Count to Infinity

by John C. Wright

  For purposes of comparison:

  APPENDIX B

  Middle-Scale Time Line

  (By Thousands of Years—Continued)

  The first part of this time line appears as an appendix in the volume Architect of Aeons, covering the events from the Birth of Christ to the Death of Jupiter. This part details the events through the Vindication of Man until the flight of Torment.

  Fourth Sweep—The Long Twilight—

  • 53rd Millennium A.D. / 17 V

  FOURTH SWEEP

  Sol, 82 Eridani, Tau Ceti visited by two Virtues from Ain and 20 Arietis, named Lamathon and Nahalon, who commandeer all Guild Starships and O’Neil colonies and worldlets, and compel the construction of many others. It is many centuries before another sailing vessel is lofted.

  December, Wintertide, Yule, and Samhain (terrestrial planets of the Tau Ceti system) are elevated and aided by these Virtues, and evolve without moral guidance to a higher intellectual topology, and embrace an erudite form of Eudaimonism as its foundation.

  The predictive models of history are shattered by the calamities surrounding the Fourth Sweep. The Patrician Golden Lords renounce the Darwinian Law and embrace a philosophy called the Noble Compassion.

  Manmade gravitic-nucleonic distortion pools (star beams) created at Tau Ceti. Star-faring Guild Admiralty removes its seat from Tellus to the moons of the living ice giant Twelve, which becomes the main port of the Guild.

  Under pressure of historical crises engineered by Twelve, the Patricians retire from cliometric long-range planning.

  End of the Long Golden Afternoon

  • 54th Millennium A.D. / 16 V

  The Anachronists expel all Patricians from Mars.

  Four-armed green Martians called Ougres created by the genetic meddling of Solomon Eventide, and thin, white, graceful creatures called Sworns by Melchisedech Eventide. Merciless and highly intelligent creatures called the Loricates are created by Timurlane Eventide, which he uses to conquer the other two Martians: all three artificial races later fall extinct, despite heroic attempts by the Foxes to humanize them.

  For reasons unknown, Foxes drop in population, many preferring to become human, removing the complex molecular engines that allow for their metamorphosis. End of the Fourth Human Race (save for remnants lingering on reservations or in archives).

  Twelve, Cerulean, and, traitorously, Peacock combine in league, and use the Starfarer’s Guild to gain control of Potentates of other systems, most importantly Tellus and Mars, in a league against the Patricians and Selene. Cyan and Nocturne staunchly, and Gargoyle with less enthusiasm, combine with Eurotas and Venture Prospect to form a long-range cliometric hegemony called the Exarchy.

  Venus is desecrated, and never against regains Potentate intelligence levels.

  Long Twilight begins. The Desecration of Venus is regarded as the instigation of the Long Twilight. Revision of long-range cliometry to serve the needs of the Potentates and Powers plunge Earth into another Dark Age, which decimates the Hierophant population, driving the remainder deeper into isolation.

  —Alderamin (Alpha Cephei) is the Pole Star

  • 55th Millennium A.D. / 15 V

  Dark Age spreads to colonies, due to Exarchy manipulation of history.

  Planet Penance of Rasalhague undergoes a dramatic expansion in wealth and power, and rapidly sophotransmogrifies its star system.

  Megalodons die off as infrastructure to maintain such large systems fail. End of the Third Human Race (save for remnants lingering on reservations or in archives).

  Penance of Rasalhague forms the Holy League with other Potentates (which, at his time, consists of Rosycross, Odette and Odile, Covenant, Albino, Walpurgis, Euphrasy). Some of the civilizations living on the surfaces and hydrospheres of these worlds are in favor of this alignment, some against, but most are indifferent, as the issues far outlast the expected life span of a civilization, even of long lived strains of humanity.

  • 56th Millennium A.D. / 14 V

  A vast multigeneration treasure ship crewed entirely by women of surpassing beauty arrives at Sol, allegedly sent from the Lost Colony of Houristan at Epsilon Boötis. (This will later be revealed to be a fraud perpetrated by the Judge of Ages, as the ship was launched from Penance.) The wealth and fame of these amazons vaults Patrician Abolitionists to predominance, and act as a powerful influence turning opinion against the continuation of the slave trade.

  The slave trade is now no longer an economically viable source of long-term investment, since the labor market has vanished with the large-scale industrialization and nanotechification of the colonies. The concubine trade, however, continues.

  Neptune emerges from his somnolence. [Neptune is roughly 14,000 miles in diameter at this time, and 70^5 IQ.]

  Mars declares for the Exarchs, despite the objections of Neptune.

  First attempt to abolish the concubine trade leads to a rebellion by the Star-faring Guild to sustain it. To aid the rebels, the Anachronists of Mars revive the extinct races of Ougres, Sworns, Loricates, Summer Kings, Overlords, Vampires, Spiritualists, collectively known as Atavists.

  Relaxation of the Absolute Rules when Twelve is discomforted by Neptune. The two Powers enter an uneasy détente, which returns control of human history to the Patricians and Atavists.

  The Judge of Ages arranges a covenant between Neptune and the Exarchy. [This era of liberty will last six thousand years, until the Advent of Achaiah.]

  The war between the Atavists and the Patricians is prohibited by the Neptune Brain: a long, slow era of bioecological struggle ensues, with each side carefully attempting the reterraformation of Earth toward mutually incompatible ecologies: but not a single shot is fired, for fear of the Retaliation.

  • 57th Millennium A.D. / 13 V

  Atavists follow the path of ecologically simple logic and attempt to herd humans, across generations, into biologically singular ecologies and tightly controlled arcologies.

  For reasons obscure to historians, many long-extinct forms of life deadly to humans are reintroduced, as Atavists seek to make the forest and seas more lethal for human beings to cross: the Five Families are resuscitated from biosuspension, and Abraxas Eventide designs fanciful monsters to prey on a disarmed mankind.

  The Five Families are driven from Tellus, and starfare to Arcturus. The immortal Phaens of Nightspore are extinguished, and younger races of peculiar design introduced as an attempt to revive the Summer King style Climatocracy.

  —Deneb is the Pole Star

  • 58th Millennium A.D. / 12 V

  White Earth: Atavists Ecological simplification policy triumphant during a small ice age. Retreat into underground cities.

  • 59th Millennium A.D. / 11 V

  Blue Earth: Patrician revolts inspire mass migrations away from the underground cities. Sea levels raised. Mankind returns to sea environment, now abundant with copper-based nanomachinery able to produce material goods, limited only by available sunlight. Orbital Mirrors make it a time of Everlasting Noon.

  [Neptune is roughly 28,000 miles in diameter at this time, and 50^6 IQ.]

  • 60th Millennium A.D. / 10 V

  Red Earth: Mirrors destroyed. Arcologies opened and sea-population returns to land to find it infested with a hierarchy of microscopic and nanoscopic tools based on murk technology, called Blood. The Blood can be formed into nearly any tool or chemical or useful substance, if given the correct orders.

  The Seventy-One Advocates are created by remote control from the Neptune Brain, and their attempts to advise and govern the populations of Earth and impose peace upon the Atavists and Patricians. This attempt miscarries badly, leading to the Blood Wars.

  • 61st Millennium A.D. / 9 V

  Advocates aid in the de-radioactivation and re-creation of Earthly biospheres after the Blood Wars.

  Using means unknown, the Advocates obliterate all traces of Blood from human civilization.

  Green Earth: also called Obdurate Years. A form of nonprogramm
able matter and mute tools (collectively called Obdurate Matter) become predominant. Nuclear and steam and primitive forms of power make a renaissance, as well as robot-made handicrafts.

  Achaiah Arrives. At about this time, an entity known as Achaiah the Beast travels from Ain in Hyades to Tau Ceti. Tau Ceti becomes the entrepot for trade goods and trinkets from Hyades. Alien goods (mostly weapons) begin to appear in human hands or (mostly information tectonics) in human Potentates.

  The deadly Virtue is called “the Beast,” as he has no concern for biological life and may have been unaware of it. His only communications are with Powers and Potentates, requiring them to begin construction on Principalities, the next stage of mental topological evolution.

  Infliction of the Absolute Rules by the Exarchs now supported by Achaiah, including centralized economic control and the removal of all weapons. Women reduced to chattel status in a society where brute strength and skill at fence is paramount.

  Private Ownership of Sailing Ships. Atavists usurp the Star-faring Guild and close membership to Patricians and their clients. In retaliation, Neptune arranges to have the Patrician-backed Interstellar Faring Company grant private ownership to interstellar-strength launching lasers and sailing vessels.

  —Vega is the Pole Star

  • 62nd Millennium A.D. / 8 V

  [Neptune reaches plateau maximum of 10^7 IQ, far less than Jupiter.]

  Signals from Tau Ceti provoke new activity from Atavists and Starfarers to revitalize the waning slave trade. Neptune attempts interference, supports the Patrician opposition to slavery.

  Achaiah starfares from Tau Ceti to Earth. Neptune suppressed. Private ownership of interstellar travel forbidden. Interstellar Faring Company disbanded. Slavery flourishes.

  Lethe, the first of the Cold Potentates, is created from a deep space Archangel drifting between Altair and Sol, as a port and aid to navigation. Styx, halfway between Arcturus and Sol is born soon after.

  Ecological catastrophes on Earth: the Compassion broken up in to rival Protectorate states. End of Patrician hegemony.

  End of the Long Twilight; Beginning of the Midnight of Man

  • 63rd Millennium A.D. / 7 V

  Atavists triumphant. Cliometric attempts made to force history into stable and unbreakable cycles. Except where hindered by benevolent but unpredictable interference by Potentates and Powers, civilization on all worlds ossifies into stereotyped forms preferred by Vampires, Loricates, Summer Kings.

  The Advocate of Mars rebuilds and resupplies Earth, in return for six thousand years of servitude. Aeacides Leafsmith of the Five Families is either resurrected or re-created, some say by the Neptune Brain, some say by the Dominion of Hyades itself, to supervise the restoration of Earth’s biosphere.

  Aeacides can mitigate some damage, but many species are extinct, never to rise again, and xenobiotic creatures from Second Sweep worlds occupy the evolutionary niches.

  • 64th Millennium A.D. / 6 V

  Solemn Years: On Earth, Atavists create a post-catastrophe political philosophy called the Fraternal Solemnity, in hopes of curing the madness of Tellus, now called Eden, and reconciling the scattered branches of man without resorting to Patrician honor currency.

  After centuries of gross mismanagement, the personalities and memories of the Solemnity, as well as their physical possessions, pass into the hands of the Conservator of the Futurity (who is an immortal from Odette, also an Atavist).

  • 65th Millennium A.D. / 5 V

  FIRST and SECOND PRINCIPALITIES

  Human history enters somnolence and decay; mankind first on one world then on all becomes clients, underlings and serfs of the Powers and Potentates, who direct the energies of history toward macroscale engineering.

  Twelve of Tau Ceti directs the dismantling of the gas giants in his system to complete a ring world of sophont matter called Catallactic, a Principality.

  Catallactic downloads a kenosis into the empty volume of Jupiter, called Apparitor. (Whether this being had sufficient independence and volume to be classified as a Power is disputed.)

  Neptune demoted. Catallactic declares himself Epitome of Man, but Achaiah does not depart.

  Expansion of the Absolute Rules under Apparitor into a regime system called the Teleological Conspectus. This new form of the Absolute Rules embraces many of the foolish errors of the first, but exceeds them in scope and damage done. It includes a long-term eugenics program for all the subarchangelic races of man.

  Under Catallactic’s guidance, interstellar concubine trade reaches its height; most world income of Earth now depends on receipts from trade deals first made during the Solemn Years.

  Birth of Consecrate from material mined and cooled from Altair. Consecrate patronizes the Patricians, and creates the Stability of Man, and directs opposition to Catallactic.

  Office of the Epitome held in abeyance.

  Petty Sweep—The Midnight of Man

  • 66th Millennium A.D. / 4 V

  Patricians grow in wisdom and power.

  Mars releases Earth from her world-debt into the hands of a Receivership. Time of the Tyranny of Tomorrow: Actuaries, operating through the Conservator of the Futurity, organize all human life for the benefit of far future generations, whose population numbers are planned: all this is based on the Tables of Stability of the now-vibrant interstellar trade.

  Rosycross, borrowing materials from Achaiah, embarks on the construction of vast arcs of a Dyson sphere of sailcloth, which ushers in an “infinite energy” economy. The ever-growing intelligence of the sailcloth library is called Toliman. When completed, it will be a Host. Toliman remains carefully neutral in the many disputes between Consecrate and Catallactic.

  Neptune, no doubt acting at the direction of Consecrate, employs a logic set or legal argument implied by the negative spaces of the Omega Monument notation, persuades or manipulates Achaiah the Beast to retreat from Sol.

  Achaiah starfares to a position half a lightyear in the lee of Arcturus—that is, a point along the trailing orbit about the galactic core, beyond heliopause, and maintains his position for a century, brooding.

  PETTY SWEEP

  The “Petty Sweep” occurs when massive numbers of Atavists are abducted by Achaiah from Arcturus and 44 Boötis to found new colonies at Kappa Coronae Borealis and Iota Draconis, and some say, the lost colony of Vayijelal. Four lesser agencies and emissaries emitted by Achaiah starfare to Four Sweep worlds, create orbital cloud masses, and compel deracination ships toward half a dozen outer worlds. The population numbers deracinated is far less than prior sweeps. Half these colonies form Potentates, known as the Outer Potentates.

  Achaiah Departs.

  Neptune inflicts the life-laws on Earth, severely limiting the biotechnological transformations permitted there.

  Aesculapius achieves selfawareness as a Potentate.

  THIRD PRINCIPALITY

  Toliman the Principality creates Althalimain the Power as a helpmeet in the Alpha Centauri system.

  Guild fails on Second Sweep Worlds, turns honors over to the Stability.

  • 67th Millennium A.D. / 3 V

  FOURTH PRINCIPALITY

  The fire giant Vonrothbarth of 61 Cygni extends the beanstalks of exotic material issuing from his globe into orbit, forming a semi-ringworld-style megascale engineering work called Zauberring of sophont matter (arguably still a Power, not a Principality due to its impoverished and decentralized levels of consciousness).

  During the dark ages caused by the economic disruptions of the Teleological Conspectus, the Atavist and Conservator wards are scattered, and the elevation of a squaloid race of seagoing Moreaus to superintelligence forces all cetacean human races to the surface (This is later discovered to have been done by Catallactic).

  Zauberring, offended at this interference with Solar history by Tau Ceti, declares for Consecrate. Apparitor commits suicide by radical self-divarication. Effective end of the Teleological Conspectus. Atavists dwindle in numbers

  St
ability Lords rapidly replace the Star-faring Guild in Third Sweep Worlds.

  • 68th Millennium A.D. / 2 V

  END OF HISTORY

  Pyriphlegethon, last of the Cold Potentates, created between Sol and Proxima. Lethe, then Styx fall into senility. Radio traffic between the Powers and Principalities reaches an unparalleled maximum, fully one-sixth the total energy output of the Empyrean.

  (A.D. 66366) Great Silence Falls. All long-range communications systems throughout the Empyrean Polity of Man are disabled for 1733 years. Scholars suggest this was the outcome of a power struggle between Tau Ceti, Altair, 61 Cygni and Promixa. Others suggest it was the birth pangs of the interstellar selfawareness of the Empyrean of Man as various Potentates and Powers interrelate through the Library Protocols.

  Massive cliometric crises erupt as all human civilization is decapitated from its artificial planetary minds. For many worlds, the only institutions maintaining continuity with civilization are the Sacerdotal Order and the Lords of Stability.

  No large-scale cliometric planning is done on any world for thousands of years. Mankind grows wild.

  Interstellar trade continues, despite the extreme poverty and confusion of the host worlds.

  Cocytus starfares to Luyten 726-8 in Cetus, a flare star, and welcomes emigration.

  —Alpha Draconis is the Pole Star

  • 69th Millennium A.D. / 1 V

  Rebirth of History

  (A.D. 68010 or 790 V) Theonecromancers from Covenant arrive on Earth, bearing tales of War in Heaven, and the destruction of the Catallactic at Tau Ceti. The scientific and technical secrets they bear usher in a century of rapid progress. The Holy League worlds support the claims of the Sacerdotes to temporal power.

  Neptune begins an engineering project to break Jupiter’s now empty husk into a belt of small, earthlike worlds. Eventually there will be three hundred such worlds, called Deodate, subjected to rapid terraforming.

  (A.D. 68050 or 750 V) Radio signals from Rania’s attotechnological supership, the Solitudines Vastae Caelorum, reach receivers at Iota Draconis and Arcturus, outlining a new plan of Cliometry for the smooth transition of the human race into the Collaboration matrix.