Here & There (73 page)

By the time she exits into the Solarium Hall, Hannah bears the appearance of a 25 annum Ascendant Guardian & Elect Liaison, an Angel as they are oft nicknamed. As soon as the door re-integrates behind Hannah, her Prime TA flanks in from the wings and falls in step with the Chancellor. An Angel and Apostle are just important enough to be given a wide berth in the forum, but not too eminent to cause a stir or arouse any real attention.

“What in Petrarch’s Dark took so long?” Hannah lashes out at her underling.

“There is an issue with one of the Alternate Elects.”

Hannah rolls her eyes, knowing the drill all too well. “Let me guess, he’s been overcome with a sudden philanthropic impulse and wants to unburden himself with some beneficence for the Lyceum. What is he offering, a new Research Grant?”

“A Babylonian Biblio
T
ech, actually,” her Prime TA corrects.

Hannah’s sarcastic whistle dissipates into the voluminous solarium as they hustle through. “And all he’s asking is for a simple recalculation of the hierarchy, so he might become one of the Ascendant Eight. An alternative for the alternate.”

“He was wondering about simply adding himself as an addition, actually.” Her TA shares a knowing smile.

“Oh, is that all?”

Hannah would prefer to do away with the four mandated back-up Ascendants. But they needed them in case an Elect couldn’t Ascend for whatever reason. This had only happened once since Ascendancy began, due to a fatal mishap on the eve of the ceremony. Still, once was enough.

There was always at least one of the alternates, every equinox, offering some sort of deal in a rush to reach the athanasia inside the Divinity Drive. Immortality is too tempting a prize, even if it costs corporeal existence. Almost all of the Lyceum participate in the bi-annual lottery, all hoping for the chance to trade their bodies in for eternal existence with the D Drive—an incorporeal incorporation. All long for the one-way ticket to become virtual gods, limited only by their imaginations, in the ethereal landscape
inside the quantum drive. All yearn to join the others who Ascended before them, becoming incarnations of immortality and waging Titanic wars against each other.

From the outside, the Council observes this fertile battlefield for gods and harvests the Ascendants’ dreams, turning their imagined innovations into the Lyceum’s cutting edge technologies. Processed through QT’s viability filters, manufactured by nano-molders, most of the Lyceum’s advancements, from the
InstaTram
to the foglets, have been reaped from the conflicts within this virtual Valhalla. Even the Divinity Drive itself was dreamt up by one of the Initial
8
shortly after they were serendipitously, though accidentally, transmuted into quantum storage. In its first annum it was a fecund landscape that produced scores of innovations. Soon after, however, the Initial
8
began to evolve into abstract, sedate, contemplative entities and seemed to lose their sense of selves.

It took several cycles of trial and error for Amaranth Pink’s experimental science department to determine the need for the Ascendancy. New Ascendants were necessary every half-annum, for both stimulation and grounding. Otherwise the previous Ascendants would become intangible and ethereal in their thinking and the Divinity Drive would become too Edenic. Complacency and peace have little utility for the Lyceum, at least within the D Drive. Eventually, Amaranth Pink determined 2
³
new participants were just enough to stir things up without overwhelming the realm in chaos. Hence, the Ascendant Eight.

Limiting the number of permissible Ascendants to eight also generated the beneficial byproducts of awe and obedience in the real world. It transformed the Lyceum from a rogue cloister of Intelligentsia into society’s salvation, with the Council acting as the Guardians. Religion, with its fallacies and promises of heaven, was rendered a fairytale. Faith was replaced by fact. Belief became an outmoded fool’s errand. Knowledge and truth are what the Lyceum offers, not to mention a real and quantifiable everlasting life, which is promised to all when the D Drive finally stabilizes and expands enough to resurrect all the scanned souls from the Numinous Archive. All will be ushered into infinity by the Ascendants. But first they must demonstrate awe and obedience.

Nevertheless, people were still people. So there was always one alternate who
had the utmost respect for tradition
, but no understanding of physiks. One who believes perhaps just this once the rules may be bent like space around a neutron star. Only a fortunate few are allowed on the equinox to Ascend and transcribe their consciousness into the Divinity Drive.

“Refer our ambitious Alternate to the Scarlet’s office.” Hannah smiles to herself at this delicious delegation. “Let him explain the Law’s lack of leniency and review the rules of exponents.” Hannah’s TA understood the reference, how it would be impossible for them to allow just one more Ascendant. If they were to add any others it would have to be eight more for a total of sixteen. The physiks was based on a geometric binary expansion, not an arithmetic one, 2
^x
not 2x. Adding one more changed it from 2
³
to 2
⁴
, 8 to 16.

“When he returns with his disappointment, offer him monthly Katharses and a guaranteed Ascendancy at the next equinox,” Hannah instructs. “But only after securing his donation of the Babylonian Biblio
Tech.”

“Perfect, Madame Chancellor.”

Across the Forum, Hannah makes out a crowd outside of Hippocratic Hall. There was always a rush for Katharsis before the festival. People want a clean slate to sully with sanctioned debauchery. The Geminis must be hard at work. She was proud when her sons rose to their position of prominence in Hippocratic Hall, and prouder still when they resurrected the ritual of submission from the old healers. The infirm would first be relegated to a communal meditation chamber, where they would await a uniformed Minder to escort them to an individual rumination room to endure another interim, until one of the Geminis would come in for a personal consulting and diagnosing, and finally be admitted for Katharsis. The cleansing of a malady was a process of submission, waiting, a demonstration of obedience and humility.

Hannah gave into it every month. Katharsis might remove any new malignancy, but it couldn’t correct a genetic predisposition. “And see if the Geminis have time for me later this post-perigee. Have the Inquisitors found anything yet?” Hannah had to keep up the pretense of a witch-hunt even with her TAs.

“They have canvassed only a quarter of Prescience Archive as of yet.”

Hannah nods. “It will take time. Keep me informed.”

“Are you not returning to the Athenaeum with me?”

Even through the foglet veneer, her TA perceives the invective in Hannah’s gaze.

“Shall I update you through your Cochlear?”

Hannah shakes her head no, knowing full well she would be disengaging all neuroplants equipped with GPS. “Don’t bother. Just upload it to my Herald Feed.”

Her TA nods, folds her hands together and opens them like a book.
“In veritas.”

“In veritas,”
Hannah echoes, and watches her TA head off to the Athenaeum tower. Before Hannah even makes it down the marble steps of the Forum to the
InstaTram
, the foglets have shimmered into the facade of an overweight, unshaven, unkempt Tunnel
T
echnician.

HANNAH’S EYES GLOW GREEN
in the dark tunnels of the
d
atacombs. The gallium arsenide Omnibus GEN CX+ optic implants had clicked on automatically when the door had slid shut. They always make her feel like she’s looking through aquamarine glasses. She shivers in the cold air of the tunnel. Geothermal cooling has its drawbacks, even if it does keep the servers at a stable 288 degrees Kelvin. Her foglets vibrate with warmth in response. She turns left at the next turn, led by her
C
artographEYE. Hannah’s confident she could navigate the tunnels of ancient data beneath the city with her eyes closed, having visited him so often down here. Hubris does not trump a simple download, though, and arrow impulses that flash through her visual cortex with every twist are simply reassuring encouragements of her mental mapping capabilities.

The auto-gating function of her Omnibus implant kicks in as she pushes open the door into the vast, brightly lit
d
atacomb chamber. A robe and hood decorated with both Bright and Amaranth Pink sit balled up on a chair.

“Hello, Hannah,” he sighs, continuing to tinker with the Kefitzat Haderechon machine.

Hannah’s the only one who visits her husband here, who even knows about here. Other than Holloway, of course. But the good doctor’s refugee status didn’t afford her much motility. She could hardly leave the Sanctuary, let alone access the restricted
d
atacombs.

“Hello, Anaxagoras.”

His black-and-white locks dangle to his shoulders. His sinewy muscles flex beneath his gray cotton shirt. He always sheds his Sophic uniform whenever possible, preferring a more ascetic, utilitarian garb. Though a few annums older than her, Anaxagoras holds his shape well and moves with
the lithe grace of a craftsman, rather than the dignity of a senior Sophos. The lines of age sharpen the appearance of his focus more than the chiseling of time.

“Good after-apogee, Chancellor,” QT’s disembodied voice echoes around the room.

Hannah acknowledges the Quantum Thought AI with her phonetic nickname, “Good after-apogee, Cutie. Looks like you’ve been busy.”

Anaxagoras nods while interfacing with a holodesigner. His hands manipulate virtual nano-architecture. He tweaks the design slightly and QT extrapolates the ripple effect on a macro-scale. “Almost finished sharpening the aether amplifier,” he states while continuing to tweak.

“I was referring to the Prescience Archive.”

Anaxagoras pulls his hands out of the holodesign. He turns and rests them on the railing that circumvents the massive Kefitzat Haderechon machine. He half sits, half leans on/against it, wipes his brow, and looks at her. Well, at least his artificial irises focus on her. There’s no telling what private images he also has layered across his mechanical pupils. His ocular enhancements have no trouble penetrating the illusion of her foglets.

“You look tired, love.” He rubs the back of his wrist across his forehead and wrinkles his nose at her.

“Of course I do,” she sighs, exasperated, but also relieved to be truly seen by someone. “What do you expect? I just came from a Council meeting. The seven Sophos are quite discombobulated by the Ascendancy preparations, not to mention the archival anomalies.”

“The Prescience Archive is intact. I made sure of that. And the reduction of areal density even made the whole server run smoother.”

“Intact, yes. But it’s been infiltrated. And apparently thinned out.”

Anaxagoras rolls his eyes. “I bet none of them even know where the Prescience Archive is, let alone what’s in it. Tell them it was a glitch. A cataloging code loop that kept recounting the same memory mass and aggregating it as new, and one of Cutie’s probes finally caught and corrected it.”

“Which is precisely what I’m planning on the Inquisitors uncovering,” Hannah snaps back with an anger that surprises her.

“You sent those zealots?” He shakes his head. “Talk about overkill. Why not just send a Votary assassin?”

Hannah takes a breath. “So you brought the Initial
8
back here?”

Anaxagoras nods. “Dr. Holloway and I thought it was time.”

Hannah works to mask her distaste at his mention of the outsider. The Psykhe had been infecting his mind ever since she’d arrived. Dr. Holloway’s affirmations of his anxieties are aggravating his conscience.

“Is Restor
8
ion ready? You really want to tear the Initial
8
out of the Divinity Drive and try to reconstitute them?” Hannah asks, already knowing the answer. She simply doesn’t want to believe, having hoped this day would never come.

“Close enough.”

“What does Cutie think?”

“Anaxagoras’s adjustments suggest a high probability of stable manifestations,” QT’s disembodied voice chimes in.

“Will it destabilize the D Drive?” Hannah asks.

“In spite of the integral role they have played in it, the Initial
8
were never fully integrated into it. Disentangling them presents a hyperbolically low probability of any destabilization,” QT assures her.

“Satisfied?” Anaxagoras asks, crossing his arms.

Hannah sits on an overturned crate. “You don’t have to resurrect them. You can’t know what’s going to happen when they’re reconstituted. It’s never been done.”

“We have an obligation—”

“Capability does not necessitate inevitability.”

“Not to science, Hannah. Ethically. They never should’ve been there in the first place.”