I will keep on inquiring and examining everything, and I hope you will not be too angry that I refuse your request. You must have known it was likely that I would. I remain, as always, your gadfly.
23
CROCUS
I. On Long Life
The first space humans who found us proved to be obsessed with profit, equating it with self-worth and pursuing it even at the expense of excellence. The levels of our mutual incomprehensibility extended far beyond language.
Nevertheless, they sold us autodocs in exchange for star-fuel from the Saeli ship, lanthanides, and finely cut obsidian sheets which the Saeli and Amarathi also prize. These wonderful autodocs allowed aging humans to be restored to their functional peak of thirty-five. Further use allowed them to stay at that peak of physical health until reaching the age of around two hundred, when telomeres run out and death comes fast. Glaukon, one of the Children who was injured by a Worker when trying to escape in the first years of the Republic, was the first to use the autodoc, which enabled him to grow a new leg and walk for the first time in decades.
I do not know, do not remember, if I was the one who injured him. I decided long ago to act as if I were, because I bear the collective guilt even if not the individual guilt—I could have done it, whether or not I did. Such things may be forgiven by the victims, but never by the perpetrators. Nor was it undone even when Glaukon ran from the autodoc laughing and crying—seventy years of immobility is not so easily erased.
Interactions with other space humans later allowed us to buy first the chemicals the autodocs needed to run and later the technology necessary to produce them ourselves from placental tissue and other human waste.
After our oldest and most frail citizens used it and were restored to health, and after we could produce the chemicals ourselves, all humans got into the habit of using it every fifteen or twenty years or so. Space humans expressed surprise that our humans were, for the most part, uninterested in using the cosmetic features. Some people did switch gender, but we never had fashions in skin or eye color or body shape as they did elsewhere.
Phaedrus, who could heal with his powers, greeted the autodoc with delight, as it could do more than he could and freed him from the burden of perpetually keeping the whole population in health. He devoted himself to his beloved volcanoes instead.
We all agreed that Plato would have approved, as it was precisely the kind of medical intervention he wanted, restoring health without making the patient a prisoner of the body. Our only regret was that we had not had it earlier, so that we could have prolonged the lives of those who died beforehand.
This helped a great deal with my problem of perpetually outliving my friends.
II. On the Foundation of the City: FAQ
Q. What is the City of Workers?
A. The City of Workers is the thirteenth Platonic City, founded seventy-three years after the first City, and forty years after the Relocation. It is the only City, whatever they say in Athenia, to run entirely as Plato described things. Workers are better fitted by nature to be just and happy Platonic citizens.
Q. Can non-Workers visit the City of Workers?
A. Certainly. We have many non-Worker visitors, and we try to make their stay pleasant. Because we do not require food ourselves, we need advance warning of visits to ensure supplies for your comfort. Please apply, stating the number and species of all members of your party, the purpose of your visit, and the length of your intended stay. (“Tourism,” “Visiting friends” or “To attend a festival/debate/conference” are some typical good purposes for visiting us.) We have two hostels for visitors. The Krotone hostel is for visitors from Plato, and the Sybaris hostel is for off-planet visitors.
Q. Where do those names come from?
A. Continuing the tradition established for eating halls in the original City, they are both named after historical Greek cities. These two were near each other in Italy.
Q. On my planet, robots aren’t conscious. How do you know you are, and that you haven’t simply been programmed to enact Plato like an animatronic Disneyland?
A. On your planet, you do not extend full citizen rights to Workers—this means you keep them enslaved. Whether or not they are at this moment fully conscious, this is unendurable, and you should emancipate them at once. Aristomache’s dialogue Sokrates is available for free dissemination both here and on your planet, in all human languages and many non-human ones.
Additionally, you and especially any Workers in your company should be aware that by landing on Plato they are automatically emancipated and may not be removed from the planet against their will. The same applies to all sapient beings—the air of Plato makes free. No slavery, indenture, debt, or labor contracts that cannot be freely exited are valid on Plato.
The question of consciousness is a fascinating one. How do you know you’re conscious, and that everything you think you know hasn’t simply been put into your brain by Jathery in a mischievous moment? How do you know you haven’t been programmed to go through your life? Whatever answers you have, the same applies to us.
Q. Can I come to the City of Workers anyway?
A. No. Come after you have emancipated your own Workers.
If you come from a planet with unemancipated Workers and you are part of the struggle to help in their emancipation and you wish to visit us as part of that work, you would be very welcome. Please state this in your application.
Q. But I want to debate with you about consciousness!
A. Regular debates on this subject are held in Psyche, Sokratea, the City of Amazons, and the Original City. Check for upcoming dates and times. Workers from those cities and from the City of Workers participate in these debates, and your honest contribution will be welcome. Please do the required background reading first.
Q. Can non-Workers become citizens of the City of Workers?
A. No. With the exception of Sokrates, who has honorary citizenship status, citizenship of the City of Workers is for Workers only. Humans and/or Saeli who are married to Workers may live permanently in the City as metics.
Q. Can Workers from other Platonic Cities become citizens of the City of Workers?
A. Yes, after passing the Short Qualification Course and taking an oath.
Q. How about dual citizenship with other Platonic cities?
A. Citizens of the Original City, the City of Amazons, Athenia, Ataraxia and the other Saeli cities, Marissa, and Hieronymo, can hold dual citizenship in the City of Workers. Citizens of the other Lucian cities, Psyche, and Sokratea must give up their citizenship to take ours.
Q. Can Workers from off-planet become citizens of the City of Workers?
A. Yes, after passing a Turing Test and a Full Qualification Course, and taking an oath.
Q. Can Workers from off-planet hold dual citizenship?
A. No. Any off-planet Workers must give up their former allegiance when taking oath in any Platonic city.
Q. Can gods visit the City of Workers?
A. Thank you for asking! Any deities polite enough to read this FAQ are welcome. Since we can’t keep the others out, we try to make them welcome too.
Q. Tell us about your dating system?
A. We consider ourselves to be a daughter city of the Original City, and continue to count dates from the founding of that city, except when talking about history, when for convenience we use dates in CE. Plato years are four hundred and sixty-one days of nineteen hours each, which makes them very close to the Earth year of three hundred and sixty-five twenty-four-hour days, 8759 to 8760 hours. For convenience, and to keep in step, like all Platonic Cities, we add a day to the Festival of Janus every nineteen years.
Q. How do you celebrate the Festival of Hera?
A. Sexual people always ask that! Plato says such festivals should be held as often as necessary to produce a new generation. We certainly wish to honor Hera as patron of marriage, and Ilythia as patron of birth, and to produce new generations of Workers. So we hold such a festival every twenty-five years, as that seems to be the optimum spacing for generations and also, according to our numerologist Sixty-One, a happy and generative number. Some of us are chosen and allotted partners and spend a day garlanded together in pairs, and then all those chosen help to assemble the new Workers and regard themselves as the parents of that whole generation, exactly as Plato says.