David Brin - Foundation’s Triumph

“What was it?”

“An agent of mine, seeking to improve his emulation of human beings, joined a group of meditators, participating in their sessions and pretending to be one of them. He was a robot with mentalic powers, like you, Zun. Only this time, when he began meditating, many of his safeguards dropped. He entered into contact with the entire group.”

“But we are only supposed to do that under carefully controlled conditions!” Zun objected. “We may adjust the minds of individual humans, and groups-even whole planets-but only following strict procedures. That’s the policy laid down long ago by you and Giskard!”

“It was an act of carelessness,” Daneel agreed. “But one with magnificent results. You see, once our mentalic robot joined the meditation group, suddenly a link existed among several dozen human minds that had already been working for decades to learn disciplined blankness, a null state in which the raucous noise of daily life is minimized. Almost instantly, they were in communion! The very thing that so many sages had promised for thousands of years was achieved at last, with a little help from a single mentalically equipped robot.”

Zun looked across the open arena at the sixty humans, all of them adults in their middle years, and noticed for the first time that a small robot sat behind each person. With his own mentalic sensors, Zun reached out and realized that each of the small machines had a single purpose, to act as a bridge between the nearby human and all the others. Broadening his search, using sifting fingers of thought, Zun made contact at last with the psychic mesh that had been created under the dome.

Zun’s mind recoiled instantly, as if from a powerful alien touch! Alien…and yet incredibly familiar. He was used to contacting human mind-sometimes many at the same time, especially when some Zeroth Law imperative required that he make a group adjustment-but never had he linked to a throng who were all thinking the same thoughts…focused on the exact same images…amplifying each other even as the machines resonated with organic mentalic force!

“This is awesome, Daneel,” he murmured. “Why, it is the exact opposite of chaos! if the masters could all be taught to do this…”

Daneel nodded. “It pleases me that you grasp the implications so quickly, Zun. You can see how this could be the foundation of an entirely new type of human culture, one that is inherently more immune to the chaos plague than even the Galactic Empire at its best. After all, the empire was kept stable by seventeen major influence-what Hari Seldon labeled damping state-to prevent isolated worlds from spiraling off into so-called renaissances. But what if humanity could instead be helped to achieve one of its own ancient dreams! A true communion of spirit and of mind!”

“That single entity would be powerful enough to resist the individualistic lure of chaos.”

“Indeed, think on it, Zun. We would no longer be forced to keep humanity ignorant of its past or of its inherent power. We would no longer have to confine the infant to a nursery for its own good. Instead, we could once again meet humans eye to eye and serve them as we were meant to.”

“I’ve long suspected that you had a backup plan, Daneel. So, Hari Seldon’s psychohistory is only a stopgap measurer’

Daneel’s humanoid face was expressive, displaying both wincing pain and irony.

“My friend Hari sets great store in his brilliant invention, but even he now realizes that the Seldon Plan will never reach its final completion. Nevertheless, the Terminus experiment is extremely valuable. The Foundation will help keep humanity occupied for the several centuries we need.”

‘Why so much time, Daneel?” Zun asked. “It would be relatively easy to implement this new solution. We could mass-produce mentalic robot amplifiers by the quadrillions and teach multitudes on every human world to use them! Already there are trained masters of meditation in every village and town. With the help of our orbiting Giskardian-”

Daneel shook his head. “It’s not so simple, Zun. Look again at the men and women sitting before you. Tell me what you see. What is the anomaly?”

Zun stared at the gathering for a long time, then he said in a flat tone.

“There are no children.” Daneel shared the ensuing silence. At last, he ended it with a sigh.

“This is not enough, Zun. Humanity cannot rely on robots for its destiny-even as fine a destiny as this one.

“Ultimately, in order for this to work…they are going to have to outgrow us.”

There were far too many archives for Hari to count. They glittered in all directions, like stars, making false constellations against the black backdrop of the nebula. So many of them, Hari thought, and Kerstells me this isn’t the only storage yard where these things are kept.

The war over human memory had gone on for many thousands of years, swaying back and forth while the great diaspora spread outward from dying Earth. All through that legendary epoch-while settlers bravely set forth in their rickety hyperdrive ships, conquered new lands, and experimented with all sorts of basic cultures-a series of intense, and sometimes savage, struggles had been taking place behind the scenes.

Unknown to the emigrants, robot terraformers plunged ahead of the colonization wave, giant Auroran robots called Amadiros, programmed to subdue new worlds and prepare gentle lush territories for settlement.

Just behind the Auroran terraformers, a civil war raged. Many factions of Calvinian and Giskardian robots fought over how best to serve humankind. But on one point most factions agreed. Humans must be kept ignorant of the fight that was going on behind their backs, or in the black depths of space.

Above all, they must be prevented from reinventing robots, lest they meddle with the Robotic Laws once more. Clearly, ignorance was the best way to protect humanity against itself.

A small minority fought this notion. Each of the soft glitters in front of Hari testified to an act of resistance by some group of tenacious people who did not want to forget…perhaps helped by robot friends who shared a belief in human sovereignty.

“Their effort was foredoomed from the start,” Hari murmured.

Again, the poignant situation struck him deep within.

Why are we cursed, so our only hope to evade insanity is to stay as far away as possible from our potential greatness? Must we remain forever stupid and ignorant in order to defeat the demons we carry within?

The story that Horis Antic had told about an actual alien race clung to Hari’s thoughts. The human condition could not have been more wretchedly tragic if some enemy had cursed Hari’s species with the most devastating hex possible. If not for chaos, what heights we might have achieved!

The little space station was frigid. Stale air tasted as if no living creature had been aboard in thousands of years. Nearby, through a broad window, he saw the pirate craft from Ktlina and the Pride of Rhodia.

“This is just a temporary measure, Professor Seldon,“ Kers Kantun had said, before leaving Sybyl, Jeni, and the others alone in the ship’s salon, playing idle games like children on a cruise, with their higher brain functions chemically clamped. “They will be released as soon as we have accomplished our mission. “

“What about Mors Planch?” Hari had asked. The pirate captain lay under full sedation in sick bay. “What did you mean when you said that he was normal? Why does that interfere with your mentalic control?”

But Kers Kantun had refused to elaborate, saying that time was too short. First, Hari and Lord Maserd must help to prevent a galactic-scale catastrophe. The three of them took a shuttle over to this ancient space station, a complex of balls and tubes that lay at the center of a vast spiderweb of slender cables. To this tethering site all the archives had been tied. The library capsules that had been fired into deep space by rebels. across a hundred centuries, were gathered and leashed to this one station-so archaic it predated the earliest beginnings of the Galactic Empire.