Backstage: General Discussion Thread

Wheel-of-Life was a Cerebelline ecoperformer of the Decentral Spirit School, as well as trustee for all copyrighted biotechnology based on the Five Golden Rings mathematics. She appeared as a matron of serene beauty and grave demeanor, seated on a throne of living flowers, grass, and hedge, in which a dozen species of birds and insects nested. She was also physically present (insofar as that word had meaning for Decentral Spiritualists), but her great cloak of interwoven living fibers ran from her shoulders out the window to where the other plants and animals that formed her corporate body and mind components reposed.

Cerebellines were a neuroform whose hindbrain and cortex were interconnected in the pattern called "global," from their ability to resolve multiple simultaneous interrelationships. They could think in a timeless meditation, and from many points of view at once. This avoided set-theory paradoxes, and linear-thought limitations. It was one of the least popular neuroforms in the Golden Oecumene, however, since it fell prey too easily to mystical conundrums and nonverbalisms.

(Helion was not able to maintain a translation from her point of view for any length of time. The plantlike parts of her were aware of the room only as motion, pressure, sunlight, moisture, but also as computer movements, information flows. The birds and rodents gave so many small, scattered pictures and sounds of the Conclave that Helion was perplexed; and the thoughts were so tangled with sharp, bright shards of instinct, lust, hunger, fear, that Helion's brain-structure could not assimilate or index the perceptions.)

Wheel-of-Life indicated an objection. She expressed herself by holding up her hands and creating a miniature ecosystem in its globe. Microbes, plankton, brightly colored fish-shaped darts swam in the globe; triangular shark things fought many-tentacled cephalopods in relentless subsea wars. She shattered the globe on the table surface into many globes. In each of the lesser globes, one species and only one rose to dominance, destroyed all competition, overgrazed, died back, and lost its throne. In every case the single dominant life form subdivided into new avenues as evolution continued.

Ao Aoen, the Master Dreamer, owner of a vast entertainment empire, spoke up: "I agree with Wheel-of-Life. Helion's vision will create a future of monochromatic conformity; events will narrow toward simplicity. Yet our society is diverse. Solutions are diverse. Within the mind are webs of interconnections, laws of thought; between minds are webs of social relation, laws of institutions. Turn one inside out and you have the other. Yet which of us is simple enough to be understood by, or complex enough to understand, ourselves?!"

Ao Aoen was a Warlock neuroform. His brain had interconnections between the temporal lobes, nonverbal left-brain lobes, and the thalamus and hypothalamus, seats of emotion and passion. Consequently, the relationships between his conscious and subconscious were nonstandard, and allowed him to perform accurately what base neuroforms could do only infrequently: acts of insight, intuition, inspiration, pattern recognition, lateral thinking. He could script his dreams. And dreams were merely one of several overlaps between conscious and unconscious realms that he had mastered, or to which he had surrendered.

He was physically present in a hideously beautiful body, patterned with scales like a colored cobra. Extra skull extensions gave his head the shape of a manta ray, shadowing his shoulders and reaching down his back. He had a half a dozen hands and arms, with fingers a yard or more in length. Between his fingers and his arms, like butterfly wings, tissues carrying a dozen delicate sensory-membranes stretched. This gave him scores of sensual sensations beyond the normal ranges.

(Ao Aoen saw the standardized version of the library scene, but overlaid with several dreams and half-dreams, so that every object seemed charged with mysterious and profound symbolism. Ao Aoen had superimposed a webwork of lines, glyphs, astrological notations, indicating loyalties and emotional, or, perhaps, magical-symbolic, sympathies or affiliations. Each Peer was represented by the self-image they projected, so that Orpheus, for example, who projected none, looked to Ao Aoen like an empty black cube.)

Ao Aoen said in a voice like a hollow woodwind, "I see patterns within patterns here. Let our society step outside itself and let us watch ourselves with awe and curious fear, as if we were strangers. The first thing we see is that most of our population (population measured only as information use) are Sophotech machine-minds. The whole rest of our society, our empires and efforts, are like the Amish who refused Fourth Era assimilation, like an animal preserve to be sustained while the Sophotechs spend their efforts contemplating abstract mathematics."

Kes Sennec the Logician spoke in even and uninflected tones. "Peer Vafnirs's comment, spoken just now, calling all of our actions 'ignoble' and 'self-centered' contains inaccuracies and semantic nonentities. Assuming that I do not presently misunderstand his intent, I presently disagree, on the grounds that the statement is overbroad, stereotypical, and inaccurate."

Kes Sennec was also actually present, a bald, large-headed man in a gray single-suit. A row of control points ran along the left closure of the tunic; he wore no other ornamentation. His skin color was gray, adjusted to local light-radiant levels, as were his eyes. His body shape was unremarkably standardized, with special organs and adaptations for zero-gravity environment, and his nervous system was highly modified with monitors, correctives, and gland overrides to ensure emotional stability and sanity.

"If a critical number of the individuals in society cooperate in actions which lead, deliberately or as a side effect, to conditions which, to an effective number of individuals, appear to favor the use of aggression and deception (as opposed to peaceful strategies of social cooperation) for the achievement of what they at that time perceive to be their goals, then every necessary and sufficient condition for the breakdown of the social order is present, and the pressure favoring the breakdown grows in rough proportion as the effective number of individuals grows. By 'breakdown' I mean both that individuals resort to violence and that they believe they must do so for fear that other individuals will do so.

"Logically, to avoid this, a sufficient uniformity of operative decision-making mores and values above a threshold level of participants must obtain; these decision values must include, at least, a priority placed on the preservation of the peaceful resolution of perceived and real conflicts. The term 'conformity' is not necessarily inappropriate to depict this uniform decision structure."

Kes Sennec was of the Invariant neuroform, a highly integrated unicameral nervous system. His brain had accessible subroutines, habits, and reflexes, but no subconsciousness properly so called. The Invariant neuroform was the second least popular among the Golden Oecumene, since all people with such uniform brains tended to think and act with startling uniformity. The Invariants had no emotional difficulties or internal conflicts.

(Kes Sennec's view of the room was entirely stark and real, with no filter, no editing. He saw Helion's body as a humanoid mannequin; he saw the tiny dull-colored plugs and antennae along Gannis's neck that connected with the Gannis Overmind; he saw the electronic activity surrounding all Wheel-of-Life's pets and pseudo-plants. He could see the wires and nodes swirling among Vafnir's column of flame, and the mechanism producing the field effects where Vafnir's consciousness was actually stored. To Kes Sennec, Orpheus was merely a remote on treads, skeletal, equipped with waldo-hands, lenses, and speakers. It all was unappealing, plain, colorless. Also, the outside noise, distant music, yells, and odors coming in through the window, were part of Kes Sennec's all-embracing attention. Once again, Helion could not tolerate the other's scene. Helion's brain structure required him to rate sense impressions by priority, and to ignore sensations of low importance. Kes Sennec's Invariant brain saw everything, paid attention to everything, judged everything with inhuman, unemotional precision.)

Kes Sennec concluded: "Those who act to prevent war and violence from occurring cannot properly be called 'selfish' and 'ignoble' even if they act in a way which benefits their self-interest."

The one Peer who had not spoken was an emissary for the Communication and Financial planning subroutine of the Eleemosynary Composition. The Eleemosynary was a group-mind with thousands of members, founded during the turmoils of the Fifth Mental Structure, with memory chains and records reaching back over eighty thousand years. The Eleemosynary Composition was one of the first to include peoples of different nervous system structures into one combination. In the far past, he-they had been a powerful political force, one of the founding architects of the Sixth Mental Structure and the age of the machine-minds. Now, all political power evaporated, the Eleemosynary Composition made his-their fortunes in interpretation and translation and arbitration between different groups and mind-sets in the Golden Oecumene.

The Emissary was embodied and costumed as a figure from Eleemosynary mythopoetry, a winged-lion chimera who wore three heads: monkey, hawk, and serpent. Each head held a separate brain, one of each of the three neuroforms of which the Eleemosynary group-mind was composed: the basic, the Invariant, and the Warlock. (Helion saw that, like Helion, the Emissary viewed the room from the other peers' viewpoints, but, unlike him, he-they did not have any private viewpoint of his-their own. Also unlike him, his-their nervous systems could understand the views coming from Kes Sennec and Wheel-of-Life.)

The Emissary said, "Whoever wishes to serve the Good should embrace long-term as well as short-term considerations into his councils. In less than one hundred billion years, Sol passes to other phases of stellar decay, and no longer will be serviceable. Forethought requires that provision be made to evacuate, but civilization not be jarred or disturbed. Technologies should be developed to accommodate the movement of all worlds and world-habitats elsewhere, social institutions adapted to preserve peace and orderliness, with philosophies to supply ideological justification. Chaos, violence, terror, should be, at all costs, avoided. Only thus can the service of all to all be maintained. Humbly, it is wondered if, in the vision presented by Peer Helion, society, by the time star colonization is needed, will have sufficient genius, foresight, and resolve to attempt the abyss between the stars. Stable societies are not known for these virtues."

"You see?" said Ao Aoen, "The great Eleemosynary Composition is willing to oppose a society of strict conformity; and he-they are the very soul of union and unselfishness! What does that make us, we who urge the plan?"

"There is, perhaps, misinterpretation," replied the Emissary, turning his-their three heads to stare at Ao Aoen. "It was meant to say that the star-colonization question should be raised long after Helion's efforts to extend Sol's useful lifespan have run their course. If raised before then, conflict and chaos may result. The occupation by colonists of nearby star systems may preclude peaceful evacuation at Sol's death. Peace is supreme; only thus can the service of all to all be maintained. Change one day will be needed and welcomed, when time is complete, and Sol's power is exhausted. But before that time, what need has peace and contentment to be disturbed by innovators and adventurers?"