John Wright - The Golden Age

Maybe she could become a dream weaver in truth, not merely a dreamer.

And maybe, just maybe, her husband would lose that look of disdain he got when he spoke of those who enjoyed the fruits of the Golden Oecumene without helping with the cultivation. "All history has worked to created our fine Utopia," he would always say, "so it is hardly the time for the human race to take a holiday! We don't want entropy to win."

She was always afraid he was thinking of her when he said this. Maybe if she won the Gold, that fear would go away. Maybe the future would be clearer to her.

She had also promised herself to decide, before the Millennium was up, whether or not to make children with Phaethon. If she had a career again, that decision might become easier, too.

Daphne rose, her silk robes whispering around her knees and ankles. No wonder she had hidden this memory from herself! Her nerves could not have taken the cheerful strain

of waiting, the fretful days and minutes till the competition drew near.

There were Red Manorial routines for controlling such emotions, or replacing fear with hope; but now that she was a Silver-Gray, she had to learn to do those things, so to speak, by hand. Silver-Gray protocol did not allow for unprompted mood reorganizations; memory redaction, however, was acceptable. Ancient man forgot things all the time, and so how could the Silver-Gray curators upbraid the exercise of a flaw so traditional?

With a silken whisper of robes, she passed from the chamber to her day lock.

And, since she was present and awake in the real world, she had to take the time to do things, one step at a time, which would have been easier and simpler even in a strict Silver-Gray dreamscape. It took time to change into her Masquerade costume (she was dressed as a favorite author from her childhood, for luck), time to program her hair, check the weather, and adjust her skin accordingly. The Ayesha-mind had remembered to summon a carriage with time enough to carry Daphne to the Oneirocon Palace (which Daphne had forgotten—these had to be done in order in the real world, with no backups or restarts).

The carriage pulled up on the turning circle outside the day lock. It was a light and open affair, well sprung, with wheels slender and light as parasols. The road was still warm from its assembly heat; evidently Aurelian foresaw more traffic from this side of the park today, and had thrown a new road up overnight. Pulling the carriage was an old friend.

"Mr. Maestrict!" Daphne exclaimed, rushing up to throw her arms around the horse's neck. "How have you been?! I thought you were working for the Parliament now, Mr. Can't or Won't or something like that."

"Mr. Han is his name, Miss Daphne. Kshatrimanyu Han. He's the Prime Minister," the horse replied. "And there's not much for me to do during the Masquerade. Parliament is not in session, and, even when it is, all they ever do is argue about how much intellectual property goes into the public

domain under the Fair-Use Doctrine, or how much salary poor old Captain Atkins should get."

"Who is Atkins?" She petted Mr. Maestrict on the nose, and sent one of Ayesha's remotes to the life-pool to assemble a lump of sugar.

"Oh ... he's sort of a leftover from the old days. He does ... ah... some tasks the Sophotechs aren't allowed to do. We're lucky, because we just found a little mystery for him to solve. It's probably just a Masquerade prank, you know."

"Well! An adventure!"

"Not really an adventure, ma'am. It appears that some Neptunian masterminds are preparing a thought-weapon to erase or drive insane some high-level Sophotechs. We're trying to find out where this weapon is, or whether it is a false alarm meant to spook us."

His words made little impression on Daphne. It would be as hard for her to imagine the foundational Sophotechs being killed as it would to imagine the sun going nova. She thought the machine intelligences were able to anticipate every conceivable danger. So all she said was: "Good! It's about time things were shaken up around here. Sugar?"

The horse twitched his ears. "Ma'am... ? I mean, I like you and all, but, do we know each other that well... ?"

"No, silly!" She threw back her head to laugh. "I was offering you some sugar. Here."

"Mm. Thank you. I, ah, of course I knew what you meant. Ahem. Climb aboard. Where to?"

"To the Dream Lords' Palace! Away! And don't spare the horses!"

"Good heavens, ma'am, I hope you'll spare me somewhat."

"I'm competing today in the Oneirocon!"

"Hoy! I didn't realize it was that important, ma'am! Watch this!" Now he reared and pawed the ground, nostrils wide, and his ears flattened. He cried "Aha!" and began to race.

Daphne squealed with delight, and grabbed for the rail of the rocking carriage.

Some people strolling the park applauded as Daphne's wild carriage thundered by, and several posted comments on the

short-term public channel, complimenting the authenticity and grace of her steed.

On the same channel, Mr. Maestrict posted: "Seems like everyone still likes horses, Miss Daphne. We'll never go out of style. Have you ever thought about taking up equestrianism again? Nobody designs a quarter horse like you. Look at my magnificent body!" And he tossed his mane in the wind as he charged.

It was the same thing her husband was always saying. But there was no market anymore for horses. Horsemanship, as a fad among anachronists and romantics, had dried up eighty years ago.

Daphne answered him out loud, shouting back over the noise of the wheels: "Why, Mr. Maestrict! I like you and all, but do we know each other that well... ?"

He was embarrassed, or amused, and he put down his head and ran all the faster.

The Oneirocon was surely the simplest, most stark building in the history of Objective Aesthetic architecture. The ceiling was a perfectly square flat slab, half a mile on a side, hovering above the ground with no visible support. Beneath, open on all sides, a square floor embraced a large, perfectly round, shallow living-pool,

A later architect had modified the plan, adding a circle of dolmens, Stonehenge-like, around the pool. In case of inclement weather, the buoyant roof could sink down till it rested on the dolmens, and protective films be projected between the pillars to form temporary walls.

A high-priority segment of the Aurelian Sophotech Mind was present, represented by a mannequin disguised as Comus, with a charming wand in one hand and a glass in the other. Daphne had no idea this contest had attracted such attention.

Comus was a character from a play by Milton (linear word poet, Second Era). The son of the wine god Bacchus and the

enchantress Circe, Comus used the gifts of his divine parents to tempt men to drunken revelry, magically transforming them into brutes and beasts. Only against pure virgins did his cunning magic fail. Daphne thought it was tremendously funny that Aurelian chose this as his self-image.

All the contestants were physically present; they would only be able to use standardized memory-and-attention equipment to promulgate their simulations. The judging would be done on four grounds: internal consistency, external relevance, coherency, and popularity.

Daphne was pleased to learn that the "relevance" ground was being given a lesser judging weight than the semifinalist judges had given it. Apparently, the Consensus Aesthetic was relaxing, allowing art for art's sake. Since Daphne's little fairy-tale world had nothing to do with real life or any modern issues, that was a relief. But it afforded a correspondingly greater weight to internal self-consistency, her weakest area. Her universe was somewhat Aristotelian in places. For example, it had an atmosphere reaching up to the crystal firmament, but a Napoleonic level of technology, such as Montgolfier's Balloon, and primitive airships, which she had included only because she thought they looked stately and romantic.