Dichotomy

Back on board, the boys crashed out after a hard day’s entertainment. Next day was hot, too hot even for young boys to run around. Angus and Darach puffed and sweated, with frequent stops at the troughs along the towpath. On days like today, the horses decided the speed of the journey (actually that was so every day, in truth). Alfred was content to daydream in the sun. Alastair had befriended Griselda, who turned out to be a formidable horsewoman in her day as well as a Classics scholar. She still judged at gymkhanas and horse trials across the country. So they had much in common, and Alastair soaked it all up. Unsegregated, universally available tuition melded together people of all ages who often became friends, sometimes for life. Meanwhile, Alfred fell into a kind of sleep, a meditative peace occasioned by the strobing reflections of light on the water and the music of Nature, something so simple yet nearly lost to folk living in the previous epoch, when the Killjoys ruled the Earth. He thought about yesterday and what a good time they’d both had. Yet, in the same moment, he was relieved to be where he was now, at peace. The feeling was almost as though he had escaped from something. Such a contrast to the beauty all around him now, compared with the hedonistic excitement of yesterday. His emotions confused him and he resolved to voice them tomorrow when they were due to place themselves in Plato’s and Socrates’ care again.

He drifted off. Then quite suddenly Cheesy Claudius appeared, standing over him. He had the same slightly sickly smile, but there was something different about him, and Alfred struggled to come to terms with what it was, before realising that Claudius had become a human being. “You’re supposed to be a robot”, he said. “No”, replied Claudius, “you are the automaton, I control you. Look around you, marvel at my wondrous works”. Alfred sat up and saw the water had turned black and treacly, a great stink coming from it. “Put this on”, said Claudius, handing him a mask, “it is no longer healthy to breathe the air”. Alfred looked around and saw the horses lying dead on the towpath. In the fields around him lay the corpses of cattle and sheep. “What has happened to all the animals?”, he cried. “We disposed of them”, replied Claudius, “they were getting in the way. And they were polluting the earth”. As he said this, Alfred watched the trees, grass and fields disappear, replaced by concrete roads in all directions, above and below each other, angry vehicles almost bumper to bumper, all kinds of tall, Robot City-type structures stretching up to a darkened, grey sky, and covering the landscape as far as the eye could see. “What is this?”, he cried in dismay. “Progress”, came the reply, “now, I need to ask you, we issued seventeen new laws yesterday, have you learned them by heart? Ignorance of the law is no defence, and you will be tested on them”. “But there is only one law”, Alfred objected. “And what is that?”, enquired Claudius sardonically. “Do No Harm”, Alfred replied emphatically. Claudius laughed a humourless laugh. “Oh dear”, he said, “we have much to learn, I see. Answer me this, how can you expect to run a complicated world with no rules and regulations, eh?” Alfred was confused and got upset. For the first time in his life, he cried out “I want my Ma, I want my Pa”. “Do you mean the creatures who gave you birth?”, asked Claudius patronisingly, “you don’t belong to them. You belong to the State. Forget them. They’re not important”. “My Ma and Pa are the most important people in the world”, Alfred cried tearfully but defiantly, “go away, go away”, and he felt a new emotion of hatred welling up inside him. “Well, that’s a fine thing to say”, said a voice, and Alfred woke to see Alastair and Griselda standing over him. “I had a bad dream”, said Alfred sheepishly. “Come with us”, said Alastair, “we’ve stopped and the skipper said we can groom the horses”. Alfred shouted with relief: “Angus, Darach, there you are, standing up, I’m so pleased to see you”. The other two exchanged quizzical glances. “Come along”, said Griselda, who seemed to sense what Alfred had just gone through. Alfred resolved to mention his dream to the teachers when they met tomorrow.

“He said that all the farm animals were polluting the earth and had to be destroyed”, Alfred recounted the next day. “Ah yes”, Plato mused, “poor old Daisy has been farting and defecating on our behalf for millennia, and there she was being blamed for humankind’s pollution”. “Careful what you say”, Griselda interjected, “my middle name is Daisy”. “Present Daisies excepted”, said Plato with mock obsequiousness and a little bow, at the same time thinking with some amusement that expressing the alternative ‘present cows excepted’ would conceivably have been his last conscious act.

“You had a sort of vision, stringing together some of the history you’ve already learned”, said Socrates, “my boys, you will find yourselves going through all kinds of phases as your intellects develop. It’s perfectly natural. You will think to yourself, sometimes, wouldn’t it be better and more beautiful to dispense with the material world altogether and immerse ourselves solely in the bucolic? Then at other times, you’ll perceive the merits and excitement of technology, embodied in the Robot Cities and under the ground, and wonder why that shouldn’t permeate and modernise everything. The truth is, so far as we can ascertain, that you need both, there’s a place for each. As you already know, I believe, Robot City boundaries can never be extended. And humanoid robots can never appear outside them. But if you dismantle them, remove them from their place, they will reappear in diverse forms, uncontrolled, you know not where, nor at what cost. Better to keep the Alternative in your sights as your slave, than for it to emerge as your master and infect the whole world, as in the past”.

Griselda spoke: “You used the phrase ‘so far as we can ascertain’ – what exactly did you mean by that?”. “I mean”, Socrates replied, “to the extent of our current wisdom. It seems likely that we’ve got it about right, allowing the two opposites to exist in tandem, with Robot Cities as the servant. Boys, it is an historical fact that all great civilisations prospered by having masters and slaves, but at a terrible cost in human misery. Griselda is all too aware of this with her knowledge of the Classics. The difference today is that we are the masters and technology is our slave. This seems to work, provided the Killjoys don’t ever get hold of technology again to enslave us. So our current wisdom informs us. But we’re investing in wisdom all the time. Our tuition is founded upon the sharing of wisdom, not the indoctrination of dogma. The hope is that wisdom therefore develops and grows, so that tomorrow’s world is wiser than today’s. Perhaps they will perceive a superior solution, who knows for sure? My boys, you must continue to learn, all of your lives, be teachers when you are old, and end up wiser than we are. That is my plea to you”.

Alfred spoke: “He laughed at me in my dream when I said Do No Harm was the only law. He said there were thousands of laws. He said you needed thousands of laws to run a complicated world”. “He’s right”, replied Plato, “if you create a complicated world, you need lots of laws to run it. These were designed by the Killjoys to muddle you up, so in the end only they knew how to run it. Which means they owned it. But we own our world today. All our land is once again common land. It’s a simpler world, and Do No Harm is the whole of the law, of government and, of course, of medicine, where the phrase, or promise, originated in the Hippocratic Oath. Thus, though simple, Do No Harm is a great river with many tributaries. For it embraces all manner of harm, to people, to creatures, to property, to Nature, physical, mental, financial, environmental. This you already know, yes?” The boys nodded. “So, repeat the mantra”, said Plato. “If I suffer or perceive harm to myself, anyone or anything, I report it to a magistrate”, Alfred intoned. “And where can you find a magistrate?”, asked Plato. “All teachers are magistrates”, chimed Alastair. “Though not all magistrates are teachers” Griselda interjected, “I’m a magistrate”. Nobody appeared particularly surprised at this revelation. “If the magistrate decides the complaint is justified”, Plato continued, “it is referred for trial”. “What if I disagree and still think my complaint is justified?” asked Alastair. “You have the right to go to another magistrate and try again”, came the reply, “but you run the risk of being judged vexatious if you keep trying and failing”. Socrates continued: “All cases have a jury of twelve. If the accused pleads guilty, there is no trial, and sentence is passed. If not, the trial proceeds. The jury’s verdict has to be anonymous. However, the jury also decides the sentence, and that decision doesn’t have to be anonymous”. “Why not?”, Alfred asked. “Well”, said Socrates, “it’s very difficult for twelve people to unanimously decide on a punishment. So the juror proposing the mildest sentence prevails”.

“What’s vexatious”, Alfred piped up. “That means telling the complainant to stop wasting time with nonsense”, Plato replied. “Or to bugger off”, said Griselda tartly.