2312

by Kim Stanley Robinson

“Because it only makes it worse!” Swan complained. “The longer you live, the worse it gets!” He shook his head, wiped his eyes again. “I don’t think that’s right.” He blew out a long breath. “It’s always bad. It’s the people still alive who feel it, though, and so …” He shrugged. “I think what you’re saying is that now it seems like some kind of mistake. Someone dies, we say why. Shouldn’t there have been a way to stop it. And sometimes there is. But …” “It is some kind of mistake!” Swan declared. “Reality made a mistake, and now you’re fixing it!” She gestured at the screens and cubes. “Right?” He laughed and cried at the same time. “Right!” he said, sniffing and wiping his face. “It’s stupid. What hubris. I mean, fixing reality.” “But it’s good,” Swan said.

“Have you done that?” “Yes, but it’s too long for me. I usually go out for a week or two.” “I see.” It was pretty clear he didn’t. “We were made to do this, you know,” she said suddenly. “Our bodies are nomads. Humans and hyenas are the two predators that chase their prey down by wearing it out.”

“My dear Swan, I am sorry you are hearing this,” Alex’s voice said. It was just like hearing a ghost, and Swan clutched her hands over her chest. The little voice went on: “Very sorry, in fact, because if you’re hearing this, it means I’m gone. My room AI has heard about my death, and it knows to open this box if you come in here alone. It’s the best plan I could think of. Sorry to intrude on you like this, but it’s important. This is kind of an insurance policy, because I’ve got some things going on that need to continue even if I die, and I don’t want to tell anyone else here about them. And really at our age you can go any time, so I’m setting this up. If you’re hearing this, I need your help. Please take the envelope for Wang out to Io and give it to him in person. Wang and I and a few others are working on a couple of very important projects together, and we’ve been trying to keep completely offline with them, which is very difficult to do when we live so far apart. You can help me hugely by taking him his envelope. But please keep the matter entirely to yourself. Also, if you would let your Pauline read the other chip in your envelope and then destroy the chip, that would serve as a secure backup. They both are one-reads. I hate to do even this much. But I know you don’t usually link Pauline to other qubes, and if you would keep it that way, it would be better for our plan. Wang will explain more to you, as will Wahram from Titan. Good-bye, my Swan. I love you.” That...

“Do you study rhetoric?” Wahram asked. The qube voice said, “Yes, it is a useful analytic tool.” “Give me an example, please.” “When you say exergasia, synathroesmus, and incrementum together in a list, it seems to me that you have thereby given an example of all three devices in that same phrase.” Swan snorted at this. “How so, Socrates?” “‘Exergasia’ means ‘use of different phrases to express the same idea,’ ‘synathroesmus’ means ‘accumulation by enumeration,’ and ‘incrementum’ means ‘piling up points to make an argument.’ So listing them does all three, yes?” “And what argument would you be piling up points in?” Swan asked. “That I was giving you too much credit in thinking you were using many different devices, when really you only have the one method, because these are distinctions without a difference.” “Ha-ha,” Swan said sarcastically. But Wahram had only just kept himself from laughing. The qube went on: “One could also argue that the classical system of rhetoric is a false taxonomy, a kind of fetishism—” “Enough!

“An aporia in some rhetorics is a pretended dubitation before coming back to the attack, as in Gilbert on Joyce. But Aristotle has it as an insoluble problem in an inquiry, arising from equally plausible but inconsistent premises. He writes that Socrates liked to reduce people to aporia to show them they didn’t really know what they thought they knew. The plural that Aristotle uses in his book on metaphysics is ‘aporiai.’ ‘We should first review the things about which we need from the outset to be puzzled,’ he writes. The word aporia was later adapted by Derrida to mean something like the blank spots in our understanding that we don’t even know are there, with the idea we should try to see these. It is not quite the same idea, but joins a constellation of meanings for the word. The Oxford English Dictionary references a quote from J. Smith’s Mystical Rhetoric of 1657, which says aporia refers to the problem of ‘what to do or say in some strange or ambiguous thing.’

The blank spots in our understanding we don't know are there

in residual-emergent models, any given economic system or historical moment is an unstable mix of past and future systems. Capitalism therefore was the combination or battleground of its residual element, feudalism, and its emergent element—what?

as feudalism is the residual on Earth, capitalism is the residual on Mars

Mutual assured destruction, as always.” “I’ve always wondered about that,” Wahram admitted. “What if a first strike is made to look like an accident, and is so successful that no one knows who did it, and meanwhile the victim is mostly vaporized? A scenario like that might make one think there is not any certain mutually assured destruction.” “Who would feel that way?” Swan asked. “Almost any power on Earth could make the calculation. They’re safer than any of us. And Mars is notoriously self-absorbed, and also can’t be punctured with a single dart. No, I’m not convinced there can’t be a power out there that harbors a feeling of invulnerability. Or an anger so great they don’t care about consequences.” “What could that be, though?” Swan said. “What causes that kind of anger?” “I don’t know … say food, water, land … power … prestige … ideology … differential advantage. Madness. These are the usual motives, aren’t they?” “I suppose!” She sounded horrified that he could make such a list, as if this were not part of Mercurial discourse, although really it was simply Machiavelli, or Aristotle. Pauline would know the list.

A raised hand, like the adamantine Buddha: “No reason to be annoyed.

: )

The quantum database is effectively distributed over a multitude of universes

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.

Is the totality simply praxis, meaning what we do with ourselves and our world?

An oxytocin nasal spray causes immediately better eye contact. Endorphins are nature’s version of morphine. The brain releases endorphins when injured, and when someone we love touches us.

Yay endorphins!

Certainly it was confusing. And power, confused, was always dangerous.

“I want to meet somebody,” she said to Mqaret experimentally. Mqaret laughed at her. “You like this guy! This person Wahram from Saturn. So maybe what you mean is ‘I’ve met somebody.’” Swan stared at Mqaret. It still hadn’t fully sunk in to her that it was possible to be loved. Or even to love. “But I met him a long time ago. I’ve known him for years now!” “Even better,” Mqaret said. “You know him. In fact you had to spend a lot of time with him. What happened in that utilidor? Didn’t something happen?” “We whistled, mostly,” she said. “But yes. Something happened.” “Maybe that’s what a marriage is,” Mqaret said. “Whistling together. Some kind of performance. I mean, not just a conversation, but a performance.” “Marriage,” Swan repeated, marveling at the word. To her it was a concept from the Middle Ages, from old Earth—an idea with a strong whiff of patriarchy and property. Not meant for space, not meant for longevity. One moved through one’s life in epochs, each a stage in one’s history, lasting some few or several years, and then circumstances changed and you were in a new life, with new associates.

Maybe that’s what a marriage is, Whistling together. Some kind of performance. I mean, not just a conversation, but a performance.