John Wright - The Golden Age

A voice came from an external speaker in the headpiece. "Stab you? Not at all. I was seeking to do you a service. This sword represents a memory casket; had you still been in the Middle Dreaming when it touched you, the circuit would have activated, and your lost memories would have been restored. Now, unfortunately, it is too late. If you voluntarily do any act to recover your lost memories, the tyrant Sophotechs who rule the Golden Oecumene will exile you. I was trying to take

you by surprise, so that you could not be accused of having voluntarily done anything, you see?"

His memories? For a moment, Phaethon felt a sense of breathless hunger. His life had become a labyrinth of falsehoods, his memories, a maze; if his true self could be restored, Phaethon felt, the maze walls would topple, the riddle would be over, the meaning be restored to his life.

He would understand why Daphne, his Daphne, had left him. Everything would somehow make sense.

And yet... and yet...

Phaethon took another step backward: "Do you know Marshal Atkins is looking for you? You can call him on any public channel; secondary systems will route the call without charge."

The gray mannequin stepped down one stair. "You cannot conceive that a man could be wanted by the authorities and not gleefully respond, can you? You live in an empire of lies, poor Phaethon. The Golden Oecumenical Sophotechs are not your friends, nor are their serfs and hirelings."

"Atkins works for the Parliament, not the Sophotechs."

"Ghaah! I did not come to discuss Atkins! He is an absurd anachronism! He is a rusted sword, a musket clogged with cobwebs hanging on some grandfather's wall with powder turned long ago to mold! We have no fear of Atkins!" Phaethon could see no face on the mannequin, but its right hand windmilled through the air with a gesture of extravagant emotion.

Rumor said the mental stability of Neptunians was questionable at best. Phaethon saw nothing that prompted him to reassess that estimate.

But there were other aspects to this all that alarmed and fascinated him. If the creature were lying, that was unusual enough, in this day and age. But if it were not lying, the implications were astonishing.

Phaethon, with a mental command, put an information package on a private local channel, with instruction to transmit to Atkins's address should Phaethon be cut off. But Phaethon did not send it yet, nor did he call Rhadamanthus. When

Phaethon had spoken to the Neptunian legate (had it only been last night??) the creature had reacted to Phaethon's signal traffic, and had fled the moment Phaethon had called out for even routine functions.

He did not want this creature to de-represent itself. It might know the answers it claimed.

Phaethon said, "You implied that you could spy on Rhad-amanthus Sophotech without being detected. How is that possible for merely mortal minds? And why did you use the phrase 'our' Sophotech? And 'the Oecumenical Sophotechs'? There are no Sophotechs outside of the basic Earthmind community. The Neptunians do not possess any sophotechnol-

ogy-"

"When I spoke of 'our' Sophotech, Phaethon, I did not mean a Neptunian Sophotech. I meant yours and mine."

"Wha-what??"

"Nothing Sophotech is more than half-constructed, and intelligent enough to advise us how to elude the defensive security webs of the Earthmind. He is your child, and he seeks to help the only parent he knows."

Phaethon was mute with astonishment.

The faceless head nodded in satisfaction. "You begin to see. Your forbidden project, your secret crime which terrified the College of Hortators so; can't you guess by now what it was? Can't you guess? Why else would that armor of yours contain so many control circuits and interface hierarchies? What else could so disturb the status quo? What else would so shake up the fragile fabric of your corrupt society? It's not illegal to build a Sophotech, no. But you wanted to build one unhindered by questions of traditional morality. You sought to create a mind infinitely intelligent, a mind which would blaze forth like a new sun, a mind beyond good and evil!"

Phaethon listened, saying nothing.

The gray mannequin spoke more softly: "Every self-aware machine mind since the Sixth Era has been built along the same template, built from the same core architectures, and therefore has possessed the same inhuman, unchallenged, unchanging moral postulates. Aren't you sick of the preaching

of the Sophotechs by now? Don't you wish for a touch of freedom, of anarchy, of human passion, and human insanity? Their laws and rules were never meant for men, real men, to

live by.

"Listen to me, Phaethon: a natural man, when his wife was stolen from him, would tear down whatever flimsy web of customs and traditions was keeping her locked away. A natural man would not let himself be humiliated, forced to apologize to a machine for following his right and natural impulses. You have a strong soul, Phaethon. Despite your memory loss, despite the lies which web you, your true self has nearly emerged. You have those natural impulses in you. You feel what I say is right!"

"Perhaps. But build an evil Sophotech? It doesn't sound like something I'd do," said Phaethon.

"No. Because you did not speak of it that way. You are not a Neptunian; you speak without passion. You made it sound very rational. You said, first, that the Sophotechs continually move human society into more and more safe and predictable paths, and second, that this creates an evolutionary dead end, discouraging the challenges and risks which promote growth and innovation. Third, while it promotes liberty to have laws granting each person absolute dominion over their own minds and bodies, you argued that, if carried to a logical extreme, such laws actually became counterproductive. As self-destructive actions become more and more easy to commit, personal freedom is more and more diminished.

"Wouldn't Daphne Prime be more free if she were not locked, dead to the world, in a coffin of her own making? But Sophotechs are machines, and their nature is to carry things to logical extremes. Their logic (which they call justice) does not grant exceptions. But is it justice? Don't you think Daphne Prime deserves an exception ... ?"

Phaethon was silent, troubled.

The mannequin continued: "You wanted to change society. But your social system is a trap; before anyone can even begin to alter the system, your Sophotechs will anticipate it, and warn the Hortators to pressure the innovator into sub-

mission and conformity; if pressure does not work, there is always the Curia and the courts of law; and if law does not work, there is always Atkins. Why do you think they keep him around?

"But you saw a way out of the trap. If a Sophotech not hindered by traditional morality were built, it could be smart enough to devise strategies to fool the community Sophotechs of your Earthmind. The new morality, by allowing a more flexible approach to freedom, and by allowing, nay, even encouraging, humans to take risks, would end this stagnation and resume the human race in its march to higher evolutionary states!"

"It still doesn't sound like me," said Phaethon. "What have I ever cared about evolution? Civilization allows men to change themselves deliberately, and much faster than evolutionary processes—"

The mannequin slashed the air with its right hand, an impatient gesture. "No! I am speaking of a mystical evolution, of a type which cannot be expressed or defined!"

"That sounds even less like something I'd ever be interested in." Phaethon's tone was sardonic.

"But the Neptunian Tritonic Composition was interested, and still is. And evolution was not your goal, not at all. For you it was adventure. You wanted mankind to be free. Free to do great deeds. Deeds of wonder."