The summer is only as miserable as you allow it to be. The sweat that runs off one's back is to be cherished; it is the love in one's labour. Armed with this philosophy, Agnur grinned through the harsh afternoon, a cloth tied around his forehead to mop the sweat. In other places, despite the shade of the massive workshop, the sweat flowed profusely. It flowed down his back, tickling his spine, seemingly soaking to near translucence the thin white drapes that covered him from waist to knee. It moistened his fingers to the point that he had to wipe his hands with rags every few minutes. Finally, despite the cloth round his forehead, the sweat made its way down to the tip of his nose, where Agnur wiped it and dried his hands again.
Agnur examined the shape of the wooden printing block he was chiselling. For the past 4 years, chiselling these blocks had been among his chief duties. The blocks contained images comprised of an astonishing array of geometrical figures. Incomprehensible combinations of curves, crude circles, dots, lines, misshapen boxes, triangles, polygons, and all the improvisation that the human mind could manage with them. For a minute, Agnur paused to look at the dozens of men in long rows, all chiselling blocks. Through the large windows just below the high domes that sat on the thick walls of the workshop, came in just enough light for them to carry on their work. At least two score men, and yet, they were a minority in the workshop. Most men in the work shop worked on the ink, cleaning the blocks, cutting the cloth and other tasks that printing on cloth involves. Agnur had chosen chiselling even though it was difficult, because it paid much more.
Agnur looked at the block again. It was perfect, and the inspector passing by indicated as much with his nodding. The smallest mistake and he would have to begin all over again. Then he looked at the image on the cloth before him, indicating the next set of blocks he was to chisel. He had seen the image hundreds of times before, only had no clue what it had meant. That was the inspector's business to know. His job was to chisel. After the first few years, it had all become comfortingly easy for Agnur. The heat was all that bothered him now.
Presently, a somewhat plump man entered, dressed in white. Some of the men near the entrance rose and instinctively performed their obeisance. The man acknowledged and motioned them to continue their work. He then proceeded towards the head printer surveying all from a corner, who greeted him warmly. Reciprocating, the man posed a few questions, upon which he was led to a portion of the workshop on the higher floors, where the last stages of book making were carried out.
Awkwardly holding the reading lens with one hand, Isbor carefully examined the print on the cloth book. The head printer looked on expectantly, with a fawning smile. The reading device helped stretch out the cloth into readable neatness, gripping at either end the two wooden rollers of the finished book. Isbor read with a slowly dawning apprehension the first two prominent symbols at the top of the cloth sheet, and then the three slightly smaller ones below it. In order, they could be translated as:
Isbor(of) Word
New-West(of)-land(of) People(of) Advanced-script
The remainder of some of the first page is best more fully translated:
It is truly my supreme good fortune to have travelled to the newly discovered vast lands to the west, across the ocean beyond Manoki. I have found many strange and wonderful, and sometimes truly horrifying things in that land. I intend describe more fully my experiences in this land in a separate word, but for now I must bring the attention of one and all to a far more important matter.
In the north western parts of the southern half, one can find a great river with several primitive cities flourishing by its banks. The people of these cities have a culture more sophisticated than that of the others in these lands. Though otherwise primitive by our standards, they have built cities, and have some knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, as well as a language of their own with a written script. This written script is truly extraordinary, something no mind in any of the cultured lands has been able to devise. This script, if introduced to the cultured lands, will be nothing short of a revolution.
Isbor sighed. This was as close to blasphemy as the so-called "freedom of speech" permitted. He read on:
We, the people of the glorious nation of Norea, have always prided ourselves on our culture, especially our language, whose brevity and efficiency are unmatched even among the languages of the nations of Uidya. But in comparison with that of the people of this new land, our written word seems astonishingly primitive. Our script uses symbols and images to represent ideas or words, thus necessitating the creation of thousands of symbols. It is thus, indeed a difficult task for a young child learning a language to learn the written script. So far, we have had no choice in this regard. But now, we do.
The people of the new western land have simplified the written script to only 38 symbols. In this language, each symbol represents not a word or an idea, but a sound made by the human tongue. We know that each word is but a combination of these sounds. By representing these sounds as symbols, any possible speech made by the human tongue can be transformed into the written word. Just as we use the five numeral symbols to represent any number, the script uses these 38 symbols to represent any human speech. It is only necessary to learn these 38 symbols and the rules for their use. Any person, who has learned these, can from the written word translate to the spoken, and from the spoken to the written. It is truly amazing how the idea has not occurred to any Uidyan mind.
It is my duty to add here, before we proceed to the teaching of the script and the language, that this phenomenon has strengthened, in me at least, the belief that all races are fundamentally equal, though most are uncultured. That they have devised this script is proof that these people have the intelligence to be cultured like us. This script must be their gift to the cultured lands. In return, we must gift them culture.
Isbor got up gently and removed the book from the reading device. He searched has garment for his personal clock. It was a small circular device, one side covered with metal, and the other with glass. Through the glass he could see a circular dial, with ten markings, each having an equal length of circumference between them. On a concentric circular track, a small metal dot indicated the time. The dot was now roughly half way between the fourth and the fifth markings. Much as Isbor had guessed, he was getting late. At about mid day, he was to meet his niece, Klea. He handed over the book to head printer with an approving smile and a nod. Thus pleased, he set about his other business.
As soon as he exited the workshop, Isbor was once again aware of the oppressive Norean sun overhead. As he entered his horse drawn carriage, he noted how much Norea city had changed since his childhood. All around him was a shocking abundance of domed buildings in all conceivable arrangements. Few were shorter than two stories. Along the side of the brick-paved road that faced the sea, was an open-air hawker's market. At close to mid day, it was empty. But by evening, it would teem with people. In theory it was open to all, but in practice only those with the means and lack of conscience to bribe sold their wares here. At regular intervals along the road there were public time-telling towers. Norea, the city and the nation, had both changed. And the empire, of course.
As he entered Klea's home, he found on the corridor wall a map of the known world and the parts of it that were under the Norean Empire. He paused to observe it. He noted that the map ended too abruptly on the left, with the western edge of the landmass of Raoh, where the black-skinned peoples dwelled. This map was then, at least six years old. Directly above Raoh was Manoki, where the "primitive pale-skins" liveed. The Norean Empire here stretched from half way into Raoh to all across Manoki, covering almost completely the camel-head shaped landmass to the north. To the east of Manoki, stretched the rest of Sialon. The vast and icy north-eastern parts of Sialon, known as Krombe, were under the Norean Empire, as was Jankur directly south of Krombe. Jankur was a much smaller part of the empire, perhaps half the size of Manoki. The empire here stretched across the ocean to cover the prominent Islands to the east. West of Jankur was Unpeke, not under the Norean Empire, stretching to the northern borders of the Uidyan peninsula. Uidya itself was endlessly splintered. Across the bottom third of Uidya - and across to the large triangular island below it - stretched the actual nation of Norea, Norea city on its western coast. The rest of Sialon was madly cut up among the other Uidyan nations, as was Raoh.
Isbor moved further inside to find Klea rather busy painting something. Painting was her hobby, one she wasn't very good at. A large, oval, richly adorned mirror faced her at an angle, and faced Isbor directly. Isbor looked at Klea from behind, and looked at his own reflection in the mirror. He saw a portly man in his late twenties, with long black hair, healthy brown skin, and austere white clothing. His gaze then shifted, admiringly but not lasciviously, to the outline of Klea's naked breasts, and the delicate jewellery adorning her soft, rich-brown neck. At the height of summer, she could afford to flaunt her beauty without risking ailment. Isbor's gaze then shifted to Klea's pretty face, neatly tied up hair and artificially reddened lips.
At 15, Klea was a very beautiful girl, but her head was mostly full of nonsense. Isbor had come to expect this from pretty girls. The logic was simple. Intelligent people are rare. Beautiful people are rare. Therefore, reasoned Isbor, the intersection of the two groups must be a rarer breed still. Add to this, the arrogance of youth. Still, he thought, one should be able to find the rarest of breeds in a world with so many people.
Isbor felt unhappy about his fate. Klea was "promised" to him. More accurately, she was "promised" to his family. To marry someone so young was a revolting thought to Isbor. It would be like marrying a child. It was however, the chosen method for his family to amass imaginary parcels of land, the Norean method of wealth. Isbor only hoped that Klea would object on some account.
Isbor now examined Klea's painting. It seemed like some absurdly approximate map of Manoki, held at a slight angle, tilting downwards on the left, the land painted in white, and the ocean in blue. So far, Klea had been too immersed in painting to notice him.
"Do I see the beautiful nation of Manoki?" he asked.
Unpleasantly surprised, Klea turned around and said dryly "Manoki is as much a nation as is the equator. I am painting the sky."
Full of nonsense indeed, reflected Isbor.
"It is Norean governance that has brought unity to Manoki," she parroted. "Before Norean ships landed on Manokite shores, Manoki was just a group of barbaric kingdoms fighting amongst each other for cheap power."
Isbor felt compelled to argue. He would not have a child dismiss a historian. "That, my dear, is an unfortunate argument," he said. "Not only is it somewhat untrue, but it also ignores the fact that no nation in history has had permanent political borders. You must also consider how large a landmass Manoki is, larger even than Uidya..... "
"Oh but they are such barbarians!!" retorted Klea inanely.
--------------------------------
Klea stared with an easy disgust at the pale-faced men carrying her bags. All she saw, she saw through disapproving Norean eyes. Dressed in coarse wool, the men had their beards trimmed and their hair tied to Norean preference. They looked at her fawning and welcoming, and she looked back at them with mild horror, her eyes seeing their devilishly bloodless, pale skin and ugly, light brown eyes. Some of them, her eyes also noted, had hair of a sickening yellow colour.
"Don't stare at them like that," said Klea's father gently. "They're not animals. They're quite reasonable, once you get to know them. For the most part, at least."
The men, she was only now realising, had quietly ogled at hear naked bosom. Already, she longed to go back to Norea.
Soon after she had objected to marrying Isbor, the Norean colonies administration had transferred Klea's father to the South western province of Manoki. After a year without him, Klea had longed to see her father, as had the rest of the family. They had all decided to move to Manoki.
After a few weeks, Klea had overcome some of her initial disgust for the Manokites. This was in large part due to a corpulent middle aged woman with robes that ran from head to toe, lively eyes, and a somewhat reassuring smile. Frombene was an obdurately loyal servant to Klea, comfortingly so. After several years serving Norean masters, she was better versed with their tongue than most Manokites. That she was a woman also helped matters, in as much as Klea was not forced to overdress all the time for fear of ogling. Frombene though, felt breasts were safer covered up even when men were not around, "or bad come..."
When not with Frombene, Klea felt happier in her brother Anout's company. He took much more readily to the natives, and had even begun to speak their language. In this regard, he helped her avoid direct contact with the natives, especially the men.
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"The cultured do not go to temples," Klea admonished Anout as he set out on another of his native-love expeditions.
"In that case," grinned Anout, "I suppose I am not cultured."
Klea rolled her eyes and Anout carried on with his expedition.
Half an hour later Anout was at his destination, a prominent temple in the area. The temple was, to say the least, extremely large. It consisted of half a dozen large, haphazardly placed, but perfectly circular and very colourful buildings, topped by domes. As he entered one of these buildings, he found almost all the Manokites staring directly up, at the beam of light that emerged from a large hole at the centre of the dome. All were muttering incomprehensibly, lost in their own worlds, talking to themselves.
"What are they doing?" Anout asked his guide, Kelene, in the local language.
"They are praying to their ancestors," said Kelene. "They believe that the light they see here descends directly from the afterlife, and can be used to communicate with their ancestors."
The words "ancestors" and "afterlife" produced a puzzled look from Anout, to which Kelene responded with several words from the more basic vocabulary and then a few from the Norean, until Anout had understood.
"But light comes from the sky.... " said Anout unsurely.
"That is where one goes in the afterlife," said Kelene.
At this point a man came around, passing in small pots a drink to everyone present.
"Who is that man?" enquired Anout. "And what is he doing."
"That is the spirit-water," replied Kelene. "It helps us hear the ancestors."
From further enquiry, Anout could ascertain that the "spirit-water" was some kind of intoxicant.
In general, the temple was much quieter than Anout had expected. All around were people, sitting and very quietly but furiously muttering to themselves and their ancestors, and all the spirits that Anout's education had taught him to disbelieve. Human destiny was in human hands, he had been told. Occasionally, somebody's voice jumped and wailed. Anout noted with surprise how it distracted nobody else. Suddenly, he was filled with a sense of absurdity.
This seems rather unreal. Is this life just a dream? If it is, what a relief it will be to wake up.
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Conscription is bloody rubbish, Anout thought to himself. Bloody snow. Bloody white
death-rubbish. He was not used to it. Anout could scarcely believe himself and his position. Here were a group of men, armed to the teeth; barely, but still risking death. He was actually risking death. The men, focussed on their task, had forgotten fear, or at least pushed it to the back of their minds. A party of four Noreans leading nearly a dozen Manokites, or rather vice versa. In fact, Anout remarked to himself, he did not see the need for any Noreans to be here. The Manokites knew the terrain. The Manokites were better suited to the weather. The Manokites were well trained, disciplined, stupidly loyal to the death, and could hunt down these guerrillas by themselves, if need be. Yet, here he was, bones turned to ice, exhaling an annoyingly profuse fog.
Anout, noticing that he had fallen behind the party, quickened his footsteps with a mild panic. No, they would not come now. Surely, not so quie...
Suddenly, he was somewhere else, in another body, a pale-skinned one. The weather was warm. His body had never been cold. He stood with the ocean to his left, the beach full of pale-skinned people, all waiting for him to do something. To his right, into the distance, rose some astonishing creation of mankind. Five identical towers that seemed to touch the sky, connected at several levels by bridges running through them. He held his breath. A voice called out to him. A pale-skinned girl spoke to him as though he was someone familiar. The words he did not understand.
Before he could ask any questions, a bare white hand was reaching across Anout's face and stifling him. In front of him was the white forest. Impossibly, a knife was slicing his throat, spilling his still warm blood. That it was happening, Anout had not fully realised, and a part of him was yet to panic. He fell to the ground, still alive, screaming with pain. His party turned around. Shouts, men running, footsteps, snow falling on his face.
The dream is ending. Will I awake? Will I fall asleep?
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In a vast dark complex of ever-clicking machinery, a man was speaking to a voice with no clear source. Their conversation could be translated as follows:
The voice spoke "Of course, on a simulation of this scale, mistakes tend to happen."
"Mistakes?" asked Raman, the human observer of the experiment.
Raman now noticed the regular sound of a brain being disconnected from the simulation, and being replaced by another. A silver-coloured orange-sized ball would slip into place, and little insect like creatures crawled into its orifices, taking with them the connections of the simulator. Death and birth. Rebirth, there was not, since each brain had to be moulded individually, and grown to full size even as it participated in the simulation. All around him, the pattern repeated endlessly. Huge simulation-traffic channels ran from the sky as endless pillars. Connected to them were the impossibly numerous silver brains. As far as Raman's eye could see, the re was more of the same.
"What sort of mistakes?" he asked.
"Usually in the modelling," the Artificial intelligence replied. "But in extremely rare circumstances, there have been cross connections. A brain from one history being temporarily plugged into another. This leads to necessary corrections, which affect the accuracy of the simulation."
"How many histories have been able to simulate at once?" asked Raman.
"The capacity, as you are aware, is close to 200 histories with populations of current size, that is to say, 12 billion. But since few histories have the population exceeding a million, we have been able to run a maximum of 13897 histories in parallel. The vast majority of these have never reached even the agricultural stage."
"Hmmm. You cannot look into the future, can you?"
"That is right. The models for simulating the environment, you are aware, are approximations. As societies become more complex, we need to replace these models with more complex models, and other techniques to make the environment appear consistent to the brains. At some point, the models need to be based on information about the nature of the universe which we do not yet have. Or, sometimes, we simply run out of computing power. Therefore, once a history reaches the technological complexity of, say, the mid 21st century, we simply have to terminate it. It takes about three months to simulate a 100,000 years worth of history. To date, we have simulated over 200,000 histories, of which 917 have been terminated for these reasons."
"One of the reasons this experiment has been commissioned is to understand 'human nature', whatever that is. I understand the committee has given you a set of questions. Also, there must have been queries from other sources. Have you been able to provide satisfactory answers to these people?"
"This has been a problematic area," replied the intelligence. "Since the sheer data accumulated is so large, human beings, understandably, have not been able to sift through it, even when it is presented to them as relatively condensed histories. Hence, we are required to observe patterns and report them to those who ask questions. The problem, then, has been human language. For instance, we have been asked what effect, if any, religion has had on progress. To answer such questions, we need unambiguous definitions of both 'religion' and 'progress'. Different people have assigned different meanings to these terms. We, the AI, have several terms for both 'religion' and 'progress', each describing a distinct phenomenon, some of which are not fully covered by human definitions of these terms."
Raman was expecting this. "The patterns then," he said, "must be spotted and reported by you."
"Precisely," replied the intelligence.
"What have you observed?" asked Raman.
"One very consistent pattern is that civilization first develops to higher levels of technological complexity either in the Americas or in the rest of the world, never in parallel. This is because of the oceans, which act as a barrier and limit the circulation of ideas within the landmasses, and nearby islands. Thus, if a civilization in the Americas was to develop some technology, this technology can, over time, spread to other civilizations within the Americas, but not outside. Various technologies born in different civilizations in the Americas gradually spread to all civilizations within the Americas. Thus, the gap between the most complex and least complex civilization, will be lower when one considers only the Americas. Before the ideas can be developed in parallel on the other side, the more complex civilizations have usually crossed the seas and introduced the technology to far more primitive peoples."
Raman smiled happily. He was a curious child now. "Tell me more...."