John Wright - The Golden Age

But Phaethon certainly did not want to hear a lecture, not today. "Why are you telling me all this? What is the point?"

"Phaethon, I will let you pass through those doors, and, once through, you will have at your command all the powers and perquisites I myself possess. The point of my story is simple. The paradox of liberty of which you spoke before applies to our entire society. We cannot be free without being free to harm ourselves. Advances in technology can remove physical dangers from our lives, but, when they do, the spiritual dangers increase. By spiritual danger I mean a danger to your integrity, your decency, your sense of life. Against those dangers I warn you; you can be invulnerable, if you choose, because no spiritual danger can conquer you without your own consent. But, once they have your consent, those dangers are all-powerful, because no outside force can come to your aid. Spiritual dangers are always faced alone. It is for this reason that the Silver-Gray School was formed; it is for this reason that we practice the exercise of self-discipline. Once you pass those doors, my son, you will be one of us, and there will be nothing to restrain you from corruption and self-destruction except yourself.

"You have a bright and fiery soul, Phaethon, a power to do great things; but I fear you may one day unleash such a tempest of fire that you may consume yourself, and all the world around you."

Helion turned and pointed toward the doors. "There is your heritage; now I step aside. But if you feel in any way unready or unfit, then do not go in." And, at his gesture, the count of time began again.

Was he ready? Phaethon had never let doubt enter his mind; he went up the stairs with a dancer's quickness. As he paused with his hand on the panels of the door, he thought with fierce certainty: I won't be like my father was. I would save my friends if they were drowning, law or no law. I would find a way.

Beyond the door was a wide dark, solemn space, with an examination pool shining like a silver eye in the gloom before him....

Phaethon had been irked by the exchange with Helion. He had always promised himself he would redact the unrecorded conversation, so that his memories of his graduation and rite of passage would be a memory of gold, a perfect day, untarnished by Helion's sarcasm and doubts. Didn't he have a right, if that was the way he wanted to remember it?

But, somehow, Phaethon had never gotten around to redacting the memory, and, eventually realized he would not and should not. The irritation had been real, part of the event, part of him, and part of his life. Falsifying the event would have made the event false, and part of him false.

So he kept the memory. He had not even stored it in archive, but kept it in his head.

With his arm still buried up to his elbow in the two-dimensional screen of the self-consideration circuit, Phaethon took his hand off of the index box. He had seen the memory that had made him hesitate. It was a warning from his past; Helion had told him not to trust the Sophotechs, that the machine intelligences would not protect his life from fear and sorrow. Instead, Helion had urged him to trust the Hortators, the guardians of the conscience of society. ,

Phaethon could see the pale light indicating his desire for Helion's help dim and ebb away. But the Sophotechs would help him. Hadn't Monomarchos solved a seemingly impossible problem? Any problem could be solved, as long as the problem solver were intelligent enough.

As for trusting the Hortators, they were the ones who had somehow gotten Phaethon to butcher his own memory. To

forget his drowned wife. They would be no help; if anything, they were his rivals.

Should he go in person to the place where his wife's body was kept? Phaethon could see the red line indicating his fear levels, rising and rising, forming what psychometric analysts called a catastrophe bubble. In a moment, fear would make him do something unwise, such as telepresenting himself to where his wife lay, when he knew he should go in person. How to head off this growing fear?

Phaethon, leaning into the surface, plunged in his arm up to his shoulder, so that he could reach the deep-structure connections feeding into his emotion/action core. He turned his pride reading up to the maximum recommended level.

Suddenly he was invincible. Was he not Phaethon? The mere fact that he inspired such fear in the Hortators was a sign of his power, power enough to sweep aside any obstacles that might dare to confront him. He had spun worlds and moons into new orbits; he had done miracles before this; to save his wife from the cobwebs of delusion could not be so impossible a task!

With great satisfaction he saw his fear levels deflate. But the emotion grid now showed another catastrophe bubble beginning to form, this one a response to mounting impatience. The same high pride that disdained all thought of fear would not allow him to wait the hours or days it would take to ship his physical body to the Eveningstar Sophotech Housing where, no doubt, Daphne Prime was resting. Besides, to rent j a vehicle would require him to draw money from Helion's account, and give Helion plenty of warning, and perhaps time to interfere.

Whereas, on the other hand, the very reason why the manorial movement had gotten started in the first place was that telepresentation was quicker and less expensive than lugging | a physical body around everywhere.

A gesture at the communication icon was sufficient to make a connection. A moment later he woke up in another scene.

THE COFFIN

Phaethon found himself in a chair of pale wood, ornamented with scrollwork, next to a small table holding a lily vase, a pomander, and a figment-case made of brass. A rug of white and pigeon-blue was underfoot. Before him, embraced by two funeral urns, was a doorway leading to a hall of dark green marble.

This hall was filled with shadows, striped with bands of pale, soft light, so details were not clear. But he had the impression there were large square stones, perhaps columns, to the right of the hall, reaching high to the cathedral ceiling.

Mauve-tinted sunlight streaming in through tall stained-glass windows to his left fell across his face, producing a sensation of velvet warmth and melancholy pleasure. When he stood, he could feel the muted sunlight slide across his cheek like a caress.

He stood, surprised to find himself represented as wearing his armor of black and gold-admantium. His helmet and gauntlets were retracted, so that his face and hands were exposed. The texture of the air as he breathed produced a gentle and powerful delight, like wine, in his mouth, nose and lungs. The simple objects his eye fell upon, the chair, the white lilies, the dark marble luster of the hall beyond the door, all these things seemed charged with a wonder and sad beauty he could not name.

The touch of the chair arms on his palms as he leaned

forward to stand, the hint of fragrance from the lilies, sent a mild thrill of ecstasy through him, but the pleasure was fragile, and transitory. As he stood, in the distance, he heard or thought he heard the trembling, low echoes of a gong, which almost brought tears to his eyes, so plaintive and mournful was the note. Like a tingle on his skin (another transitory pleasure) he felt the sound wave ripple over him.

Phaethon was not unfamiliar with this style of dreamscape; it was typical of the Red Manorial group (to which Daphne had once belonged) to exaggerate the sensual sensations. Red protocols allowed the introduction of new sense impressions (such as, for example, an ability to feel the texture of sunlight, or of gong notes) that had no counterpart in reality.

He was not sure if he was in Surface Dreaming, in which case all the objects around him had real-world counterparts, or if he was partway into the Middle Dreaming, which allowed the thought-environment to project additional information into his memory. Silver-Gray and White sense-filters were normally tuned to exclude anything other than information from being inserted through Middle Dreaming channels; but the Reds allowed emotions, conclusions, and states of mind to be altered by information fields attached to sense-objects, like a type of psychic aura, as if hints and colors of childhood memories were being stirred deep within him, reminders of other lives, perhaps, or of forgotten dreams.