John Wright - The Golden Age

"You are free to join the Orthomnemonicist School, which permits no memory alterations except antisenility storage, or join the Primitivists, who permit none at all."

"You know what I mean. You Sophotechs are smarter than I am; why did you let me do such a foolish thing?"

"We answer every question our resources and instruction parameters allow; we are more than happy to advise you, when and if we are asked."

"That's not what I'm thinking of, and you know it."

"You are thinking we should use force to defend you against yourself against your will? That is hardly a thought worth thinking, sir. Your life has exactly the value you yourself place on it. It is yours to damage or ruin as you wish."

The next cylinder was filled with the twisted crystal slabs of the Tachystructuralists. The lifestyle of these disembodied people, who had sacrificed their biochemical brains in an attempt to reach Sophotech thinking-speeds and complexities, had long ago been superseded by the Neptunians, whose colder superconductive brain matrices carried thoughts much faster. This region, and these few stubborn miles of crystal, were perhaps the only remainder of the once-prestigious Tachystructural School.

"Is that another hint? Are you saying I'm destroying my life? People at the party, twice now, have said or implied that I'm going to endanger the Oecumene itself. Who stopped me?"

"Not I. While life continues, it cannot be made to be without risk. The assessment of whether or not a certain risk is worth taking depends on subjective value-judgments. About such judgments even reasonable men can differ. We Sophotechs will not interfere with such decisions."

Phaethon flew through two cylinders, which were filled with the heat and stench of old Venus. Here were Hell-born from the Lakshmi or Ishtar Plateau. Phaethon saw their gray-brown beehive-shaped cities, connected by lava dikes, or paths made by the wake of crawling-machines. Only one or two of the burning roads had oblong shapes stalking along them. The Hellish body forms had been rendered obsolete,

centuries ago, once the Venereal Terraforming was complete; but the Hell-children, for whatever reason, preferred to keep the forms and shapes they knew.

The next cylinder had walls paved with rank upon rank of dull-colored pyramids, with no sign of life on the barren pavements between. The one after was filled with what looked like herd upon herd of overgrown babies, surrounded on all sides by curving walls of warm, pink flesh, with milk flowing from hundreds of nipples. A third cylinder was bitterly cold, filled with zones of darkness, in which greater darknesses moved and pulsed. Phaethon recognized none of these schools or societies.

Rhadamanthus continued: "If we were to overrule your ownership of your own life, your life, would, in effect, become our property, and you, in effect, would become merely the custodian or trustee of that life. Do you think you would value it more in such a case, or less? And if you valued it less, would you not take greater risks and behave more self-destructively? If, on the other hand, each man's life is his own, he may experiment freely, risking only what is his, till he find his best happiness."

"I see the results of failed experiments all around us, in these cylinders. I see wasted lives, and people trapped in mind sets and life forms which lead nowhere."

"While life continues, experimentation and evolution must also. The pain and risk of failure cannot be eliminated. The most we can do is maximize human freedom, so that no man is forced to pay for another man's mistakes, so that the pain of failure falls only on he who risks it. And you do not know which ways of life lead nowhere. Even we Sophotechs do not know where all paths lead."

"How benevolent of you! We will always be free to be

stupid."

"Cherish that freedom, young master; it is basic to all others."

"And what about privacy? Helion is one of them, isn't he? One of those who benefits from my amnesia."

"That is a very sound assumption. I do not think I am

violating any confidences by telling you that Helion must have sent Daphne to come speak with you."

"What? I thought you—this version of you—weren't allowed to know what was going on any more than I am."

"Yes, sir. But I can still make deductions of ordinary logic. Where was Daphne when you left her?"

"In the dream-tank. She was going into one of her games ... wait a moment. I was expecting her to be in simulation for several days. She is not a novice at these games."

"Was she competing for an award?"

"I thought she was."

"And she was in masquerade, so her location was masked. So: who could have found her, who had the authority to interrupt her game, and who could call upon her to do something which he would know she regarded as more important than her competition; but it had to be someone who also knew where you where ... ?"

"Daphne and I are penniless, right? If she enters a game, or if I run a routine, or even send a message, Helion gets billed for it. I assume he can figure out certain details from the billing. And ... Oh! Good Heavens! He even knows when I talk to you, doesn't he?"

"It uses computer time, yes. Helion does not know the content of our conversation, but he knows how much of my mind and time I use."

"And does he know where we're going now? Does he know for what reason the Curia summoned me?"

"I will be surprised if he has not been summoned also."

Phaethon came at last into the central cylinder, the one which had been the original space-yard topping the original elevator. It was smaller than Phaethon expected, only a few miles or so along its axis. Overhead and underfoot, along the curving walls, were the famous gardenworks of Ao Nisibus, dating from the era just before the Fifth Mental Structure, when this place was chosen to be one of the seats of Golden Oecumene administration.

The gardens were laid out in graceful and classical designs. Near the axis, in microgravity, floated balls of lunarian air

bushes and sphere trees, each with an orb of soil at its center. Vines and lianas, grape and ivy of Martian manufacture inhabited the lesser gravity of the canopy and middle regions. Below, along the walls, were Terran flora; stands of fruit trees laid out, rank and file, in rectangles proportional of the golden mean; or colonnades and trellises; or lily ponds centered on concentric ranks of colorful blooms, from which paths and walkways radiated. Some of the plants, extinct on Earth, existed now only here, to maintain this famous garden's natural state.

Phaethon, searching for the courthouse, looking into the Middle Dreaming. The symbolic meanings of the floral colors, tree and leaf, shape and placement, came flooding into his brain. The experience was overwhelming, since the architect had woven multiple overlapping layers of symbolism, each part reflecting the whole, throughout the entire garden.

It was doubtful whether any brain (before the invention of sophotechnology) could actually envision and enact a scheme where each part or group of parts could contain its own symbol-message while maintaining integrity taken as a whole; but Ao Nisibus, the designer, certainly made it seem as if he had. (All the more amazing, since Ao Nisibus had not had a Cerebelline neuroform.)

The gardens and lawns of the opposite side of the cylinder shone viridescently in the light of long windows, which, like canals filled with stars, ran along the walls parallel to the cylinder's axis. The blue Earth, huge and dazzling, was rising through windows spinward of him. Sunlight slanted up through windows in the floor below, striping the gardens opposite with alternating bands of light green and dark green. Phaethon started to see a pattern in all this. His attention was absorbed.

Overhead, the Founder's Monument and reflecting pool formed signs of Masonic import. Rose gardens, for passion, were hedged about with virtuous lilies; and two walkways, lined with euphrasy and rue, truth and repentance, came together in a cross (for noble sacrifice); but the actual intersection was a carriage circle (representing the world). In the