John Wright - The Golden Transcendence

Socrates laughed. "So you will join Phaethon? Even you? He holds you in no esteem. Phaethon will surely charge you half your wealth before he will let you store backup copies of yourself on his ship to scatter through the void."

"Wealth well spent. How better to ensure there is always an Orpheus somewhere in the universe?"

He raised his hand and pointed to the motto inscribed over the doors there. It was the only decoration, the only mark, on the otherwise dull, blank walls.

The motto read: I Am the Enemy of Death. I Do Not Intend to Die.

Neo-Orpheus bowed, turned, and reentered his dark house.

Socrates sat on the stair with a sigh. With a wave of his hand he called closer the spiderlike remotes that were meant to dispose of the flesh he wore, once it was empty.

He muttered, "Some do not fear it, my friend."

Out from beneath his cloak, he took up a wooden drinking bowl, and raised it to his lips.

Gannis was waking up in terror.

In the artificial moon, made of adamantium gold, was a large amphitheater; here was a round table, also of adamantium, with a hundred golden thrones on which a hundred versions of himself were kept Some groaned, some wept; others were still in partial Transcendence, eyes glassy, or were stepping down from mind-to-mind, but were not yet restored to normal consciousness.

Through high windows in midair shone the scene from outside the Gannis planetoid: the bright new sun of Jupiter, surrounded by a ring brighter than any star, and this ring cut the window from side to side like a rainbow of pure fire. Usually the image cheered him: this rainbow (as he called it) that had led to the pot of gold for Gannis. This was the equatorial supercollider. The sight did not cheer him now. One of him woke, and saw the confused faces on the thrones to either side of him. The one next to him asked: "Self! Is there any better news from the later sections of the Transcendence? I fell out of the communion two hours ago; the Gannis there has been out for several days. Have the gathered minds of all mind-kind changed their minds?"

The newly-woken Gannis answered: "The judgment is harsh. Our fellow men will not understand. But we did no wrong! The cheating was legal! It was legal!"

A Gannis who had been out of Transcendence for several days called from across the expanse of the table: "Orders are already being canceled! Commer-cialists are withdrawing their advertisements! Patrons are being reprogrammed-and this is from the early risers, just mass-minds and mansion houses, mostly! The Gannis Fifty-group will not answer when we ask for extrapolations of the loss; the accountancy program crashed itself rather than answer."

One of the Gannises from halfway across the table answered, "Brothers! Other selves! It cannot be so bad! I was involved with a mass-mind entangled with the Bellipotent Composition before I woke. They will be making a war fleet of ships like the Phoenix-(hey need our metal! Surely, surely all is not lost.

Another Gannis opened his eyes. His face still was shining with the peace and supreme confidence of a tran-shuman. He was perhaps only partly awake; perhaps be did not know what he was saying, for the words boomed out without any hesitation, and he smiled, despite the gloomy word: "I was with the Orient Overmind-group. I remember the high thoughts: listen!

"We, Gannis, are guilty of no conspiracy against Phaethon. We are not, and never have been, a confidant of Scaramouche or Xenophon. Rejoice, O Gannis, to know our reputations cleansed of all suspicion!

"We, Gannis, have arranged our affairs to profit by Phaethon's eventual bankruptcy and failure. There is no illegality in this; sharp business practice, perhaps; unkindness, maybe. Wrongdoing? Possibly not."

Several of the Gannises who had been out of the Transcendence for hours or days now started timidly to smile at each other: but those who were more recently connected, or who still had intermittent sub-connections, did not smile. Their faces were drawn and pale.

"And yet..."

Now all the faces of all the Gannises at the great round table grew pale.

"And yet, we shall lose business partners, friends. Several of our wives and counterwives will divorce us. Why? Because, during the Transcendence, the inner soul of Gannis was examined... and found wanting.

"No, we had not known anything was amiss with Phaethon, but we had suspected.

"When, during Phaethon's Inquest, the Hortator's records falsely showed Phaethon redacting himself, Gannis knew that this was wildly out of character for Phaethon; yet we said nothing.

"Likewise, earlier, when Phaethon's loans had exceeded all reasonable limit, and his bankruptcy seemed certain, again, Gannis said nothing, made no move to help Phaethon, our alleged partner. Instead, we maneuvered to benefit by his fall.

"Look into your own souls, Gannis. We now see the motive hidden, for a time, from us, from all of us. But now we know it. The Transcendence knows it. All of us know it; all mankind; friends, peers, colleges, colleagues, artists, thinkers, media, partials, competitors. All."

Silence hung in the chamber.

No Gannis in the chamber met the eye of the Gannis to either side of him. Each knew the unspoken thought.

Fear had led him. Fear of competition from Helion.

Gannis had struggled and taken risks to achieve bis high status: he wanted to rest from the struggle, and enjoy his rewards. Having established a lucrative business empire, Gannis had wanted that empire to be maintained without further effort, to be protected from Helion's challenge to his business interests, to be protected from reality.

One of the members of Gannis who had been lying slumped on the golden tabletop now stirred and raised his head, and said, "Brothers, other selves; we are not as bad as all that! Recall how, last Transcendence, Gannis had been lauded! Under Argento-rium, the gathered minds praised us! We were known then to be daring, innovative, a benefactor of mankind. . . ."

His voice trailed off.

A Gannis who had just come out of Transcendence said bitterly, "I did not realize how much I had changed. How fearful I had grown. Grown? Shrunk. My soul is small, these days."

Another Gannis, one of the earliest ones awake, now opened his mouth to object. He was about to say that everyone, after all, was miserable and fearful and deceptive and afraid. All businessmen did business this way. Everyone did it, right?

The early Gannis closed his mouth. Everyone in the chamber knew what he had been about to say. They all looked at him skeptically.

They all had just seen the souls of all mankind. And they knew, now, that everyone did not do business that way. Not everyone was afraid, sneaky, dishonest. It was amazing how few people were. What a horrible thing to find out!

That Gannis, the early one, slouched in his throne, and said no more.

There was a stir in the chamber.

The main Gannis on the central throne opened his eyes and raised his hand. The other awake Gannis-segments tried to orient with him, and grew dazed by the information overload. By this, they knew this was not the normal over-Gannis talking.

This was the Transcendence itself, or a remnant of it, some segment of the gathered minds of all civilization still interlinked, now speaking through him.

It said:

"Your daughter is fated to die."

His own personal problems forgotten, the Gannis group around the table called on the stored energies and computer space of the Gannis planetoid. Recklessly, without proper preparation, they linked up to the still-partly-Transcended Gannis Overmind.

A fortune in computer time was burned away in a moment. Gannis hardly noticed.

A little sub-Transcendence, consisting only of Gannis, of his associates and colleagues, and of the few millions interlinked through the overmind, now took place in Jupiter space.