum investigation into this security breach—an investigation she’s engineered to reveal empty answers, while offering solid reassurances about new security measures—she must manage this while discreetly interrogating and admonishing the irksome interloper.

  Where are my TAs? It has to have been a half-Period by now.

  “Could instigate!” Amaranth Pink says. “Could. Our tests have detected no disturbance so far—”

  “Assessing kernel architecture stresses should take weeks,” Radical Red says, “with more exponential potential than mere stress-processing algorithms—”

  “Which is why the entire storage field has been quarantined!”

  “It shouldn’t be too difficult to run simulations on some biologic samples without full-on committing them to Ascendancy,” White suggests. “Assuming there are no artifacts in the Coil Shuttling, all may proceed as planned. In veritas . . .”

  “Knowledge,” they all reflexively echo in response to her call.

  “The only difficulty being we don’t know,” Radical Red adds.

  The roundtable falls to silence. Hannah struggles not to let out her yawn. She imagines it must appear that her face is arguing with itself.

  “Explain,” Emerald says.

  Radical Red shrugs. “The worm left no trail.”

  “So there’s no infection,” Daffodil asks without a questioning inflection. She has a habit of doing that, much to Hannah’s chagrin.

  The Amaranths shake their heads no.

  “So, what then, it was simply passing through? Someone crosses the Glass Desert, breaks into the Prescience Archive, evades security drones, releases a transitive virus, and sneaks back out for his afternoon perambulation?” Emerald asks.

  “What makes you so sure it was a he,” Daffodil says, ignoring the question mark in her statement.

  “This is neither the time nor the place for your tiresome gender theories,” Emerald sighs.

  White intervenes, “So then what did the worm do?”

  Everyone turns to look at Radical Red in a way that would’ve been amusing in an Entertainment Comedia.

  Radical Red shrugs and turns to Amaranth Pink, who reluctantly admits, “It took something out.”

  Everyone waits.

  “What?” Emerald asks.

  “We don’t know how much it took,” Radical Red says, seemingly distracted by a whorl of dust particles floating in a beam of sunlight.

  Emerald’s irritation bubbles up. “Well, how many exabytes are missing?”

  “None. Nothing’s missing,” Amaranth Pink says. “Not a single byte of data. Everything is there and accounted for, every last zettabyte.”

  “So then you’re saying nothing was excised.”

  “Something was taken. The aggregate field is less dense by an order
of xenottabytes,” Radical Red says.

  “But Crates just said—”

  “Every byte of data is accounted for, yes. But the whole of the field is, as I said, less dense.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but are not xenottabytes larger than zettabytes.” Daffodil asks.

  “By an order of two. Exabytes, zettabytes, yottabytes, xenottabytes,” Amaranth Pink replies.

  “But how is that possible?” Emerald asks.

  Radical Red’s eyes light up. “It is intriguing. I imagine it’s like a balloon filled with carbonated water that’s suddenly filled with just the carbonation. The volume of the balloon remains the same and every molecule of CO2 is accounted for, but the balloon is lighter.”

  “So then there was data, immense amounts of data, stored in our Archive without our knowledge, all of which is now gone?” Azure asks.

  “We assume all of which,” Radical Red notes.

  A hush sets into the room.

  “Maybe we should consult Anaxagoras?” Azure offers.

  Radical Red shakes his head. “Our founder’s beyond the mundane dealings of this Council.”

  Before they can parse the paradox further, a hologram coalesces in front of Hannah’s seat with a soothing knell.

  “Forgive the interruption, Madame Chancellor,” the hologram of her Prime TA announces, “but the Twelve Apostles require your immediate assistance.”

  Hannah nods, careful to wrinkle her brow with consternation to mask her relief. The hologram disintegrates. “My apologies, fellow Sophos, but my TAs and I must attend to the Ascendant Elects, regardless of the Ascendancy’s fate.”

  Hannah turns to Scarlet. His lack of participation reflects his standard taciturn modus operandi. “What are our legal options for delaying the Ascendancy?”

  Scarlet slides the fingertips of his pressed palms down from his lips to his chin and speaks with a finality that precludes dispute. “There is no legal option for delay, only deferment. As specified in the Charter, the Ascendancy may only take place on an equinox. That is absolute. The Ascendant Elect would have to wait for the vernal, which would then set back all subsequent ceremonies. Enacting a deferment without any direct tangible threat or substantive proof thereof could be interpreted as a direct violation of the Charter. The Lyceum would not only be deemed liable, but the Council itself could be subject to a Competency Hearing and Tenure Revocations.” He slides his fingertips back up his chin to the tip of his nose.

  Hannah nods solemnly. Scarlet delivered precisely as she had hoped.

  “The Council’s hands seem to be tied. Until some body of evidence is acquired, we must proceed according to plan. In the interim, I will have a sect of Inquisitors sent to the Prescience Archive.”

  To preclude any protests, Hannah stands. A chorus of screeches sings out as the others push their chairs back to stand.

  “In veritas,” Hannah says, pushing her palms together as if in prayer and then opening them as if a book.

  “In veritas,” the Council echoes, returning the skeuomorphic gesture of learning.

  HER BLACK ROBES AND violet hood billow out behind her as she exits. Her foglets shimmer around her, a blur of movement as she marches down the corridor. The microbots devour her Sophic costume, rearranging the molecules of the mortar board into a French braid of long flaxen hair tied with a Royal Blue Honor Cord; her cappa clausa lightens to Ascendant white and constricts around her, tightening and lifting her age-softened flesh, as Royal Blue borders bleed solid around her collar, sleeves, and waist; her wrinkles seem to soften, skin lighten, eyes morph chartreuse; Lyceum e-Scrolls coalesce from the mist of her disintegrated hood in her hands.

  By the time she exits into the Solarium Hall, Hannah bears the appearance of a 25 annum Ascendant Guardian & Elect Liaison, an Angel as they are oft nicknamed. As soon as the door re-integrates behind Hannah, her Prime TA flanks in from the wings and falls in step with the Chancellor. An Angel and Apostle are just important enough to be given a wide berth in the forum, but not too eminent to cause a stir or arouse any real attention.

  “What in Petrarch’s Dark took so long?” Hannah lashes out at her underling.

  “There is an issue with one of the Alternate Elects.”

  Hannah rolls her eyes, knowing the drill all too well. “Let me guess, he’s been overcome with a sudden philanthropic impulse and wants to unburden himself with some beneficence for the Lyceum. What is he offering, a new Research Grant?”

  “A Babylonian BiblioTech, actually,” her Prime TA corrects.

  Hannah’s sarcastic whistle dissipates into the voluminous solarium as they hustle through. “And all he’s asking is for a simple recalculation of the hierarchy, so he might become one of the Ascendant Eight. An alternative for the alternate.”

  “He was wondering about simply adding himself as an addition, actually.” Her TA shares a knowing smile.

  “Oh, is that all?”

  Hannah would prefer to do away with the four mandated back-up Ascendants. But they needed them in case an Elect couldn’t Ascend for whatever reason. This had only happened once since Ascendancy began, due to a fatal mishap on the eve of the ceremony. Still, once was enough.

  There was always at least one of the alternates, every equinox, offering some sort of deal in a rush to reach the athanasia inside the Divinity Drive. Immortality is too tempting a prize, even if it costs corporeal existence. Almost all of the Lyceum participate in the bi-annual lottery, all hoping for the chance to trade their bodies in for eternal existence with the D Drive—an incorporeal incorporation. All long for the one-way ticket to become virtual gods, limited only by their imaginations, in the ethereal landscape inside the quantum drive. All yearn to join the others who Ascended before them, becoming incarnations of immortality and waging Titanic wars against each other.

  From the outside, the Council observes this fertile battlefield for gods and harvests the Ascendants’ dreams, turning their imagined innovations into the Lyceum’s cutting edge technologies. Processed through QT’s viability filters, manufactured by nano-molders, most of the Lyceum’s advancements, from the InstaTram to the foglets, have been reaped from the conflicts within this virtual Valhalla. Even the Divinity Drive itself was dreamt up by one of the Initial 8 shortly after they were serendipitously, though accidentally, transmuted into quantum storage. In its first annum it was a fecund landscape that produced scores of innovations. Soon after, however, the Initial 8 began to evolve into abstract, sedate, contemplative entities and seemed to lose their sense of selves.

  It took several cycles of trial and error for Amaranth Pink’s experimental science department to determine the need for the Ascendancy. New Ascendants were necessary every half-annum, for both stimulation and grounding. Otherwise the previous Ascendants would become intangible and ethereal in their thinking and the Divinity Drive would become too Edenic. Complacency and peace have little utility for the Lyceum, at least within the D Drive. Eventually, Amaranth Pink determined 23 new participants were just enough to stir things up without overwhelming the realm in chaos. Hence, the Ascendant Eight.

  Limiting the number of permissible Ascendants to eight also generated the beneficial byproducts of awe and obedience in the real world. It transformed the Lyceum from a rogue cloister of Intelligentsia into society’s salvation, with the Council acting as the Guardians. Religion, with its fallacies and promises of heaven, was rendered a fairytale. Faith was replaced by fact. Belief became an outmoded fool’s errand. Knowledge and truth are what the Lyceum offers, not to mention a real and quantifiable everlasting life, which is promised to all when the D Drive finally stabilizes and expands enough to resurrect all the scanned souls from the Numinous Archive. All will be ushered into infinity by the Ascendants. But first they must demonstrate awe and obedience.

  Nevertheless, people were still people. So there was always one alternate who had the utmost respect for tradition, but no understanding of physiks. One who believes perhaps just this once the rules may be b
ent like space around a neutron star. Only a fortunate few are allowed on the equinox to Ascend and transcribe their consciousness into the Divinity Drive.

  “Refer our ambitious Alternate to the Scarlet’s office.” Hannah smiles to herself at this delicious delegation. “Let him explain the Law’s lack of leniency and review the rules of exponents.” Hannah’s TA understood the reference, how it would be impossible for them to allow just one more Ascendant. If they were to add any others it would have to be eight more for a total of sixteen. The physiks was based on a geometric binary expansion, not an arithmetic one, 2x not 2x. Adding one more changed it from 23 to 24, 8 to 16.

  “When he returns with his disappointment, offer him monthly Katharses and a guaranteed Ascendancy at the next equinox,” Hannah instructs. “But only after securing his donation of the Babylonian BiblioTech.”

  “Perfect, Madame Chancellor.”

  Across the Forum, Hannah makes out a crowd outside of Hippocratic Hall. There was always a rush for Katharsis before the festival. People want a clean slate to sully with sanctioned debauchery. The Geminis must be hard at work. She was proud when her sons rose to their position of prominence in Hippocratic Hall, and prouder still when they resurrected the ritual of submission from the old healers. The infirm would first be relegated to a communal meditation chamber, where they would await a uniformed Minder to escort them to an individual rumination room to endure another interim, until one of the Geminis would come in for a personal consulting and diagnosing, and finally be admitted for Katharsis. The cleansing of a malady was a process of submission, waiting, a demonstration of obedience and humility.