John C. Wright's Journal

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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Excerpts from THE GOLDEN AGE, my debut novel from 2001. Arkhaven Comics is reprinting the excerpts mirrored here, from time to time.

Volume I: The Golden Age
Chapter 01: The Old Man
Episode 04: To Halt the Wheel of History

Elsewhere, Helion was also discontented.

In Aurelian mansion, seven entities of very different schools, life-principles, neuroforms, and appearance were meeting privately.  They had three things in common: wealth, age, and ambition.

The Seven Peers were actually sitting in a tall, many-windowed library, with thought-icons on the oak-paneled walls.  Each Peer saw the chamber differently.

The most recently admitted Peer was named Helion Relic (undetermined) Rhadamanth Humodified (augment, with multiple synnoetic sensory channels) Self-composed, Radial Hierarchic Multi-partial (multiple parallel and partial, with subroutines) , Base Neuroformed,  Silver-Grey Manorial School, Era 50 (‘The Time of the Second Immortality’.)

He was the only manor-born present, and was more than a little pleased that his School, the Silver-Grey, was singled out from among the other schools of the manorials for this dignity.

Helion’s self-image wore the costume of a Byzantine Imperator from the time of the Second Mental Structure, with a many-rayed diadem of pearly white, and robe of Tyrian purple.

“My Peers, it is with great pride and honor I take my place among you.  I trust that the legal issues surrounding the question of my continuity of identity are acceptable to everyone here?”

There was a signal of concurrence from the Peers, which Helion’s sensorium interpreted as nods and murmurs of assent.

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