The Golden Transcendence

by John C. Wright

  At the same time, twenty-five gravities of acceleration flattened all loose objects in the room, hurling Xenophon and his ally bodies against the far wall. It looked just as if the whole huge room had just wildly been thrown over on its side. Actually, the carousel of the ring in which the bridge was held could not reorient quickly enough to keep the local deck perpendicular to the sudden thrust. Fields made of pseudo-matter, not unlike the retardation fields interwebbing Phaethon’s body on the captain’s chair, trapped every cell of the Neptunian bodies in place. Those webs allowed only those biochemical functions to continue that the stealth remotes did not classify as potentially threatening. Consciousness was not one of them.

  For now, Phaethon wanted prisoners, not corpses. The higher centers of the brain and associated neurocircuitry had bioelectrical patterns in the Neptunian modes imposed upon them by the lurking stealth remotes, patterns, which, in a base neuroform, would have been fourth-stage delta waves, deep, dreamless sleep.

  In that same split instant of time (long before Xenophon’s scalded, blinded, crippled, and stunned body could hit the far bulkhead), the portable noetic reader to Phaethon’s left came to life. Despite the storm of energies lashing the chamber, it retrieved the information from the stealth remotes, positioned in and around the Neptunian’s main nerve channels, were pinpoint-beaming to the reader heads.

  By the time direction of gravity returned to deck-perpendicular as the straining carousel reoriented all the rooms and chambers in the ring (including the bridge) to right angles, Phaethon had a working copy of Xenophon’s brain trapped in the noetic reader. It was, after all, also a noumenal mentality recorder.

  But now for the important part.

  The stealth remotes monitoring the ship mind indicated that the virus-infected sectors had been dumped, a new mind reestablished, and that the full computing power of the ship was at his command. He signaled to his mannequins. “What communications or signals have left this chamber or this ship? Track and trace them.”

  The Jason mannequin reported that no transmission, of any type of energy the ship instruments could detect, had left the chamber, or the ship, nor was there any breach in the hull, such as a collision with antimatter might produce.

  The Byrd mannequin brought up views of the other Neptunians everywhere on the ship, where they had been caught by the sudden, unexpected, tremendous acceleration. Those who the stealth remotes had concluded were not allies of Xenophon had been given enough warning to find pseudo-material retardation fields, to survive the shock; others had been downloaded into more pressure-resistant brain boxes, since the Neptunian neuroform allowed for rapid transmission and storage of neural information, and survived even if their bodies were crushed. Many had been injured; none had been damaged beyond the point of recovery. Resurrection teams were already being formed in the ship mind and telerepresented to the severely injured. But, so far, there was no panic, no outrage. Being Neptunians, their bodies were insensitive to pain, except when they chose to feel it, and as for their minds, they chose to regard all this as some huge prank, or hoax.

  But there were no transmissions detected coming from any of them, either, nor was there any activity at all coming from the body masses Xenophon had left behind on the ship-mind decks, or in the fuel axis.

  The estimator from the stealth remotes said, “There are no transmissions detected from any source. Xenophon either has no ability to transmit to his superior during an emergency, or prepared no deadman switch or alternate—despite that he must have known he was walking into a trap—or else has no superior, and he himself is the Silent One in charge.”

  But the Ulysses mannequin said, “With all due respect, sir, the readings are not complete. We ourselves have opened the hull ports to extend antennae, detectors, and to send signals to and from the attendant ships which are circling us, watching for transmissions. Also, the drive is operating—”

  Phaethon said: “Wait!”

  Because, at that moment, red status lights lit on the neotic unit. Phaethon looked at the golden tablet through the ship’s Middle Dreaming, and understood that the noetic reader could not analyze or interpret certain sections of Xenophon’s mind. Some of the brain segments had been encrypted, thinking by a means, or in a formation, utterly unknown to the builders of the noetic unit. This was a thought formation, a mental language, so to speak, that the neotic unit could not decode.

  These encrypted segments could not be decrypted by any key or process known to the legible parts of Xenophon’s mind.

  The encrypted segments of the brain had not been located in the cortex or main consciousness circuits of the neural architecture. Which meant they had not been located in the brain sections targeted for narcoleptic paralysis. Which meant . . .

  Phaethon focused a communication beam from his armor to the remotes now attached to Xenophon’s nervous system. “You are not unconscious.”

  The answer came back along the same beam: “No. This one was curious as to your actions. They seem to be without meaning. You will explain.”

  3.

  “Your speech pattern has changed again. Are you Xenophon, or someone else?”

  “Questions of identity are meaningless. By what right do you hold me here, discomforted, limited? You are not a Constable, you have no warrant, you have not obeyed the forms and procedures. Do you suppose me to be a prisoner of what you call war, perhaps? But you have not treated me according to the civilized formalities to which you pretend to adhere. Explain your conduct.”

  Phaethon increased the pressure of the retardation fields webbing the Neptunian body, and sent the medical remotes to sever any nerve trunks they thought were suspicious. Little flashes of laser-scalpel fire appeared in the Neptunian’s brain. Phaethon sent no answer except: “Where are your superior officers? What are your strengths and resources, goals and means? Where is your starship? What are your motives? Where is your Sophotech?”

  “Irrelevant. These inquiries refer to fictional entities. There is no Sophotech, no starship, no superior officers. No strengths, no means, no resources.”

  Phaethon thought this answer was a lie. “Decode your thoughts and allow my noetic unit to read them.”

  “Impossible. The encryption system is based on the nonrational mathematics which obtain within the interior of a black-hole event horizon. That mathematics cannot be translated into yours by any means. The premises of that mathematics were transmitted. Your society has rejected these beyond-truths.”

  “Are you referring to the undefined mathematics terms in the Last Broadcast? Infinity divided by infinity, zero raised to the exponential power of zero, and all that?”

  “To us, it is your mathematics which are not defined. Your mathematics does not depict the conditions which obtain beyond the event horizon of rationality. Likewise, your laws and your morality lack both universal application and self-consistency. I have committed no act of aggression, threatened no one, harmed no one. This ship was turned over to me, and the identities I now embrace were given to me, entirely in accord with your laws and customs.”

  “You sent that thing inside of Daphne’s horse to attack me. You tried to kill her.”

  “False. The actions of that other unit cannot be attributed to me; it was a separate and complete entity. It is true that I equipped it with a philosophy and outlook which would render it likely, ready, and able to perform a suicide mission, but I issued no orders. The concept of orders and of control is entirely alien to those of my Oecumene and civilization. We do not even have a word for it.

  “And furthermore, Phaethon is the one who opened fire first. I have killed no one. Only Atkins has killed. You are in violation of proper conduct. Release me, make amends, restore me.”

  Phaethon sat motionless in the captain’s chair, held in place by a retardation field. A much stronger field pinned the Neptunian body in place, and the gravity pressure had flattened it against the deck. Aiming beams and low-level charges, like the beams of searchlights, reached from the
energy mirrors to either side and glinted across the glistening blue body surface. All the internal organs, nerve circuitry, and biomechanic tissues had settled to the bottom of the body mass and were flattened.

  Now what? Should he argue with the Silent One, threaten him, torture him? So far it had seemed not unwilling to talk, even if it did not answer questions.

  Phaethon tried again. “If there is no starship, how did you arrive here from the Silent Oecumene? How many others came with your expedition? How did you enter the Golden Oecumene without being detected?”

  “I was born in the Golden Oecumene. I am a citizen thereof with rights which you are trampling.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Xenophon, of course. And yet part of me, the part whose thoughts you cannot read, the part who is proof against your intrusion, comes from a wise and ancient civilization, a child to the Golden Oecumene, a child who surpassed her parent in beauty and genius and wealth and worth. Listen: I have no reason not to tell you the tale.

  “I was born when Xenophon, at Farbeyond Station, erected a radio laser at a point in distant space where the noise and interference of the Golden Oecumene had been left behind. Xenophon had been mapping Phaethon’s possible routes for him, through the dark matter clouds, the particle storms which fill interstellar space. And he found a hole, a gap, a thin spot, in the clouds of dark matter which surround the Cygnus X-1 Nebula. Radio conditions were good. Xenophon’s receivers were very powerful. He used your money to create them. He sent a signal. Then he slept. One thousand years passed. The signal reached the dead worlds and graveyard cities surrounding the black sun at Cygnus. Something woke. A return signal was transmitted. A second ten thousand years passed. Xenophon had constructed the machineries and antennae out of his own body substance, as is the tradition among Neptunians. Xenophon woke only when the signal, carrying what it carried from the Second Oecumene, entered his body, and entered his brain.”

  “You are that ghost? You were transmitted here from the Silent Oecumene?”

  “Surely you have viewed the Last Broadcast. Surely you have wondered who was the subject who made that broadcast. Surely you have wondered why, at the last moment, he is so afraid, and then so overjoyed, to realize that he is infected with a mental virus, to realize that his mental virus now possesses him, and will possess anyone who properly receives his message. Your Golden Oecuemene received a corrupted version of the original message, the signal strength was weak, and the subtextual channels, where the mental virus was hidden, did not arrive. Pity! Had the signal been strong, all people in the Golden Oecumene would now be what Xenophon is; all would now be me! As it is, only Xenophon enjoys this privilege.”

  “Are you a copy of the man who made the Final Broadcast from the Silent Oecumene? Or are you the virus? Or what are you?”

  “He is called Ao Varmatyr. He was the son and creation copy of Ao Ormgorgon Darkwormhole, our culture hero who founded the Second Oecumene. He is now part of the oversoul of which I was once part, as is Ormgorgon, and all others. But I do not claim to be him. I am as much him as I am any other. Questions of identity are immaterial.”

  Phaethon realized he had not asked a central question: “Why are you doing this? What is your motive?”

  “To aid and help Phaethon. We are the children of the first successful star colony. Now there will be more. We knew where your first port of call would be, had to be, even if you yourself have not yet acknowledged this. Where can this great starship go most easily to refuel?”

  “You think the Phoenix Exultant is going to Cygnus X-1 first?”

  “You admitted as much when you spoke to Kes Notor-Kotok. Had it not been for our interference, Gannis and the Hortators would have dismantled this ship for scrap, after taking it from you. We expected you to go in person to visit your drowned wife at the Eveningstar Mausoleum. We were ready to reveal ourselves and our purposes to you, to take you and your armor, take this ship, and go to Cygnus X-1.

  “But you deceived us. Our model was inaccurate. Something distorted your normal behavior. Instead of coming in person, you telerepresented yourself.”

  Phaethon remembered. He had turned his pride up. He had used an Eleemosynary self-consideration table to alter his emotional nature, and that had made him too impatient to wait to see his Daphne in person.

  The ghost of Ao Varmatyr continued: “Because of this we were caught off guard. As an emergency measure, we sent a mannequin to inculcate a mental virus into you, which would cause you to open your memory casket, and force the Hortators to exile you. We anticipated that, after a period of trial among the exiles, you would nevertheless rise to the occasion, begin to gather money and equipment, contact the Neptunians, and join with them.

  “Then, a second thing happened which we did not expect. Daphne chose exile and death to come to you. The danger to us mounted, as Daphne brought Atkins out of retirement. We are fearful of discovery. Desperation forced our hands; the unit hidden in Daphne’s horse exceeded his instructions, and attempted to bring you by speaking threats. This was miscalculation; we underestimated how rashly and how violently the Sophotechs who control your civilization would order their assassin Atkins to respond. You, by your actions, have shown that we had good reason to be fearful of discovery.”

  “Your story doesn’t ring true. Why all this deception? Why didn’t you come to me directly?”

  “I did. You rejected my entreaties. Furthermore, your capacity for independent judgment has been altered by the Sophotechs to suit their own purposes, sometimes obviously, sometimes subtly. Your thoughts about them have been altered by them; your sense filter would edit out any evidence I might present to convince you; redaction programs would make you forget. This has happened several times during our interaction. We could not reason with you because your capacity for reasoning had been tampered with. We had to act in secret because we feared the Sophotechs.”

  “Feared them? Why?”

  “Because your Sophotechs destroyed the civilization of the Second Oecumene.”

  3

  THE SILENT OECUMENE

  1.

  The Second Oecumene was a paradise, rejoicing in the most abundant goods, the most amiable prospects imaginable; no limits were defined on any of our energy budgets. There was little need for private property, no jealous competition, no cause for anything other than perfect generosity: what goods we wished could be replicated endlessly out of the endless energy the singularity fountains produced.

  “But it was not a perfect paradise. There was death. There was fear of death.

  “And there was misunderstanding. The Second Oecumene was settled during the Era of the Fifth Mental Structure. The Warlock neurofom, the Invariant neuroform and the Basic neuroform could not comprehend each other. As a by-product of fundamental differences between neurology, there were fundamental differences in psychology. There was no bridge to this gap, no common ground, no common foundation for interaction.

  “But, did we need understanding? We had privacy instead. In our paradise, with our endless abundance, no person had any need to interact with any other he found incomprehensible, or even distasteful. There were no centripetal social forces. Space habitats could be constructed by reverse total conversion to produce hydrogen gas, which, compressed and ignited with additional energies, could be nucleogenetically burnt into carbon, and nanotechnologically spun into diamond, webbed with organics and brought to life. Anyone impatient with his neighbors could create a mansion of smart-carbon crystal, staffed by a thousand ferro-vegetable servant machines, and float into an orbit far from any concerns.

  “At her height, the Second Oecumene had several hundred small artificial suns and nucleogenesis stations orbiting very far from the black hole, and tens of thousands of diamond habitats, belt upon concentric belt of asteroid mansions, as if the rings of Saturn, expanded to encompass an area greater than your Solar System, were made of inextinguishable fire and glittering fields of endless, living jewelry!

  “Your
Oecumene, the First Oecumene, is very small: even your Neptunians are near neighbors of your little system. How far from the center is the farthest habitat of your polity? Four hundred A.U.’s? Five? Our narrowest orbits of our most heavily shielded palaces were wider than that.

  “The core of our system is hell. HDE226868 is a blue-white supergiant star, and he circles the singularity once each five days. He is a monster sun, thirty-three times the mass of Sol, pulled into a tormented egg shape by the tidal stress of his close orbit around the black hole: and bands and belts of plasma are pulled in everlengthening spirals out from the giant, tendrils of flame, forever falling into the pinpoint of nothingness hidden in the X-ray halo of the accretion disk. Our ancestral instruments once watched as the masses of fire fell inward, slowing, reddening, flattening, becoming frozen in time by the relativistic effects: and that frozen fire is there still, though we watch no more. Above this, a permanent belt of white-hot condensate circles the event horizon, and the magnetic aura from the singularity’s hidden core, forever spinning, churns it to incandescent froth. This equatorial belt of radiation, potent enough that even astronomers in the Third Era detected the endless shriek of ultra-high-energy, renders the plane of our ecliptic uninhabitable.

  “And so our houses twinkled and danced in wide, wide orbits: your Neptune would be a Mercury to us. Our ancestors were short-lived. The two thousand years expected to pass between perihelion and when a house must cross the deadly plane of the ecliptic, no builder expected to live long enough to see. So, naturally, our ancestors built far from each other. So, naturally, our ancestors drifted far from each other.

  “Everyone had as many palaces as whim dictated, each was a king, an emperor, in his own realm, or even a god. The Second Oecumene was a place of light, endless light, and furious energy. Inefficient, yes, but what need had we for efficiency?