by clusterfuggles Wed Aug 26, 2020 2:52 pm
Not sure the neuralink is a good idea.
‘You ask me to speak openly. Yet I feel I cannot do that without offending you, Li Yuan. This is, I take it, your idea?’
Li Yuan could sense the great weight of the Marshal’s authority bearing down on him, but steeled himself, forcing himself to confront it.
‘It is.’
‘I see. And yet you command me – speaking with your father’s voice – to answer you. Openly. Bluntly.’ He sighed. ‘Very well then. I’ll tell you what I feel. I find this scheme of yours repugnant.’
Li Yuan shivered, but kept his face impassive. ‘And I, Marshal Tolonen. And I. This is not something I want to do.’
‘Then why?’
‘Because there is no other way. None that would not result in greater violence, greater bloodshed than that which we are already witnessing.’
Tolonen looked down. Again he sniffed deeply. Then he looked up again, shaking his head. ‘No. Even were the worst to come, this is no path for us. To put things in men’s heads. To wire them up and treat them like machines. Achh...’ He leaned forward, his expression suddenly, unexpectedly, passionate. ‘I know what I am, Li Yuan. I know what I have had to do in the service of my T’ang. And sometimes I have difficulty sleeping. But this... this is different in kind. This will rob men of their freedom.’
‘Or the illusion of freedom?’
Tolonen waved the words aside impatiently. ‘It’s no illusion, Prince Yuan. The freedom to choose – bad or good – that’s real. And the Mandate of Heaven – those moral criteria by which a T’ang is adjudged a good or bad ruler – that too is real. Take them away and we have nothing. Nothing worth keeping, anyway.’
Li Yuan sat forward. ‘I don’t agree. If a man is bad, surely it is no bad thing to have a wire in his head – to be able to limit the effects of his badness? And if a man is good—’
Tolonen interrupted him. ‘You, I, your father – we are good men. We act because we must – for the good of all. Yet when we have left this earth, what then? How can we guarantee that those who rule Chung Kuo after us will be good? How can we guarantee their motives? So, you see, I’d answer you thus, my prince. It does not matter if the man with the wire in his head is good or bad. What matters is the moral standing of the man who holds the wires in his hands, like ten thousand million strings. Will he make the puppets dance? Or will he leave them be?’
CHUNG KUO II: THE BROKEN WHEEL
David Wingrove
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