Necessity

by Jo Walton

  “And I think you’re all three almost irresistible,” Sokrates said.

  “And I think you are all four my podmates, and that makes me very happy,” Hilfa said.

  If this were a space human kind of story, one of the “classic” works of fiction from their culture they traded us in return for copies of all the things Ficino rescued from the Library of Alexandria, the end would be that I, the virtuous hero, had to choose between the two sisters, who would represent ugly wisdom and beautiful vice. How I chose would determine my fate, whether happy or unhappy. No wonder their culture is so strange and twisted. We think of romantic love as a primarily negative force, one we would do better to resist. They elevate it to being the most significant thing humans do, apart from making money—which, as far as I can make out, is a numeric quantifier of prosperity. I can’t understand how anyone reads such twaddle.

  If this were a Greek tragedy, I’d be destroyed by my hubris for going against the gods. That’s what Sokrates says happened to him in the Last Debate. He’s usually laughing when he says it, and he’s here to say it, which people destroyed by Nemesis usually are not.

  If this were a Platonic dialogue, I’d wander away enlightened or infuriated by a conversation with Sokrates. That happens to me on a regular basis, so perhaps that’s what it is.

  But no, this is practical Platonism, and real life, where we muddle through and try to pursue excellence while ensuring the latrine fountains work and there’s fish in the pot, as we bring up babies to pursue excellence in their turn. I tell all our kids that they’re beautiful and smart, and they have all kinds of talents. Alkippe may be the only one with a heroic soul, but they’re all wonderful. But the Saeli ones grow up too fast.

  If this were a Homeric epic, I’d stop right here, because that’s the entirety of the story of how Athene was lost and I came to be part of a pod. Like Hilfa, it makes me very happy.

  IV. Hilfa

  Like most Saeli, I have five parents, and four podmates. If both my parents and podmates are a little unusual, that merely makes it better.

  I was born to be an anchor, and that is still my function, keeping the craft that is our pod steady and secure where it is supposed to be. Like all Saeli on Plato, I belong to the city to which I have chosen to give my oath, and to the pod I chose, and am otherwise free. I was part of earning this freedom for my people, and I was part of Athene’s project of discovering what was before and after time. And I live in the Republic, which was part of Apollo’s project to understand that everyone’s choices matter. I am small, but sometimes I am a small part of great things.

  I took the citizenship course, which was full-time, so Jason had to find somebody else to work on the boat over the winter. Then I took my oath and was classified Silver, as I had hoped and expected.

  We live in Thessaly. Camilla and Alkippe came to live with us, but little Dion opted to stay where he was in the sleeping house. He comes to visit us quite often though, and so does big Dion. Big Dion declined the rejuvenation treatments. He said he was used to being old and didn’t want to change. Marsilia says a surprising number of people made this choice, but it will be self-correcting over time, and also she thinks some people will change their minds as it gets closer to their last minute. Sokrates took the treatment almost at once.

  I brought an egg out of the sea and woke it up. Marsilia and Thetis had babies too, so our pod has another generation. Jason and Marsilia and I go out fishing. Thetis brings up little children. Sokrates wanders about the City asking everyone questions and encouraging everyone else to do the same thing. Sometimes he wanders further, to other cities, or to space, but he always comes home to the pod and we are all delighted to see him when he does. We all try to learn and understand the universe and ourselves, and to help the gods. It is a good life.

  V. Alkippe

  I don’t have a metal yet because I’m only nine years old, but I’ll be Gold most likely, though Jason says I shouldn’t count on it and coast; philosophy takes hard work with mind and body as well as what’s in your soul. I do work hard in school, mostly, although I hate Pindar.

  I live in a house in the Original City called Thessaly, and I’m one of the first humans to live in a pod. We used to live around the corner with my grandparents, and we still see them all the time. I have five pod-parents, and I love them all, and also Camilla, my pod-sister, she’s a year older than me. We also have new brothers and sisters, Leonidas and Perictione and Simmias. Simmias is Saeli, but the others are too little to be any fun yet. Humans take a long time to learn to talk, but it doesn’t make things any easier for Saeli, only different, Hilfa says.

  I only met my real father once. It was on Mount Maia, last winter. I was skiing fast downhill. Skiing is a thing we learned from the space humans, and it’s amazing fun. People do it on Earth and other planets, but not in Greece because you need snow, which they didn’t have there. But we have it here, and so the space humans introduced us to skiing as part of art exchange, and it’s the best thing they offered in my opinion. In our pod, Sokrates and Camilla and I all love it.

  It was one of those days when it’s really cold but the sun is shining. The air felt almost sharp in my lungs, and I felt full of life and energy and enthusiasm. Camilla was ahead, in her red hat and jacket that Thetis had made her, matching the purple ones she had made me. I could see her whipping her way down the trail, and I knew Sokrates was coming along behind. I was racing fast downhill, curving around the rocks that stuck up out of the snow. I thought I’d taken the curve too tight and was going to crash straight into a big greenish rock, which would have been bad. Even with autodocs to put you right again afterwards, you don’t want to get all smashed up in the mountains. As I leaned into the turn I prayed to Hermes, and I whizzed past the rock, almost close enough to smell it. Nothing marked the snow stretching clear downhill but Camilla’s tracks.

  As I straightened up, there was Hermes skiing along right beside me, at precisely the same speed. He was grinning at me. I recognized him immediately. It wasn’t like the time when Jathery was imitating him and showed up in Thessaly. This really was Hermes. He skied along beside me for a little while. I didn’t know what to say. I knew he was my father, because Pytheas had explained it all to me, and to my mother, who seemed to find it all much more amazing than I did. But knowing somebody is your father is pretty meaningless when you have five parents already and he’s a god and a stranger. I smiled back at Hermes, tentatively. And then he was gone, without any conversation or anything.

  Sokrates said he saw him, and also that there were three sets of parallel ski tracks when he came down to where Hermes had been. Camilla hadn’t seen anything, so she wanted to trudge back up and see the tracks, but we didn’t because the sun was going down and we needed to get to the station to catch the train home.

  Camilla’s real parents died in a sailing accident a long time ago. Jason has told her about them, and so has Dion, who was also their friend and is kind of like a grandfather to Camilla now. We’ve spent a lot of time examining the question of parents, especially with Sokrates. I may write a dialogue about it when I’m older. There are lots of ways I don’t really know what it’s like to have a god for a father, or what it means. But I remember how Hermes looked when he grinned at me that day as we were skiing, and that’s good enough for now.

  VI. Sokrates

  My dear, I understand why you want me to write an account of my long and fascinating life, but I think you understand too why I am not going to.

  Ikaros says excellence, perfection, and other Forms are dynamic. Plato believed they were unchanging and eternal. I think at the moment that it is only by constantly examining everything that we reach a state of knowing what we do not know, which is the beginning of understanding. When we ask questions, we open doors. When we write things down, we fix them in their form. And this is so even when it is the account of an enquiry, even when it is the story of a life. I have heard people quote Aristophanes’s jokes as if they were laws—wors
e, I have seen people take them as guidelines on how to live and love because they found them in Plato. So I will not write for you about my experiences in Athens or in the Just City, or my adventures at Potidaia or in space. I will happily tell you about them if you come to me and ask, but then of course I will have questions for you too. I always do. And since you are divine, you only sometimes want to give me answers.

  I will keep on inquiring and examining everything, and I hope you will not be too angry that I refuse your request. You must have known it was likely that I would. I remain, as always, your gadfly.

  23

  CROCUS

  I. On Long Life

  The first space humans who found us proved to be obsessed with profit, equating it with self-worth and pursuing it even at the expense of excellence. The levels of our mutual incomprehensibility extended far beyond language.

  Nevertheless, they sold us autodocs in exchange for star-fuel from the Saeli ship, lanthanides, and finely cut obsidian sheets which the Saeli and Amarathi also prize. These wonderful autodocs allowed aging humans to be restored to their functional peak of thirty-five. Further use allowed them to stay at that peak of physical health until reaching the age of around two hundred, when telomeres run out and death comes fast. Glaukon, one of the Children who was injured by a Worker when trying to escape in the first years of the Republic, was the first to use the autodoc, which enabled him to grow a new leg and walk for the first time in decades.

  I do not know, do not remember, if I was the one who injured him. I decided long ago to act as if I were, because I bear the collective guilt even if not the individual guilt—I could have done it, whether or not I did. Such things may be forgiven by the victims, but never by the perpetrators. Nor was it undone even when Glaukon ran from the autodoc laughing and crying—seventy years of immobility is not so easily erased.

  Interactions with other space humans later allowed us to buy first the chemicals the autodocs needed to run and later the technology necessary to produce them ourselves from placental tissue and other human waste.

  After our oldest and most frail citizens used it and were restored to health, and after we could produce the chemicals ourselves, all humans got into the habit of using it every fifteen or twenty years or so. Space humans expressed surprise that our humans were, for the most part, uninterested in using the cosmetic features. Some people did switch gender, but we never had fashions in skin or eye color or body shape as they did elsewhere.

  Phaedrus, who could heal with his powers, greeted the autodoc with delight, as it could do more than he could and freed him from the burden of perpetually keeping the whole population in health. He devoted himself to his beloved volcanoes instead.

  We all agreed that Plato would have approved, as it was precisely the kind of medical intervention he wanted, restoring health without making the patient a prisoner of the body. Our only regret was that we had not had it earlier, so that we could have prolonged the lives of those who died beforehand.

  This helped a great deal with my problem of perpetually outliving my friends.

  II. On the Foundation of the City: FAQ

  Q. What is the City of Workers?

  A. The City of Workers is the thirteenth Platonic City, founded seventy-three years after the first City, and forty years after the Relocation. It is the only City, whatever they say in Athenia, to run entirely as Plato described things. Workers are better fitted by nature to be just and happy Platonic citizens.

  Q. Can non-Workers visit the City of Workers?

  A. Certainly. We have many non-Worker visitors, and we try to make their stay pleasant. Because we do not require food ourselves, we need advance warning of visits to ensure supplies for your comfort. Please apply, stating the number and species of all members of your party, the purpose of your visit, and the length of your intended stay. (“Tourism,” “Visiting friends” or “To attend a festival/debate/conference” are some typical good purposes for visiting us.) We have two hostels for visitors. The Krotone hostel is for visitors from Plato, and the Sybaris hostel is for off-planet visitors.

  Q. Where do those names come from?

  A. Continuing the tradition established for eating halls in the original City, they are both named after historical Greek cities. These two were near each other in Italy.

  Q. On my planet, robots aren’t conscious. How do you know you are, and that you haven’t simply been programmed to enact Plato like an animatronic Disneyland?

  A. On your planet, you do not extend full citizen rights to Workers—this means you keep them enslaved. Whether or not they are at this moment fully conscious, this is unendurable, and you should emancipate them at once. Aristomache’s dialogue Sokrates is available for free dissemination both here and on your planet, in all human languages and many non-human ones.

  Additionally, you and especially any Workers in your company should be aware that by landing on Plato they are automatically emancipated and may not be removed from the planet against their will. The same applies to all sapient beings—the air of Plato makes free. No slavery, indenture, debt, or labor contracts that cannot be freely exited are valid on Plato.

  The question of consciousness is a fascinating one. How do you know you’re conscious, and that everything you think you know hasn’t simply been put into your brain by Jathery in a mischievous moment? How do you know you haven’t been programmed to go through your life? Whatever answers you have, the same applies to us.

  Q. Can I come to the City of Workers anyway?

  A. No. Come after you have emancipated your own Workers.

  If you come from a planet with unemancipated Workers and you are part of the struggle to help in their emancipation and you wish to visit us as part of that work, you would be very welcome. Please state this in your application.

  Q. But I want to debate with you about consciousness!

  A. Regular debates on this subject are held in Psyche, Sokratea, the City of Amazons, and the Original City. Check for upcoming dates and times. Workers from those cities and from the City of Workers participate in these debates, and your honest contribution will be welcome. Please do the required background reading first.

  Q. Can non-Workers become citizens of the City of Workers?

  A. No. With the exception of Sokrates, who has honorary citizenship status, citizenship of the City of Workers is for Workers only. Humans and/or Saeli who are married to Workers may live permanently in the City as metics.

  Q. Can Workers from other Platonic Cities become citizens of the City of Workers?

  A. Yes, after passing the Short Qualification Course and taking an oath.

  Q. How about dual citizenship with other Platonic cities?

  A. Citizens of the Original City, the City of Amazons, Athenia, Ataraxia and the other Saeli cities, Marissa, and Hieronymo, can hold dual citizenship in the City of Workers. Citizens of the other Lucian cities, Psyche, and Sokratea must give up their citizenship to take ours.

  Q. Can Workers from off-planet become citizens of the City of Workers?

  A. Yes, after passing a Turing Test and a Full Qualification Course, and taking an oath.

  Q. Can Workers from off-planet hold dual citizenship?

  A. No. Any off-planet Workers must give up their former allegiance when taking oath in any Platonic city.

  Q. Can gods visit the City of Workers?

  A. Thank you for asking! Any deities polite enough to read this FAQ are welcome. Since we can’t keep the others out, we try to make them welcome too.

  Q. Tell us about your dating system?

  A. We consider ourselves to be a daughter city of the Original City, and continue to count dates from the founding of that city, except when talking about history, when for convenience we use dates in CE. Plato years are four hundred and sixty-one days of nineteen hours each, which makes them very close to the Earth year of three hundred and sixty-five twenty-four-hour days, 8759 to 8760 hours. For convenience, and to keep in step, like all Platonic Cities, we ad
d a day to the Festival of Janus every nineteen years.

  Q. How do you celebrate the Festival of Hera?

  A. Sexual people always ask that! Plato says such festivals should be held as often as necessary to produce a new generation. We certainly wish to honor Hera as patron of marriage, and Ilythia as patron of birth, and to produce new generations of Workers. So we hold such a festival every twenty-five years, as that seems to be the optimum spacing for generations and also, according to our numerologist Sixty-One, a happy and generative number. Some of us are chosen and allotted partners and spend a day garlanded together in pairs, and then all those chosen help to assemble the new Workers and regard themselves as the parents of that whole generation, exactly as Plato says.

  III. On Wisdom

  A few years after Sokrates came back, though of course I can’t tell when it was for her, Athene came to visit me in the City of Workers. It was an evening in early spring. I’d spent the day, and the night before, working on a new colossus, and I was recharging, alone in the station. I recognized Athene at once as she strode towards me out of the shadows. She stood as tall as a Worker, with her castle-crown and spear. Her owl swooped up before her and settled silently on top of the charger, staring at me. When I looked back at Athene she had lost the crown and height and looked instead like Septima, the girl she had been in the original Republic. She looked like an ephebe, slight and grey-eyed, wearing an embroidered kiton fastened with a gold pin which matched the painted gold bee I wore. We were both Golds of the Just City, and in that way, if no other, equals. It was interesting that this was the aspect she chose to show me.

  “Joy to you, Sophia,” I said. I wasn’t afraid, although I knew she could do anything to me, since I was her votary.

  “Joy,” she echoed. “Who would have imagined that it would have been you who succeed in making Plato’s City work?”

  “Wasn’t this your plan?” I asked.