La Edad De Oro (79 page)

Another sophisticated thought virus offered for sale was the Self-Referencing Fulfillment routine, published by the Subjectivist School. This routine promised that the user, aided by artificial programs, would enjoy all the sensations and experiences of genius-level artistic creation. The user’s standards of valuation and ability to critique himself would be blotted away in a wash of endorphins, false memories, and self-sustaining sophistries. Everything the user made or did would seem—seem to himself—to be a work of supreme magnificence.

More subtle was the Invariant School’s Stoic software. This thought routine promised to alter the user’s sensitivity to pain and grief, simply making him able to endure any torment without a twinge of emotion. Anything, even the death of a loved one, even the discovery that one’s whole life was a lie, could be regarded with perfect and Olympian detachment, as if one were a machine, or a remote and heartless god.

More subtle still was the Time Heals All Wounds software published by the Dark-Gray Mansion of New Centurion. This created a predictive model of the user’s brain, to deduce how the user would think and act once his present grief had run its course; and then imposed the new thought forms on the user. It did not abolish the memory but merely softened its edges, as if the tragedy had happened long, long ago.

Phaethon was actually reaching for that icon, and about to download that program into his head, before he caught himself. He stood up so suddenly that the scene he was in did not have time smoothly to render his legs and feet; and he stumbled against the balcony rail, and caught it with both hands.

The rail did not feel like metal or wood or polystructure or urim. It did not feel like any substance at all;, it was merely a geometrical notion of a flat surface, a sensation of hardness and resistance in the nerves of the palms and fingers. When he dug in his fingernails there was no give; when he pounded with his fist, there was no pain.

Phaethon heard a two-tone chime ring. He turned his head left and right, unable to locate a source. Disconnected from Rhadamanthus, Phaethon did not automatically have the knowledge of what these two chimes meant. The traditions and customs of the aesthetic of this room were unknown to him. He wanted to make the identification gesture, but there was nothing at which to point.

The two notes of music sounded again. Phaethon said, “Activate.” And then he said, “Engage function. Open. Go. Go ahead. Come in. Perform. Yes.”

One of them must have been the magic word. A three-headed self-image appeared on the other side of the table surface. It was dressed in an old-fashioned housecoat from the middle period of the Fourth Era. The fabric had vertical pipings for recyclers and buoyancy and other household functions. The three heads were monkey, hawk, and snake. This was the Chimera image of the Eleemosynary Composition.

The bird of prey was actually a blue-headed merlin; the monkey head was an ourangoutang; the snake was a black asp. Phaethon was familiar with some Eleemosynary iconography: these particular combination of heads showed that the image was projected from the hospitality branch of the media and publicity subdirectory of the Eleemosynary spaceside operations. In other words, this was the managerial officer or maître d’hotel of the public box and local area service Phaethon was using. Other functions of the Eleemosynary mass-mind represented themselves with different combinations of bird, primate and reptile heads.

Phaethon could not restrain a sense of condescension and distaste. The image had not come through a doorway; it had simply appeared. There had not even been a simulated sound of air being displaced by the sudden arrival. He suspected that this was all according to Second Revised Standard Aesthetic, or some other populist, plebeian school.

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 too 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 eagle 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.”