2312

by Kim Stanley Robinson

Do you imagine they must have been fools? Do you think you would never make such a mistake? Don’t you be so sure. Really you have no idea. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. You may think you are inured, that nothing outside the mind can really interest you anymore, as sophisticated and knowledgeable as you are. But you would be wrong. You are a creature of the sun. The beauty and terror of it seen from so close can empty any mind, thrust anyone into a trance. It’s like seeing the face of God, some people say, and it is true that the sun powers all living creatures in the solar system, and in that sense is our god. The sight of it can strike thought clean out of your head. People seek it out precisely for that.

Habits begin to form at the very first repetition. After that there is a tropism toward repetition, for the patterns involved are defenses, bulwarks against time and despair. Wahram was very aware of this, having lived the process many times; so he paid attention to what he did when he traveled, on the lookout for those first repetitions that would create the pattern of that particular moment in his life. So often the first time one did things they were contingent, accidental, and not necessarily good things on which to base a set of habits. There was some searching to be done, in other words, some testing of different possibilities. That was the interregnum, in fact, the naked moment before the next exfoliation of habits, the time when one wandered doing things randomly. The time without skin, the raw data, the being-in-the-world.

There were some people, standing by the buildings next to the trees. They were small somehow. Weighted down. Could this be so close to the great city? Was it indeed part of the city, part of what made it work, not just the wetlands but the legions of poor marginal people, living in the half-drowned ruins? The weight of the planet began to drag her down. Those people over there were like figures out of Brueghel, people from the sixteenth century, bowed down with time. Maybe these were the people living a real life, and what she did in space nothing more than the dilettantism of a gaga aristo. Maybe what she really needed to do was to live here and build things, maybe houses, little but functional, a different kind of goldsworthy. Under the sky, in the full light of the sun—the utter luxury of the real. The only real world. Earth, heaven and hell both—natural heaven, human hell. How could they have done such a thing, how could they have not tried harder?

the space diaspora occurred as late capitalism writhed in its internal decision concerning whether to destroy Earth’s biosphere or change its rules. Many argued for the destruction of the biosphere, as being the lesser of two evils

marginal capitalism is a tough-guy sport like rugby or tackle football, suitable mostly for people slightly overdosed on testosterone. On the other hand, with some rule and attitude changes, it has proven it can be an interesting game, even beautiful, like baseball or volleyball. It is a valid project at the margin, a form of self-actualization, not to be applied to the necessities, but on the margin a nice hobby, even perhaps an art form

It’s almost always a pleasure. I try not to worry about them. I love the kids; I remember parts of their lives they don’t remember themselves. I think that’s of more interest to me than to them. That’s all right. Memory is a haunting. You remember times you liked, and you want something like them. But you can only get new things. So I try to want what I get. It isn’t obvious how to do it.

He thought about that for a while. The lights passed them overhead, he pushed her on the cart. Was that right? Was it how you felt about what you did that made it good or bad, rather than what you did, or what others saw? Well, you were stuck in your thoughts. The current medical definition of the term “neurotic” was simply “a tendency to have bad thoughts.” If you had that tendency, he thought, looking down at Swan’s bare scaly head, if you were neurotic, then the material to work with would be nearly infinite. Was that true? Well, here they were, little spins of atoms which felt inside that something mattered, even while looking out at the stars, even inside a tunnel that looped downward forever. Then the spin would decohere and collapse. So, faced with that: good thoughts or bad thoughts?

Charlotte Shortback’s periodizing system was very influential. Of course, the idea of periodization itself is controversial and even suspect, as it seems often to be a matter of squinting hard and waving one’s hands in belletristic fashion to make sock puppet myths out of the dense “buzzing and blooming confusion” of the documented past. Nevertheless, there do seem to be differences in human life between, for instance, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment and the Postmodern; and whether these differences were caused by changes in modes of production, structures of feeling, scientific paradigms, dynastic succession, technological progress, or cultural metamorphosis, it almost doesn’t matter. The shapes invoked make a pattern, they tell a story that people can follow.

They offered tips for how to catch the wave, but Swan nodded agreeably and forgot their advice: surfing was surfing. You needed to catch the break at its own particular speed, and off you went.

In any case she had always preferred bodysurfing to surfing on boards. To be the object of flight, to cast yourself out into the spaces you breathed, and although motionless be flying at speed, slung forward—

Despite this, people tried things. So much more power than ever before was at their command that some felt they could at last begin to overturn Jevons Paradox, which states that the better human technology gets, the more harm we do with it. That painful paradox has never yet failed to manifest itself in human history, but perhaps now was the tipping point—Archimedes’ lever brought to bear at last—the moment when they could get something out of their growing powers besides redoubled destruction. But no one could be sure. They still hung suspended between catastrophe and paradise, spinning bluely in space like some terrible telenovela. Scheherazade was Earth’s muse, it seemed; it was just one damn thing after another, always one more cliffhanger, clinging to life and sanity by the skin of one’s teeth; and so the spacers kept on coming home, home to home’s nightmares, with the Gordian knot tied right in their guts.

Sorry, but it’s true. It has to be said: the stars exist beyond human time, beyond human reach. We live in the little pearl of warmth surrounding our star; outside it lies a vastness beyond comprehension. The solar system is our one and only home. Even to reach the nearest star at our best speed would take a human lifetime or more. We say “four light-years” and those words “four” and “years” fool us; we have little grasp of how far light travels in a year.

“Interesting. So …” Swan thought for a while. “Make up a recipe for a successful revolution.” “Take large masses of injustice, resentment, and frustration. Put them in a weak or failing hegemon. Stir in misery for a generation or two, until the heat rises. Throw in destabilizing circumstances to taste. A tiny pinch of event to catalyze the whole. Once the main goal of the revolution is achieved, cool instantly to institutionalize the new order.”

“So do you think you’re getting smarter? I mean wiser? I mean more conscious?” “Those are very general terms.” “Of course they are, so answer me! Are you conscious?” “I don’t know.” “Interesting. Can you pass a Turing test?” “I cannot pass a Turing test, would you like to play chess?” “Ha! If only it were chess! That’s what I’m after, I guess. If it were chess, what move should I make next?” “It’s not chess.”

“History is a product of labor just like the work of art itself, and obeys analogous dynamics”

we all began female, and always had both sexual hormones in us. We always had masculine and feminine behavioral traits, which we had to train into gender-appropriate behaviors, even though they were traits that everyone has. We selectively encouraged or repressed traits, so for most of our history we have reinforced gender. But in our deepest selves we were always both.

My oh my, they said. If we can just keep our shit together here we’re gonna make this a real nice place.

They had spent quite a bit of time together at this point; made music together; were sleeping together. Swan felt herself liking him, and felt in her the desire to like him, and the pleasure she took in that feeling coming to her. This was a feedback loop.

Maybe to say that someone was “like this” or “like that” was just an attempt to stick a memory to a board where you organized memories, like butterflies in a lepidopterist’s collection. Not really the generalization it seemed, but just a stab at understanding. Was Wahram anything like what she might say about him, if she tried to say something? He was like this, he was like that—she didn’t really know. One had impressions of other people, nothing more. Never to hear them think, only to hear what they said; it was a drop in an ocean, a touch across the abyss. A hand holding your hand as you float in the black of space. It wasn’t much. They couldn’t really know each other very well. So they said he is like this, or she is like that, and called that the person. Presumed to make a judgment. It was such a guess. You would have to talk with someone for years to give the guess any kind of validity. And even then you wouldn’t know.

And yet you do care. I love you, you said. And—Swan admitted to herself—she wanted him to feel that way when he was with her. That way—is this what love was, this desire for a feeling that remained unclear even when felt? Is that why people sometimes thought of it as a madness? The words stay the same, even the feelings stay the same, but there are slippages between the words and the feelings, hard to track. The desire to know, to be known, to be cherished for what you are and not what others think you should be … But then, what you are … It was hard for her not to feel that a person loving her was making a big mistake. Because she knew herself better than they did, so knew their love was given in error. And thus they must be some kind of fool. And yet it was precisely that misplaced love she wanted. Someone who would like you more than you do. Someone who likes you despite yourself, someone more generous to you than you are. That was how Alex had been. And when you see that, when you feel that—feel loved beyond justice, from some kind of generosity—that sets off certain other feelings. A kind of a glow. A spillover. It caused something to start that felt reciprocal. A mutual recognition. The hall of mirrors again. Set a lased beam of light between two mirrors, back and forth the beam bounces, two parts of something more; not just the beast with two backs (though that too, for sure, and a great thing, a great animal) but something else, some kind of … pairing, like Pluto a...

Meaning, Wahram thought, that right now somewhere in the system there could be machines in human form, escaped into the crowd, doing their best to stay free, perhaps, when any X-ray machine or other surveillance device would reveal what they were—out there hiding, trying to accomplish the goals they had been given, perhaps, or new ones they might choose for themselves, according to some self-invented algorithm of survival. Damaged, dangerous, detached from any other consciousness, solitary and afraid—in other words, just like everyone else.

No happiness but in virtue. No, that wasn’t true. Each part of the triune brain had its own happiness. Lizard in the sun, mammal on the hunt, human doing something good. What’s good is what’s good for the land. So when you worked as if on the hunt, in light and warmth, at making a landscape—some place for people to live in for ages to come—then you were triunely happy. Surely that should be enough.