John Wright - The Golden Age

Some of her manor-born friends, Anna and Uruvulell, always had their Sophotechs surprise them on unplanned festival days, plan their schedules for them. The superintelligent machines often could choose what would amuse and instruct their patrons much better than the girls themselves could do. Such a life was not for her. She craved spontaneity, wildness, adventure!

Daphne challenged propriety among the manor-born by go-

ing in her physical presence to the festivals. The cottage around her now, for example, with its pillars of porphyry marble and its diamond dome, was real, grown last month in the gardens south of Aurelian Mansion. It was not Rhada-manthus, but a more simple-minded Sophotech (only eighty or ninety times as bright as a human genius, not thousands) named Ayesha, who dwelt in this cottage.

It was Ayesha who now manipulated the millions of microscopic machines in the life-pool to weave robes of flowing blue-and-silver silk up around Daphne as she rose to her feet. Water trickled from the curves of her breast and belly, and her long hair, now wet and black and heavy, that hung, clinging, to her back. Where the water passed, silk thread clung, so that by the time she stepped from the pool, fabric spun down to her feet. The waste-heat of the molecular assembly was directed through her hair to dry it.

The robe was like a Hindu sari. The shining cloth was simply draped, without fastenings or ties, and fell with natural grace over one shoulder and tightly around her waist and hips, to accentuate her figure. She carried the train over her elbow.

She passed down a corridor paved with mother-of-pearl, with softly glowing hypnogogic Warlock-sculptures hovering in niches to either side. Daphne did not have the states of consciousness necessary to receive the experience-signals from these sculptures; she was a base neuroform, even though, in her youth, she had been a Warlock named Ao Andaphantie, with no barriers between her left brain and hy-pothalamus, and in dreams had walked by the day through her waking consciousness. Daphne kept the sculptures with her nonetheless; they were not intelligent enough to be emancipated, and would have drooped with melancholy had she abandoned them.

Even if she could no longer read the interior of the sculptures, she saw how they spun and glittered and laughed as she passed, catching her mood and reflecting it back to her. They seemed much brighter than she would have expected, glinting with suppressed mirth, as if some hidden and wonderful surprise were waiting for her.

Beyond was a mensal room. Part of the discipline of the hedonists of the Red Manorial Schools was that they take all nutriment not through traditional living-pool absorptions but in a more ancient fashion, by eating. Daphne had been allied with Eveningstar, a Red manor, for many centuries before she joined the more austere and strict Silver-Gray. The mensal chamber was floored with polished wood, the walls hidden by rice-paper screens painted with bamboo-and-crane motifs.

Why that motif? Daphne glanced at the cranes. Mating for life, they were symbols of eternal fidelity. Was Ayesha Sophotech trying to hint that Daphne should spend more time with her husband? He had been acting rather moody and abstracted lately, not enjoying the festivals as much as she had thought he would.

In the center of the room was a table on which were displayed a careful arrangement of bowls, napkins, tiny crystal bottles of sauce or dried leaves of spice. Here were plates of spiced fish wrapped in seaweed, slices of octopus, balls of rice. In the middle was a black iron tea kettle with three spouts. She knelt, her robes as bright as flower petals on the mat around her knees, and took up her chopsticks. And stopped, her head cocked to one side: what was this bulk beneath the silk napkin folded to the side of her setting?

She drew aside the napkin and found a memory box beneath. This was an imaginifestation, the real-world analogy for some icon in thoughtspace. Taking it up or opening it would trigger some mental reaction or routine.

Daphne recognized her own handwriting on the lid: "For the Third Day after Guy Fawkes'. Happy Surprise!"

"I hate surprises!" She groaned and relied her eyes. "Why am I always doing things like this to myself?!"

Well, there was nothing else to be done. She would have to open the box. But to make the waiting more delicious, and to prevent her meal from spoiling, she ate first. Daphne was good at mensal ceremony; her each gesture and nibble, each sip from her tea bowl, was as graceful as a small ballet.

Then, with her food warm in her stomach, and chewing on a mint leaf for desert, it was time to open the box.

Slowly, the lid came open.

Inside the box, like concentric iridescent bubbles, was her universe.

Daphne saw it, and remembered.

She sat, eyes closed, breathless. Her old Warlock training allowed her to remain awake while the dreaming centers of her brain, rushing with images, tried to establish deep-structure emotional and symbolic connections between her memories and consciousness.

The cosmos was called Althea. It was a simple, geocentric, Copernican model, based on Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics. Beneath a crystal sphere of fixed stars and the complex epicycles of moving planetary mansions were continents and blue oceans of a gentle world. Her seas teemed with fishes and mermaids, whales grand with ancient wisdom, sunken cities. Her lands were pastoral, jeweled with tiny villages and farms, high castles, small cities crowned with lovingly built cathedrals. A memory of horrid war hung like the notes of a trembling counterpoint echoing from far hills, and musketeers and daring horse guards patrolled the edges of dark forests where winged dragons were rumored to brood.

In the city of golden Hyperborea, beyond the Northwestern Sea, a prince named Shining had returned from the wars with the grim Cimmerians, who lived in endless caverns of gold and iron, in a land of eternal gloom. The prince had brought with him out from that underworld a dream made of fire, which he wore like a cloak over his armor of gold, or like wings of flame....

The wonder of it was that Daphne had achieved the Semifinal Medal for the Althean universe she had created; today she was to enter in the final competition against other amateur dreamsmiths. She had originally intended it only for children, or for those who delighted in childish things. How could it compete with the modern non-Euclidean universes invented by Neomorphs, or the strange multileveled worlds of the New Movement Warlocks, or the Mobius-strip infinities of Anachronic Cerebellines? The love-gravity universe submitted by Typhoenus of the Clamour Black Manor, a universe where

love increased gravitic attraction and hate and fear lessened it, had thousands of worlds, a galaxy of worlds, peopled by thousands of characters no less complex and complete as her few continent's worth. How could she compete? How could she ever hope to win?

She opened her eyes and came out of her trance. Phaethon was always bothering her about getting back into some effort, getting involved in some business or program. (As if anything humans did could make any difference at all in a world run by machines!) And it was true that she had put off the decision, and put it off again and again, telling herself that perhaps, by the time of the Masquerade at the end of the Millennium, when the world reviewed its life and decided where its future lay, Daphne would review and would decide herself.

Well, the Millennium had come. The decision was here. If she won the Gold Medal for her universe there would be a flood of invitations, communions, ovations. Entertainers would send her gifts and compose praises just for the privilege of being seen with her, or publicity-mongers to have the public see what name-brand services she patronized.