Fulfilling the Law

1.

Ralph had been Catholic all 32 years of his life and was on his daily walk when he was struck by an eddy in the space/time continuum and found himself a glemmen or two sidewise in probability.  Not that he even noticed, a glemmen being relatively small.  Not so small as a fimp, that would have had him in an alternate universe so nearly the same as to be the difference between whether he had left two dimes and a nickel on the dresser before leaving or three nickels and a dime.

But neither was it so large as a dath, which would have had him swimming in a vast primordial ocean till he drowned looking for the only two mile square island peaking up over the endless waves some where around the area that he'd have thought of as the Bering Sea.

No, two glemmens, or there about, was going to be nothing too large.  But nothing too small, either. Medium-ish?  Guess it depends upon your perspective.

He stumble stepped, wondering what had disoriented him, but noticing nothing new or different continued on and forgot about it before he had reached the corner of the block.  He made it home - and it was his home - and kissed his wife - and she was his wife - and smiled at his son - and he, well, he was still not really his son, but he'd got used to that long ago.  Mostly.

He started getting ready for Mass, which he took his family to every Sunday, like clockwork.  As he had been took to Mass every Sunday as a child, like clockwork.  All his life.  And now all his son's life.  Well, all his wife's son's life.  Why had she done that, he wondered for the thousandth time.  Yes, he forgave her, and it never even came up any more, but that didn't stop him from thinking of it almost weekly.

"You ready for the orgy, dear?" he thought he heard his wife call from downstairs.  What!  What had she said?  He surely must have heard her wrong.  Hastily throwing his suit jacket on, he took the stairs down two at a time while adjusting his tie.

There his wife and the boy were sitting in the kitchen, he not dressed for church yet, she having removed her robe and wearing...and wearing...blushing, he turned sharply to James and said, "Get upstairs, now!"  At seeing no movement from the boy, just puzzlement, he took a step forward and barked, "Now!" which got a reaction. James, seven and sassy, had nothing to say this time but just ran upstairs and slammed his door.

Looking again at his wife, who was wearing a skimpy lace see-through negligee and a questioning look upon her face, he asked, "What in the name of God are you doing?"

"The orgy, dear", she started, "It's Sunday, remember?  We have to hurry or we'll be late!"  Giving him an even more questioning look, she asked, "But what are you doing dressed like that?  Cosplay is only for Wednesday Night Vespers!"

He stood gaping at her.  This must be something stress related.  Work.  His high blood pressure.  His ceaseless fretting about her infidelity with the FedEx driver 8 years ago.  Almost he fainted.  But he caught himself and sternly told himself to stop - he was tired of not being the man he liked to imagine himself!

He strode toward her, and the look on his contorted face must have been truly frightening, for she backed up and into the stove top behind her.  Glowering he reached out and grabbed her arm, hard, deliberately hard, and started with, "Look, you utter tramp, I forgave you once when you slept with the guy who fathered James, and that was more than I should have, but if you think this is funny or - " but she never learned what the "or" was, as she had clocked him with a cast iron skillet that she'd frantically grabbed from behind her.

Terrified as much as how quickly she'd knocked him unconscious as by his inexplicable attack, she called 911 at once.  And started crying, wondering what she'd tell James.  Or how she'd explain her absence at the orgy to her parish priest, a man known for his lack of tolerance of any improprieties.  Like missing orgies or beating hubbies, she thought inanely and let out a horrified giggle.

2.

Ralph came to groggily, mostly due to trying to scratch an itch with his right hand, and it not reaching his nose.  He tried to focus his eyes, and could start to make out that his hand was - handcuffed? - to the bed rail like in the cop shows.  Sitting next to his hospital bed was a bored looking young man, maybe not even 21, playing with this iPhone and dressed in that polyester fashion that screams "security guard" without even having to see the company patch on the shoulder.

"What...where...?" he mumbled out, and the guard sighed and put his phone in his shirt pocket.  Silently the guard reached over and hit the call button for the nurse and then sat back down.  "She'll be here in a minute, just take it easy."

"What happened?" Ralph asked.  "Well", the guard said, "You attacked your wife and she defended herself.  You also missed the orgy, which while yeah, Sabbath laws aren't enforced like in the old days still won't go over well with the judge."

Ralph shook his head, but winced as a fresh wave of nausea overcame him.  Don't move your head too quickly he thought.  Take it slow and easy.  Something was up, but what?  "What is this orgy, and why would it be something I'd take my wife to on a Sunday?" he managed to ask, even if nervously.  What a question, he thought, and wondered why the guard didn't react the way he'd have expected someone to react to such a question.

Looking concerned, the guard explained, "Buddy, she must have really got you good, glad she's not my wife to deal with!  She said it was like you didn't want to go to your Parish's Sunday Orgy, that you weren't even dressed for it.  When she told you that you were going to be late, she said you attacked her."  He stopped, looking for all the world like he believed such an explanation was rational and meant something.

Ralph dropped his head wept.

The nurse came in and shot a dark look at the guard, as if it were his fault for Ralph's crying.  The guard got a "Who me?" expression on his face and folded his arms defensively.  "Hey, I just told him how he got here, he's not been convicted of nothing yet!" he grumbled.  Ignoring him, and the double negative, the nurse started touching the bandages on Ralph's head, then satisfied, started shining a pen light in his eyes.

"What's this about not wanting to go to your church's orgy?" she asked, for all the world sounding conversational about it.  Ralph, looking like a punch drunk fighter said, "Please, please, I don't understand. Can you explain, like I'm from Mars, why a church would have an orgy, or why I'd want to take my wife to any orgy?"

The nurse contemplated this silently for a moment, then letting the guard know to follow her out by means of a significant look, exited.  She shut the door firmly behind her, leaving Ralph alone.

It was a half hour later that a priest entered, wearing the black robes and white backwards collar that was known world wide as "Catholic".  Must be a Catholic hospital, Ralph thought.  Perhaps now there'd be some answers for him he hoped.

The priest said, before Ralph could talk, "I'm Dr. Tobias, the staff psychiatrist.  What's all this about church orgies?  What does this have to do with your domestic violence?"

Ralph had had some time to think.  Not that he had figured anything out, only in the movies does the hero suddenly "get" that he's in an alternate universe.  Instead, he was trying to figure out whether he was truly insane or whether an unlikely number of random strangers were trying to play a joke on him that was not in the least funny.

He was hoping for the second, but feared it was the first.  Still, he did not feel insane, though he admitted to himself that he really would have no way of knowing what "insane" felt like.  But no matter what, he figured that his only real recourse was to play this out and see where it went.  For he clearly was going no where, not while still chained to the bed.

Taking a deep breath, he asked the priest/psychiatrist what he'd asked the nurse.  For an explanation about this orgy thing that would assume he was from Mars.

3.

Dr. Tobias pondered that question, but while it seemed like being asked about why water was wet, felt he could afford to indulge this man who might well end up being his full time patient.  Violence displayed to loved ones, general disorientation, not seeming to understand where he was or how he got here, the nurse already thought that a 72 hour hold would be of benefit and Dr. Tobias was already thinking that the nurse had called it correctly.

Well, here goes, he thought.  "Young man, the Universal Church, ever mindful of their responsibility in shepherding lost souls to heaven, hosts such orgies so as to keep weak and fallible and sinning men from violating the commandment against coveting their neighbor's wife.  It was noticed early on, even in the time of Moses, that men just wouldn't stop doing this, so the solution, obvious in retrospect, was to let every man have every other man's wife once a week, and thus they'd not have to covet those wives during the week."

Dr. Tobias paused, and seeing Ralph just staring at him figured on giving the rest of the old boring seminary lecture.  "Remember too, the prohibition is about coveting your neighbor's wife, not the wives, plural of all your neighbors.  Thus you can get it out of your system Sunday, and be safe for the rest of the week from any odd random temptation over any individual wife."

Ralph couldn't really think of what to say to this fantastical nonsense, but of a million questions he could ask, did ask, "And so you do this instead of the weekly Mass?"

Dr. Tobias looked surprised.  "No, no, of course not!  Mass is held on the Sabbath!  Why would we hold Mass on the first day of the week when the 4th commandment clearly says, 'six days shall ye labor, and the seventh ye shall rest'?  The seventh day is the Sabbath, and the first day of the week is for the orgy!"

Ralph said, "The usual reason gave for moving the Sabbath to Sunday is that Christ fulfilled the Law when he was crucified.  And so in honor of Him, and the 'new creation' of his resurrection, we worship on Sunday."

Dr. Tobias made a note that this seemed to be a well-developed delusion if his soon to be patient had reasons already for his irrational beliefs about how the world was.  But before he could respond, Ralph asked, "If you put such great store on the exactness of the commandments, why are you breaking the one about adultery?"

Now Dr. Tobias looked genuinely puzzled.  "But...but..." he stammered, "Christ fulfilled the Law, that part of what you thought was true, but we are still to keep most all of the commandments!  But that adultery commandment we no longer observe in honor of Christ pardoning the adulterer!"

"Adulterer?", inquired Ralph.  "You mean the adulteress?  Is that why you're claiming that all this is okay?"

Dr. Tobias said, "What do you mean, 'adulteress'?  I'm speaking of the part in the Bible where Christ forgave the man brought to Him in adultery.  The crowd wanted to stone the adulterer for he having seduced and defiled a woman not his wife.  A woman the adulterer had long coveted.  Christ in His mercy and wisdom set aside the man's punishment, and thus we honor Christ by making it as easy as possible for men to avoid the sin of coveting another man's wife!"

Ralph pondered this vaguely logical nonsense.  Was this then what it was?  A weird theological joke? Tentatively he asked, "So if I understand you, instead of ignoring the Sabbath being on the seventh day, like I thought we could, it's the commandment about adultery we can ignore?  And that's in honor of Christ, same as I thought about the Sabbath being moved?"

Dr. Tobias frowned thoughtfully. "I guess it does boil down to that.  Christ did fulfill the Law, but we are still to follow it.  But to honor Him, we do go to great lengths to keep any man from being punished for adultery, and to do all we can to make coveting impossible.  And from what you're saying, you theologically agree in principle, but prefer that we not entirely follow the Sabbath commandment instead?  To also 'honor' Him?"

Ralph pondered this.  The priest was still speaking seriously, like this wasn't a joke.

4.

Ralph was sitting in Group, hearing about how someone's wife just wouldn't listen, and was convinced now that he was insane.  There was no way that everyone could be so thoroughly in on this weird and not even funny joke.  True, he at the least now had a healthy respect for why it would be best to follow all of God's laws, as wrote, not as interpreted.  Kind of funny to even call something "honoring" Christ, or to blame Christ for a change, when the "change" involved violating His Father's laws!

An orderly interrupted his reveries.  "Your wife is here, sir."  With a grunted "'scuse me", Ralph got up from his plastic chair and hurried over to the Visitation Room, eager to see his wife for the first time in two days. He went up to hug her, and the intern stopped that from happening, but not before he saw her flinch back. His heart broke.

"Honey, I'm sorry for scaring you, that wasn't my intention, but to see you dressed like that...!" he began. Sniffling a bit, like she'd been crying, she said, "I was dressed the way I was supposed to!  And how could you have called me that ugly name, or criticized me over your own son?"

His anger rushed up, in spite of his desire to be out of here and with her again.  "My son?  My son?  How sorry can you be for cheating on me with his father if you're going to deny it now?"

"Wait...what?" she began, "I never hid from you who the biological father was, I slept with George - yes, yes, a FedEx driver - at one of the Parish Orgies!  To hear you go on about it, I slept with him during the week!"

And with a flash, Ralph got it.  No, he was not aware of the nature of the omniverse or how one might find oneself slipping betwixt the alternates randomly.  But what he "got" was that no matter how, no matter why, whether it was a joke, a gaslighting, a scam or simply an insanity of his, that the world was now this way and that he'd better adjust to it.

Sabbath on Sunday?  That makes no sense when you think about it.  No one could seriously think that honor was done to Jesus by flouting the laws of His Father.  And likewise, these people were making the same mistake, but over something he was not used to.  Honoring Jesus by forgiving adultery each week, and making it impossible to covet, as you could freely have that which you otherwise would have coveted!

Madness!  You can't honor Jesus that way!  But here they do.  Here they do.  He clung to that as if a log in a raging river.  Here they do.  Here they do.  Deal with that, with what they are doing, not with what I think they should be doing.

"Honey", he said, in a different voice from before.  A calmer,  more rational voice, that caught her attention at once.  "I've been...been...not feeling well.  There's been some work stress.  I've not felt myself, that's the truth.  I'm sorry for what I've put you through, for you catching the brunt of it.  I think I'm feeling a bit more in control, though.  I know I need some aid."

She looked skeptical, but a bit hopeful.  "I think that you should stay here, just for a week or so for observation.  Then, Dr. Tobias says that if all goes well, you might be able to come home and have outpatient therapy twice a week.  I've already called your work, your insurance was paid up, so you've three months coming and they're nothing but sympathetic."

Ralph looked grateful.  All he had to do, he told himself, was keep reminding himself that it doesn't matter how or why things have changed or seemed to change.  The Sabbath commandment is kept here, the adultery one is not.  In fact, he thought - probably sinfully, as far as he was still concerned - it could even be fun, if that church secretary he always had errant thoughts over was still attending!

He nodded humbly to his wife, a tear rolling down his cheek, the tear being of relief that there was an end point in sight, that he'd not be here forever.  "Yes, yes," he said to his wife, "Whatever Dr. Tobias feels is best, that's what I want.  To get myself back in order and be there for you and...and..." She looked up sharply at him and he quickly finished, "...our son."

She beamed.

5.

It was Friday and Ralph was so glad to be out.  It was good not to be confined to a single floor any more and be told when to eat and when to sleep and when to go to the bathroom.  His sessions with Dr. Tobias had, he felt, gone well, though having to make up a narrative to account for his insanity had been difficult at first.

But with each group session, with each private therapy session, and with each bit of quiet time to rehearse things, his story and the delivery of it came easier and easier, so much so that after 90 days - he'd been in longer than his wife had told him it would be, but no longer than his insurance covered - it was easier to remember the narrative than what he still sometimes thought of as "reality".

He looked at his son doing his end of the week homework in the kitchen, though given how fast sunset was approaching, he'd need a light on soon.  He went ahead and turned the light on now and smiled briefly at his son before ducking out.

Yes, he told himself, his son.  James was not to blame.  Had she "cheated" on him, a word that no one seemed to know the meaning of but him?  Or had she got pregnant at a church event in which he was busy sleeping with another woman at the same time?  Either way, he had either forgave her or not minded, so it was best to put all that behind him now and just accept James as the innocent boy he is.

Idly he wondered how it was going to be this Sunday.  His first Sunday of freedom since what he thought of as "my episode".  He had gone online almost immediately upon being released, so that he could google how these orgies were conducted.  As usual, Wikipedia assumed that the reader knew nothing, which made it great for him.

Each parish had their own orgy each Sunday, said orgies lasting for one hour.  There were rules as to what you should not do.  You should not be with your wife at all for that hour.  You should not be with just one other woman for that hour.  There was no maximum number of women you could be with, but three was the socially accepted average.

Men picked the women, women could not decline without cause.  But if they didn't like the man, then they could opt for it to just be foreplay and that the first time asked also be the last.  A request rarely made, but always honored.

He was feeling an anticipatory shiver.  He was anticipating Marla, the church secretary, being there, and he had always, well, "coveted" her!  In theory, this would "cure" that, though he still didn't in his heart of hearts believe that any of this would be okay.  Still, everyone said it was okay, and there were pleasant sounding reasons, and the priest said it was all right, and bottom line?

How much effort does it really take to persuade a man that sin is not sin?  Never much, he thought.  Never much.  He'd apparently been sinning in Sunday worship - false memory, false memory, he silently admonished himself.  So now he could sin in adultery.  Because here they do, here they do, here they do!

He shivered.  Part still in fear over the strange three months, part at the thought of Marla.  Do all insane people wrestle this way?  Well, if it was this or the asylum, he'd stay out and say whatever he had to.  If the choice was between Group Therapy or Marla...!

He shivered yet again, this time at the thought of what a sinner he truly was.  He should not give in to this, just for having a carnal desire.  He should rather have spiritual purity in the asylum, then carnal pleasure for a brief time then Hell hereafter.  But...but he knew himself.  He knew he'd sin.  Not a sin, because here they do, here they do!  Not a sin!  Because here they do!  Maybe in enough years he'd believe that and quiet his conscience.

He was almost done with his walk, glad to feel the fresh air on his face and to see real sunlight, what little there was left of it.  You don't realize how valuable that is till you don't have it, he thought!  He stumbled briefly, and resumed his walk smiling at the laughter of a child across the street.  And unaware of the additional half glemmen he'd been shunted sidewise!

Darn eddies!

Seeing Marla across the street, he grinned roguishly, winked broadly and said, "See you Sunday!"  Her face instantly went cold.  Drawing from a concealed shoulder holster with a rapidity that was astonishing, Marla shot straight at Ralph's chest and the shot landed true.

A squad car that had just then been driving down the street screeched to a halt and two cops got out.  They looked at Ralph, laying there dead in a growing pool of blood.  They looked at Marla in all her curvaceous glory holding the smoking gun.

Glancing at his watch, the first officer said, "Good thing Sabbath is not for another five minutes!  Thou shalt not kill - on the Sabbath!"

"After all," the second officer said, "Christ fulfilled the Law!"

Left Behind

January 20, 2017:

Denny woke up with a start, it seemed as if some loud sound had awoke him.  He looked about his room with the sun only just now starting to brighten it, and shook his head in puzzlement.  A factory horn, he vaguely wondered, though he knew the factory had been closed for years.  Stretching, he put the memory - dream? - behind him and started his morning routine.  Which began with waking his husband.

Jim was piloting Oceania 921 at a steady 30,000 feet when it suddenly dropped several hundred feet.  I'm awake, I'm awake, he thought ruefully as he brought her back up and steadied her in the turbulence. Without being asked, his co-pilot was already calming the geese down with some tale of an "air pocket".  Truth is, he didn't know what had caused this, but it was over now, and he could get back to dreaming of his little side piece in Tokyo, and the rest of the flight would prove uneventful.

At a revival tent outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the crowd was being warmed up to a fever pitch as the Reverend Rich "Righteous" Richards was striding up and down the stage, calling upon the excited congregants to let the Good Lord hear how much they loved Him!  From the sounds of the Hallelujahs, Amens and Praise Jesuses, they apparently loved Him an awful lot!

Though had a pollster been gathering data on the crowd, he could have broke it down to 33% of them using alcohol and/or drugs with some degree of regularity, 32% of them cheating on their spouses or fornicating with their unmarried significant others, 21% guilty of a variety of petty thefts in all manner of situations, 11% currently indulged in beatings, bullyings and other forms of assault lumped under "domestic violence" and 3% who had raped.

Not that the entirety of that crowd was not also guilty of taking the Lord's name in vain and failing to remember to keep the Sabbath holy.  And there was the 75% of them who said that they were "more spiritual than religious" and that they could find and commune with God even at a fishing hole or shopping mall.  Except that none of them ever really did.

A sound man in the far back of the tent looked at the briefly fluctuating laptop screen, but then made a negligible adjustment to the bass and looked satisfied.

At NORAD, A1C Glenn Adams looked up in surprise from his iPhone with femdom leather porn dancing on the screen, but wondered why as no alarm had sounded, though for a second he had thought it had. Checking he noticed that some satellites that make up a part of the early warning system were reporting a missile, or at least an oblong object massing about 40 kilos (96 pounds), but wait, something was funny, it was rising up from somewhere in - North Dakota?  Now just who is attacking who and where is that missile heading?  Adams had just enough time to wonder that before it winked out at about 12 miles up.

Bruce and Jordan were arguing heatedly.  Bruce was the owner of what he called "the last family farm in Iowa" and Jordan was R. Jordan Williamson, in house counsel for a Big Agro company that had an unusually high love of copyright, patents, trade secrets and anything and everything related to growing corn.

Bruce was believing that he had a right to harvest anything that grew on his land, and Jordan was explaining that no matter how the seed was acquired, it still belonged to his client.  Bruce was of the opinion that Jordan's mom had not been a particularly virtuous woman, Jordan thought to himself that such was probably true, but pointed out to Bruce that he'd be back with the Sheriff all the same.

To say that both men were living examples of the truth of Romans 3:23 would be an understatement.  Bruce couldn't have the close relationship with his daughter Tonya that he used to, her having got into the Army as quickly as her dumb mom could sign the papers when she was 17.  But Bruce was lately developing an unhealthy interest in Tonya's sister Rhonda, just turned 13.

And R. Jordan?  Well, he's a corporate lawyer, right?  Enough said.

Both took their leave from that spat, without further incident.

All over the world that day, while about 1% of the populace seemed to have a moment of disorientation, it was nothing more than usually happens each day anyway, and for a million different reasons, and passed unnoticed.

February 3, 2017:

Tanner knocked for the third time on Mrs. Krebb's apartment door.  He figured that she probably just didn't hear him, but she sure seemed to hear her gospel shows okay, she had them blaring 24/7 lately, where it used to be she'd turn off her TV at 8pm each evening to go to bed.  Kind of unlike her to be so rude as to leave the set on to disturb her neighbors, but given the help and kind words she'd had for each of her neighbors over the years, no one had had the heart to complain to her these past two weeks.

Tanner used his passkey, he'd have preferred to leave it to another day, but his dad was adamant about the rent, and given that she'd not mailed it to them this time when it was due - another change, she'd always been so prompt - it was on him to go see to getting it.

"Mrs. Krebb?" He called out, but there was no answer.  "Mrs. Krebb, hello?  Hello?  Anyone home?" he called out repeatedly as only those who are going into another's house without permission ever do.  If he still expected a response, he was disappointed, as the small apartment was quickly seen to be empty.  It was neat, it was clean, the TV was blaring - he hastily found the remote and turned it off.

Silence fell, at first that was a relief, then it was a bit eerie.  The apartment was very neat.  Very clean.  By her recliner was a little end table where the remote had been on top of a King James Bible that looked like the giant kind in pulpits.  Oh, large print, he realized, seeing her open glass case - with the glasses still in it?

A drink, only half drunk, was also on the stand.  Cola.  Flat.

He spun about and immediately started calling out her name again, this time going back to the bedroom and checking the other side of the bed, that narrow space between it and the wall.  No body - wait, no Mrs. Krebb, he corrected himself!  He checked the closet, no one there - and all her clothes still there, and a suitcase on the floor inside there.

Her purse was also in there - with her pocketbook inside, and her ID and credit cards inside that.

He pulled out his cell phone and called the police.

February 28, 2017:

"I'm telling you, we have no leads, and yes, we're still working on it!", Sgt. Jennings said, sounding as exasperated as he felt.  "She may be visiting one of her relatives, and yes, yes, I know no one leaves their purse behind.  But no one kidnaps poor 68 year old women, either!  Now listen - people go missing every day, all over the world.  Mostly for harmless reasons.  So you quit calling me on this number and I'll call you if I hear anything!"

Tanner heard the hang up and winced.  He was 22 and had ambitions to be more than a landlord like Dad. He wanted to be a detective, and really thought his sleuthing at Mrs. Krebb's apartment was a step in the right direction of impressing the local police.  But according to the curt dismissal by Sgt. Jennings, he was starting to think that such was not the case.

Angrily, he left the office to go see his girl.  She'd better be home he thought.

March 1, 2017:

On this day there are approximately seven billion, four hundred and ninety million people on Earth.  And each of them was going about their business, and none was aware that anything at all was amiss.  Perhaps for the good reason that there was really nothing different about anything at all.  Thus as it had been, was thus as it was now, and - so they imagined - thus as it would always be.

But 50 miles above Earth and 32 glemmens to the sidewise, was a 68 year old lady from Bismarck standing in the gate of a vast golden city, a tall white robed man with a beard behind her and a host of angels behind them.

"I know I've had you look each day for 40 days now, but is there truly no one else to rapture?", Mrs. Krebb asked.  "No", replied her Savior sadly.  "No one at all."

The Sincerest Form

Archivist’s Note:  The story of the Foundation, being told before by the possibly mythic, but certainly venerated Ancient One named “Asimov”, uses words, sentences and phrases of the original writings on the pre-Peak Data Disc many times.  The divergences are only reflective of the actuality of events, but wherever the words bear resemblance to reality, they are used to give homage to the man who more than Seldon, single-handedly created our Second Galactic Empire.  Students of the highly guarded original will be amazed at the similarities, though that the participants actively sought to make this so should always be borne in mind. 

Hari Seldon - …born 11,998GE (Galactic Era) …died 12,077GE…sometimes given as 79BFE to 1FE (Foundational Era) by the more fervent of his followers …the true year has been called into doubt, as it is known that his followers had reasons for wishing it assigned that year, but it is known that he was born on Helicon in the Arcturus Sector, where the records show that 215,744 other “Hari Seldons” were born that same year, plus or minus 2 years, of both genders and all castes.  …popularity of name due to the presence from founding times of the Church of Scientism, believed to be derived from fragments of an Ancient Data Disc said to be original to pre-Peak Earth.  …Seldon would often joke about his father being a “tobacco” farmer, though what “tobacco” is no one…

…stories of his youth are impossible to verify, and ascribe feats to him in keeping with his namesake, but he is known to have had unusually high Amity and Charisma levels.  In spite of the planet-wide bias for Mathematics as the main degree sought, Seldon is believed to have received his in pre-Peak History, though this has been disputed by...

…his greatest contribution was to Psychohistory, which he grew up learning of as only a religious ideal, but left a fully developed – if still unknown by us – science.

…biographical information on him is chiefly – and apparently deliberately – from a man named Gaal Dornick who Hari Seldon arranged to meet two years before his death.  Whether Seldon truly knew he was to die in two years, or deliberately arranged his own death is the subject of much speculation among scholars.  The story of that meeting… *

All quotes are from the 113^th edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica (13,077GE) used under the Common Cultural Inheritance Act of 12,594GE.

Part 1:  The Psychohistorians

His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a provincial Beta minus who had never seen Trantor before.  That is, not in real life. He had seen it many times in VR, such as when “attending” an Imperial Coronation or the opening of a Galactic Council. Even though he had lived all his life on the world of Synnax, which circled a star at the edges of the Blue Drift, he was not cut off from civilization. At that time, no place in the Galaxy was.

There were 100,000 civilized worlds in the Galaxy then, and not one but owed allegiance to the Empire whose seat was on Trantor. It was the last half century in which that could be said with any degree of truth.

To Gaal, this trip was the undoubted climax of his young, scholarly life. He had never been in space before, there had been no need.  Even when he was writing his doctoral confirmation paper, he had not needed to leave his planet’s VR net.  It extended throughout its star system, so he was able to confirm the already known meteor driftage by simply beaming there, with his actual body still enwombed on Synnax.

He was not worried about the Jump.  His body had not left his womb, no civilized person did that, he simply had his enwombed body transferred to the ship from the warehouse it had always been stored in and he then beamed from Synnax.pl to HMS Serenity.sh. Once in the ship’s VR, he asked one of the Gamma ensigns about the Jump and was assured that there would be no physical sensation.

The Jump, as the Captain explained at dinner that first evening, was the longest temporary solution in mankind’s history.  Warp Drive with Inertial Dampers, allowing men to break the light speed limit, was known to be possible in mankind’s earliest pre-Peak history, but the knowledge had been lost during the Strike.  But the Hyperspatial Jump, also known to the Ancients, had been the temporary solution adopted thousands of years ago.  It took into account the crumpled nature of the space/time continuum and punched a hole in it so as to get very far, very quickly. 

Gaal knew the chief problem was in the mapping of the convoluted topography of the fabric of space, so that one would know where to punch out, and where to punch in, and where you’d wind up after that.  But he supposed that’s what computers were for, to take man’s theory, and then do the boring number crunching work.  He idly wondered where man would be if space were flat.

A soft bell had chimed the following morning, and then came the jump and the jump and the jump and the jump as the ship traveled here and there in its quest to get to the second to last jump point which would then land it near Trantor.  Gaal hung about Ten Forward where passengers on any ship went to relax and enjoy the view from the giant virtual windows which displayed what one would see if one was looking out real windows. 

He thought with satisfaction about his recently awarded doctorate in mathematics, his re-proving of a rather difficult Ancient theorem, thought by some to be beyond the skills of a Beta minus.  He thought of his invitation from the great Hari Seldon to come to Trantor and join the vast and somewhat mysterious Seldon Project – an invitation that many had sought, but only he had received.  He sipped his drink and waited, wondering how long the endpoint confirmation would take.  It wasn’t long.  It must be a matter of routine for the Captain to send a tiny automated probe through the last jump and back again, to confirm with Trantor System Traffic Control that their pre-scheduled arrival at that point was not double booked.

What Gaal was waiting for was the first sight of Trantor. He drank another gin and tonic, marveling at its taste, it was – by ancient custom - not served anywhere but on interstellar craft.  He noticed that the drink was cueing a much larger than normal infusion of the drug euphorion into his system, and he idly made some finger gestures to direct his womb to tone that down to the strength of regular synthehol.

The sights were not as varied or magnificent as in virtudramas, and the best was a blue gaseous nebula, with a few brighter stars twinkling through it, disappearing out of sight ten minutes later, after another Jump.

The first sight of Trantor's sun was that of a hard, white speck all but lost in a myriad such, and recognizable only because it was pointed  out by the ship's guide. The stars were thick here near the Galactic center. But now with this last Jump, it shone more brightly, drowning out the rest, paling them and thinning them out.

The Gamma minus bartender stopped pretending to clean the drinking glasses.  She advised those there that they’d be in parking orbit in a few hours, and while they were welcome to stay, they were within range of Trantor.pl and might wish to start getting ready for Customs.  Most left, Gaal stayed, for wishing to see the planet Trantor, not just its sun.

The bartender must have guessed his thoughts, because she said to him gently, “First time?”  At his nod she said, “I can always tell.  Look, you can stay, but you won’t actually see Trantor. 

“Thank you, Gamma, but I’m aware that this is a virtual view.  It reflects reality nonetheless.”, Gaal said, and turned back to the windows.

“No, no, sir, I meant no offense”, she said gently.  “It does reflect reality, but you see, Trantor can’t be seen from space, there are too many ships in orbit around it.”

Gaal flushed at his provincialism being so obvious to a lesser caste.  It was childish to feel embarrassed and disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child. He had never seen Trantor spread out in all its incredibility, in a real life representation, and had hoped to be able to.

He watched anyway, not for not believing her, but out of wishing to see what she meant.  The bartender retired behind the bar to find more glasses to pretend to clean, counting the minutes till she could clock out.

2.

The ship finished gliding into parking orbit, traffic control routing it to its appropriate “spot” among the other ships.  No human could have kept track of all the ships that came to do business with Trantor, but advanced computers, designed solely for the task, kept each of the behemoths safe amidst the others.  From a distance, Trantor looked to be almost encased in metal, that closer views showed to be those billions and billions of ships.  It was estimated that at the height of Trantor’s reign, that no asteroid could hit it, for even if the planetary defenses failed, it would only hit one of the many ships in orbit.

Gaal finally left, waving a half credit tip to the silent Gamma, and had the Transporter chief beam him down to Customs at Trantorian.pl.  The others had already done that, few having had Gaal’s curiosity to see things “real”.  As he dematerialized, the ship began to spin in place, so as to insure that no bone deterioration of those enwombed would occur during the stay.  Once down, he waited in line for the next Customs Officer.  His status was normal, his credentials in order. He stood waiting, the data he had brought was scanned for viruses, as was the program of his avatar. His credentials were inspected again and approved. He himself paid no attention and his avatar program was updated with the appropriate visa.

Then through customs and into an explosion of sounds and sensations!  This was Trantor! They had their air a little thicker, the gravity a bit greater, and the temperature warmer than on his home planet, but he could – and did - opt out of those sensations. He wondered if he would get used to the tightly constricted spaces they seemed to prefer.

Debarkation Building was tremendous in length, but had a ceiling scarcely a half meter above his head and the walls on either side were only five meters away in either direction.  Everything was a uniform gray.  He looked about but could not see the end of this long hall, just Gammas seated at endless desks and crowds of Betas milling around those desks.  All along the walls were what looked to be a near infinite series of doors on either side.  He thought about blanking out his perception of the other people, so as to appear to be alone in this building…?  Passage?...but he had been advised in advance that Trantor was very conservative and had the VR controls locked into “realistic”.

The Gamma at the desk in front of him was speaking again. He sounded annoyed. He said, "May I help you, sir?" Gaal realized that he didn’t know how he was getting to a tempidence, so first things first, "A tempidence, please, I’m to be at the University…"

The Gamma at the desk jerked a thumb, "Sir, the aerocar office is to your right, half a kilometer down that hall", and he pointed to a door.

Gaal started down that hall, leaned as if to flash to super-speed, and appeared to stumble when he could not.  Stolidly, and cursing reality, he walked at normal speed to the office.

A figure detached itself from anonymity of the crowd and stopped at the desk, as Gaal left. The Gamma at the desk looked up and shook his head in refusal. The figure made a hand gesture, the man at the desk flinched, then spoke hurriedly, and the figure went off to follow Gaal.

Gaal found the office marked "Aerocars", to be more a small cubicle.  The elderly Gamma at the desk did not look up from the multi-colored cube he was playing with in his lap.  He was turning sides of it with an expression of utter futility. He mumbled, "Where to, sir?"

Gaal was a bit out of sorts, and snapped his fingers twice, the Gamma looked up in surprise and held the cube under the desk to hide it.  “Sir?”, he asked nervously, only to relax into an amused grin at the tell tale minus sign on Gaal’s tunic.  The cube – an Alpha’s nursery toy  – was brought back out from under the desk, but he at least kept looking attentively at Gaal.

Gaal glared, noticing the plus on the Gamma’s tunic, “A good tempidence, please."

The Gamma was unimpressed, "They're all good, sir. Would you like me to call up a directory for you?"

Regretting that he’d lost his temper, Gaal said, "The nearest one to the University, please, unless you have Transporters."  The Gamma said, "You don’t rate beaming, sir, the aerocar is forty point five credits."

Gaal winced and waved his hand over the desk in payment. He said, "Where do I go?"

"Down the hall to your left, sir." Gaal went into the hallway indicated. There were thousands walking to and fro in it, as many going his direction on the right hand side as were going the opposite direction.

A door on his right was open with a sign saying “Aerocars”.  He went through and reached a long row of aerocars, that had tubes right above each of them, a Gamma in a yellow uniform with small black and white squares randomly flowing up and down it, looked at him oddly and said, "Direct line to the Luxor, sir."

The figure who still followed Gaal heard that. He also heard Gaal say, "Fine," and watched him enter the circle shaped vehicle with a two person front seat, a two person back seat and a clear transparent bubble hinged at the back and raised for access.  Like a provincial, Gaal sat in the front seat with the Gamma, who looked amused but merely pulled the bubble down over them said nothing.

The aerocar lifted straight up. Gaal stared out at the wall of the gray metal tube, marveling at the sensation of airflight within an enclosed structure and wondering at its point at the same time. After going up for a bit, Gaal noticed that there were four holes around the tube every 100 meters or so.  The Gamma selected one, but by what method Gaal did not know, and he sure was not going to ask.

Instead he was pondering why things were arranged to be so confined, when finally the aerocar dropped down a tunnel and descended to ground-level once more. "The Luxor Tempidence," said the driver, unnecessarily. He made a show of helping Gaal out, and presumptuously held out his hand, waiting till Gaal waved his hand in a fashion that allowed a tenth credit tip to pass from his account to the driver’s.  The driver looked amused, then turned, picked up a waiting passenger, and was rising again.

In all this, from the moment of debarkation, there had been no glimpse of sky in the whole VR world, and at no point was he anything other than completely enclosed.

3.

TRANTOR–...At the beginning of the thirteenth millennium, this tendency reached its climax. As the center of the Imperial Government for unbroken hundreds of generations of Stasis, and located, as it was, toward the central regions of the Galaxy among the most densely populated and industrially advanced worlds of the system, it could scarcely help being the densest and richest clot of humanity ever seen.

Its urbanization, progressing steadily, had finally reached the ultimate. All the surface of Trantor, 510,000,000 square kilometers in extent, was a single warehouse of artificial wombs and the support machines, power processors and computer nodes. The population, at its height, was one trillion, all enwombed, all participating in the VR overlay. This enormous population was devoted almost entirely to the administrative necessities of Empire, and found themselves all too few for the complications of the task. (It is to be remembered that the impossibility of proper administration of the Galactic Empire under the uninspired leadership of the later Emperors was a considerable factor in the Fall.) Daily, fleets of ships in the tens of thousands brought the produce of twenty agricultural worlds to the dinner tables of Trantor....

Its dependence upon the other worlds for water, food and, indeed, for all necessities of life, made Trantor increasingly vulnerable to conquest by interruption. In the last millennium of the Empire, the monotonously numerous revolts made Emperor after Emperor conscious of this, and Imperial policy became little more than the protection of Trantor's delicate jugular vein....

ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

Gaal was not certain whether the sun shone, or, for that matter, whether it was day or night.  Trantor’s VR overlay represented things as close to “real” as possible, and everything seemed indoors, with no windows, and only soft uniform light from no particular source.

At first, he had eagerly followed the signs to the "Sun Room" and found it but an area for people to play in large baths under artificial light. He lingered a moment or two, puzzled that Trantor’s VR leisure spots could be so standard, then returned to the Luxor's main lobby.

He said to the Gamma clerk, "Where can I buy a ticket for a planetary tour?"

"Right here."

"Is there a tour today?"

“There are 86,400 of them every day, sir.”

“Is it that popular?” 

The clerk looked at him, seemingly pausing for a second.  “Sir, there are 1 trillion citizens on this planet, not to mention the billion or so guests in orbit, such as yourself.  It so happens that this is not very popular at all, as only .03% of the citizens ever take the tour even once, and less than 2% of the guests take it.  But that works out to roughly a million people per day desiring the tour, so we book a 12 person tour 86,400 times per day, or one every second.  Do you wish me to schedule one of those seconds for you?”

“Yes, that would be fine.  How far off is the next available one?”

The clerk looked at his screen and said, “In 9 minutes and 54 seconds, sir.  100 credits and I’ll reserve it.  You’ll have time to get there if you start now.”

“How’s the weather?”  Gaal asked as he made the gesture for payment.  He hoped the weather wouldn’t let him down.

The room clerk said, "Good weather. Come to think of it, I do believe it's the dry season now." He added, conversationally, "I don't bother with such things, but I’ve heard no one complain of it, after all, the weather will be nice for you no matter what the actual meteorological conditions are. You’re cleared now. Special elevator in the rear. It's marked 'To the Planetary Tour.' Just take it."

“But…but…”, Gaal stammered.  “As it’s a VR tour, and not even real time, then why can’t I just take it from my tempidence, any second I care to?”

“Sir, planetary computer systems on the 100,000 other worlds have more than enough capacity for their planet’s needs.  But the Trantorian planetary computer system is dealing with the VR interactions of 100 times more people than any other world.  And another tenth of a planetary population worth of guests.  Program and site usage is carefully monitored, thus the insistence on people seeming to travel in aerocars and walkways and tubes, and the token credit costs for what on other worlds would be free.”

He felt as if his actual face were flushing a bit, as he turned away.  It seemed that every time he asked a question he was reminded of his provincial status.  He approached the elevator and saw it allowed for the semblance of levitation. Gaal entered and others flowed in behind him. The guide closed a contact. For a moment, Gaal felt suspended in space as gravity appeared to switch to zero, and then he had his personalized mass again as the elevator accelerated upward. Deceleration followed and his feet left the floor. He squawked against his will.

The guide called out, "Sync your personalized mass to the lift parameters. Can't you read the sign?" The others had done so. They were smiling at him as he madly and vainly tried to clamber back down the wall, forgetting in his panic to simply finger twitch it.

Then a hand reached out and pulled him down.  He gasped his thanks as the elevator came to a halt.  He stepped into the docked ship, a cruiser with a dozen seats. The man, whose helping hand he had just now been the recipient of, was immediately behind him.  The man said kindly, "Plenty of seats."

Gaal nodded mutely, and made straight for the front row and a window seat.  He needn’t have bothered rushing as he noticed that each row had what seemed to be a large bay window appear in front of it, so that all passengers had front row window seats.

He could not see the ground. It was lost in the ever increasing complexities of man-made structures. He could see no horizon other than that of gray metal against gray sky, and he knew it was so over all the land-surface of the planet. There was scarcely any motion to be seen – a few maintenance-craft lazed against the sky - but mainly all the busy traffic servicing a trillion plus people were going on, he knew, beneath the metal skin of the world.  It was perpetually dusky, due to the canopy of ships that while out of sight, blocked a great deal of Trantor’s sunlight nonetheless.

There was no green to be seen; no green, no soil, no life other than man. Somewhere on the world, he realized vaguely, was the Emperor's palace, set amid 100 square kilometers of natural soil, green with trees, rainbowed with flowers. It was a small island amid an ocean of steel, but it wasn't visible from where the ship was now.  But Gaal remained hopeful. It might be ten thousand kilometers away, but for one hundred credits, he imagined he’d see it soon enough.  Meanwhile, he was amazed by the unexpected variety. 

The bulk of the structures were warehouses, but there was no end and no beginning, they all blended together, roofed over together, and he knew that these contained endless wombs.  But dotted among them were enormously tall structures, like thick tubes disappearing up into the sky, which he realized were much bigger than he’d first thought.  They were beanpoles, and orbiting supply ships could drop their cargoes of yeast and liquid nutrients into the top, and have them drop down into automatic factories at the base, to be distributed later to the Trantorians.  Or distributed at once, Gaal realized.  There was no hope of storing any food long term, not when it was hard enough to meet the current needs.

Skyscrapers, easily five kilometers high were also visible, in groups of five, every 100 kilometers or so.  When his eyes squinted at them in puzzlement, a voice spoke, audible only to him, letting him know that such were built in earlier times, when some still liked living in Real World, and wished for a view out an actual window.  Now, though the windows were perpetually blanked out, and the apartments turned into storage spaces for more wombs, they were still reserved exclusively for top echelon Beta Pluses and Alpha Minuses as a status symbol.  Even Gaal knew that such were the actual leadership of any world, as Alphas and Alpha Plusses were too lost in their large thoughts to bother with something as small as “governing”.

He noticed now that the groups of five skyscrapers had left off, but that a giant circle of even taller skyscrapers was rapidly approaching,  with what was perhaps another beanpole in the middle of that ring.  His eyes now grew in wonderment, as the ship came upon what he realized must be the Emperor’s Palace, bathed in an enormous pillar of light from beyond the sky.

In a ring of a dozen skyscrapers 5 kilometers high, rose the largest one ever built that wasn’t meant to be a beanpole.  Enormously thick at the base, it rose up 10 kilometers, narrowing in the middle and then widening out even more than the base at the top.  It was the top that the cruiser was taking him to, and as they crested the rim of the top, color exploded before him!

It was the one hundred square kilometers, said to have not been built over, but he realized now that was not really true.  All of Trantor was built over, but a wondrous park had been made on this enormous disc, with an apparent perfect mastery of weather, temperature and pressure control, even at this rarefied altitude.  One third of it was a kilometer and a half higher than the rest, so that they were skimming alongside an enormous cliff with three waterfalls cascading fifteen hundred meters down to a large lake.  As they approached the other side, they saw the lake was actually a river, in that it flowed off the disc, dropping down towards Trantor itself.  Seeing his eyes focus intently and noting his facial expression, the voice explained that the water was reclaimed below and pumped back up to start again.  It was also the only open water on Trantor, the oceans and lakes having long ago been drained for more space for buildings.

The ship then shot over the edge where the water was falling, and looped back around, climbing up toward the third of the disc at the top of the cliff.  Cresting that, an enormous palace confronted Gaal, the more impressive because while it looked like every Magic Castle he’d ever seen in VR world back home, this was twice the size and a representation of that which he knew existed in Real World.

Here were rainbow colors, such as to make a real rainbow look as gray as the warehouses kilometers below.  No shade or tint or hue was left unrepresented, and various turrets glittered or gleamed or mirrored the ship and sky behind it, or were black as night, or glowed as the sun or displayed a hundred other colors and textures and styles.  Around all flew hundreds Imperial Stormtroopers covered head to toe in solid white armor, mounted on sky-cycles.  To and fro they went, on errands more diverse than simple security, for it was known that when the Viceroys and Industrialists of the Galaxy met the Emperor, it was always Real face to face, with no VR overlay of the interior allowed.

He sighed, knowing he’d never see the interior.  Where the Emperor, his family, his courtesans and courtiers bustled about, in Real World, with no wombs ever used, or even in existence there.

He realized finally that he was in Trantor at last; on the planet which was the center of all the Galaxy and the finest flower of the human race. He saw none of its weaknesses.  He saw no ships of food docking at the tops of beanpoles. He was not aware of a jugular vein delicately connecting the trillion of Trantor with the rest of the Galaxy. He was conscious only of the mightiest deed of man; the complete and almost contemptuously final conquest of a world. 

As the ship started back, he looked away a little blank-eyed. His friend of the elevator was in the seat next to his, and caught Gaal’s eyes.

The man smiled. "My name is Jerril. First time in Trantor?"

"Yes, Mr. Jerril."

"Thought so. Jerril's my first name. Trantor gets you if you've got the poetic temperament.  Trantorians rarely take the planetary tour, though. They don't like it. Gives them nerves."

"Nerves! – My name's Gaal, by the way. Why should it give them nerves? It's incredible."

"Subjective matter of opinion, Gaal. If you are always in a womb from birth to death, and the VR world is deliberately all indoors with realistic rules, then it would be jarring to see outside all of a sudden.  They have pictures they can view, of course, but they never deliberately choose any vacation environment that involves outdoors.  Every now and then someone suggests that they condition the children to tolerate outdoor environments, but they never do.”

He went on, "Of course, it doesn't really matter. What if they never see the outside at all? They're happy in their wombs and VR and they run the Empire. How many people do you think you’ve met here?”

Gaal thought for a moment, there was the man who registered him, the aerocar driver, the Luxor desk man, the elevator guide…”Four?” he asked tentatively.

The man laughed, “No, just one.  Me.”, then to Gaal’s astonished face he continued, “Oh, the others in this tour are actual people, all but the guide.  But the menials you saw were all basic computer personalities, no sentience of course, but able to imitate all expected and most unexpected interactions.  It saves having to support a population of Gammas and Deltas here, like the other worlds have to.”

"I imagine so.", said Gaal, wondering about a world in which not only were there 100 times more people than on any other planet, but everyone was an Alpha or Beta.  He fleetingly wondered how the native population was maintained, without Gammas to breed, for it was well known that upper castes did not automatically have upper caste children.  Idly he thought of the man with the colored cube, and wondered why an elaborate computer imitation would wish to play with one – and why did such simulations accept tips?

"What do you think of it all?", Jerril said, interrupting his thoughts.  For a moment, the man's good nature evaporated into shrewdness. He looked almost sly.

Gaal fumbled. "Incredible," he said, again.

"Here on a trade mission, or sabbatical?  Or just a pilgrimage to elevate your status with castemates on cook outs?"

"No, none of that.  I actually came here primarily for a job."

"Oh?", brief eye flicker to Gaal’s minus symbol.

Gaal felt obliged to explain further, "With Dr. Seldon's project at the University of Trantor, I’m a mathematician."

"Raven Seldon?"

"No, Hari Seldon."

"Hari's the one I mean. They call him Raven. Slang, you know. He keeps predicting disaster."

"He does?" Gaal was genuinely astonished, not only at this information, but that the man appeared to be reciting memorized lines.

"Surely, you must know." Jerril was not smiling. "You're coming to work for him, aren't you?"

"Yes, yes I am.", Gaal reaffirmed.  Then in the silence, he asked, “What kind of disaster?”

"What kind would you think?"

"I'm afraid I wouldn't have the least idea. I've read the papers Dr. Seldon and his group have published. They're on mathematical theory."

"Yes, the ones they publish."

As the cruiser docked, Gaal felt annoyed. He said, "I think I'll go to my tempidence now. Very pleased to have met you."

Jerril waved his arm indifferently in farewell.

Gaal found a man waiting for him within the bounds of his already rented tempidence!  For a moment, he was too startled to put into words the inevitable, "What are you doing here?" that came to his lips.

The man rose. He was unusual in that he wasn’t holding his appearance to middle age as most men did, but was displaying a body image that was old and almost bald and walking with a limp.  Only his eyes seemed enhanced, and they were very bright and blue. 

He said, "I am Hari Seldon," an instant before Gaal's befuddled brain placed the face alongside the memory of the many times he had seen it in pictures.

4.

PSYCHOHISTORY–...Gaal Dornick, using nonmathematical concepts, has defined psychohistory to be that branch of mathematics which deals with the reactions of human conglomerates to fixed social and economic stimuli, drawing its origins from an exhaustive analysis of pre-Peak politics, religions, and commerce as they related to the manipulation of unlabeled Gammas....

... Implicit in all these definitions is the assumption that the human conglomerate being dealt with is sufficiently large for valid statistical treatment. The necessary size of such a conglomerate may be determined by Seldon's First Theorem which ... A further necessary assumption is that the human conglomerate be itself unaware of psychohistoric analysis in order that its reactions be truly random ...

The basis of all valid psychohistory lies in the equations that Seldon never fully published, but are believed to be the distillation of pre-Peak histories . Data Discs dealing with possible futures of control and command, and the reactions of the masses (now known to be Gammas) to given stimuli ...

ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

"Good afternoon, sir," said Gaal. "I– I–"

"You didn't think we were to meet before tomorrow? Ordinarily, we would not have. It is just that if we are to use your services, we must work quickly. It grows continually more difficult to obtain recruits."

"I don't understand, sir."

"You were talking to a man on the planetary tour, were you not?"

"Yes. His first name is Jerril. I know no more about him. "

"His name is nothing. He is an agent of the Commission of Public Safety. A plainclothes Stormtrooper.  He followed you from the port."

"But why? I am afraid I am very confused."

"Did the man on the tour say nothing about me?"

Gaal hesitated, "He referred to you as Raven Seldon."

"Did he say why?"

"He said you predict disaster."

"I do. What does Trantor mean to you?"

“Practically, a place where I have a job.  More generally, it’s an incredible achievement.”

Seldon paused for a moment, then asked, “But, what of psychohistory?"

"I haven't thought of applying it to the problem."

"Before you are done with me, young man, you will learn to apply psychohistory to all problems as a matter of course. Observe." Seldon played his fingers in the air in the characteristic movements that created a screen floating in front of him.  Seldon's nimble fingers, showing age spots for reasons Gaal could not fathom, played along the windows that played across the screen. Red symbols glowed out brightly, the seeming conclusion of Seldon’s efforts.

He said, "That represents the condition of the Empire at present."

He waited.

Gaal asked tentatively, “Am I to critique your analysis or accept it subject to future verification?"

“Good, you are careful.  Accept it for now, you may analyze it at leisure.”

"All right." Gaal said cautiously, thinking that this felt like another interview.

"Good. Add to this the known probability of Imperial assassination, viceregal revolt, the contemporary recurrence of periods of industrial dislocation, the dominance games of Betas. . ."

He proceeded. As each item was mentioned, new symbols sprang to life at his touch, and melted into the basic function which expanded and changed.

Finally, Seldon stopped. "This is Trantor three centuries from now. How do you interpret that? Eh?" He put his head to one side and waited.

Gaal said, unbelievingly, "It would seem to have Trantor – not existing? But – but that is impossible. Trantor has never been –"

Seldon was filled with the intense excitement of a man whose body only had grown old. "Come, come. You saw how the result was arrived at. Put it into words. Forget the symbolism for a moment."

Gaal said, "As Trantor becomes more specialized, it becomes more vulnerable, less able to defend itself. Further, as it becomes more and more the administrative center of Empire, it becomes a greater prize. As means of status enhancement fade in worlds frozen in Forever Stasis, more of the cognitive elite turn their thoughts to seizing the throne, rather than content themselves with pointless status games, and as the feuds among the great families grow more rampant, social responsibility disappears. "

"Enough. And what of the numerical probability of total destruction within three centuries?"

"I couldn't tell, it depends on the unthinkable of breaking the Quaternary Directive against Planetary Destruction."

"Surely you can perform a field-differentiation as to determine what would prompt such an atypical response?"

Gaal felt himself under pressure. It would be a breach to touch another’s screen, and to call up his own would feel like a surrender. He calculated furiously.  He said, "About 85%?"

"Not bad," said Seldon, and seemed to try to thrust out his lower lip, "but not good. The actual figure is 92.5%."

Gaal said, "And so you are called Raven Seldon? I have seen none of this in the journals."

"But of course not. This is unprintable. Do you suppose the Imperium could expose its shakiness in this manner? That is a very simple demonstration in psychohistory. But some of our results have leaked out among the aristocracy."

"That's bad."

"Not necessarily. All is taken into account."

"But is that why I'm being investigated?"

"Yes. Everything about my project is being investigated."

"Are you in danger, sir?"

"Oh, yes. There is probability of 1.7% that I will be given the Ultimate Punishment, but of course that will not stop the project. We have taken that into account as well. Well, never mind.  What do you think of our names?”

“I read your brief outline of an Ancient Data Disc, sir, on the way to Trantor as you asked.  An Ancient one is said to have foretold such a meeting.  I don’t know what to make of that, could they have had this science so long ago?”

“No, they did not.”, Seldon said, and waited.

“Are you saying this is a coincidence?”, ventured Gaal.

“Not at all”, replied Seldon.  “I deliberately arranged it.  I knew the story said a man with my name would meet a man with your name, so I chose you.”

“I had thought my qualifications had something to do with that.”, said Gaal with a touch of injury to his voice.

Seldon laughed, “Of course, of course, you are certainly qualified.  But come, there are 10 billion citizens on each planet of the Synnax province, and people named after names in Ancient histories are hardly scarce.  How hard do you imagine it was to find a person with your name and qualifications?  I had 142 to choose from, 18 even if I confined myself to your particular planet instead of your sector.”

“I am glad to have been the top of that group, sir.”, said Gaal stiffly.

“You weren’t!”, grinned Seldon.  “But you were the first I contacted that was available!  Now do you care to ask how many others I called first, or can a Beta accept that all minds below Alpha plus are mostly interchangeable within caste?  That is, after all, one of the key parts of psychohistorical theory.”

Gaal briefly considered this.  Knowing Seldon was right, he shook his head ruefully.  “You have not caught me at my best, sir, but I will try to comport myself better in the future.  Can you tell me why it was so important to arrange this situation?  So we’ve met, now what?”

“Psychohistory is not so much a science, as an art.  An analysis of probabilities indicates that it is important to arrange for reality to follow the story as closely as possible.  The story was not widely known outside of my home world till ten years ago.  But our group has been spreading it as best they can.  Such things are essential.  In the long run.”

“Not a science!”, exclaimed Gaal.  “But what of the mathematics you showed me?”

“Perhaps claiming mathematical backing helps it appeal more to scientifically oriented minds, who would dismiss a myth out of hand.  Or perhaps the math is dead on, but the belief in the myth is an important part of the equation.  Either way, you will meet me, I suppose, at the University tomorrow?"

"I will," said Gaal, wondering, and not for the last time, just what he was getting into.

5.

COMMISSION OF PUBLIC SAFETY–... The aristocratic coterie rose to power after the hacking and powering down of the artificial wombs of Emperor Chandrasekhar and his family, starting the tradition of the Emperors living solely in the Real world. In the main, they formed an element of order during the centuries of instability and uncertainty in the ruling classes of the Imperium. Usually under the control of the great families of the Chandrasekhars and the Windsors, it degenerated eventually into a blind instrument for maintenance of the status quo.... Garbed in white exoskeletons for protection and Real world strength and speed enhancement, they were inevitably dubbed ‘Stormtroopers’ by the Gammas, as was probably the plan from the start.  The connotations of such a name are to be found in the history of wars in an unnamed Galaxy far from ours, described by pre-Peak authors as…

.... In a way, the beginning of the Commission's resurgence in power and increased control can be traced to the trial of Hari Seldon two years before the beginning of the Foundational Era. That trial is described in Gaal Dornick's biography of Hari Seldon...

ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

Gaal did not carry out his promise.  After a deep sleep, he was awakened by a muted buzzer.  It was the desk clerk, or at least a program that did a great imitation of one, telling him that he was under detention.  Gaal attempted an emergency beam out back to his body in orbit above, but found that was blocked.  Only governments had such powers over citizens, so he composed himself with the creation of a formal scholar’s outfit, as was appropriate to his caste as a Beta and his rank of a Doctor of Synnax.

Imperial Stormtroopers came for him and took him elsewhere, but it was still detention. Their superior, a man of deliberately small and prim appearance, asked him questions most politely. It was all very civilized. He explained that he was a provincial of Synnax; that he had attended such and such schools and obtained a Doctor of Mathematics degree on such and such a date. He had applied for a position on Dr. Seldon's staff and had been accepted.

Over and over again, he gave these details; and over and over again, the little man returned to the question of his joining the Seldon Project. How had he heard of it; what were to be his duties; what secret instructions had he received; what was it all about? He answered that he did not know. He had no secret instructions. He was a scholar and a mathematician. He had no interest in politics. And finally the gentle inquisitor asked, "When will Trantor be destroyed?"

Gaal paused, upset that they were undoubtedly letting fatigue poisons accumulate in his actual body in orbit, "I could not say of my own knowledge."

"Could you say of anyone's?"

"How could I speak for another?" He felt warm; overwarm, and wondered how far they were going.  By convention, no one of his caste could have emotion or mind altering chemicals added to their life support without a court order, but there were still ways of manipulating the environment by acts of omission, such as halting the womb’s programs that were to cleanse his system of fatigue poisons.  Could they have turned off the heat dissipators, or was his imagination getting carried away?

The inquisitor said, "Has anyone told you of such destruction; set a date?" And, as the young man hesitated, he went on, "You have been monitored, doctor. We viewed you at the port when you arrived; on the planetary tour ship; and, of course, we were able to monitor your conversation with Dr. Seldon."

Gaal said, "Then you know his views on the matter."

"Perhaps. But we would like to hear them from you."

"I’m not going to speak for another. I have a right to remain silent and have counsel. I demand my rights as an Imperial citizen."

The man looked faintly surprised but only said gravely, "You shall have them."

And Gaal did.

It was a tall man that eventually entered, a man whose face seemed all vertical lines and so thin that one could wonder whether there was room for a smile.  The fashion on Synnax for forty years had been to maintain an appearance of inhuman perfection, and this man, like so many others on Trantor, was disconcertingly odd looking.

Gaal felt tired, though from checking in with his ship’s captain remotely, he knew his body on that orbiting ship was still receiving basic care. So much had happened, yet he had been in Trantor not more than thirty hours.

The man said, "I am Lors Avakim. Dr. Seldon has retained me specifically to represent you."

"Is that so? Let me guess, you were the first Lors out of 300 to agree?  Well, then, I wish a motion to show cause, for when the Emperor hears of how the least of his are treated, we shall see some action!"

Avakim was carefully making finger gestures on a screen he had called up in the air in front of him. If Gaal had had the stomach for it, he might have recognized legal forms in one window, and a somewhat sophisticated anti-hack program scrolling across another.

Avakim, paying no attention to Gaal's outburst, finally looked up. He said, "The commission will, of course, be monitoring our conversation. This is against the law, but they will do it nevertheless."

Gaal glared.

"However," and Avakim seated himself deliberately, "the program I’ve started – which is a perfectly ordinary notarization recording program to all appearances and performs it duties well – has the additional property of completely blocking the hack. This is something they will not find out at once."

"Then I can speak."

"Of course."

"Then I want a motion to show cause and the Emperor notified."

Avakim smiled frostily, and it turned out that there was room for it on his thin face after all. His cheeks wrinkled to make the room. He said, "You are from the provinces."

"I am none the less a doctor, a Beta, and in the final analysis, an Imperial citizen. As good a one as you or as any of this Commission of Public Safety."

"No doubt, no doubt. It is merely that, as a provincial, you do not understand life in Trantor as it is.  There are no show cause hearings and the Emperor will not be notified."

"I know that as a provincial things are not always like in the virtudramas.  But if I am not speaking of the correct procedure, then what are the correct procedures?"

"None. There is no recourse in a practical sense. Legalistically, you may make a motion to show cause, but your hearing would be before the same Commission. Not only would they be judging their own decision, but they are well familiar with the Convention’s ‘exceptions clauses’ in time of war or unrest.  And as the old saying goes, ‘After all, there is a war on’!"

Gaal said, "Indeed?  And as the rejoinder always goes, ‘But isn’t there always?’ – show me the decade that has no rebel scum flitting about making noise about something, which as noble sounding as it always is, usually involves some spoiled Alpha minus princess or disaffected Beta son trying to seize power within his own family!  Frack!  If the virtudramas of that old tale have played once, they’ve played a million times!  If they truly suspended show cause hearings every time the rebels were about, then there’d never be any!”

“And that is exactly how it is.  No doubt why the rebels never quite lose.  Be that as it may, this is hardly a tragedy. Dr. Seldon was of the opinion that you would be arrested this morning.  He counted on it."

"What!"

"It is unfortunate, but true. The Commission has been more and more hostile to his activities.  New members joining the group have been interfered with to an increasing extent. The graphs showed that for our purposes, matters might best be brought to a climax now. The Commission of itself was moving somewhat slowly so Dr. Seldon visited you yesterday for the purpose of forcing their hand. No other reason."

Gaal caught his breath, "I resent –"

"Please. It was necessary. You were not picked for any personal reasons, other than the ones Seldon went over with you yesterday. You must realize that Dr. Seldon's plans, which are laid out with the developed mathematics of over eighteen years, include all eventualities with significant probabilities. This is one of them. I've been sent here for no other purpose than to assure you that you need not fear. It will end well; almost certainly so for the project; and with reasonable probability for you."

"What are the figures?" demanded Gaal.

"For the project, over 99.9%."

"And for myself?"

"I am instructed that this probability is 87.5%."

"Then I've got the same chance of avoiding a week of Data Deprivation or the Ultimate Penalty as I do at winning a Gamma child’s tic tac toe game?"

"Are those truly such poor odds?  One week is not four, endurable for a well educated Beta, and the chances of the Ultimate Penalty are under one percent."

"Indeed. Calculations upon one man mean nothing. You send Dr. Seldon to me."

"But calculations as to what a group such as the Commission will do to a given man mean much.  However, I cannot send for Dr. Seldon as he is also under arrest."

An Imperial Stormtrooper beamed into the middle of the room, weapon at the ready, and looked quickly about before Gaal could do more than utter the beginning of a cry. The Stormtrooper went to Avakim’s screen, still floating in the air, and with no ceremony wiped it clean with a single fast hand motion, before resuming his two handed grip upon his blast rifle.

Avakim said quietly, "I will need that notarization recording program."

"My legate will call one up for you, Counselor, that does not interfere with safety monitoring protocols."

"My interview is done, in that case."

Gaal watched him leave and was alone.

6.

GAMMA CASTE -…any world without caste population manipulation will always have the Gammas as the largest caste.  Ancient Beta scholars, pre-Galactic Era, had argued to great effect that Gammas should be regarded simply as another trainable animal species, like the horse or dog, and that only the top 25% of mankind that were Alpha and Beta level were deserving of the title ‘human’.  …fiercely condemned as casticidal, but lent credence by the obvious fact that all mankind’s works of art, scholarship and invention were demonstrably done by the top two castes.

After the Solarian Incident, with the rumors of Alphas committing casticide against Betas, the new view was that the Gammas were to be regarded as a Control Natural group, the caste from which individuals of all other castes are born.  Research into genetics being on the Ancient list of forbidden inquires along with artificial intelligence, robots, and a dozen more dangerous fields listed in the histories.  …Gammas made up the main caste exported when mankind was still colonizing planets aggressively, yet their presence was increasingly questioned by Betas when Trantor forbade further in-Galaxy colonization efforts…

…and laws such as those forbidding Gamma Herding led scholars to believe that in pre-Peak days, the state of affairs was anarchic in the extreme, with Earth’s various governments engaged in attempting to have as many Gammas under their control as they could, but moreso, diverse elements within each government’s territory would attempt to gain control of Gammas to their own purposes…  …thus a Gamma was a much sought commodity, with churches, corporations, clubs and civic leaders all competing for his time, attention, productive efforts, and most of all, his loyalty, but all of them doing so with no unified plan whatsoever, and worse, not even being aware of caste distinctions.

The loss of the knowledge of how to compete for and control free range Gammas has been shown to be a side effect of the VR and Forever Stasis, which by having the Gammas enwombed and plugged into VR world, meant that control of them was a foregone conclusion, and disputes over what direction to take them in were kept purely among the upper castes, with no permission of the Gammas sought or needed.  The rediscovery of the Ancient methods of Gamma persuasion is what allowed Seldon to…

Of the many things that contributed to the fall, Trantor’s reckless abandoning of appropriate caste distribution ranks high.  To this day scholars are unsure of how they arranged that their population of a trillion were solely the top castes.  …possibly planets were colonized off the books, in some obscure section of the Galaxy available as a preserve from which to skim off the newly born Betas and Alphas.  But whispers of casticide and genetic manipulation have always been the leading…

ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

The trial (Gaal supposed it to be one, though it bore little resemblance legalistically to the elaborate trial techniques Gaal had interacted  with in virtudramas) had not lasted long. It was in its third day. Yet already, Gaal could no longer stretch his memory back far enough to embrace its beginning. He himself had been but little pecked at. The heavy guns were trained on Dr. Seldon himself.  The charges were as large as they were vague, with Gamma Herding being the least alleged, and High Treason itself on the bill of particulars.

Hari Seldon, however, sat there unperturbed. To Gaal, he was the only spot of stability remaining in the world.

The audience was small and drawn exclusively from among the Barons of the Empire. Press and Gammas were excluded, and it was doubtful that any significant number of off-worlders even knew that a trial of Seldon was being conducted.  The atmosphere was one of unrelieved hostility toward the defendants.

Five of the Commission of Public Safety sat behind the raised desk. They appeared in the black robes and white wigs that were the sign of their judicial function by the authority of the Ancient texts themselves. In the center was the Chief Commissioner Linge Chen. Gaal had never before seen so great a Lord and he watched this Alpha minus with fascination. Chen, throughout the trial, rarely said a word. He made it quite clear that much speech was beneath his dignity.  Court rumor was that he was a slumming Alpha prime with a high Aggressiveness quotient who posed as an Alpha minus for his own larger (and unknown) purposes.

The Commission's Advocate glanced at his private screen and the examination continued, with Seldon still on the stand:

Q. Let us see, Dr. Seldon. How many men are now engaged in the project of which you are head?

A. Fifty mathematicians.

Q. Including Dr. Gaal Dornick?

A. Dr. Dornick is the fifty-first,

Q. Oh, we have fifty-one then? Search your memory, Dr. Seldon. Perhaps there are fifty-two or fifty-three? Or perhaps even more?

A. Dr. Dornick has not yet formally joined my organization. When he does, the membership will be fifty-one. It is now fifty, as I have said.

Q. Not perhaps nearly five hundred thousand?

A. Mathematicians? No.

Q. I did not say mathematicians. Are there five hundred thousand in all capacities?

A. In all capacities, your figure may be correct.

Q. May be? I say it is. I say that the people in your project number four hundred ninety-six thousand, three hundred and four.

A. I believe you are counting spice and children still in caste creches.

Q. (raising his voice) Four hundred ninety-six thousand, three hundred and four individuals is the

intent of my statement. There is no need to quibble.

A. I accept the figures.

Q. (glancing at his screen) Let us drop that for the moment, then, and take up another matter which we have already discussed at some length. Would you repeat, Dr. Seldon, your thoughts concerning the future of Trantor?

A. I have said, and I say again, that Trantor will lie in ruins within the next three centuries.

Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one?

A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty.

Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth?

A. I am.

Q. On what basis?

A. On the basis of the mathematics of psychohistory.

Q. Can you prove that this mathematics is valid'?

A. Only to another mathematician.

Q. (with a smile) Your claim then is that your truth is of so esoteric a nature that it is beyond the understanding of even an Alpha minus. It seems to me that truth should be clearer than that, less mysterious, more open to the minds of others.  We are all at least Beta plusses, after all.

(Unnoticed by all, Gaal winced.)

A. It presents no difficulties to some minds, principally Alpha plusses. The physics of energy transfer, which we know as thermodynamics, has been clear and true through all the history of man since pre-Peak Earth, yet there may be people present who would find it impossible to design a power engine.  Alphas, too. I doubt if the learned Commissioners–

At this point, one of the Commissioners leaned toward the Advocate. His words were not heard but the hissing of the voice carried a certain asperity. The Advocate swiftly turned and interrupted Seldon.

Q. We are not here to listen to speeches, Dr. Seldon. Let us assume that you have made your point. Let me suggest to you that your predictions of disaster might be intended to destroy the off world Gamma’s confidence in the Imperial Government for purposes of your own.

A. That is not so.

Q. Let me suggest that you intend to claim that a period of time preceding the so-called ruin of Trantor will be filled with unrest of various types.

A. That is correct.

Q. And that by the mere prediction thereof, you hope to bring it about, and to have then an army of half a million available, scattered as they are about the 100,000 worlds of the Empire, ready to recruit the lesser castes to your banner of uprising and change?

A. In the first place, that is not so. And if it were, investigation will show you that there are no Deltas or Gammas as members to be turned into soldiers, and none of our Betas have formal training in lesser caste administration.

Q. Are you acting as an agent for another?

A. I am not in the pay of any man, Mr. Advocate.

Q. You are entirely disinterested? You are serving science?

A. I am.

Q. Then let us see how. Can the future be changed, Dr. Seldon?

A. Obviously. The court personnel’s wombs may be collectively hacked and powered down in the next few hours, or they may not be.  If such took place, the future would undoubtedly be changed in some minor respects.

Q. You quibble, Dr. Seldon, but the implied threat is noted for possible future action. Can the overall history of the human race be changed?

A. Yes.

Q. Easily?

A. No. With great difficulty.

Q. Why?

A. The psychohistoric trend of a planet-full of people contains a huge inertia. To be changed it must be met with something possessing a similar inertia. Either as many people must be concerned, or if the number of people be relatively small, enormous time for change must be allowed. Do you understand?

Q. I think I do. Trantor need not be ruined, if a great many people decide to act so that it will not.

A. That is right.

Q. As many as half a million people?

A. No, sir. That is far too few.

Q. You are sure?

A. Consider that Trantor has a population of one trillion. Consider further that the trend leading to ruin does not belong to Trantor alone  but to the Empire as a whole and the Empire contains roughly 1.1 quadrillion human beings.

Q. I see. Then perhaps half a million people can change the trend, if they and their descendants labor for three hundred years.

A. I'm afraid not. Three hundred years is too short a time.

Q. Ah! In that case, Dr. Seldon, we are left with this deduction to be made from your statements. You have gathered half a million people within the confines of your project. These are insufficient to change the history of Trantor within three hundred years. In other words, they cannot prevent the destruction of Trantor no matter what they do.

A. You are unfortunately correct.

Q. And on the other hand, these half million are spread out on every planet of the Empire for no illegal purpose.

A. Exactly.

Q. (slowly and with satisfaction) In that case, Dr. Seldon – now attend, sir, most carefully, for we want a considered answer. What is the purpose of your half a million, if not for illegal Gamma herding?

The Advocate's voice had grown strident. He had sprung his trap; backed Seldon into a corner; driven him astutely from any possibility of answering.  Gamma herding was a crime that carried four weeks of Data Deprivation, a punishment rarely used, in which those who were found guilty had their VR set to completely silent blackness with no sensory stimulation at all for 28 days while their womb kept them fed and cleaned with no physical sensation of it.  History recorded no case of anyone coming out of it with their mind intact, always they were reclassified as Epsilons at once, for their own safety.

Only High Treason carried a weightier punishment, the Ultimate Punishment, in which the person convicted of it would be left in Data Deprivation for the rest of his natural life, and as many years after as the best in medical maintenance units could give him.  It was well known that the techs in charge of those special wombs had on some occasions accepted massive bribes from family members, simply to arrange for the power to go out for five minutes, thus insuring a merciful death by suffocation.

There was a rising agitation and babble of voices at that which swept the ranks of the peers in the audience and invaded even the row of Commissioners. They swayed toward one another in their rustling black robes, only the Chief remaining un-affected.  It was an oddity of a culture of absolute stasis and custom that while all there knew that Gamma Herding was as disgusting as cannibalism, not a one of them could have said just what that really involved, beyond the vague – and incorrect – definition of “inciting to riot”.

Hari Seldon remained unmoved. He waited for the babbling to die down, as all eyes turned upon him.

A. There is no attempt to recruit Gammas or incite them.  We are merely trying to minimize the effects of the upcoming destruction.

Q. And exactly what do you mean by that?  We’ve reports from at least a 10,000 planets that there have been minor upsurges in “Foundation” type stories and Church of Scientism activity, whereas that belief system had been confined to your own home world almost exclusively until 15 years ago.

A. The explanation is simple. The coming destruction of Trantor is not an event in itself, isolated in the scheme of human development. It will be the climax to an intricate drama which was begun centuries ago and which is accelerating in pace continuously. I refer, gentlemen, to the developing decline and fall of the Galactic Empire.

The buzz now became a dull roar. The Advocate, unheeded, was yelling, "You are openly declaring that –" and stopped because the cries of "Treason" from the audience showed that the point had been made without any hammering.  Several dozen other notables, who had had the right to witness this but had chose not to till now, beamed in from around Trantor, their heads cocked to one side as they received rapid updates audible only to themselves.

Slowly, the Chief Commissioner raised his gavel once and let it drop. The sound was that of a mellow gong. When the reverberations ceased, the gabble of the audience stopped as if turned off.  Which it had been, now none could speak save those participating. The Advocate took a deep breath.

Q. (theatrically) Do you realize, Dr. Seldon, that you are speaking of an Empire that has stood for twelve thousand years, through all the vicissitudes of the generations, and which has behind it the good wishes and love of a quadrillion human beings?

A. I am aware both of the present status and the past history of the Empire. Without disrespect, I must claim a far better knowledge of it than any in this room.

Q. And you predict its ruin?

A. It is a prediction which is made by mathematics. I pass no moral judgments. Personally, I regret the prospect. Even if the Forever Stasis of the Empire were admitted to be a bad thing (an admission I do not make), the state of anarchy which would follow its fall would be worse. It is that state of anarchy which my project is pledged to fight. The fall of an Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, an imbalance of castes, a damming of curiosity – a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

Q. Is it not obvious to anyone that the Empire is as strong as it ever was?

A. The appearance of strength is all about you. It would seem to last forever. However, Mr. Advocate, the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had. The storm-blast whistles through the branches of the Empire even now. Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking.

Q. (uncertainly) But what has this to do with Gamma recruitmen -

A. (firmly) The Empire will vanish and all its good with it. Its accumulated knowledge will decay and the order it has imposed will vanish. Interstellar wars will be endless; interstellar trade will decay; planetary populations will go offline with the inevitable diebacks; worlds will lose touch with the main body of the Galaxy.  And so matters will remain.

Q. (a small voice in the middle of a vast silence) You suggest a Forever Stasis of pre-Peak?

A. Psychohistory, which can predict the fall, can make statements concerning the succeeding dark ages. The Empire, gentlemen, as has just been said, has stood twelve thousand years. The dark ages to come will endure not twelve, but thirty thousand years. A Second Empire will rise, but between it and our civilization will be one thousand generations of suffering humanity. We must fight that.

Q. (recovering somewhat) You contradict yourself, and lead us from the point. You said earlier that you could not prevent the destruction of Trantor; hence, presumably, the fall - the so-called fall of the Empire.  Yet you also do not explain the upswing in a new belief system among the Gammas of many worlds.

A. I do not say now that we can prevent the fall. But it is not yet too late to shorten the interregnum which will follow. It is possible, gentlemen, to reduce the duration of anarchy to a single millennium, if my group is allowed to act now. We are at a delicate moment in history. The huge, onrushing mass of events must be deflected just a little – just a little.  It cannot be much, but it may be enough to remove twenty-nine thousand years of misery from human history.

Q. How do you propose to do this?

A. By saving the knowledge of the race. The sum of human knowing is beyond any one man; any thousand men. With the destruction of our social fabric, science will be broken into a million pieces. Individuals will know much of exceedingly tiny facets of what there is to know. They will be helpless and useless by themselves. The bits of lore, meaningless, will not be passed on. They will be lost through the generations. But, if we now prepare a giant summary of all knowledge, it will never be lost. Coming generations will build on it, and will not have to rediscover it for themselves. One millennium will do the work of thirty thousand.  A Data Disc of an Ancient named Asimov spoke of this pre-Peak, and the Church of Scientism has always preserved that knowledge.  The Gammas that we employ on various worlds to help collect that world’s data are merely displaying their loyalty to our goal, and no permit is required for incidental and un-manipulated lesser caste loyalty.

Q. All this, and you speak of nothing but Data Discs?  Data Discs such as are common as the VR we live in or the nutrients pumped into our veins?

A. Data Discs are a part of the fragmentation.  It is a rare world that has even a single original pre-Peak Data Disc, for all that every world claims to have the full set enshrined.  Most have copies, fragmented and skewed, even deliberately altered, more venerated than studied, certainly never fully understood.  They are apparently good only for naming children after and rehashing the Ancient’s histories for Gamma virtudramas.  At least so it could be assumed by the use to which they are typically put.

And even such tech as the copies of discs contain are at levels far too low to support the average populations of worlds now, we are speaking of a pre-Peak tech so ‘pre’ that scarcely two billion people could be supported per world, and only by the most brutish of manual labor.  And while some worlds have bits and pieces of other discs, slightly more advanced, it does little more than color their cultures, without preserving any real near first Peak data. 

All my project members, my one hundred and fifty thousand employees with their spice and children, are devoting themselves to the preparation of an "Encyclopedia Galactica”, by the process of collecting all data on each world to be transcribed on a new set of Data Discs, full and complete.  They will not complete it in their lifetimes. I will not even live to see it fairly begun, after all there are only three to six of us on each world. But by the time Trantor falls, it will be complete and copies will exist in every major library in the Galaxy.

The Advocate looked like he was trying to speak, but silence fell even as his mouth opened and moved.  The Chief Commissioner's gavel rose and fell. Hari Seldon left the stand and quietly took his seat next to Gaal.  The commissioners appeared to be whispering among themselves.

He smiled and said, "How did you like the show?"

Gaal said, "It hasn’t gone dark yet, so that is well."

"They'll adjourn the trial and try to come to a private agreement with me."

"How do you know?"

Seldon said, "I'll be honest. I don't know. It depends on the Chief Commissioner. I have studied him for years, and know that he deliberately changed his name to conform to the old “Foundation” histories. I have tried to analyze whether this indicates sympathy or a desire to disrupt, but you know how risky it is to introduce the vagaries of an individual in the psychohistoric equations. Yet I have hopes."

7.

Avakim approached, nodded to Gaal, leaned over to whisper to Seldon. The cry of adjournment rang out, and guards separated them. Gaal was led away.

The next day's hearings were entirely different. Hari Seldon and Gaal Dornick were alone with the Chief Commissioner and two Deltas standing behind him in the characteristic red shirts of personal bodyguards from time immemorial. They were seated in an ornate study, bookcases making up the walls and large and luxurious old style chairs for each of them.  At a lift of Chen’s finger, one of the redshirts offered a box of iridescent plastic which had the appearance of water, endlessly flowing. The eyes saw the displayed motion although the fingers reported it to be hard and dry.

Seldon nodded to himself at the sight of the box, looked inside curiously, saw nothing and sat back.  Chen gave a half smile and shrugged his shoulders a bit. 

Seldon said, "I was hoping to learn what a ‘cigar’ was.  But my apologies – ‘my lawyer is not present’."

The Chief Commissioner replied, "This is no longer a trial, Dr. Seldon. We are here to discuss the safety of the State."  A silence formed about Linge Chen into which he might drop his words.  Gaal held his breath. Chen, lean and hard, deliberately older in looks than in fact, was the actual Emperor of all the Galaxy. The child who bore the title itself was only a symbol manufactured by Chen, and not the first such, either.

Chen said, "Dr. Seldon, you are as apparently driven as I am.  Frankly, it is remarkable watching you, as you seem to take an enjoyment in this that I have never personally felt.  I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect when I instructed the Advocate to ask certain questions and respond in a certain way, all according to the Foundation mythos of that Ancient Data Disc, but you – wherever it was possible - parroted the appropriate responses exactly as if reading from the book itself.  Isn’t that taking things a bit far?”

Seldon looked at him blandly and said, “James, you would seem to be in a position to know as to what ‘far’ is.  Only now we both get to learn which direction that distance is going to take us.”

The redshirts looked puzzled at their master being called ‘James’, but Chen only laughed.  “You are as thorough as I had hoped, to have learned that original name of mine.  I picked my current one because while still in crèche I learned of the Church of Scientism from my aunt, and she and I both felt that given the events of the past centuries, that it would be irresistible for some dedicated man and/or group to arise to take advantage of the…prophesy?  No, not ‘prophesy’, but I think you understand me.”

Gravely, Seldon nodded.  Then he grinned again and said, “So must I go through the pretense of requesting that we stay on Trantor?  Or may I just start packing to leave now?”

“This is not resolved yet, Doctor.”, said Chen.  “Several dozen Hari Seldons throughout the Galaxy have made some small pretense of being ‘the’ Seldon, but they being obviously trolls or pranksters were taken care of quickly, as the individual situation merited." 

"Your trial afforded me the opportunity to see if you were capable of performing under pressure, as opposed to just talking well in front of your friends and associates.  And it let you demonstrate that you’ve done enough research to show that you are at least sincere in your dream.  However, are you, even now, the man for it?  Can you pull this off, or are you just a more thorough troll than the others, who will flash more brightly, but just as quickly, into the coming darkness?”

“And if I was only a troll?”, replied Seldon.  “What then?”

“At need, I can try and take other steps to preserve the status quo, ‘lest darkness fall’, to borrow from another ancient text.”, said Chen grimly.  “I do not pretend to your mathematical insights – and am unsure you even have them yourself – but I believe that there are usually a variety of solutions to any given problem.  What remains to be seen then is if you are the best solution to this problem.”

“We at least agree there is a problem, then.”, murmured Seldon reflectively.

“Come, come, Doctor”, said Chen impatiently.  “You are but delaying giving me what you know I need.  Which is assurances of your abilities and a sign of trust.  I may see the same problem as you, but we are not equals due to that.  I am responsible for 1.1 quadrillion human lives, you may be little more than a talented prankster shooting to have a virtudrama made of his life after he pulls off what may be the largest and cruelest hoax history has ever seen. 

As to whether I see the problem, didn’t my renaming of the tempidence nearest the University ‘Luxor’ show you that?  I am in more of a position to know of ‘the problem’ than even your spies are – and you see, I know you have spies, especially as more than a few of them report to me as well.  There have been far more power outages and failed programs than the public – even Betas – are made aware of.  As the Betas and Alphas turn their attentions from artificial dominance games to the very real game of ‘seize the flag’, the trade and stasis of the Galaxy is increasingly disrupted.  Which only leads to new players emerging, who see that as a sign of weakness and opportunity.  I speak of now, not three hundred years from now.  Only the inertia you spoke of has carried us this far, that and our rather substantial control of the VRs throughout the Empire.  Now speak.  And make it good.”

Gaal flinched back, and even Seldon seemed to become more serious.  Gone was his earlier effort at nonchalance, he knew he was speaking to the most powerful man in history.

“We are – or I should say ‘I am’ – engaging in Gamma Herding, on a level so vast, and with methods so ancient, that you may forgive your off world agents for not recognizing the extent of it.  You know of how the Forever Stasis has made us forget many of the arts they had in the past.  As the millennia have gone by, any knowledge not needed has fallen into disuse, then gets left out of the active planetary computer memories to make room for more useful data.  Then storage of that inactive data is sloppy at best, relegated as it is to Gamma minuses with a bored Gamma plus listlessly overseeing it.”

Seldon paused.  “I was in a unique position to see this, as my family is of the Church of Scientism, which as has been pointed out, was localized to my home world, even as recently as 20 years ago.  While it was a vague semi-cult for thousands of years, centered around the Ancient named Asimov, it became more serious around 150 years ago, growing to around 74% of the planetary populace even before I started my project.”

“You acknowledge Gamma Herding.  And note I have took no action.”, Chen said.  “Continue.”

“It was around a century and a half ago that an Alpha minus, who’s parents were in the group, realized that things in the Galaxy were declining for real, and that this tale could be helpful in putting things to right.  He spent his life, not on mathematics, but on the very difficult task of finding all the data on psychology and sociology that had been lost since pre-Peak times.  You are aware that it is generally believed that no such sciences truly existed so far back, and given our Forever Stasis, and populations safely in VR worlds, no such science really exists now, as when the need for it died, so did it.”

Chen nodded, and Seldon continued.  “The question that most puzzled him was why ‘Gamma Herding’ was such a crime.  Considering that there were no recorded examples of it having happened in 12,000 years of Imperial History, yet it was not only still on the books, but was and is regarded as worse than anything but treason itself.  But not only were there no examples of it taking place, there were not even available descriptions of how such was done.  He realized that once humanity reached year zero of the Galactic Empire, such knowledge must have been more than lost, it must have been actively repressed, until even the repressors and their descendants forgot of it.”

Chen murmured, “Yes, yes…and then?”

Seldon said, “Suffice to say he found that the Ancients did have knowledge as to how to herd Gammas, but as they had no official caste system, they did not realize what they had.  And the knowledge was right in front of all of us, given that we still tell their histories, but without looking at it with the right orientation, the stories were useless.  But with the right orientation…”

Chen raised his hand.  “It is enough.  I am aware of this, but to my knowledge no other is.  My aunt had been married to a man of your odd cult, and told me the same story.  I gather then that you have used that knowledge to derive mathematical formula that, with the aid of computers, can make meaningful calculations?”

“In essence.”, Seldon said.  “This does not change the fact that for such an enormous task that it takes more than the mathematical predictions, it takes those large numbers of people actively working towards it, even if not fully aware of what they are doing.  Obviously that means Gammas.”

“But the ancient text does not speak of a massive recruitment of Gammas”, said Chen.  “Doesn’t this get you off track before you start?”

“The text referred to it in a sense, when they spoke of the Church.  Suffice to say that none of the Gammas we are dealing with are going to disturb the peace of the Emperor’s realm.  Past that, I think it important that we leave it at that.”

Chen contemplated this.  “It confirms what I in the main had already learned of you and your organization.  But know this - no Gammas really understand what their work is for, beyond the ideal their ancestors were fed millennia ago.  Each world was free to come up with an ideal, after that, subject to Imperial mandates, the Gammas would work towards that ideal each generation, never finishing, and never minding.  So long as it was a large project, unlikely to ever be done, be it the somewhat sane Lifeships to Andromeda, or a completely insane attempt at a Dyson sphere, all worlds were free to choose.  But the upper castes have been tiring of their own ideals – and their attempts to stifle their boredom may be accelerating the fall faster than the book says.  You will need to bear that in mind.”

Seldon’s face was blank, but his mind was jubilant.  He knew of what Chen spoke of, but being confirmed in it was helpful.  And it was encouraging that this Chen, unlike the fictional one, would be helping not hindering his efforts.  He wondered how much Chen really knew?  Such as the reports that he had from his project members of the upper castes that the whispers of the Gamma casticide on tens of thousands of worlds might be true?  He decided to keep that question to himself.

Chen took his silence for assent, and said, “It will be as you wish, Dr. Seldon, to a degree.  As you know, the original Von Neumann machines are still busy terraforming world after world, and one of the latest – as unused as millions of others – is on the outer edge of the Galaxy, and four provinces surround it.  I took the liberty of listing it in the central planetary computer as ‘Terminus’.”

“That will help the mythos.”, said Seldon.  “But you said ‘to a degree –"

He stopped for Gaal was out of his chair and pointing at the screen where he had called up the location of Terminus.  “Now hold on!” Gaal all but yelled.  “The provinces around this area are Anacreon, Smyrno and all the others from the synopsis of Ancient text you had me look at!  Surely they cannot have been renamed by you like a tempidence, these are entire worlds and systems!...Sir.” He added belatedly, as Chen looked at him sharply.

“No, they were not named by me.”, said Chen.  “Those are the original names, and they predate the founding of the Empire.  It means little, really.  You know that as the originally metal engraved Data Discs are what lifted man from his original fall on Earth, that enormous importance was put on every word, then even more than now.  This planet’s founders knew it was near the central core, and desired to have it one day be the capitol, so they named it ‘Trantor’, straight from the same text, though few know that nowadays.  Four other colonial groups from the diaspora thought it appropriate to use the names from the same book when they knew they were going out to colonize four different, but neighboring, areas on the periphery.  I believe the original founders of that area even left the star system of where Terminus is now alone, hopeful that it would be available one day at need, though my agents tell me that the well over 12,000 years that have passed have left none there that still know of any of this.”

Gaal did not look entirely convinced.  “Are all planets thus named?”

“Of course not”, said Chen.  “We had maybe three dozen texts on what they called ‘science fiction’, which is understood to mean literally “stories of science”.  But those histories did not have 100,000 planet names in them.  While we do have a boringly large amount of ‘number’ planets, such as Arrakis XII, Vulcan VL, or Hoth III, the rest of the 100,000 worlds – about 70% - are named for various Ancient people and places.”  With a nod that clearly meant ‘enough’, Chen turned his attention back to Seldon, to answer him.

“Yes, I said, ‘to a degree’.  You will be ‘exiled’ to Terminus, and I will turn a blind eye to those you leave behind here, so long as they act as they are supposed to according to the book.  And I’ll pretend I know nothing of your representatives on all the other worlds, though I am quite sure that is no official part of the book.  And your secret will die with me, and I assure you that all others will only take your trial and subsequent work at face value.”

“But?”, asked Seldon.  “For I feel sure you are leading up to one.”

“Two, actually.”, said Chen.  “My son, who is a Beta plus and eight years old will go with your group to Terminus.  He is to be adopted by a family of note there, and trained for a place in the leadership of the Church of Scientism you think I don’t know is already further advanced than you say.”

Seldon nodded, with a look of surprise and grudging respect on his face.  “Two?”

“The family of note will change their last name to Branno, if you don’t have a family with such a last name already.”, said Chen.  And seeing the puzzled look on Seldon’s face, added, “So even your world has not all the historical books…but as you wish me to inquire no further into your plans, so too do I ask you to inquire no further of me on this.  Suffice to say it costs neither you – nor your project – a thing to grant this.”

Seldon thought a moment, looking disturbed.  Then his face cleared and he simply said, "I accept exile."

Gaal's heart skipped a beat at the words. For the most part, he was filled with a tremendous joy, for who would not be to have escaped punishment. Yet in all his vast relief, he found space for a little regret that he knew so little of what was really going on.

8.

For a long while, they sat silently as the taxi whined through the hundreds of miles of worm-like tunnels toward the University. And then Gaal stirred, and asked, "Was what you told the Commissioner true?  Is Gamma recruitment in the book in any way?"

Seldon explained, "I never lie about psychohistoric findings. Nor would it have availed me in this case. Chen knew I spoke the truth, he certainly knew about the state of the Church. He is a very clever politician and politicians by the very nature of their work must have an instinctive feeling for the truths of psychohistory.”  Seldon paused.

“The reason Gamma Herding is still a crime, is that even before the rise of the Galactic Empire, the caste system allowed the cognitive elite to identify the Gammas, and herd them into one solid group on each world.  No more were there fights over who they would work for, worship for, or wait on.  They belonged collectively to the society of that world, and were administered by specially trained Betas, sworn to a code that I’m afraid is not always followed nowadays.  Their efforts were then parceled out as was deemed best by the Alpha minuses.  Or as happened almost at once, competed over by the Betas themselves."  Seldon paused.  “The difference being that the fights over what they would produce were done in advance, not endlessly shifted and changed like in Ancient times.  But Chen knew, before I told him, that we are starting to herd some of them for our own purposes.  Knew and let it happen.”

"But he is, after all, working with us, isn’t he?" Gaal wondered, but Seldon did not answer.

Upon their arrival at the University, they were met by a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers.  A smallish man, identical to the one who had previously interrogated Gaal, greeted them impassively.

Consulting a screen that was in the shape of an old-style clipboard in his hand, he looked up and said, “By decree of his Imperial Majesty, you and your project members are to be bound for Terminus within six weeks, there to found a city dedicated to the preservation of the knowledge of all mankind.  The Imperial Charter incorporating you is being uploaded into your project’s data base, and the Trantorian Central Computer.”

Gaal exclaimed, “Six weeks!  This is but a punishment after all!”, for he knew full well the penalty for disobeying an Imperial decree.  But Seldon hushed him and said, “We accept, and will be ready.”, and with that the smallish man beamed out, leaving behind the impassive Stormtroopers.

Putting a finger to his lips, Seldon urged Gaal with gestures into the office that the University maintained for him.  A few finger gestures later, he said, “We may speak freely now.  Those Stormtroopers outside the door cannot detect what we are saying, but are getting a randomly generated conversation that will not flag any suspicion.”

Gaal said, “How are we to move half a million people from all over the Galaxy in six weeks?  And won’t that destroy any recruitment program of Gammas on those worlds?  And what of those we are supposed to leave here?”

Seldon smiled and said, “I’ve put you through much, and I’m sorry.  But it had to be this way.  The truth is, we’ve been planning for this, and it won’t present the difficulties you are imagining.”  He glanced at his screen and read a bit, then paused in contemplation, then read further.  Finally he continued, “Commissioner Chen, or perhaps I should say ‘the Emperor’, is generous.  Terminus City is already under construction, and will be ready for our wombs when we arrive.  As to your other concerns, our recruitment efforts were not confined to Gammas.  Our half million Betas out there will remain where they are at, with some of the Betas and Alphas they’ve recruited – and who have been told little of our real purposes – going to Terminus.  And those that remain here on Trantor will be the majority of the staff of the Imperial Library, who are unlisted members or the project already.”

“That allows us to have a population on Terminus in the dark about the psychohistorical plan, but the expense alone, I can’t afford 1/500,000^th share in a world, why the industrial investment in just a beanpole is –“, began Gaal, but Seldon interrupted him.  “Relax, none of us could, but this is being funded by the Emperor himself, though I doubt he is personally aware of it.”

“How?”, asked Gaal.  “How can such an expense be hidden even from that child?”

“What expense?”, asked Seldon blandly.  “Consider the factors.  Ships to Anacreon are routine, and from 100,000 planets trips will be scheduled that involve only the enwombed individuals being placed aboard and transported.  On average, that would cost 2,500 credits, representing about two weeks productivity credit.  This gives us a total cost – as the city is being built for us – of only 1.25 billion credits.  You can afford your ticket?”

“Of course.  But the world itself?  Or are we going to climb out of our wombs and play Cowboys and Commies?”, said Gaal skeptically. 

“Nothing so archaic.”, Seldon said.  “The Emperor receives in taxes 10% of each planets productivity, or the labor of 1 billion people from each planet, each year.  And there are 100,000 planets.  1 billion people on each of 100,000 worlds earning on average 65,000 credits is over six and a half quintillion credits per year, of which the 9.5 billion credits needed for planetary development is well under one billionth of a percent.  And this is an officially funded project, by the way.  We’re preserving the knowledge of mankind, and as far as the Emperor – or our recruits – know, that is all we’re doing.”

Gaal shook his head, marveling at how fast his life was changing.  His reverie was interrupted by Seldon letting him know that he’d be met tomorrow by some of his staff, and that all would be well. 

“And make sure you place Chen’s son correctly.”, Seldon warned.

“But aren’t you going to…”, Gaal’s voice trailed off as he remembered the outline of the Ancient text.

“No”, said Seldon sadly, “That – and many more things – will be your task.  But as for me”, and here his voice dropped to a somewhat theatrical whisper, “I am finished.”

9.

Gaal watched in silence.  The silence stretched.  He looked away, and observed what he had not before, that the style of the office was archaic in the extreme.  Done up as an old style Captain’s office, it had a couch and a desk with one chair and a fish bowl.  Off to one side was a nook that looked like a food dispenser, and off to the other side was a rectangular window that had a myriad of little points of lights streaming past it, for no discernible reason.  He had read about such offices, but had thought they had been obsolete fashion-wise for several millennia.

He looked back at Seldon, who was still sitting silently.  “Well?  My task?”, asked Gaal.

“Um, yes.  Sorry for the awkward silence, but you see, my part in the book ended there.  Though there was a vague inference that I am to go about recording holograms of myself now.”, said Seldon.  “You don’t have much of a sense of humor, do you?  But then, that was one of the reasons I picked you.”

“I had thought it was due to my name and saying ‘yes’.”, Gaal said.

“Oh, Gaal, I am sorry!  I had to have you a bit off balance, the Galactic Spirit knows how hard it was to pull off that performance!  I mean, some of us knew our lines, others did not, some did but we did not know who they were – you can understand, can’t you?”

“Yes, I do.  And I’m glad to have been chosen for more than my name.”, replied Gaal.

“I know you are, and that is important.  You see, the Empire is declining, but it has an overarching problem that makes everything we’ve discussed incidental.”

“What do you mean?”, asked Gaal.

“You understand that we are fighting to have a rebirth after the collapse of the Forever Stasis, correct?”, asked Seldon in a pedantic manner.

“Yes.”, said Gaal, and volunteered no more, sensing that he was to be the straight man again.  And not without some resentment.

“You’re upset, I know.  You feel you have been brought here under pretenses that if not false, are not as fully true as implied.”, started Seldon, and seeing Gaal about to interrupt, waved his hand and added hastily, “No, no, you are right to feel that way.  You see, it is the Forever Stasis itself that is the problem.”

Gaal contemplated this.  He thought over the mathematical formulas he had been studying, the papers of Seldon he had read, and various other bits of information. 

“Which then?  Or both?”, inquired Gaal.

“Ahh, you justify my selection of you.  But indulge me.  Name them.”, said Seldon.

“The two ways that the Forever Stasis could be the problem is if there is some factor of the stasis that must of a necessity lead to it’s fall, or if the stasis itself is a thing deleterious to humanity.”, said Gaal.

“Correct.”, beamed Seldon.  “And in this case, it is both.”

“But it is a tenet of all humanity that VR and population control assures stasis.  That any dominance games can be contained within VR and not spill over.  Oh.”, said Gaal.  “We already know that the games have spilled over.  Yet it’s been 12,000 plus years, was it truly inevitable, or is this a deliberate disturbance?”

“It was both evitable and inevitable.  One can easily show equations in which stasis would last forever, at almost any level, however, those equations all assume that everyone is working towards that goal, or that those who are not are at least balanced by those who are.”, Seldon explained.  “From even pre-Peak, and I imagine pre-Historical times, there has been a fluctuating equilibrium, in which things remain static as long those in power can pull it off, but as various alliances and social forces shift and grow and decline, the balance is inevitably upset.  Then a new level, usually a bit lower is reached, and people build off of that.”  Seldon paused.  “Build faster each time, thank the Galaxy, or we’d still be on a single planet!”

“Yet those past fluctuations”, Gaal interrupted, “were due to squabbles over actual resources for actual survival, and allocation of lesser caste labor and which ideas would dominate and what goals a society would strive for.  VR, automation, free power…it changed all that.  Made it obsolete.”

“Not obsolete, just damped down.”, Seldon replied.  “One could foresee that free power and pantographs to make anything would free up mankind as never before.  And one could guess that VR would take away a good percent of humanities desire to strive for change.  When one is in heaven, one doesn’t look up.  But what was good for the Gammas wasn’t good for the cognitive elite.  They wanted more.  And someone had to keep an eye on things in any case."

"So it's not stasis that's forever...it's the fluctuations.", Gaal said. "And so what - we're here to smooth the fluctuations out as much as possible?"

"Yes", said Seldon.  "Picture a child's see-saw, but one in which it never goes more than a centimeter down and up.  That is what we strive for.  A steady state of fluctuations so smooth, so small, that it may as well be stasis.  A galaxy wide system in which dangers and disruptions will be so minor as to for all intents and purposes not really exist.  How far is too far?  How little is too little?  The solution to this dilemma is, of course, obvious!"

Gaal shook his head, knowing from his own research that this line came much later, and from another, but dutifully said, "Obvious as all hell!"

"Now you're getting it!", Seldon laughed.  "That IS your task!  And now, for real this time, I am finished!"