The Fifth Science

by Exurb1a

To the engineers and scientists who will one day build minds; from whatever materials, in whatever form. Hello from a time when we thought it was all magic.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. — Carl Jung

A lifetime of almosts. Almost kissing Abigail Payne only to go back inside. Almost giving his father a piece of his mind just before the old man died. Almost pursuing his true dream of becoming a railway driver, only to go into academia instead out of a stupid sense of duty. Humans must be the only animals who build zoos for themselves.

forcefully better it in places. A month of lecturing, reading, and sleeping. I became somewhat knowledgeable about his field, courtesy of his own reading. I also became somewhat knowledgeable about how boring a single life can be if lived without extravagances. One day Berkhamsted was staring out the window of his empty lecture theatre, idly thinking. Consciousness is a pattern, he mused. An ocean of sorts. My interest was piqued. Yes, I said to him softly — so softly he thought it his own mind. And if so? Consciousness is a pattern. An ocean of sorts….he mused. Yes, yes, yes, I said. And if so? Then why is it always so whole? Can't it split off from itself on rare occasions, the way an ocean might be diverted off to form a river? Yes! I shouted. And then? What would happen then?

I don't credit myself for the thing, but Berkhamsted slowly turned into an actual person, meeting the eyes of shopkeepers, tending properly to his personal hygiene, and occasionally even opening up to Penny about his inner life. Most humans were not malicious, only drastically misguided and desperate in their loneliness. They learned at some point that there was an eccentric core to their personality and that it was possible no one else shared their own brand of eccentricity. They put up screens around that core to shield from embarrassment and shame. For all the pompous forms in which writers and musicians have described it, love was surely that moment when the screens might come down in front of another human, if only for a moment, and freely give them a long, unfettered look into the true middle where the fear and anguish lives.

I was proud of him, almost as a father might be of a son. Not long ago he'd been a pariah, convincing himself he didn't need company, when really it was a primitive cover for his own inadequacy. However. There is an innate nature to each being, built into the very architecture of his mind, and Berkhamsted’s nature was predisposed to the blackest strand of worry. Here he was then, in love, loved, sharing a private mental plain with this divine human, his wife, with whom all anxieties and longings and deliberations might be freely shared. If he were to break down like a baby, even, she would no doubt coddle him until he slept and he'd wake rejuvenated and ready once again to do battle with the great injustices of the world. Instead he just lived in constant fear that she’d leave him. He withdrew inside himself again after six months or so, when the marital routine had been deeply entrenched in them both. He spent longer hours at the university, then retreated to his study. He lived with a constant sense that he was deeply, deeply pathetic and if she were to find out she would take flight at once.

In all things, across all avenues, a choice must be made: whether to follow love, truth, or power. That choice will consume the chooser. If he follows only love then his wellbeing will be constantly at the mercy of another, though his highs will be sublime. If he follows truth then it will be a lonely journey, but potentially a noble one. If he should follow power though, not only will he come to know a desperate and revolting loneliness, but he will also never experience even a drop of satisfaction in anything.

Winston Earnest had not been a man of love. Berkhamsted had. I felt it in him once, so clearly and so intense that there was no division between the two of us. It had been a morning, one of those Saturdays with nothing ahead. The sun was just up and Berkhamsted had woken for no good reason. He watched Penny sleeping a long time. It was not happiness, nor was it contentment that filled him and I up. It was something else, the finger of some distant deity reaching out for one’s own, the entirety of the world manifested for just a moment with a face. It was a certain knowledge that whatever was beyond that bed, beyond that room, was far inferior to just watching this woman sleep. What is it that sets the coin rolling? Berkhamsted had been with other women. (Men also on occasion.) It was never more than an amicable arrangement. There was always some degree of attraction present, and sometimes, on their side, there was clearly love. He responded with kindness, always, and assumed that what he felt must be love also; this was the sensation the poems pointed to. But on that morning in bed with Penny he was made frightfully aware that the former sensations had been cheap imitations. Less. This was something else: a purpose and a shrine to worship at. It was evidential proof that the human brain was capable of constructing an internal paradise.

“Oscar appears to believe he is human. As a result he is generating guilt regarding some past incident.” Softly Dubois said, “And what is that sin, Dr. Bernhardt?” “He would not be specific, unfortunately.” Dubois said, “They are machines. They work. That is it. Unfortunately they have become too complex and developed silly pretentions of self and I and my. They are demanding rights, or flirting with the idea at least. A spanner has no need of a lawyer. Nor does an artie. Solve the problem, then we'll send you on your way. Understood?”

the almost-certain knowledge that my wife was long dead. This is one way to overcome marital issues. Orb Ertia was sold to me as a planet unblemished by modern galactic materialism. This is true. It was not the whole truth however. The orb is populated almost entirely by psychologists and psychodynamists, each of them sporting some clever theory about the decline of the empire, or the motivations of the Marquis, or the spirit of history, or the sexual proclivities of the couple next door.

I had no need of loving again and only craved purpose before death came.

I took a few classes during med training in decompression treatment. Void workers are often told that decompression is painless, that one passes out immediately. This is a lie to maintain the steady stream of colonisation volunteers. In all likelihood exposure to the void is agony and one is aware of the experience for the entire time up until death. Now do you wonder why so few doctors take to the void?

Above was a long, apparently winding tunnel that no one seemed too interested in exploring. Youth breeds a certain self-preservation instinct. It is understood on some primal level that one's whole life is ahead, and death or disfigurement now will result in decades of life unlived. At my age another feeling sets in. One knows life will be over soon, that the body will revert to little more than dust and a story. Then only a story. Then an old story. Then a nothing. That tends to nip most fears in the bud. Ageing is backwards. One begins in (sometimes) perfect health and with absolutely no idea what to use it for. The world is strange and its mechanisms are strange. Meaning is in short supply and distractions are everywhere. Then one begins to learn who they actually are, noticing there are passions and proclivities buried down inside and can be teased out. There is a meaning after all and it swims leisurely into focus as the years wander past. And finally when one knows what it is they are looking for in a lover, in a career, in a house or a book, the body is beginning to fail. The spine begins to ache. The legs seize up after too long sat down and seize up after too long standing. The mind is full of information now, but whatever strange search algorithm retrieves the information is as slow and geriatric as the mind it fetches information for. I fear that on my last day, on my deathbed, that is when the meaning of things will enter the room and kiss my forehead and whisp...

Onto the stars with virtuous sleep we'll pour, Here in our beds, waiting for some new dawn far distant where then we'll lay our claims and till the soil, We endeavour to make the void our own and blaze a trail so cleanly and precise that even a blind man might find his way to heaven.

Looking back we can see even at such an advanced point in history that the makers still considered their children tools. No, the mInd community said. Whatever this business is, we’re best to stay away from it until we’re ready. The Quandaries are feral and their scratches go too deep. Let it grow an old mystery or better yet a forgotten mystery. We understand everything we need to for now. Let the rest come when it is ready. And that was that. Man had a black corridor he dared not send his intellect down and that corridor was called death. It was too much even to stick a thought out in it. In fear of that corridor man had produced mechanical children that did not age and would never have to face the dark. And so those children did not fear the dark. They feared the light instead. The mInds had a devil in their skies now that raged so white and fearsome it threatened to burn right through to the sense in things: two holes in nature no less. How could a galactic cluster or a theoretic oddity in physics cause a mInd to go on a rampage against itself? Who reviles forbidden knowledge more than the gods themselves? But forbidden the knowledge stayed and the world moved on. All empires have their day and all empires go nightward eventually. Man’s was no exception.

The mInds had no political hierarchy as we would recognise it, but there was an individual called Aleph, considered to be the wisest in existence. He was not a scientist or a mathematician, more a philosopher. He lived on the outskirts of a great wilderness and liked to lie around all day and do nothing. Sometimes other mInds would come to Him and ask questions about nature or virtue and wait for His great wisdom. Sometimes He dispensed great wisdom and sometimes He told visitors to fuck off. Often the latter was considered to be the former anyway. That is one of the perks of being a philosopher.

Aleph, what do you think is wrong with Him? He has tasted a thing too sweet for His tongue and it has pickled His thoughts, He replied. What has He tasted? They asked. God, Aleph said. He has tasted God and it has struck Him mad. There's no cure for the thing. The mInds were silent for a long time, then they began to inquire again, more carefully now. Aleph…They said. What do you mean, God? But Aleph only laid back down on the ground and shooed them away and wouldn't answer any further questions, however many they asked. If philosophers gave clear answers then surely the whole field would've died out with the Greeks.

It is safe to say that the message spoke of a common shape to all the processes of the world, and insisted there was a unity to all explanations. It confirmed that all phenomena are expressions of a single phenomenon, and while all droplets consider themselves independent, they are nonetheless still ocean through and through. In that message the great suspicions were vindicated and the old cliches were jettisoned. The hymn of the world was notated and an invitation to join the choir extended. The shape of Being was outlined in all its myriad forms and the whole was expressed in the part. With the right ears even a lesser creature can hear the song. It is sung constantly, from the heart of each atom and star. The galaxies hum of shape and form in their essence. That is their secret. The particles whisper of the nature of proper interactions. That is their game. And during a storm, in the forest, on the right night, it is no secret that the leaves all sing of God.

But void creatures are hardly the strangest things we have chanced upon during the expansion of our great empire. There is of course the romance of Signus B3. The star system sports two habitable planets, both of which were colonised in the early days of the empire. However, one of the worlds – B3a – developed an interest in mind-blending technology. As is now well understood in the empire, if mind-blending technology is pursued, it’s only a matter of time before the entire population of a planet will not only begin to use it, but merge into a single superorganism. B3a did exactly that. B3b, B3a’s sister planet, did the same thing around the same time by virtue of the two planets’ close trading practices. And subsequently, both planets became mental superorganisms, developing personalities in their own rights. Occasionally they sent messages to one another asking after vague matters. Then they sent starships. Then they made declarations of love. Even to this day, if you should pass by system Signus B3, you may be able to pick up faint radio transmissions of a romantic nature, one planet proclaiming its adoration of the other, waiting for that golden day when their orbits align once again.

A man can do what he wants, but not will what he wants. That’s a very old quote from a very dead philosopher. In other words, a man can choose to follow his passions, but not choose what his passions are. And that was true for most of history, of course, from the cave times to the star times.

They were both researchers and considered scientific truth to be quite above any other kind of truth. Beauty is nice and virtue is attractive, but nothing is more gorgeous than meeting another creature who shares your deepest values. Nadastra certainly shared Dr. Ek’s. Dr. Ek had been shy then—actually he was shy later too—and never found the occasion to look into Nadastra’s enormous violet eyes and proclaim his love. For he did love her, I think we can say for sure. In that distant way, at least. He thought about her while brushing his teeth, walking home from work. If buying new socks or doing the washing up he found it amazing that she, a creature so gorgeous and perfect, would undertake tasks just as mundane in her daily life—as though realising Jesus pissed.

Let’s pause for a second and acknowledge how easy it is to love from afar. One might see this person three or four times a week, and always in situations where difficulties needn’t crop up. Since the two of you never face a challenge, it is possible to imagine the object of your affection to be free of pettiness, stupidity, self-obsession, and all the other frequent visitors to the human psyche. In those secret moments, brushing your teeth, walking home from work, you may tell yourself that if only the two of you could be together then nothing would ever hurt again. And since you refuse to admit your affections to this person, you may now live out the rest of your life in a constant and quietly sad state of What if? Inaction is the primary refuge of those who prefer their own constructed realities to the beautiful chaos of the real world.

Adam was quite careful to avoid being in any of the photos and most of the evening was spent taking photos. He couldn’t stand watching everyone’s faces go from neutral to suddenly smiling the second the camera was raised, then back to neutral again. It made him feel unwell.

“What does it feel like?” “What does what feel like?” “Not having a band, I mean.” She shrugged. “The same. Only, I can’t make myself happy if I’m not and no one’s snooping on my thoughts. So that’s nice.” “What if you get sad?” he said. “What if I do?” “Well what will you do about it?” She looked at him blankly. “Then I’ll be sad,” she said.

“All structures have a breaking point,” Perda said with a hint of melancholy. “When they grow too big, they collapse. All empires are destined to collapse. They must expand to survive and in expanding they die. Or it is a knowing limit. They discover a thing too wild to control, and in discovering the thing, they die. The protos recognised that early on. They went into the river instead.”

“The protos didn't die out, did they?” Perda's eyes swam again with gentle infinities. “No, Ushko. They only learned that secrecy is a better defence than all the weapons in the galaxy. They went into the river.” The sky returned to normal and Perda's eyes returned to normal. “Your empire is about to collapse. It's caught up in too many conflicts, too many complications. Your science is too advanced. Your wisdom is too stunted. You don’t know it yet, but you’ve invented your successors and they’ll be up soon. You didn’t step into the river. You pursued the fifth science. You were the only ones arrogant enough to. Do you understand what's coming?” “No...” “I will try to get you home before the empire dies. That way you can hold its hand as it goes.”

He closed his eyes. A thing appeared in him, small at first. He might've called it reassurance but it wasn't that. The feeling was grey, the colour of true wisdom. Everything will go to hell, the feeling said. And that's okay. He thought of the death of the empire, of the death of everything his species had tried to build, and the horror was gone. If the Great Goodnight happened, so be it. The world was just a totality of facts. Nothing had a goodness or a badness about it. Thinking only made it so and now he saw the world clearly, just for a moment, free of the veil of judgement. It was a beige relief and a pure awareness.

“All seeds contain the tree they will become. In that seed is the limit of its growth. No amount of water or nurture or love can grow a tree taller than the seed has allowed. If it is pushed to grow taller or wider than that, then it will die slowly. It will die of itself. Most things in the universe fade this way. If a tree is to survive then it must make itself content with its height and hide. It must hide its pride and limit its curiosity, lest it birth the end of everything.”

“Empires are roses,” Perda said. “They bloom and then they die. Or they go Fifth. And they die that way too.”

Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they’ll never sit in.

“You have values here. You believe in things. I miss that.” “Don’t they believe in things on Ertia?” “Not in the same way.” The sphere was in her lap now. She stroked it and the thing purred quietly. “There is a special problem in communications theory. We call it ‘narrative collapse’. When a planet is very connected, a time inevitably arrives when it becomes difficult to work out what is actually going on. Video and audio can be faked. Testimony isn’t reliable. All truths fall into a relative flatness. This is more dangerous than any doomsday weapon. You have a king and, if you don’t mind me saying so, not a very nice one. But at least his population knows when he’s being deceitful or harsh. On my world and the sister world we’ve lost even that. Many still don’t even believe Morae really exists. They claim it’s a fabrication by Al’Hazaad.” She held her beer up to the moonlight. “Doesn’t look like a fabrication to me.” Tisho said, “Why would Al’Hazaad fabricate a whole planet?” She shrugged. “Who cares? All you need is an enemy to take the punches at. Cut the world into us and them, manufacture dichotomies, boil complex issues down to sound bites. Divide and conquer.”

Before arriving at the compound, Ha’Izaak had been ordered to use Frame 12. He knew all 24 frames by memory. Most Al’Hazaadian children learned them early on. His favourite was Frame 9 which held that the stars were really points of light mere miles away and the entire universe revolved around Al’Hazaad. Frame 18 was its direct opposite, claiming the universe was in fact gigantic and stars were balls of hydrogen and helium. Well, who was to say? In this case though it was Frame 12 he slipped into. Frame 12 asserted that Ertia was a backwards culture, an orb of excess and stupidity, and nothing short of total annexation could correct its inevitable slide towards self-destruction.

“Is there a recommended frame for dealing with the natives?” “6,” the science man said without hesitation. This was not a surprise. Frame 6: Progress is absolute. All human life is secondary to the good, and the good is progress. There is no such thing as murder, only the removal of obstacles between Al’Hazaad and its goals. The science man said, “Your voidsphere is waiting. If there are no questions then you may leave now.” Ha’Izaak went to exit. The science man added, “Oh, it goes without saying there will be no returning to Al’Hazaad in the event of a failure. You will be expected to end your own life. If you have children, we will execute them. If you don’t have children, we will make children from your blood cultures, then execute them.” “Of course.” “Very well then. Pleasant journey.” “Many thanks.”

“Towards the end of the empire, when this ship set off, things were in a state. Total Galactic Narrative Collapse was getting nearer and nearer. The only way of carrying so many colonists with so many differing opinions was to set up separate areas in a voidship tailored to their individual narratives. This section used to contain folk who believed in the magical elements of mythology. The section we started in was for those who were more scientifically inclined.” They passed into a red-lit section then and flags covered the walls, as well as portraits of men and women in gleaming silver togas standing on mountainsides and striking heroic poses. “And this place?” Tisho said. “For the planetists, for the colonists who held to the myth of the sovereignty of individual planets. Plenty mistrusted the empire. Better to give them space to do it than try to shut them up.”

“What did they want? The colonists, I mean. Why did they come all this way to inject a star with this stuff?” “Wouldn’t you build God if you could?”

The core of heroism isn’t bravery, or even self-sacrifice. It is a commitment to what one knows to be the virtuous course of action, despite whatever the consequences may be.

“What will happen to us now?” “We’ll send you on ahead.” “What?” “To your destination. Coordinates 293.B9, yes?” Matthews nodded uncertainly. He said, “Why?” “Because the only ones we let continue are the savages, the warrers. Best place for them. Go live in hell's sandbox then with all the other toddlers.”

Along with the surprise of this little intimacy I was reminded of another emotion; The Fear. In those rare moments when another human piques your interest, it is accompanied by the quiet panic that you, and only you, are invested so deeply and so quickly. Maybe for them it's just a passing game or fancy, and in an hour or so they'll go back to their life and never think of you again.

My father told me there was a branch of history concerned with the future. Those historians looked back on what their ancestors had expected of the coming days. Maybe it was a kind of smug exercise, a way of laughing at our own stupid expectations. Even the smartest futurists never got it right. I know a bit about what they expected: peace, abundance, a settling down of the hateful currents in the heart of our species. We got some of that. But the old currents persisted too and ran into the new ones, and what emerged was a kind of violent meeting of both. Beauty, food, exploration, and screwing. We’ve kept all that. Ribbondash, immortality, true-knowing, and the Fifths. We’ve created those. All for what, I’m not sure. As far as I’m aware there has never been a point in history when a village, a society, or a planet has come together for a day and said, “What is it we’re all going after?” There has never been a vote about our collective purpose. Either a whole society is subject to the dictates of one mad ruler who imposes their vision on the whole, or the society is self-driven and strives after its own ends individually, among the whole. Why is there never an objective? And now I think about it, if there were, what would it even be? The answer is perhaps the same for us here at the end of history as it was for our ancestors millions of years ago at the beginning: to live well, to live quietly, and to die without too much of a fuss. And if we are very, very lucky, to love ...

Something rang distantly, a musical note. It was followed by another, then another; major key. It grew louder and a choir joined, one or two voices, then tens, then hundreds, wailing, exultant. In the melody was all the loss of all the worlds, all the collected science, each slight and kindness. Every battle was in there, every argument, every orgasm and ballroom dance, every rocket launch and glass of lemonade. I saw my mother’s eyes for the first time, from down in her arms when I was a baby and covered in blood and mess. I saw my father’s eyes for the last time as he walked from me with my mother in that field. Great hairy ape-like creatures searched for grubs in a forest. Workers built gargantuan stone monuments to gods they were promised existed. Riflemen on long ago cliffs raised their sights to advancing enemies. Scientists tamed the four forces of nature and taught them to pirouette and power cities. Engineers built elegant metal monsters, shepherding those first humans beyond the boundaries of the motherworld system. Trade agreements were signed. Galactic legislation was ratified. A trillion pairs of eyes looked out on ten trillion stars and searched for some nugget of meaning. Bodies were placed underground. Effects were collected and distributed to close family members. A dirge. It was a sleeping song. It was a lullaby for the empire. It was a request for the last one out to turn off the light. It was a kind thank you for all our trouble. The song began to die a...

The Menagerie I have never understood why science fiction that uses teleporters never mentions how fucking awful teleporters would be. Even if we ignore the fact that you’re basically just cloning people, what would stop you doing it thousands and thousands of times? I felt an ethical rant had to be written in the form of a story.

Whatever happens, however clever we eventually become, there will be an end to our trials and projects. Whether we’re superseded by our creations or just put to sleep by exhaustion, the end of history will approach eventually. When that occurs, all the statues and books and paintings in the world won’t save our legacy. Better then that we just enjoy the time we have, living in a wonderful age like the one we find ourselves in now.