Excerpts from THE GOLDEN AGE, my debut novel from 2001. Arkhaven Comics is also reprinting such excerpts.
Volume I: The Golden Age
Prologue: Celebrations of the Immortals
Episode 05: The Peers Ponder Futurity
The other six Peers, each with different thinking-speed and thinking-processes, absorbed or pored over examined over 92 hundred projections of the effect of the next Transcendence on the upcoming Millennium, either directly, or (for those without permanent mental augmentations on staff), through auxiliary minds.
A gap in Helion’s memory edited out this wait, and brought his time and time-sense current to the next point in the conversation. To him, there was no pause. It may have been hours, or merely seconds, later.
The undisputed informal leader of the Peers, Orpheus Myriad Avernus, was not physically present, there or anywhere. He was the eldest and wealthiest of the Seven. He presented himself to Helion’s senses as a dark-haired, pale-skinned youth, whose face had a haunting lack of expression, but with eyes unblinking, inward-looking, deeply self-absorbed. He wore a long black Plutonian thermal-cape of a style so quaint and so far out of fashion that, only during a masquerade, would it pass without comment. The wide neck-piece rose almost to his ears, and the paudrons extended past his shoulders, making his head seem small and child-like.
Orpheus spoke in a very soft voice: “We applaud the sentiment expressed by our newest peer. When conditions are optimal, any change, by definition, is decay. And Helion knows, all too well, how chaos, disloyalty, and recklessness can be found within our own households and holdings, and even within the hearts of those nearest to us.”
For a moment, no one spoke. All eyes were fixed on Helion. An embarrassed silence hung over the room.
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