Isaac Asimov: Foundation and Earth

“Of course.”

“But if Gaia has all the records spread through the planetary memory, what good is that to you as an individual portion of Gaia?”

“All the good you can wish. Whatever I might want to know is in an individual mind somewhere, maybe in many of them. If it is very fundamental, such as the meaning of the word ‘chair,’ it is in every mind. But even if it is something esoteric that is in only one small portion of Gaia’s mind, I can call it up if I need it, though such recall may take a bit longer than if the memory is more widespread. —Look, Trevize, if you want to know something that isn’t in your mind, you look at some appropriate book-film, or make use of a computer’s data banks. I scan Gaia’s total mind.”

Trevize said, “How do you keep all that information from pouring into your mind and bursting your cranium?”

“Are you indulging in sarcasm, Trevize?”

Pelorat said, “Come, Golan, don’t be unpleasant.”

Trevize looked from one to the other and, with a visible effort, allowed the tightness about his face to relax. “I’m sorry. I’m borne down by a responsibility I don’t want and don’t know how to get rid of. That may make me sound unpleasant when I don’t intend to be. Bliss, I really wish to know. How do you draw upon the contents of the brains of others without then storing it in your own brain and quickly overloading its capacity?”

Bliss said, “I don’t know, Trevize; any more than you know the detailed workings of your single brain. I presume you know the distance from your sun to a neighboring star, but you are not always conscious of it. You store it somewhere and can retrieve the figure at any time if asked. If not asked, you may with time forget it, but you can then always retrieve it from some data bank. If you consider Gaia’s brain a vast data bank, it is one I can call on, but there is no need for me to remember consciously any particular item I have made use of. Once I have made use of a fact or memory, I can allow it to pass out of memory. For that matter, I can deliberately put it back, so to speak, in the place I got it from.”

“How many people on Gaia, Bliss? How many human beings?”

“About a billion. Do you want the exact figure as of now?”

Trevize smiled ruefully. “I quite see you can call up the exact figure if you wish, but I’ll take the approximation.”

“Actually,” said Bliss, “the population is stable and oscillates about a particular number that is slightly in excess of a billion. I can tell by how much the number exceeds or falls short of the mean by extending my consciousness and—well—feeling the boundaries. I can’t explain it better than that to someone who has never shared the experience.”

“It seems to me, however, that a billion human minds—a number of them being those of children—are surely not enough to hold in memory all the data needed by a complex society.”

“But human beings are not the only living things on Gaia, Trev.”

“Do you mean that animals remember, too?”

“Nonhuman brains can’t store memories with the same density human brains can, and much of the room in all brains, human and nonhuman alike, must be given over to personal memories which are scarcely useful except to the particular component of the planetary consciousness that harbors them. However, significant quantities of advanced data can be, and are, stored in animal brains, also in plant tissue, and in the mineral structure of the planet.”

“In the mineral structure? The rocks and mountain range, you mean?”

“And, for some kinds of data, the ocean and atmosphere. All that is Gaia, too.”

“But what can nonliving systems hold?”

“A great deal. The intensity is low but the volume is so great that a large majority of Gaia’s total memory is in its rocks. It takes a little longer to retrieve and replace rock memories so that it is the preferred place for storing dead data, so to speak—items that, in the normal course of events, would rarely be called upon.”

“What happens when someone dies whose brain stores data of considerable value?”

“The data is not lost. It is slowly crowded out as the brain disorganizes after death, but there is ample time to distribute the memories into other parts of Gaia. And as new brains appear in babies and become more organized with growth, they not only develop their personal memories and thoughts but are fed appropriate knowledge from other sources. What you would call education is entirely automatic with me/us/Gaia.”

Pelorat said, “Frankly, Golan, it seems to me that this notion of a living world has a great deal to be said for it.”

Trevize gave his fellow-Foundationer a brief, sidelong glance. “I’m sure of that, Janov, but I’m not impressed. The planet, however big and however diverse, represents one brain. One! Every new brain that arises is melted into the whole. Where’s the opportunity for opposition, for disagreement? When you think of human history, you think of the occasional human being whose minority view may be condemned by society but who wins out in the end and changes the world. What chance is there on Gaia for the great rebels of history?”

“There is internal conflict,” said Bliss. “Not every aspect of Gaia necessarily accepts the common view.”

“It must be limited,” said Trevize. “You cannot have too much turmoil within a single organism, or it would not work properly. If progress and development are not stopped altogether, they must certainly be slowed. Can we take the chance of inflicting that on the entire Galaxy? On all of humanity?”

Bliss said, without open emotion, “Are you now questioning your own decision? Are you changing your mind and are you now saying that Gaia is an undesirable future for humanity?”

Trevize tightened his lips and hesitated. Then, he said, slowly, “I would like to, but—not yet. I made my decision on some basis—some unconscious basis—and until I find out what that basis was, I cannot truly decide whether I am to maintain or change my decision. Let us therefore return to the matter of Earth.”

“Where you feel you will learn the nature of the basis on which you made your decision. Is that it, Trevize?”

“That is the feeling I have. —Now Dom says Gaia does not know the location of Earth. And you agree with him, I believe.”

“Of course I agree with him. I am no less Gaia than he is.”

“And do you withhold knowledge from me? Consciously, I mean?”

“Of course not. Even if it were possible for Gaia to lie, it would not lie to you . Above all, we depend upon your conclusions, and we need them to be accurate, and that requires that they be based on reality.”

“In that case,” said Trevize, “let’s make use of your world-memory. Probe backward and tell me how far you can remember.”

There was a small hesitation. Bliss looked blankly at Trevize, as though, for a moment, she was in a trance. Then she said, “Fifteen thousand years.”

“Why did you hesitate?”

“It took time. Old memories—really old—are almost all in the mountain roots where it takes time to dig them out.”

“Fifteen thousand years ago, then? Is that when Gaia was settled?”

“No, to the best of our knowledge that took place some three thousand years before that.”

“Why are you uncertain? Don’t you—or Gaia—remember?”

Bliss said, “That was before Gaia had developed to the point where memory became a global phenomenon.”

“Yet before you could rely on your collective memory, Gaia must have kept records, Bliss. Records in the usual sense—recorded, written, filmed, and so on.”

“I imagine so, but they could scarcely endure all this time.”

“They could have been copied or, better yet, transferred into the global memory, once that was developed.”