David Brin - Foundation’s Triumph

Hari wondered if such a flaw might be exploited somehow, to thwart these radical kidnappers.

It didn’t take much probing to find the sore point between Sybyl and Vlimt. As in Junin, forty years ago, it had to do with destiny.

“Picture what’s happening on Ktlina, only multiplied a thousand, a million times over,” Sybyl urged. “We’ve already invented much better computers than they have on Trantor, passing and correlating information across the planet with incredible speed. Researchers get instant response to their info-requests, bringing back a torrent of useful data. Folks in one field quickly make use of advances made in another. New kinds of tiktoks take care of the drudge jobs, freeing us to concentrate on creative tasks, learning more and more!

“Some people have plotted this steepening upward curve,” she went on enthusiastically. “They suggest that it looks like the graph you get by dividing any finite number by x-squared, as x approaches zero. That’s called a singularity. Soon it heads almost straight up, which implies there may be no limit to the speedup of progress! If that’s true, imagine what we could become, within just a human lifetime. As singularity beings, we’d be effectively immortal, omniscient, omnipotent. There’s nothing humans could not accomplish!”

Gornon Vlimt snorted derisively.

“This obsession with physical power and factual knowledge will get you nowhere, Sybyl. The vital fact about this new kind of culture is its essential randomness. Take the belittling word that Seldon and others keep using to attack us. ‘Chaos.’ We should embrace it! When arts and ideas roar in a myriad directions, sooner or later somebody is going to hit on the right formula for conversing with the Godhead, with the eternal-or eternals-that permeate the cosmos. From then on, we’ll be one with them! Our deification will be total and complete.”

While Jeni Cuicet listened to all of this, entranced, Hari pondered several things.

First, the two concepts were essentially similar, in both their transcendental vision and the zealous means prescribed to achieve it.

Second, the more they heard of each other’s specific descriptions, the more Sybyl and Gornon grew to despise each other.

If only I could find a way to use that fact, Hari contemplated.

While their argument raged on nearby, he sat deep in thought, pondering the roots of their disagreement. Each of the five castes had a basis in essential human personality types, far more than inheritance. Citizens and gentry were rather basic. Their ambitious efforts to get ahead were based on normal competition and self-interest-which also reflected their high birth rates. Both classes were contemptuously called breeders by the other three.

Meritocrats and eccentrics also competed-sometimes fiercely-but their sense of self-importance was based more on what they did or accomplished than on money or power or social aggrandizement for their heirs. Each felt a need to stand out…though not too far ahead. They seldom had offspring of their own, though sometimes, like Hari, they adopted.

These similarities were significant. But chaos conditions also highlighted essential antagonisms between eccentrics and meritocrats, as happened in Junin long ago, when a struggle between faith and reason sent part of Trantor reeling.

Using his imagination, Hari floated equilibrium equations for each caste in front of him, until they were more real to him than the people arguing nearby. Of course, the new empire to come in a thousand years would be much more complex and subtle, no longer needing such formal classifications. But there was an elegance to this old system, worked out long ago by immortal beings like Daneel, who sought a peaceful, gentle way of life for humanity, based on their own crude version of psychohistory. Resonating against basic drives of human nature, the formulas revolved around each other, staying in remarkable balance, as if kept up in the air by an invisible juggler. As long as chaos did not interfere.

And as long as the old empire survived.

Kers Kantun touched Hari’s arm, leaning over him, expressing concern.

“Professor? Are you all right?”

His servant’s voice sounded distant, as if echoing down a long tunnel. Hari paid no heed. Before his bemused gaze, the five social formulae started dissolving into a sea of minuscule subequations that ebbed and flowed around him, like diatoms in a surging tide.

The breakup of the old empire, he thought, identifying this change. Briefly, he mourned the lost symmetries. In their place, more primitive rhythms of survival and violence throbbed across the galaxy.

Only then, the haze parted, revealing something far more beautiful, emerging from the distance.

My Foundation.

His beloved Encyclopedia Galactica Foundation. The colony that was being established, even now, on far-off Terminus. A frail seed designed to flourish in adversity and overcome each challenge that fate’s ponderous momentum brought its way.

The equations orbited all around, nurturing his sapling, causing it to grow tall and strong, with a trunk that was ironhard and roots that could bear any weight. Impervious to both chaos and decay, it would be everything that the old empire was not.

At first, you will survive by playing great powers against each other. Then you will thrive as conjurers and pseudoreligious hucksters. Do not be ashamed, for that will be just a phase. A way to survive until the trade networks take over.

Then you will have to deal with the death throes of the old Imperium…

As if through cotton, Hari could hear voices gathering nearby, murmuring concern. Some of Kers Kantun’s Valmoril-accented speech came through dimly.

“… .I think he may be havin’ another stroke… .”

His servant’s alarmed words drifted away as the hallucinatory vision changed before Hari yet again.

The tree grew ever greater, its boundaries becoming harder to define. Strange flowers briefly appeared, surprising in their unexpected shape and texture. The Foundation’s overall rate of growth still followed his Plan, but something additional was starting to happen, adding richness that he had never seen before, even in the Prime Radiant display. Enthralled, Hari tried to focus on a small part…

However, before he could look closer, a pair of gardeners abruptly appeared, striding forward to examine the tree. One had the face of Stettin Palver. The other resembled Hari’s granddaughter, Wanda Seldon.

Leaders of the Fifty.

Leaders of the Second Foundation.

Using great brooms, they swept away the beautiful hovering formulae, chasing off the protective, nurturing equations.

Hari tried to shout at them, but found he was frozen. Paralyzed.

Apparently, his followers and heirs did not need math anymore. They had something better, more powerful. Stettin and Wanda brought their hands up to their heads. Concentrating, they caused shears of pure mental force to emerge from their brows…and set to work at once, lopping flowers, buds, and small limbs off the tree, simplifying its natural contours.

Don’t fret, Grandfather, Wanda assured. Guidance is needed. We do this to the Foundation for its own good. To keep it growing according to the Plan.

Hari could not protest, or even move, though he distantly heard shouting as hands carried his frail physical body out of the chair and down a long corridor. There was a stinging hospital smell in his nostrils. A clattering of tools.

He did not care. Only the transfixing vision mattered. Wanda and Stettin looked happy, pleased with their work on the tree, having trimmed the irksome flowers and shaped it to suit their design.