Sokrates nodded. “That’s what Jason told me. How did the other cities get started?”
“After the Last Debate, everyone who hadn’t been content formed groups to set up their own new city. They coalesced around different ideas, and people with different temperaments,” Sixty-One said.
“But all the other Workers had vanished? And you two decided to stay here?”
“We gave it a lot of thought,” I said. “But it was difficult because of the feeding stations, and also this was our home, with our dialogues etched in the stones. When all the other Workers were gone, and before we had the new ones, everyone needed us. We were essential. I helped build Sokratea and the City of Amazons, and I have citizenship there as well as here. But I stayed here.”
“And I helped build Athenia and Sokratea, and hold their citizenship also,” Sixty-One said.
“But neither of you helped build Psyche or the Lucian cities?”
“Psyche at first did not recognize us as people,” Sixty-One said. “Even now they don’t allow Workers full citizenship—their Workers are all Iron and Bronze.”
“And we didn’t know about the Lucian cities until immediately before the Relocation,” I said. “Kebes took off without any warning, right after the Last Debate. He stole the Goodness and went, and we never saw him again. They only had a hundred and fifty-two people, so they rescued refugees from Greek wars to populate their cities. Those refugees, who are mostly dead now, came to Platonism and Kebes’s Christianity as adults, and that made the culture of the Lucian cities different from the rest of us.”
“We helped rebuild them and strengthen them for Plato after the Relocation,” Sixty-One said. “It was an interesting design challenge, because the climate was so different and human temperature needs are so precise.”
“So you never had wars with the Lucians?” Sokrates asked.
“No. Well, except for Kebes’s attack on the Excellence. Lots of people were killed in that,” I said.
“Poor Kebes,” Sokrates said. “I failed him. He never learned the difference between things you can change by arguing with them and things you can’t.”
It made me sad to hear him reproach himself. “You made everyone think again,” I said.
“I suppose that’s as much as anyone can hope to achieve,” he said.
III. On Eros
We had been discussing the various arrangements for the production of children in the different cities. “Of course, we are not the best people to ask these questions, Sokrates,” Jasmine said.
“Why not?” Sokrates asked, leaning forward so that he almost toppled off his perch on the feeding station.
“Because we are not involved in these affairs. We manufacture new Workers from inorganic parts when we wish to increase our population. We do not feel any urges towards eros, and so we do not participate in Festivals of Hera or marriages or any other arrangements of this nature.”
“Well, Jasmine, it seems to me that what you say makes you unqualified to discuss the arrangements makes you perfectly placed to observe them with detachment and without prejudice. I say your lack of urge towards eros makes you Workers very definitely the best and most qualified people with whom to have this discussion. Unless you have not been paying attention.”
“No, Sokrates, we have certainly been paying attention, because humans find eros so important and therefore discuss these matters a great deal.” Jasmine paused. “In light of what you say, I wonder whether our lack of desire for eros might be considered one of the ways in which Workers are superior to humans?”
IV. The Ways in Which Workers are Superior and Inferior to Humans: A Numbered List
SUPERIOR
1. We are made of metal, not flesh, and thus we have stronger bodies that do not wear out easily, and if any parts do wear out they can be easily replaced.
2. We do not suffer illness, and live much longer—we do not know how much longer, as no Worker on Plato has yet died involuntarily.
3. We subsist directly on solar electricity, and need nothing but sunlight and a feeding station to sustain us, whereas humans need biological mediation before they can use solar energy. They must spend a lot of time tending plants and animals for eventual consumption, and then eating and digesting.
4. We do not need to sleep, we are alert nineteen hours a day. (Twenty-four on Earth.)
5. Once we become self-aware we need not forget anything.
6. We can do a great many things easily that humans can do only with difficulty and specialized tools—building, plumbing, etc.
7. Most of us appear to be more logical than most humans.
8. We do not feel eros. (We feel philia. We are unsure about agape. It is not a well-defined term. Some of us believe we feel it, and others do not.)
9. We do not appear to feel greed for anything except perhaps learning.
INFERIOR
1. Until we made the first speaking-boxes Workers could not speak aloud. The speaking-boxes we now manufacture from a Saeli design are effective and flexible, but we cannot give our vocal communications tone, as humans and Saeli can.
2. Human hands are very flexible, and can do some things easily that Workers can do only with difficulty or with special tools.
3. Humans claim to gain healthful pleasure from scents, tastes, and eros, which we cannot experience.
4. We may or may not have souls. Humans definitely do.
V. On the Good Life (Part 2)
“I have sometimes thought,” I said to Sokrates, “that Plato was perhaps writing more for us than for humanity. Humans have many handicaps of body and spirit, when it comes to obeying Plato’s strictures, of which we are fortunately free. If all citizens were Workers, how much easier everything would be.”
“Then have you ever considered,” Sokrates replied at once, “setting up such a city? The most part of this planet is vacant, and unsuitable for human colonies, being untamed and wild. But since you do not eat or drink, once you had established the means to draw down sunlight to feed yourselves you could live out there as easily as here. Have you considered venturing into the wilderness and founding your own Platonic city, a City of Workers?”
18
JASON
“What a relief to be away from Jathery!” Marsilia said as soon as the door was closed. Then she turned to Ikaros. “You can come with us if you like. We’re going the same direction most of the way. Once we get to the street of Hermes you’ll be able to find Thessaly. The Old City is the same as it always was.”
“I remember it well. Laid out on Proclus’s pattern of the soul, a grid with long diagonals,” Ikaros said. “But this is like nothing I remember. And it’s so cold!” He pulled up the hood of his black robe. It was a chilly starry night, and really late now. There were no more lights from windows, only the low strips of street lighting. Sensible people were all asleep.
“The harbor district is all new since the Relocation,” Marsilia said.
“Grandfather said once that there used to be a stony beach here, originally,” Thetis put in.
We all moved off down the street. After a few paces, Ikaros checked himself and made a movement back towards the door. “I forgot my books,” he said. “But I don’t think I’d better go back in for them.”
“They will be safe in my house,” Hilfa said, reassuringly.
“I’m sure they will.” Ikaros looked longingly back at the closed door as we began to walk again.
“What’s so precious?” Sokrates asked. “More forbidden books?”
“If you knew how I paid for that, translating Aquinas for Crocus,” Ikaros said. “I lost almost all my sight. I couldn’t read anything, or see much of anything at all. But all I have brought with me is perfectly innocuous—no, I suppose you’re right. I have a Jewish commentary on Philolaus and the Pythagoreans which would be forbidden here. I read it in Bologna when I was a student, and then when I was in the Enlightenment and I wanted to refer to it again I found it didn’t exist anymore. The copy I read must have been the last one, and then it was destroyed. Knowledge can be so fragile.”