THALES

 

Thales slept heavily in the early part of the evening but woke from a dream before dawn. He realised, with a start, that he had not even asked the gentleman his name and yet the man knew much about him and his life.

He climbed out of bed and sat on the cool marble floor for his morning samayik, one small part of his mind tuned to sounds of stirring in the adjacent sleeping chamber. This morning, though, Thales found it hard to connect with Atma. His unchanging reality eluded him.

Discontented, he washed more thoroughly and retied his hair. Today Rene would rescind her complaint and he would be released, he told himself. A lesson in deprivation would not hurt him so much. He felt calmer now. More centred.

Not able to wait any longer for the gentleman to rise, Thales went out into the shared living room. A selection of breakfast foods awaited him—as did the man he had heard getting up.

‘You slept well?’ Thales halted, eyeing the food. ‘At least one cannot complain of being starved. But one could complain about my poor manners. Forgive me for I did not even ask you your name yesterday. My samayik has helped me re-gather myself.’ He sat in the same chair as he had the evening before and served himself a large helping of creamy eggs and bitter cheese.

The man gave a gracious smile. ‘Amaury.’

‘Well, Amaury. As, it would seem, we have time to kill, what shall we talk of today?’

Amaury placed his knife and fork on his plate without making any clatter, like a man who had long practised silence. ‘I am out of touch with the outside world. Not just Scolar, but the worlds beyond. Do OLOSS and the Extropists still sniff each others’ underbellies like cock-stiff dogs?’

Thales laughed. The image was not one he would have expected from this gentleman’s mouth. ‘Well put, Amaury. I shall swap you. Orion’s doings for your own story.’

‘Of course. That would only be fair.’ The gentleman nodded and settled back in his chair. ‘Visitors first.’

Thales smiled and took several mouthfuls while he collected threads of thought. How long had Amaury been in here that he craved knowledge of the wider galaxy? What sin against the Pre-Eminence could such an amiable old man have committed?

Manners and grace, he thought sourly. An interest in humanesque kind? All crimes, no doubt, to the current Pre-Eminence.

As Amaury bit into a pastry, Thales became aware that he was waiting patiently for him to speak. ‘My apologies again, Amaury. Meditation sometimes leaves me preoccupied. Rene, my wife, calls it my introspection hangover: His laugh was intentionally bitter. ‘Not only that, but I am somewhat uninformed about wider political topics. I have been so consumed by Scolar’s own problems. Though it seems that little changes out there. OLOSS maintains its deep suspicion of the Extropists, and continues to hold to its ridiculous apartheid. Since the Stain Wars no one travels to the Extropist quarter of Orion.’

‘You are not fearful of the transhumans, Thales?’ asked Amaury.

Thales answered plainly. ‘I am more fearful of my own demons.’ He glanced up from his last mouthful of egg. ‘Does it shock you to hear that?’

But the old man was still smiling. ‘There is very little that would shock me and, in truth, I am of the same mind. If humanesques were more concerned with mastering their own “demons”, as you called them, and less with mastering the demons of others, then harmony would not be merely one of our ideals.’

‘Aren’t ideals our vocation?’

‘Ideals are our life force,’ corrected the old man. ‘Realising those ideals is our vocation. Anything less is our failure.’

Thales detected something then: a conviction within the man that was as compelling and fervent as any he had known, but so delicately... so subtly veiled that it might have slipped past unnoticed. And yet the very quietness of it, the surety, stirred Thales’s passion. ‘Have you heard of the discovery near Mintaka? A godlike Entity, it is being called.’

Amaury leaned forward, his eyes alight and keen. ‘Only scraps. Tell me what you know.’

‘Precious little, other than that it is a manifestation of dark energy which has the means to communicate with regular sentients.’

‘And how did this energy make itself known?’

‘There is talk of it saving the life of a simple mineral scout, an average man who now goes by the title of God Discoverer. From that point a bevy of researchers have collected to study it. It is said to have intelligence far beyond anything we could imagine. Hence the title of God.’

‘It is curious, our obsession with the concept of all- knowing and how so many of us cling to it as their vision of God. When, I wonder, will we be brave enough to cut our umbilical cord to the notion of something greater?’

‘You sound like an atheist, Amaury.’

‘It is not a word I acknowledge. For as you know, Thales, giving credence to one thing gives equal credence to its opposite. I would personally erase all religious concepts—including the naturalistic.’

‘You mean God within nature?’

Amaury nodded. ‘We lose autonomy each time we lend our thoughts to these beliefs.’

Thales felt a tingling in his body. The man’s discourse was both stimulating and uncomfortable. ‘You mean we refuse to grow up.’

Amaury nodded. ‘You. Me. All of us, Thales.’

‘But surely choice is more important than anything else. We should be free to choose what we believe.’

‘Only when we can see the whole picture, Thales, not just our little corner of it.’ Amaury’s eyes sparkled. ‘Surely you agree that informed choice is the best choice? And humanesques are eternally mired in their own limitations. Now tell me, is the Entity old by our measuring?’

Thales shrugged. ‘One would expect so, although I have not seen any empirical reports.’

Amaury moved his fingers in the air as if flexing them, yet Thales knew it to be more of a mental stretching than a physical. ‘Why would an ancient wisdom choose now to reveal itself? Has anyone thought to question its appearance?’

‘OLOSS has sent Astronomeins to study it and has allowed Geneers, Lawmon, Dieters and archiTects into its tutelage—but no philosophers and no Extropists.’

Amaury shook his head slowly. ‘Once we were the first to be thrown a challenge. Now it seems we are not to be challenged at all.’

‘I pleaded with the Pre-Eminence to lobby OLOSS for a position with the Entity, but just yesterday I learned that they refused to do so.’

‘Is that what precipitated your disagreement with your beloved?’

Beloved? Was she still that? Thales pushed back from his empty plate and stood. He walked a few paces and retraced them, aware that Amaury was watching him with the same calm patience.

‘That amongst other things. Rene has changed; position and comfort have become more important to her than anything else.’

‘One cannot dictate another’s beliefs, Thales. Even those of one’s chosen partner.’

‘I don’t believe it is just a matter of changed beliefs. It’s as though an apathy sickness has taken her.’

Amaury nodded thoughtfully. ‘Tell me what it is that you would learn from the Entity near Mintaka?’

Thales stopped his pacing. ‘Infinite knowledge, of course.’

‘And what would “infinite knowledge” give you?’ Amaury prodded.

Thales thought for some time before he answered. ‘Initially I would say knowledge is its own gain. But what lies beyond that?’

Amaury smiled. ‘What lies beyond that... is what you really seek.’