John Wright - The Golden Age

Against his will, Phaethon was interested. "Sir? I thought you and he were political rivals. Enemies."

"You are thinking of Hyacinth Sistine. This was another version of his, but a close alternate. What these days would be called a parallel-first close-order brother, emancipated non-partial ... though we did not use that terminology at the time."

"What did you call brothers back then?"

"Real-time clones."

Phaethon snorted. "Well, no one ever accused people from the Second Immortality period of being overly romantic!"

"Indeed," said Helion with a small, ironic smile. "Which was why I founded the Romanticism movement among the manorial schools. It wasn't called the Consensus Aesthetic back then, because there was no consensus and no standard forms. But Orpheus Prime Avernus—who fancied himself a poet, as you can tell from his name—had come out very strongly in favor of the return to classical themes and images. He wasn't called a Peer back then, because there was only one of him, and he had no peers." (Phaethon knew Helion had named himself, following that same classical myth tradition the Orphic movement had resurrected.)

"No peers? The Eleemosynary Composition was around at that time."

"But held in contempt by public opinion. You probably don't remember—-recorded lives from that time usually don't get posted on the apprentice net or educational channels— that the Eleemosynary Composition at that time was a fervid opponent of the Noumenal technology. And with good reason. Subscription to the Compositions dropped almost to nothing after Orpheus opened his first bank. People would rather be immortal—truly immortal, themselves, as individuals—rather than be a recording in a mass-mind. The Compositions might call it immortality, or 'First Immortality,' but without the Noumenal mathematics, without the ability to

capture the self-aware and self-defining part of your soul, all Composition recording is, in reality, is other people pretending they are you, or playing out your old thoughts, after you die. Like a playactor reading a diary."

"What about Vafnir? Surely he was a peer."

"Vafnir was alive, but he wasn't human. He had built himself into the power station at Mercury Equilateral. The whole damn station was his body. He was rich, but everyone deemed him a lunatic." Helion smiled at the memory. "It was a wild age, an age of reckless daring and of high delights, of symphonies and storms of light. We all thought we could not die, and the elation from Orpheus's breakthrough sang in our souls like summer wine.... Ah. Anyway, where was I... ?"

Phaethon realized that Helion must have their local, rented version of Rhadamanthus off-line; otherwise he would not have forgotten his place in his speech.

The Jovian system Sophotechs did not adhere to as strict a protocol of proprietary information as did Earthly ones, and disconnecting was the only way to be sure a conversation was not being recorded. Helion must have regarded what he had to say as important, or, at least, as worthy of privacy.

"You were about to tell me some cautionary tale to horrify me into refusing the risks of adulthood, I believe, sir."

"Don't be impertinent, boy."

"I thought you liked impertinence, old man?"

"Only in moderation. Let me tell you about Hyacinth and me."

Phaethon did not want to hear a long story. "Am I right in guessing that Hyacinth Sistine hates you because of whatever you are going to tell me about Hyacinth Septimus?"

Helion nodded grimly.

Phaethon said, "You said his name was Hyacinth-Subhelion. You swapped personalities with him?"

"We lived each other's lives for a year and a day."

"And he refused to change back once the year was up. He thought he was you."

Helion nodded again.

"But, Father! Father! How could you be so stupid!"

Helion sighed, and stared up at the ceiling. 'To be quite honest, Phaethon, I don't know if I was as bright, when I was your age, as you are now."

Phaethon was shaking his head in disbelief. "But didn't you think about the consequences ... ?"

Helion brought his eyes back down. "We were very close. He and I thought we could work together better if we really understood each other. And, in that day and age, absurd things seemed possible, even inevitable. It was an exciting time. We were all drunk with our new-found immortality, I suppose, and thought we were invincible. We thought we could simply resist the lure to stay in each other's personality."

"But mind swaps like that are against Silver-Gray doctrine!"

"You forget to whom you speak, young man. I wrote that doctrine because of this event. Don't you relive your history texts? Ever?"

In his youth, Phaethon had always found history tedious. He was more interested in the future than the past. He was particularly interested, at the moment, in his own personal future. He looked at the golden doors in an agony of impatience. "Please continue with your fascinating story, Father. I am most eager to hear the end."

"Very funny. I will be brief; for it is not a tale I care to dwell on. Back when there was only the White Manorial School and the Black, Hyacinth and I combined forces to create a compromise school, taking the best from both doctrines, the artistic appeal of the Black Mansions and the in-tellectualism and discipline of the Whites. He provided the inspiration and logic; I provided funds and determination. The mind-swap gave us each the strengths and virtues of the other. Together, we converted the skeptics and conquered a million markets.

"But then when the year and a day had passed, we both claimed my property and estates. After all, both of us remembered doing the two hundred years of hard work which had gone into earning it. To settle the quarrel, we both agreed to abide by whatever the Hortators might decide."

"You had the College of Hortators way back then when you were young?"

Helion squinted with impatient humor. "Yes. It was after the invention of fire but before that newfangled wheel contraption. I should tell you about when we domesticated the dog, put a man on the moon, and solved the universal field theorem. Should I continue? I'm trying to make a point."

"Sorry, sir. Please continue."

"When the Hortators declared him to be the copy, he refused to accept it. He entered a dreamscape simulation that allowed him to pretend he had won the case. He rewrote his memory, and ordered his sense-filter to edit out any contrary evidence. He continued to live as Helion Prime. He did thought-for-hire and data patterning, and was able to sell his routines out in the real world. He made enough to pay for his dreamspace rental. That worked for a while. But when self-patterning overroutines became standard, his subscriptions ran out, and he was kicked out into the real world.

"But it did not end there. If the Sophotechs had only allowed someone to erase just the sections of his memory when he thought he was me, he would have been his old self, awake, oriented and sane, in a moment or two. But the Sophotechs said it could not be done without his permission. But how could he give his permission? He would not listen to anyone who tried to tell him who he was.

"Instead, he sued me again, and accused me of stealing his life. He lost again. He could not afford enough to hire a So-photech to give him job-seeking advice, and he could not find other work. The other Hyacinthines, Quintine and Quatrine and Sistine, gave him some charity for a while, but he just spent it again to buy false memories. Eventually, to save on money, he sold his body, and downloaded entirely into a slow-process, low-rent section of the Mentality. Of course, illusions are easier for pure minds to buy, because there is no wire-to-nerve transition."

"Wouldn't that also have made it easier for him to find work? Pure minds can go anywhere the mentality network reaches."