Читать книгу A Vision of Hell - Brian Stableford - Страница 7

CHAPTER 3

The history of the Overworld began, according to the Euchronian Movement, at the close of the second dark age (which they also called the age of psychosis). Naturally enough, there was no one to disagree with them. In point of fact, however, an unbiased observer—Sisyr, perhaps—might have traced the Overworld mentality much further back than that. At least a thousand years, and probably two. A devout Euchronian might shrug his shoulders, and point out that an odd millennium or two was little enough compared with the eleven thousand years of the Euchronian Plan (let alone the half a million years the Euchronians were prepared to spend if that were necessary), but a historian would have recognized the flaw in such a comparison of duration. The velocity of history is not uniform. “Progress” (a mythical concept dating back to prehistoric time) is not constant.

However, it was certainly during the second dark age that the Movement was formed and the Plan was born. According to Euchronia, the Movement and the Plan saved the world. No one would disagree with that, either. By Euchronian standards, Euchronia had saved the world. It had discarded the old world and built a new one, on a platform which was mounted over every convenient acre of the old world’s land surface.

In the beginning, the Plan had been ludicrous. The Euchronians had accepted that in those days (they denied it now), but they had pointed out with some justice that if ludicrous ambitions were all that were left, they were the only recourse of hope.

Work on the Plan had been underway for several centuries when Sisyr’s starship arrived in the solar system. The Euchronians never actually found out why Sisyr came to Earth, although they did discover that his arrival at precisely the time when they needed him most was purely fortuitous. Whatever the reason, Sisyr was ready and willing to set it aside in order to provide Euchronia with the technical expertise and the scientific knowledge which they lacked. The margin between failure and success was undoubtedly filled by Sisyr. Without his intervention time would most definitely have run out for the dying Earth. As it was, the assistance of the alien and his home world, though slow to be provided (starships took centuries to cross the interstellar gulf between the two worlds) turned the tide.

Euchronia was suitably grateful to Sisyr, but it also found it very convenient to forget him. The Movement had its pride, and it needed the credit more than he did. Sisyr went into quiet retirement somewhere on Earth, atop one of the mountains which projected its peak into the Overworld. He asked nothing other than a home and a quiet life. The Euchronians presumed that he would die one day and could then be obliterated entirely from the history of the Earth. They were wrong. While thousands of years rolled by, Sisyr showed not the slightest sign of dying. Earthly memories, however, were short, and Sisyr’s active contribution to the Plan ended long before the platform was complete and the world rebuilt upon it. The only real reminder of his existence was the fact that two or three times a century a star-ship would land, but the aliens were discreet, and they bothered no one except Sisyr.

The platform was completed in six thousand years. The world in which the Euchronians were destined to live was finally pronounced complete after eleven thousand. The cities were finished, the cybernet which would provide the needs of the community was complete—a gargantuan mechanical beast for the humans to parasitize. The Euchronian Millennium was declared and the people settled down to enjoy it.

They did not know how. They only knew why.

Hundreds of generations of Euchronians had spent their entire lives laboring toward an end they knew they would never see. Billions of lives had been given up absolutely to the ideal of the Plan. For eleven thousand years, the purpose of life in Euchronia had been labor, unselfish and unrewarded: the infinitely protracted process of giving birth to a new existence. And when the birth was achieved....

The purpose of life was lost.

The Planners had anticipated this. They knew that there would have to be a period of adjustment, and they knew that period would be measured in centuries rather than in years. The Utopian potential of Euchronia’s Millennium would have to be carefully developed and brought to flower. It would take time and effort. The Planners, with the supreme optimism which had guided their forebears out of a ruined Earth and toward a promised land, led them to believe that it could and would be done. It had to be done—to justify the Plan. But when the Millennium came, they only knew what and why. They did not know how. This time, they could only rely on their own resources. They could not ask Sisyr for help.

The people of Euchronia’s Millennium were living in a functionally designed Utopia, but they had problems. They were not Utopians. They were, in a sense, a society of misfits. Empirically maladjusted. The builders of a new world are ipso facto ill fitted to live in it. The mother cannot be expected to live the life of the child. Mothers who try destroy their children.

Among the methods adopted by the Planners to facilitate the Plan was the i-minus effect—the chemical control of dreams. I-minus was calculated to exorcize instincts, so that social conditioning—functional social conditioning—might be made one hundred percent effective. It worked. It continued to work after the Millennium, but no one could tell whether the fact that it worked was useful or not. No one could judge the situation well enough to decide whether the effect ought to be continued or not, or even how such a decision might be made. This exemplifies the confusion of the citizens of the Millennium. They were as helpless as newborn children. An infant society. Ignorant, yet not knowing of their ignorance; blind to the contexts of their existence, yet not knowing of their blindness.

The society of Euchronia’s Millennium was vulnerable. Its vulnerability was exposed by Carl Magner, who rediscovered the Underworld in his nightmares. (How? There was no way of knowing.) Perhaps the rediscovery of the ruined Earth was the last thing the Euchronians needed. Perhaps, on the other hand, the rediscovery of the Hell which the Plan had left behind was the only way in which the people could come to terms with the Heaven it had built.

Perhaps it would help them to rediscover themselves.