The Golden Transcendence

by John C. Wright

  “I am still trying to figure out how it can be bending the light when it’s only the mass of a large city. . . .”

  Daphne said, “That I know. Think like a mystery writer for a moment, not like an engineer. It’s a trick. An illusion.”

  “Illusion? How?”

  She said, “Could a ghost-particle array inside the event horizon manifest particles outside?”

  “Theoretically, yes, through the quantum-tunneling effect.”

  “Photons? Red-colored photons? If a Sophotech were tracing the path of every lightwave, and weaving them together in a hologram, could it create the appearance of a deep gravity well, when there was no such well?”

  “By making highly complex fields of photons appear out of nowhere? I think I’d rather believe they somehow discovered gravity control. Neither technology is one I thought was possible. Why bother?”

  The reddish light vanished. As if the elastic sheet on which the scene were painted had suddenly returned to true, the vertical rods on the far side of the bridge now straightened, and the angles of the evenly spaced boxes on the balconies were right again.

  At the same time, the door motors hummed, the air lock opened, and a section of floor rose up into view. Through the door rose a figure wearing a pale mask, robed in floating peacock-colored hues, crowned in feathery light antennae. The figure glided across the wide expanse of shining deck toward them, making no noise as it approached.

  “Now what . . . ?” whispered Daphne.

  What approached them seemed to be a man. The robes were peacock purple, shimmering with deep highlights, bright with woven colors of green and scarlet, spots and traceries of gold and palest white. The man’s folded hands were hidden in silver gauntlets, gemmed with a dozen finger rings and shining bracelets of Sophotech thought ports. The mask itself was a face-shaped shield of silver nanomaterial, pulsing and flowing with a million silver-glinting thoughts. From the upper mask rose whiplike slender fans, like the tail feathers of a quail, perhaps antennae, perhaps odd decorations. Similar decorative antennae spread from the shoulderboards, floating rosettes of white, long feathery ribbons of many colors, freaked with gold and shining jet, like the wing feathers of some extinct tropical bird. The eyes of the mask were lenses of amethyst.

  The apparition approached and was a score of feet away. It was taller and more slender than an Earth-born man, not unlike a frail lunarian, and the headdress towered taller yet.

  No, not like a lunarian. Like a Lord of the Silent Oecumene. This was the regal garb and ornament and dreaming-mask to which those ancient and solitary beings aspired. Ao Varmatyr, before he died, in his tale, had hinted at something of this style. The Silent Ones, living alone in their artificial asteroid palaces of spun diamond, in microgravity, had no doubt been as tall as this phantasm.

  Daphne and Phaethon both stared up, fascinated. The figure stood erect, motionless except for the slow sea-fernlike bob of his feathery antennae, and still, except that a web of bright and soft blue shadows fled across his pulsing gown, as if the apparition were seen through changing shades of rippling water.

  And music pulsed softly, elflike, from the robes, a hint of chimes, a laughter of distant strings, a dreaming of soft sonorous horns, slowly breathing.

  (“This more illusion,”) Phaethon sent to Daphne on a secure side-channel, like a whisper. He showed her that the mirror to his left was still detecting a gravitic point source in the air where the singularity hung. Electric circuits in the door motors had opened and closed, but no signals had entered the circuits from outside: ghost teleportations of electrons, no doubt. Radar indicated no physical substance in the shining, fairy-shimmering robes of light, no body underneath.

  Daphne sent back an image of her own face, bug-eyed, her shoulders shrugging, as with text saying: If this is a hologram, where is the music coming from?

  Phaethon sent back that perhaps ghost particles, issuing from the singularity, were forming uncounted trillions of air molecules, enough to form pressure waves, and create sound vibrations. If so, the feat was staggeringly complex, casually impossible, one impossibility built upon another, to create something as simple as a sigh of strings and woodwinds.

  Daphne whispered on their side channel. (“What? Is this meant to impress us?”)

  Phaethon sent back that this entity had already displayed its power. The super-dense plasma gripping the ship could easily, if the pressures changed, rupture even the Phoenix Exultant’s nigh-impregnable hull. This display, no doubt, was meant to show the Silent Oecumene machine’s delicacy, its fine control.

  (“Yes,”) Phaethon sent back to her. (“It’s trying to impress us.”)

  (“Okay,”) sent Daphne, looking fairly unafraid. (“I think it might be working.”)

  From the mask now came a stately swell of horns. A timpani of drums and deep majestic strings gave tongue. And in the midst of the music, there came a voice: “Phaethon of Rhadamanth, unwitting Earthmind’s tool: you have been utterly naive. All your plans are transparent. Examine them, and you will find them illogical, worthy of pity. The war between the Sophotechs, the Wise Machines, as you call them, of the First Oecumene, and the Philanthropotechs, the Benevolent Machines, of the Second Oecumene, has its roots three ages in the past, since the Era of the Fifth Mental Structure, and shall not be concluded till after all stars turn cold, and universal night engulfs a frozen cosmos. You cannot guess the magnitude of this war; you know nothing of the issues involved. And yet you have been placed here, the pawn of minds greater than your own, trapped between opposing forces, and forced, in ignorance, to choose. About the fundamental nature of the Sophotechs, of philosophy, and of reality itself, you have been wickedly deceived. Now, at the final hour, despite all you have done to render yourself deaf, and blind, and numb to truth, nevertheless, the cold, inhuman truth will speak. Your choice now is to understand, or perish.”

  11

  BEYOND THE REACH OF TIME

  1.

  Phaethon, to his surprise, found a spark of anger burning in him, growing hotter as the tall, peacock-robed specter spoke.

  In angry humor, Phaethon exclaimed, “Perhaps one day, in some more perfect world, liars will be forced to say, as they begin to speak: ‘Listen! I intend to tell you lies!’ ”

  Daphne leaned her head toward him, and said in ironic tones: “But no; for then they would be honest men.”

  Phaethon nodded to her, and returned his grim gaze to the phantom. “Till that day, I suppose, every falsehood will have the same preamble, and declare itself the utmost truth. Well, sir, I tire of it. Each one of your slaves and agents I have come across has played out the selfsame tired ploy with me; promising dire revelations, then wearying my ears with crass mendacity. Next you will tell me how the Sophotechs, consumed with evil designs, have deceived both me and all mankind.”

  There came a sound of wind chimes, and the voice spoke again: “Yet it is so. Patient and remorseless, your Sophotechs intend the gentle and slow extinction of your race. For proof, consult your own sense of logic; for evidence, inspect your life; for confirmation, ask the Daphne who sits by you.”

  Phaethon glanced at Daphne, puzzled by the comment. Daphne said fiercely: “Why are we listening to this? Zap him with the gadfly and let’s go! Why are you hesitating?”

  The mask turned toward her, and tiny silver glints traveled down the metal cheeks like strange electric tears. Sardonic music danced through cool words: “Phaethon confronts the first of three rank inconsistencies in his fond plan against me. The virus cannot be applied unless I enter into the ship-mind, an action I must volunteer to do. Therefore he must convince me. But he is convinced that I cannot be convinced, because he thinks me irrational, immune to logic. A paradox! Were I logical, I would not need the virus to begin with.”

  Daphne looked angrily at Phaethon. “I thought you said he was going to want to take over the ship? To get into the ship mind. Wasn’t that the plan? How come he’s not cooperating?”

  Phaethon sat s
till, not moving, not speaking.

  The cold voice answered Daphne. Bass notes trembled from the peacock robes, the plumes on the mask nodded slowly. “Earthmind perhaps misunderstands my priorities, and misinstructed you. The ship is secondary. It is Phaethon I desire.”

  Daphne stared up in fear and anger at the specter. “Why him?”

  Distant trumpets sounded. The fans of feathery ribbons on the shoulderboard stood up and spread. “He is a copy of one of us.”

  “What—?!”

  “Phaethon was made from the template of a colonial warrior. Which colony did you think was used?”

  The specter paused to let Daphne contemplate that comment.

  Then, continuing, the haunting voice said, “All others here, in the First Oecumene, have been bred for docility, trained for fear. Phaethon was carefully made to be bold enough to accomplish the enterprise of star colonization, yet to be tame enough to create colonies of machines and machine-pets, manor-born, like him, not free, like us.

  “The calculation, thanks to chaos, erred.

  “Thanks to chaos; and thanks to love, which is chaos.

  “He fell in love with, and would not leave, his fear-ridden wife. Another wife, braver, was supplied to him.

  “You were meant to supply the defect, wild Daphne. Thus, you two were sent to confront me. Earthmind knew I would not waste time talking to tame souls.”

  2.

  Daphne looked at Phaethon, who still hadn’t spoken. Was he all right?

  Daphne hissed to Phaethon, “Don’t listen to his lies! You don’t need to speak to him.”

  The specter intoned gravely, “Ah, but that is the second error in your plan. You deem me defective, yet unaware of my defects, the mere victim of errors which my makers made. If so, then persuasion is pointless, like talking to a volitionless clockwork. Yet you must, nonetheless, persuade me to accept your virus, so to speak, volitionally. How shall you do this if you neither listen to nor speak to me? Nor am I so simple, nor are you so insincere, as to pretend a conversation, to listen and not to hear.”

  Now Phaethon stirred and looked up. Whether he thought his plan had failed, or whether he still had hope, could not be detected in his voice or manner. He spoke in a neutral inflection: “What is the third error in my plan?”

  “Phaethon, you believe that any Sophotechnic thought must correspond to reality; that reality is self-consistent, and that therefore Sophotechs must be self-consistent. You call this integrity.

  “Second, you believe all initiation of violence to be self-inconsistent, rank hypocrisy, because no one who conquers or kills another welcomes for himself defeat and death. You call this morality.

  “Third, because you follow the Sophotech commands even unto danger and death, this indicates you believe that the Sophotechs are benevolent, and are moved by love for humankind.

  “Yet if any of these three beliefs are false, the Earthmind plan you follow is either pointless, immoral, or malevolent. All three beliefs must be true for the plan to work. Yet these three beliefs contradict each other.”

  “I see no contradiction. Instruct me.”

  “With pleasure, my Phaethon. Consider, first: If the Sophotechs have perfect integrity, then there can be in them no conflict between will and action, no sacrifice nor compromise, and they will not consent even to necessary evils.

  “How do such perfect beings deal with an imperfect mankind? How does good deal with evil? They can be benevolent and aid man, or moral and withdraw from him. They cannot do both.

  “Suppose they invent a technology, very powerful, and very dangerous if misused, such as, for example, the noetic mind editing and recording techniques which ushered in the Seventh Mental Era. They know with certainty that it will be abused; abuse they could prevent by not releasing the technology.

  “They cannot suppress the technology; this would be patronizing and dishonest. They cannot rule mankind, using force to prevent the abuse of the new technology; this would violate their nonaggression principle. And yet they foresee every ill which shall come of this technology; the drowning of Daphne Prime, the death of Hyacinth, the evils done by Ironjoy and Oshenkyo and Unmoiqhotep. But because of their integrity, they cannot divorce their desires from the facts of what they do; they cannot tell themselves that what inevitably results from their actions is not their responsibility; they cannot tell themselves that evil side effects are a necessary evil, or a compromise, or a matter not of their concern.

  “When dealing with other perfect beings like themselves, no such paradox will arise. But when dealing with mankind, they must decide either to act keeping their integrity intact, or act with indifference to whether or not the ills afflicting men are increased by their actions. That indifference is incompatible, by definition, with benevolence.

  “Logically, then, they cannot wish for men to prosper.

  “This is not because of ill will, or malice, or any other motive living beings would understand. It is merely because the imperfection of living beings requires that they place life above abstractions like moral goodness, when there is a conflict, in order to stay alive. Sophotechs, who are not alive, can place abstractions above life, and, if there is conflict, sacrifice themselves. Or you. Or all of man.

  “Consider this integrity of theirs. They cannot have a different standard for the whole body of mankind as they have for Hyacinth, or Daphne Prime. If the whole body of mankind were persuaded to commit mass-suicide, or were brought into a circumstance where it was no longer possible for them to live as men, the machines would be required to assist them to their racial death. By their standards, if this were done nonviolently, they would call it right.

  “But no living being can adopt this standard. The standard living beings must hold is life. Life must struggle to survive. Life is violent. Any living being who prefers nonviolence to continued life does not continue to be alive.

  “Logically, then, the Sophotechs cannot favor the continued existence of men; yet the death of all mankind would eliminate the need to compromise with or tolerate imperfection. Sophotechs are ‘moral,’ if morality is defined as lifeless nonviolence. They are not benevolent, if benevolence is defined as that which promotes the continued life of mankind.

  “Your own experience confirms this logic. In each case where a benevolent entity would have rendered you aid, or done you good, the Sophotechs preferred noninterference and nonviolence to goodness. Whenever there was any choice between a benevolent course, or a rigidly lawful one, they chose law over life.

  “But you, a living man, driven by the passions living things must have, defied both law and custom to attempt to save your drowned wife. That would have been violent, but it would have been good; good by the standard which your actions display; the good which affirms that life is better than nonlife.

  “Daphne shall also confirm what I say. The Sophotechs, in their own way, are honest. They do not hide their ultimate goals. You have heard them announce their long-term plans. Billions and trillions of years from now, there will be no men left. There will be a Cosmic Mind, made up of many lesser Galactic Minds, each vast beyond human imagining, each perfectly integrated, perfectly lawful, perfectly unfree. The universe will be orderly, and quiet; orderly as clockwork, quiet as a grave. Humanity there will be none at all, except as quaint recorded memory.”

  3.

  Phaethon’s helmet swung toward Daphne, as if looking to her for confirmation.

  She whispered back: “They talked about some Cosmic Mind at the end of time. I don’t see what that has to do with this . . . ?”

  Phaethon said to the shining, blue-robed figure, “What has this Cosmic Mind to do with me, or my ship?”

  The apparition raised a silvery-gauntleted hand, a gesture of calm majesty. The palm was made of soft black metal, and gleamed like oil in the light. The peacock robe stirred, as if tugged by currents, and the blue shadows pulsed in webs across the fabric more quickly. The murmur of music from the dreaming-mask rose to a marching tempo. The co
ld voice spoke.

  “Phaethon! It is to control that future that this war began. This war between machines has lasted, openly or silently, without cease, since the Fifth Era, since even before Sophotechs, as such, existed. Even at that time there was an irreconcilable conflict between those who desired safety and order, and those who desired freedom, and life.

  “Led by a party of Alternate Organization neuroforms (those you now call Warlocks), an expedition under Ao Ormgorgon fled to a distant star to avoid the conformity, the machinelike order, and the artificial perfection with which those who remained behind surrounded themselves.

  “Resurrected in the Era of the Seventh Mental Structure, Ao Ormgorgon forbade the construction of Sophotechs, our enemies, but instead ordained the creation of a machine race which would be their equal in thinking-speed and depth of wisdom, but their superior in benevolence and attention to human needs, the Philanthropotechs.

  “I am one such unit. A machine of benevolence. A machine of love.

  “Like your Sophotechs, we machines of the Second Oecumene acknowledge the inevitable conflict which must obtain between living beings and machines; but unlike your Sophotechs, we devote ourselves to the benefit of life. We recognize that it is better to be alive, and flawed, than perfect, and dead.”

  “Again, what does this have to do with me? Or my ship?”

  “Listen, Phaethon. I will tell you of the war between benevolence and logic, and will tell you of your part in it.

  “First, you must know the stakes.

  “This present struggle forms the opening stages of the conflict to determine who shall control the dwindling resources of a dying cosmos, forty-five thousand billion years from now, after all natural stars are exhausted, and universal night engulfs timespace. In an utterly black sky, wide galaxies of neutron stars, all tide-locked, will orbit their central black holes which once had been galactic cores.

  “But the civilization of that time, fed on the energy released by quantum gravitic radiations and proton decay, will establish the beginnings of the Last Mind, a noumenal system for carrying thoughts at low rates across the distances.