David Brin - Foundation’s Triumph

Hari persisted, limping after them as Kers carried the stunned spacer down the hall.

“How did he do that? How did he resist you! Is Planch a latent human mentalic?”

Kers Kantun did not slow down. But the robot’s answer echoed off bulkheads and down companionways.

“No. Mors Planch is something much more dangerous than a mentalic.

“He is normal.”

R. Zun Lurrin was astonished to discover something that Daneel had kept from his closest aides-humans lived on Eos!

The ancient repair base for Zeroth Law robots had been chosen for its remoteness and inhospitability to organic life. It was the deepest cryptic heart of a secret the masters should never penetrate, or even imagine. And yet, here they were! A small community of men and women, living quietly under a transparent dome that lay just beyond the frozen metal lake.

Robots stood at their beck and call, silently anticipating every person’s need. With their physical requirements taken care of by attentive machines, the humans were free to direct all their concentration toward a single goal.

Achieving stillness.

Serenity.

Unity.

“For ages, the answer stared me in the face, and yet I never saw it,” Daneel Olivaw told Zun. “A blindness that arose because I am fundamentally a creature of chaos.”

“You?” Zun stared. “But Daneel, you’ve fought chaos for nearly all of your existence! Without your ceaseless efforts…and innovations like the Galactic Empire… plagues of madness would have overwhelmed humanity long ago, instead of being limited to small outbreaks.”

“That may be so,” Daneel answered. “Nevertheless, I share many of the assumptions that were held by my creators-brilliant human roboticists who lived in a time of dynamic science. The first great techno-renaissance upheaval. Those programmers’ deep assumptions still dominate my circuits. Just like them, I habitually believe that all problems can be solved by direct experimentation and analysis. So it never occurred to me that our masters-in their present-day ignorance-had already stumbled onto another way of penetrating to truth.”

Zun watched the humans, about sixty of them, who sat quietly in rows across a carpet made of woven natural reeds. Their backs were straight and their hands unfolded, empty on their laps. No one said a word.

“Meditation,” Zun commented. “I have seen it often. Most of the popular religions and mystical systems teach it, along with countless schools of mental hygiene and discipline.”

“Indeed,” said Daneel. “This type of mental regimen predates technological civilization. Human beings trained their minds in similar ways throughout a variety of cultures. In fact, just about the only society that largely ignored it was techno-Western civilization.”

“The one that built robots.”

“The one that unleashed the first great killer chaos.”

“I see why you’ve encouraged meditation, across the millennia.” Zun nodded. “Fostering it under all forms of Ruellianism. The technique serves as a stabilizing influence, does it not~”

“One of many tools we’ve used.” Daneel nodded. “The outcomes achieved by meditation are compatible with overall goals of the empire, to keep individuals busy developing their own personal spirituality, instead of engaging in the kind of arrogant cooperative projects we see during a scientific age.”

“Hmm. This will also be important early in the post-imperial era, won’t it?”

“That’s right, Zun. One of the first crises to face Seldon’s Foundation will be solved when its leaders on Terminus figure out how to manipulate these same religious response sets, using them to gain sway over their immediate neighbors in the periphery kingdoms.”

Zun was silent for a while, watching sixty humans sit almost motionless on their mats. They weren’t the only living things under the transparent ceiling. He saw that Daneel had arranged for a water garden to be established nearby, complete with miniature trees and golden fish splashing near a gentle waterfall. Just above, several dozen white birds nested in the branches. All at once Zun saw them take off, fly a complete circuit of the dome in unison, and settle back to roost again. Superficially, none of the humans seemed to react. But Zun could sense that they knew all about the birds. Indeed, the men and women had been involved in the flight, somehow.

At last he spoke again.

“I have a feeling there is more involved here than you’ve told me, Daneel. If meditation is simply a useful way to keep humans diverted, distracting them away from chaos states, you would not be performing this research here on Eos, our most secret place.”

“That is right, Zun. You see, adherents of meditation have long promised several things. That it can provide serenity, detachment, and a degree of organic self-control-these are undisputed. The techniques have proved useful in helping the Galactic Empire to remain calm and peaceful, most of the time. But believers also promised something else, something that I dismissed for many thousands of years, as mere superstition.”

“Oh? What is that?”

“A way to connect with that which lies beyond. That which is other. A method of achieving the fabled communion of souls. Something to make humans far greater than human. For many years, science attempted to investigate these claims. In most cases, they were found to be no more than illusion. Self-deception, as when hypersensitized minds experience emotions and chimeras that they interpret as fulfillments of a dream.

“For thousands of years, I dismissed this aspect, making use of meditation primarily as a social tool, one of many that helped to create a gentle, conservative civilization, safe from chaos. Then something happened.”