The Brown
Smoke
Hovering like
a Terrestrial eagle or a Uranian eopc over
the landscape of Syoom, in what
turned out to be the last days of the Thulium Era, we might have discerned
murky caterpillar-like shapes, fuzzy in outline, squirming across the
plains, and in doing so we would have witnessed one of the
many phenomena grouped by historians under the generic
title, "The Brown
Smoke".
Sooner or later it was bound to happen that the various non-human
powers
in Fyaym, in one of their periodic awakenings, should
resent the incursions of the prospectors who had become ever bolder
throughout the Thulium Era. The first serious attack of the
"Smoke" was aimed at Vyanth itself, the largest city of Syoom. It
was beaten off, but the shock of that day caused an
eomasp which ushered in the 144 days, 13 hours
of the Ytterbium Era - a time of disaster and of rescue.
The Lutetium
Era
When a defence
was invented against the Smoke - a device which reduced it to a
shrinking bubbly patch of slime - the relief which this brought
triggered another eomasp
, which brought on the Lutetium Era.
Era 71 lasted 34,964 of the 30-hour
Uranian days, plus 24 hours. This is equivalent to 119.66 Earth
years - hardly longer than a single lifetime. It is thus one of
the minor eras in length, like the Nitrogen Era. Also like the
Nitrogen Era, it has a historical importance out of proportion to its
length.
It is the era in which the
colloquial phrase "I am laying my life on the line" - in the Nouuan
tongue - became compressed into a single long and famous word,
kommassandassan.
It is a word
that must be spoken aloud only in very special situations, by someone
so keen to change a plan that he is willing to risk his
life to interrupt proceedings. This is because custom - dating from era
71 - has decreed that it is a word of such
power, that not only must it not be spoken in vain, but also it cannot
be ignored, on pain of death in either case.
If you feel that something must be
stopped, you can cry 'dassan, and you will be heard; but if you are
proved wrong in your reasons, or if you cannot convince, then you
die. On the other hand if you are ignored but then turn out to
have been right, those who ignored you will die, no matter who they
are.
The first time
the 'dassan call was used, was at a muster of airships preparing to invade Fyaym on an
expedition in retaliation for the Black Smoke. A young officer, Gyan Ennye of
Jaax, burst into the flagship control room and interrupted a
meeting of the captains. Threatening them and the ship's mechanisms with his
laser, he at the same time pleaded so impressively for the
mission to be called off, that they hesitated, and when he uttered the
phrase, "I lay my life on the line", they were sufficiently convinced
that they postponed the fleet's departure while they investigated his
arguments further.
As we all
know, Gyan Ennye turned out to be right - the fleet would have been
annihilated had it proceeded. The incident was never
forgotten. It set the precedent for other occasions on which
desperate individuals felt they had to halt some mighty process which they felt would lead to disaster.
The 'dassan call did for large movements in general what the institution of
Corrector did for Sunnoads in particular.
However, on that first occasion near the beginning of
era 71, custom had not yet established the prodecure of the Call in the
form it has taken since. Gyan Ennye had to wait longer for
complete vindication, even though his immediate warning was soon proved
to be justified. For he had used violence, in order to get
into the control room and to force the captains there to listen to
him.
He was court-martialled, and the verdict was a strange
one. Hundreds of predecents were cited, dating from various naval
trials throughout the planet's age-long history. In the end he
offered his prosecutors an unexpected deal which they decided to
accept.
Simulation
Gyan Ennye was a member of the Dfangexcarj - the
Simulator Project. This was a corporation recently formed to
cultivate a machine (we would call it a giant computer) that might aid
in decision-making. Now it was agreed as part of the deal that the
Simulator should be brought to bear on the question,
"Should Syoom seek to punish the powers of Fyaym for the
attack by the Brown Smoke?"
Wayfarers were sent out and data were gathered as never
before. The help of many Ghepions was sought and obtained,
partly because they saw the Dfangescarj as potentially one of
themselves. Much opposition was roused against the Project,
during the race against time to justify Gyan Ennye's 'dassan call.
A number of cliff-hanging coups by Project supporters ensured that
enough intermediate predictions and simulations, some involving a
certain amount of deceit, kept political support alive. In the
end, just as the agreed deadline was approaching, a successful
simulation was run, which completely vindicated Gyan Ennye's
advice. Syoom should have a defence policy that really was
defensive only, and should not allow itself to get tempted into
large-scale attacks on Fyaym.
To the surprise of many, Gyan Ennye himself seemed
rather to turn against the idea of the Simulator, after it had done its
work. He wondered aloud whether it should be dismantled, lest
people come to rely too much on its power, though he did not press the
point. Anyhow it was allowed to fall into disuse, largely because
of the difficulty and expense of keeping its
expert-system updated.
As if on cue, more trouble, more incursions from Fyaym,
darkened the horizons. The last third of Era 71 saw a renewed
interest in the idea of Simulations, for purposes of disaster
prediction as well as for aid in decision-making. Gyan Ennye was
no longer alive by this time, but his example was remembered, and some
'dassan calls were successfully made, forcing authorities to rekindle
successors to the first Simulator Project.
Finally the two disparate ideas - Simulation and
kommassandassan - came together when a
Skyyonian Simulator, in the presence of the Sunnoad, actually proved, by
running two scenarios, one with and one without the institution of the
'dassan call, that the latter should be kept and codified as part of
Syoomean culture.
On the same day, the same Simulator was used to
recommend that all large-scale prospecting for ell-light crystals in
Fyaym must stop.
If that were to happen, Syoom would be weaker in
physical power, and must make up for it by increased intelligence.
The Simulators predicted that they would supply this.
The decision was left to the Sunnoad, Dynnt Gilvar
48559. He was at a forking point in history; a push either way
would establish which path mankind would follow for hundreds of
lifetimes to come.
He chose to follow the Simulator's advice. The
news spread, and awareness multiplied of the implications of the
decision. A wave of emotion caused an
eomasp, and a new era.
>> The Age of the Wise
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