The Golden Age

  Phaethon did not introduce himself. “You intrude upon me, sir. What do you wish?”

  The creature bowed. “One serves oneself by serving one and all. It is my wish to aid and comfort the one which you are.”

  “You do not know me.”

  “One lives; one suffers pain. This is motive sufficient to compel charity. Ask what you will.”

  Phaethon glared at the Chimera. This was one of—or at least part of one of—the Peers. The Peers were the compatriots of Gannis, and those who benefited from Phaethon’s loss of memory. “And why do you presume I need help?”

  “There was fist pounding and tooth gnashing. Activity in your thalamus and hypothalamus show neural imbalance and extreme emotional upset.”

  Phaethon now felt “emotional upset” indeed. The simulation was real enough to allow him to feel the blush of hot anger pulsing in his face. “How dare you monitor my internal brain states without permission?! Have you no concern for privacy?”

  The creature pointed at the balcony rail. “The privacy curtain was not in use. Posture of distress and pounding on the rail would have been visible from below, had this been a real scene. Whatever would have been visible from below is presumed to be in public information space.”

  “And my brain activity?”

  “Kirlian auras and chakra-energy broadcasts are visible.”

  “Not in the real world. No such sense perceptions exist there!”

  “Aura-reading sense perceptions are allowed by the Revised Standard Aesthetic. You prefer the Consensus Aesthetic? Apologies are rendered. Had one made one’s preferences known, one’s needs would have been supplied, and passage into public information space of your private information would have been restricted to what is available through the five traditional senses. The offense was unwitting: would it be preferred if this unfortunate occurrence were removed from all records? All memory of the trespass can be redacted; it will be made as if it had never been.”

  “You are rather free and easy with your offer, sir, to mutilate your own memories.”

  “The knowledge that you suffered came through unwitting trespass on your privacy. How can privacy be restored unless that knowledge is abolished? If the event is forgotten by all, if all evidence is erased, then it is as if the unfortunate event had never occurred. But your expression shows you do not agree.”

  “You disgust me.”

  “More apologies are tendered. But if the memories are unpleasant, why cherish or preserve them? How can they have a value?”

  “Because they are real. Real! Doesn’t that mean anything to anyone any more?!” He turned his back on the Chimera and stared out over the balcony. Above him and below him, windows representing activity in the public thoughtspace flashed and glittered. Pictures, icons, dream dramas, ghost archives, and strange scenes lived and pulsed.

  To Phaethon’s surprise the Chimera answered him: “If our perception of reality is vulnerable to manipulation by our technology, why should we not employ that technology, if it serves our convenience, utility and pleasure? Where is the wrong?”

  Phaethon gripped the rail and spoke without turning his head. “Where?! Where is the wrong?! Damn your eyes, where is my wife? Where is Helion? Imagine waking up to find your father is dead, replaced by a copy of himself. A near copy, almost an exact copy, but a copy nonetheless. How am I supposed to feel? Is it supposed simply not to bother me? Am I supposed to be satisfied with the copy, if the copy is close enough?

  “But what if it is not close enough? What then? What if your wife is gone—a woman you always thought was finer and better than anything you could ever wish, a love more perfect than you had dreamed—a happiness beyond hope—gone! Gone! Replaced by a walking mannequin, a doll! And, to add cruelty to cruelty, the doll is hypnotized into believing that she is your wife, truly believing! A perfectly nice girl, a twin sister to your wife, looking like her, talking like her. The girl even wants to be her. But she is not her.

  “And what if—what if you find yourself staring at a mirror and wondering how much of yourself has been forgotten. Or how much of yourself is real … ? What if you do not know whether you are dead or alive? I think you will begin to see exactly how much wrong is in all that. Convenience? Utility? Pleasure? I do not feel particularly pleased or well served at the moment.”

  The chimera answered: “Who, then, is to blame, Phaethon of Rhadamanth? Godlike powers mankind now enjoys; to render good service to others, or to serve one’s own selfish ends, as one chooses. But if one will not heed the wishes of others, do not expect to be heeded when one’s turn comes to cry out for comfort.”

  The voice was different. Phaethon looked over his shoulder.

  The self-image had changed; the Chimera now had the head of a crowned human man, a bald eagle, a king cobra. This was a different part of the Eleemosynary mass-mind; a part of the central command structure. This was one of the Directorships.

  Phaethon straightened and turned. “You are one of the Seven Peers. Gannis said you all wished for me to fail. Is it true? Do you relish my distress? My wife is dead and worse than dead; and I was not even allowed to see a funeral.”

  The snake head stuck out its tongue, tasting the air; the eagle stared unblinking; but the human head looked grave and sad. “The Eleemosynary Composition wishes ill to none. Your pain causes nothing but grief and sympathy in us. Once, there might have been a way to avoid all this strife. It is even now, perhaps, not to late.”

  “Not too late … for what?”

  “You and Helion are at odds. You and the relic of Daphne are in pain; she loves you but you want the love of her original self.”

  “Is that wrong? If a strange woman looked like my wife and thought she was my wife, she would still deserve no love from me. Do you think I married my wife for her looks? Do you think I married her for the kind of surface qualities which can be copied into a doll? Just how shallow do you all think I am?”

  A hard, harsh look came onto Phaethon’s face then. He spoke again in a quiet, grim, and deadly voice: “Just how easy to stop do you think I am?”

  The Chimera said: “If you and Helion and Daphne’s relic were willing to enter into Composition with all of us, your fears would be soothed, your desires satisfied. Compromise and renunciation would satisfy your wishes, and hers, and his, and there would be no more conflict. Every defect and darkness in your soul would be supplied and enlightened by the thought of another in our Composition; all our thoughts and minds would mingle together in one whole symphony of harmonious love and peace and joy. You would be one with a thousand loved ones, closer than friends or fathers or wives, and all your self-centered pain would be sponged away.

  “Find compromise,” the Chimera concluded. “Submit your selfishness to the general good; renounce yourself. Do this, and you will find comfort and peace beyond measure.”

  “Indeed, sir? And what if I want something better than comfort, rest, renunciation, and peace?”

  “But what else can there be to want?” The Chimera spread its hands, a mild smile showing puzzlement.

  Phaethon stood tall, and said softly: “Deeds of renown without peer.”

  Phaethon knew what the Eleemosynary Chimera would say next: that the desire for a life of glory was nothing more than selfishness and self-aggrandizement; that all human accomplishment was the outcome of a collective effort.

  Compositions generally talked all the same way. Mass-minds were the last refuge, in modern times, of that type of person who would have, in earlier eras, turned to collectivist political or religious movements, and drowned their individuality in mobs, in mindless conformity, in pious fads and pious frauds. Just the thought of it made Phaethon weary with disgust.

  But the Chimera surprised him: “For what price will you forswear your present attempts to rediscover the contents of your hidden memories? For what price will you abandon, now and forever, that project which your earlier self agreed, at Lakshmi, to abandon?”

  Phaethon realized that the
Eleemosynary was not just any mass-mind but a Peer and a politician. A version of this same Composition once, long ago, had ruled all Asia. Perhaps it was not going to talk in that same pious way in which all other Compositions spoke. It was willing to make a deal.

  The Chimera’s snake head spoke: “We offer you Helion’s place at our table. Join with us as a Peer, one of the seven paramounts of the Golden Oecumene. Helion may soon be declared legally dead: you are much like him, and would make a fit replacement. Wealth, honor, and respect will flow to you. The Solar Array may be yours. A central place in the coming Transcendence in December may be yours.”

  The Chimera swelled slightly in size, growing six inches taller. In Eleemosynary iconography, icons grew larger as more and more members of the mass-mind turned their attention to the scene.

  The hawk head spoke next: “You will have richness and prestige more splendid than any captain of industry history remembers, more than any mass-minds’ multinational wealth, more than conquerors of empires in ancient times enjoyed. The Eleemosynary Composition makes a preliminary offer of twelve billion kiloseconds of time currency, or its equivalent value in energy, antimatter, or gold.”

  It was an enormous fortune. With his connections to Rhadamanthus shut, Phaethon could not instantly calculate the energy value he was being offered with any precision; but, roughly converted to foot-pounds, it would have been enough to accelerate a large-sized space colony to one or two gravities for two hundred hours.

  Phaethon spoke in a skeptical tone: “This is staggering largesse, even by Eleemosynary standards.”

  “Let us rejoice in sacrifices, howsoever great, provided they serve the good of all.”

  Phaethon’s eyes narrowed. “Your motive is unclear.”

  “The inner thoughts of the Eleemosynary Ethics Oversight Unit are posted on public channels for all to see. Only individual minds, cut off and alone, can pursue secret plans or schemes based on dishonesty. We are not an individual; we can seek the good of the whole, even a good that includes your own.”

  “What of Helion’s good? You talk with easy air about betraying him.”

  “The danger you pose is greater than the benefits he promises. He should be happy to be sacrificed for the common good. Besides, if Helion is truly dead, you come into possession of his copyright holdings, including his intellectual property. This includes his memory archives and personality templates; so armed, you can easily create a son, modified to be loyal to you, equipped with the skills and knowledge and persona of Helion, ready and able to run the Solar Engineering Effort.”

  Phaethon recoiled in disgust. Silver-Gray protocols forbade the duplication and editing of other people’s personalities, whether their copyrights were lapsed or not. Obviously the constituent members of a mass-mind would have less than perfect respect for the mental integrity of individuals.

  “I think we have nothing to say to each other, sir,” said Phaeton coldly.

  “You reject my offer to negotiate?”

  “My soul is not for sale, thank you.”

  The Chimera stepped backward, its three heads glancing at each other in puzzled surprise. “Your every word displays you as a self-centered man; yet now, when you are penniless, you reject unimaginable fortune! Surely you do not pretend you serve some higher cause or fine ideal, not when all of society, all civilization, opposes you? How can you be so certain?”

  Phaethon smiled in contempt and shook his head. “You should ask rather, what cause have I for doubt? For every question I ask, I am answered with lies, illusions, and amnesia. These are not weapons honest men are wont to use; you use them; the logical implication from this is hardly that I am the one who is in the wrong, is it?”

  “You will not give us the benefit of the doubt?”

  “Certainly. By straining the generosity of my imagination, I am willing to entertain the possibility that you all are merely cowards rather than scoundrels.”

  “Yet you consented to the Lakshmi Agreement. You now seek to circumvent it. Is this honest?”

  “I have not seen this alleged agreement, do not remember it, and do not know its terms. The version of me who agreed is the version you and yours wanted erased! If I have broken it, feel free to attempt to take me to court. If not, then kindly mind your own affairs.”

  “No one says the Agreement has been broken, merely circumvented.” The Chimera made a delicate gesture with one hand. “You seek to defeat the intent of the Agreement, even if you live up to its terms.”

  “Your point being?”

  “Acts can be dishonorable and still be legal.”

  “That is true, but I am surprised you have the gall to say that to my face.”

  Two heads blinked in confusion. The snake stuck out its tongue. “Gall?”

  Phaethon said, “Hypocrisy might be a better word. Or impertinence. You dare to stand there and tell me it is dishonorable for me to circumvent an agreement which you have not just circumvented but broken and ignored!”

  “We have broken no law.”

  “Hah! The Agreement was that everyone would forget whatever it was that I had done. But so far I have not met a single person who does not remember! Are all the Peers above the law, or is it only Helion, Gannis, and you? No, excuse me, Wheel-of-Life also is ignoring the Agreement; it was she who detected my presence at Destiny Lake and informed Helion.”

  “The Agreement provisions allowed to the Peers an exception. The redacted memories are permitted to us when they are directly pertinent to the conduct of our interest and efforts, or for other reasons of public need.”

  “But not to me, not even when I need those memories to defend my interests in a lawsuit?”

  “The exception provision does not extend to you. That was not a point for which you negotiated.”

  Phaethon thought this might be another clue as to what his original self had intended.

  But he said: “I am more confused than ever about this alleged Agreement. It seems, at best, poorly put together. If you did not want me to even investigate my loss of memory, once I had discovered my memory was gone, why didn’t you make that one of the provisions in the Agreement?”

  “Frankly, that idea that you would become curious about your missing memory was never seriously discussed. The Agreement provisions were put together rather hastily.”

  “But surely the Sophotech lawyers drafting the Agreement ran predictive scenarios of every possible outcome, didn’t they? They must have foreseen possible problems. That’s what Sophotechs are for.”

  “No Sophotech was involved.”

  “What? What do you mean? I thought Nebuchednezzar Sophotech advised the Hortators.”

  “Nebuchednezzar had an extension present on Venus, but refused to aid the Hortators in this case. The College of Hortators proceeded without Sophotech help, and drafted the Agreement themselves.”

  Phaethon fell silent a moment. He was not certain how to take this. The famous Nebuchednezzar Sophotech refused to advise the Hortators? Refused?

  According to the diary memory files Daphne had shown him, Daphne had spoken with Helion in a sane period between his eternally repeated self-immolation. During that conversation, Helion had expressed frustration that Aurelian was not cooperating with the Lakshmi Agreement.

  The same diary file had also shown him her memory (when she had been leaving the dream-weaving competition) of the Aurelian Sophotech criticizing the Hortators. Aurelian had spoken of the attempted mass amnesia with jocular contempt.

  And the Earthmind, whose time was so precious that She hardly ever paused to speak to anyone, had paused to speak to him, asking him to stay true to himself. Not what one would say to someone to make them content with false memories.

  And … and what had he—the forgotten version of him—what had he been relying on when he made the Lakshmi Agreement in the first place? What had made him so certain?

  Then, a feeling like a light began to rise up in him. He could not help but smile. “Tell me, my dear Composition, y
our very structure makes it impossible for you to hide thoughts in one part of yourself from other parts, isn’t that true?”

  “There are forms of mental hierarchies which control internal information flow; but Compositions are democratic and isonomial.”

  “The Transcendence in December, when all available human minds will gather to decide what must be decided about the coming millennium … it is just another form of Composition, isn’t it? A temporary one … ?”

  “If you are thinking of using the Transcendence as a podium from which to denounce the Peerage to the rest of mankind, you will be disappointed, I fear. While there are no official controls on information flows, there are informal controls, social controls. Few people heed the ravings of an outcast; everyone’s attention will be focused on those people who are central to public attention …”

  “In other words, the Peers. Just now you offered me a central place in the Transcendence. Helion’s place, I assume. So, if I refuse, he will be honored by having crowds of visitors flood through his brain.”

  “You express it crudely. His thoughts, dreams, and visions will swell to encompass wide audiences …”

  “And in his thoughts are the knowledge of what I did. So if I’m in the audience …” His smile grew broader.

  The Chimera stood stock-still, as if stunned. Then it began to shrink. Evidently the icon was no longer the center of the mass-mind’s attention. The Eleemosynary Composition was consumed with higher-priority thought.

  Phaethon was wreathed in smiles. He said, “Maybe Nebuchednezzar refused to advise the Hortators because what they planned was so stupid. So self-defeating. The Peers could not resist the temptation to open their forbidden memories. After all, you had to know what it was that I had done in order to defend against it, didn’t you? In order to prevent me from stumbling across it again, didn’t you?