Gregory Benford - Foundation’s Fear

“The human toll-”

“Save the survivors. Send Imperial aid ships through the wormholes-food, counselors, psychers if they’re any help. But after the disorder has burned itself out.”

“I see.” Cleon gave him a guarded glance, face slightly averted. “You are a hard man, Hari.”

“When it comes to preserving order, the Empireyes, sire.”

Cleon went on to speak of minor matters, as if shying away from so brutal a topic. Hari was glad he had not asked more.

The long-range predictions showed dire drifts-that the classic dampers in the Empire’s self-learning networks were failing, too. The New Renaissance was but the most flagrant example.

But everywhere he had looked, with his body sensorium tied into the N-dimensional spectrum, rose the stink of impending chaos. The Empire was breaking down in ways which were not describable by mere human modes. It was too vast a system to enclose within a single mind.

So soon, within decades, the Empire would start to fragment. Military strength was of little long-term use when the time-honored dampers faltered. The center could not hold.

Hari could slow that collapse a bit, perhaps-that was all. Soon whole Zones would spiral back to the old at tractors: Basic Feudalism, Religious Sanctimony, Femoprimitivism…

Of course, his conclusions were preliminary. He hoped new data would prove him wrong. But he doubted it.

Only after thirty thousand years of suffering would the fever bum out. A new, strong at tractor would emerge.

A random mutation of Benign Imperialism? He could not tell.

He could understand all this better with more work. Explore the foundations, get…

An idea flickered. Foundations? Something there…

But Cleon was going on and events were colliding in his mind. The idea flitted away.

“We’ll do great things together, Hari. What do you think about…”

At Cleon’s beck and call, he would never get any work done.

Dealing with Lamurk had been disagreeable-but in comparison with this trap of power, easy. How could he get out of this?

The two figures from a past beyond antiquity flew in their cool digital spaces, waiting for the man to return.

“I have faith he will,” Joan said.

“I rely more upon calculation,” Voltaire replied, adjusting his garb. He softened the pull of silk in his tight, formal breeches. It was a simple adjustment of the friction coefficient, nothing more. Rough algorithms reduced intricate laws to trivial arithmetic. Even the rub of life was just another parameter.

“I still resent this weather.”

Gales howled across troubled waters. They flew above foaming waves and banked on thermal upwellings.

“Your idea, to be birds for a bit.” He was a silvery eagle.

“I always envied them. So light, cheerful, at one with the air itself.”

He morphed his wings up to his shoulders, making his vest-coat fit much better. Even here, life was mostly details.

“Why must such strangeness manifest as weather?” Joan asked.

“Men argue; nature acts.”

“But they are not nature! They are strange minds-”

“So strange we might as well regard them as natural phenomena.”

“I find it difficult to believe that our Lord made such things.”

“I’ve felt that way about many Parisians.”

“They appear to us as storms, mountains, oceans. If they would explain themselves-”

“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”

“Hark! He comes.”

She grew armor while keeping her giant wings. The effect was startling, like a giant chromed falcon.

Voltaire said, “My love, you never cease to surprise me. I believe that with you even eternity will not be tedious.”

Hari Seldon hung in midair. He was clearly not yet used to adventuresome simulations, for his feet kept trying to stand somewhere. Eventually he gave up and watched them swoop and dive around him.

“I came as soon as I could.”

“I gather you are now a viscount or duke or such,” Joan said.

“Something like that,” Hari said. “This space you’re in, I’ve arranged for it to be a permanent, ah-”

“Preserve?” Voltaire asked, batting his wings before the Hari-figure. A cloud drifted nearer, as if to listen in.

“We call it a ‘dedicated perimeter’ in computational space.”

“Such poetry!” Voltaire arched an eyebrow.

“That sounds much like a zoo,” Joan said.

“The deal is, you and the alien minds can stay here, running without interference.”

“I do not like to be hemmed in!” Joan shouted. Hari shook his head. “You’ll be able to get input from anywhere. But no more interference with the tiktoks-right?”

“Ask the weather,” Joan said.

A cascade of burnt-orange sheet lightning ran down the sky.

“I’m just glad the meme-minds didn’t exterminate all the robots,” Hari said.

Voltaire said, “Perhaps this place is a bit like England, where they kill an occasional admiral to encourage the others.”

“I had to do it,” Hari said.

Joan slowed her wings and hovered near his face. “You are distressed.”

“Did you know the meme-minds would use the tiktoks to kill robots?”

“Not at all,” Joan said.

Voltaire added, “Though the economy of it provokes a certain admiration. Subtle minds, they are.”

“Treacherous,” Hari said. “I wonder what else they can do?”

“I believe they are satisfied,” Joan said. “I sense a calm in our weather.”

“I want to speak with them!” Hari shouted.

“Like kings, they like to be awaited,” Voltaire said.

“I sense them gathering,” Joan said helpfully. “Let us help our friend here with his vexations.”

“Me?” Hari said. “I don’t like killing people, if that’s what you mean.”

“In such times, there is no good path,” she said. “I, too, had to kill for the right.”

“Lamurk was a valuable public servant-”

“Nonsense!” Voltaire said. “He lived as he died-by the dagger, too slippery to show the sword. He would never rest with you in power. And even had you stepped aside-well, my mathist, remember that it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”

“I still feel conflicted.”

“You must, for you are a righteous man,” Joan said. “Pray and be absolved.”

“Or better, peer within,” Voltaire explained loftily. “Your conflicts reflect subminds in dispute. Such is the human condition.”

Joan flapped her wings at Voltaire, who veered away.

Hari scowled. “That sounds more like a machine.”

Voltaire laughed. “If order-you are an enthusiast of order, yes?-means predictability, and predictability means predetermination, and that means compulsion, and compulsion means nonfreedom-why then, the only way we can be free is to be disordered!”

Hari frowned. Voltaire realized that, while for him ideas were playthings, and the contest of wits made the blood sing, for this man the abstract mattered.

Hari said, “I suppose you’re right. People do feel discomfort with rigid order. And with hierarchies, norms, foundations-” He blinked. “There’s an idea, I can’t quite see it…”

Voltaire said kindly, “Even you, surely you do not want to be the tool of your own genes, or of physics, or of economics?”

“How can we be free if we’re machines?” Hari asked, as if speaking to himself.

“Nobody wants either a random universe or a deterministic one,” Voltaire said.

“But there are deterministic laws-”

“And random ones.”

Joan put in, “Our Lord gave us judgment to choose.”

“Freedom to choose to do other than one would like-what a sordid boon!” Voltaire said.