John Wright - The Golden Age

in our thoughts, except that which we, out of politeness, extend to each other. And so what else is there to do? I did something—I don't know what, and frankly, at the moment I don't care—which shamed and offended my equals. So we all agreed to forget it. Pretend it never happened!"

The penguin stood in midair, long scarf flapping slightly in the breeze, looking at Phaethon through large, round goggles. It rubbed its little white tummy with a stubby wing, and said, "Are you asking me a question, young master? You gave me specific orders not to bring the gap in your memory to your attention; nor can I tell you what you forgot."

"I did it to myself then? I was not compelled?"

"It was voluntary. We Sophotechs would have acted to stop it, otherwise."

"And if I countermand the order?"

"Your old memories are in my archives back at Rhada-manthus Mansion, in the chamber of memory, in third level of mentality, the deep-layer nonrealistic dreamscape."

"And should I?"

Even Rhadamanthus could not answer right away. There was a pause as the machine-mind examined every foreseeable future consequence of every possible combination of actions and responses for all the individuals in the Golden Oecumene (Rhadamanthus had mindspace enough to know them all intimately). This complexity was measured against the eternal philosophical dialogue structure the Sophotechs maintained. Rhadmanthus answered:

"It would be nobler and braver of you to know the truth, I think, young sir. But I also should warn you that there would be a cost. One which you yourself, earlier, were not willing to pay."

"The cost? What is the cost?"

"Look down, sir, and tell me what you see below you here."

Phaethon looked.

Everywhere was splendor. To the north were open glades, cool secret pools, fragrant hedges, walled arbors, tree-lined lanes, mountains, clefts, murmuring streams falling to a blue

sea. East was forest, deep and dark, invested with bioformu-lations less traditional: weird coral-like growths, fairy-tale energy shapes, luminous bubbles, or strange miles of intertwisting lucent tendril vines. South were palaces, museums, thought-cathedrals, living-pools and amnesia wombs. West was the sea, where, in the light of the newly risen sun, Phaethon saw silhouettes of guests in newly altered bodies like his own, shouting with delight, soaring and diving and dancing in the sky, or plunging from high midair into the waves to rise again in glittering spray.

"There are people there flying like me—!"

"News travels quickly. You did tell me to put the information out. What else do you see?"

Phaethon looked not just with his eyes.

On the surface-level of dreamspace, were a million channels open to conversation, music, emotion display, neural stimulation; deeper interfaces beckoned from beyond, synnoetisms, computer synergetics, library organisms and transintellectualisms no unaugmented brain could comprehend.

Below them, in the center of the Celebration grounds (and in the "center" also of the mind-space) was the Aurelian Mansion, like a golden flower, with spires and domes shining in the light of dawn, with a hundred thought paths (in mentality) and four great boulevards (in reality) coming together into Aurelian's city.

"I see Aurelian's House. What point are you trying to make, Rhadamanthus?"

"The cost. I am showing you what you would lose. The cost of opening those old memories is that you would be thrown out."

"Thrown out of the Celebration?!" Phaethon was taken aback. Then he was horrified.

He thought about all the work and hopes, all the long years of preparation which he and so many myriad others had put into this effort to make the Celebration a success. Their host, the Aurelian-mind, had been created just for this occasion

(even as Argentorium, a thousand years ago, had been created for the last Millennial Ball.)

Aurelian was born by a marriage between the Westmind-group, famed for their audacity, and the Archivist, whose nature was more saturnine. The combination of these qualities had already proven inspiring.

One of Aurelian's best effects—audacious, almost cruel— had been to invite both past and future to attend. Phaethon had seen paleopsychological reconstructions, brought to life and self-awareness to gaze in awe at the works their descendants had wrought. With them were personalities constructed from Aurelian's models of many possible futures, inhabitants of fictional worlds set a million or a billion years yet-to-come, strolling with droll smiles amidst what, to them, was past.

Aurelian, at high-compression thinking-speeds, had been studying every possible combination of the guests (and that guest list was large; everyone on Earth had been invited) and all of their possible interactions for 112 years before the January Feast commenced.

Had Aurelian foreseen one of his guests accidentally recovering a buried memory, creating a scene, offending his dear wife, ruining the pageants and plans for the entire Silver-Gray School? Was the tragedy of Phaefhon one which had been engineered for the edification of the other guests, a warning, perhaps, not to inquire too closely into what was better left unknown?

If Phaethon left now, he would miss the Final Transcendence in December. All the art and literature, industry and mental effort for the next thousand years would be established and determined, or, at least, heavily influenced, by the experience of that Transcendence. He would not contribute to it; none of what he had done over the last thousand years would be part of it. And after the culmination of the Transcendence, almost every conversation, every meeting, and every grand affair would be conducted in the shadow of that shared memory.

A memory Phaethon would not have. An experience every-

one but he would share. Phaethon thought about all the jokes he would not get, all the allusions he would not catch, if he missed this. Not to mention the gifts and vastenings he would lose.

After all, why should he create a scene? Couldn't he wait till the party was over to dig up buried unpleasantness? Wouldn't that be more practical, make more sense?

Phaethon stood in midair, frowning, staring down. Like a smaller, second sun, the bright point of what had once been Jupiter rose in the East, casting double shadows across the Aurelian palace grounds underfoot.

Happily, the fanfare of the Jovian Aubade rang from tower to tower. White-plumed birds, all singing gloriously, flew up in flocks from aviaries and the groves, a thunder of wings. The doves carried fruit, or delicacies, or decanters of wine, and they sought out guests who hungered or thirsted.

A white bird flew up, and landed on his shoulder, cooing. The bird was a new species, designed just for the occasion. Phaethon took a crystal of smart-wine. The taste was perfectly conveyed through sensors in his mannequin to the taste glands and pleasure centers of wherever Phaethon's real body and real brain were stored, sound asleep, and safe beyond all danger.

The taste was like summer sunshine itself, and the bouquet changed from moment to moment as tiny assemblers in the liquid combined and recombined the chemical elements even as he lifted the crystal. He sipped in pure delight, and no two sips were the same; each was an individual, not to be repeated. But he shooed the bird away, opened his hand, and dropped the drink unfinished. He made himself feel no regret as it fell away from him.

He dialed his costume from Harlequin to Hamlet. Now he wore bleak, grim, sober colors.

Phaethon said: "If the cost is that I be excluded from this Celebration, I can tolerate that. Somehow, I can. It's only a party, after all. I can pay that cost. It's better that I know the truth."

"Forgive me, young master, but you misunderstand me. You will not be excluded from the Celebration. You will be exiled from your home. Those memories will cast you out of paradise."