When I was 69, in 2352, Union launched its last major offensive of the war; and came to me with the outline of the Gehenna project. See file under keyword: Gehenna, keyword: private file. When I was 71, in 2354, the Company Wars ended with the Treaty of Pell. When I was 72, in 2355, the Gehenna Colony was dispatched, as a contingency measure. My advice to the contrary was overruled by Adm. Azov, Councillor of Defense.
When I was 77, in 2360, I challenged Jurgen Fielding for the Science seat. When I was 79, in 2362, final vote tabulations gave me the seat, which I hold at the time I am writing these notes.
It's one thing, young Ari, to study older people as a fact in psychology; its quite another thing to be aware of the psychology of old age in yourself—because you do get old inside, even if rejuv holds your physical age more or less constant. The difference rejuv has made in human psychology is a very profound difference: consider . . . without rejuv, the body begins to change by age 50 and specific deteriorations begin and grow acute enough within the next 20 to 30 years to cause disability. That is the natural aging process, which would lead to natural death between the ages of 60 and 110 at the outside, varying according to genetics and environment.
In individuals without rejuv, the 20-to-30-year period of decline in functions, followed by a period of diminished function and degenerative disease, works a considerable psychological change. In eras when no rejuv was possible, or in places such as Gehenna, where no rejuv is available, there are sociological accommodations to having a large portion of the population undergoing this slow diminution of physical and in a few cases mental capacity. There may be institutions and customs which provide support to this segment of the population, although, historically, such provisions were not always optimum or satisfactory to the individual faced with the psychological certainty that the process had begun. With rejuv, we contemplate natural death at, considering mere percentages, a little greater lifespan, ranging in my time between 100 and 140 ... bearing in mind that rejuv is still a tolerably new phenomenon, and the figure may increase. But rejuv was a discovery on Cyteen, was available for the first time during my mother's generation, and the sociological adjustments were still extremely rapid during my early years: keyword: Aging, keyword: Olga Emory: keyword: thesis.
At the time I write these notes, the major change has not been so much length of life, although that has had profound effect on family structures and law, due to the fact most people now live near their parents for a century or more, and frequently enter into financial partnership in their estates, so that inheritance, as you have done with my estate, is quite rare: estates usually progress rather than leap from one individual to the other nowadays.
The major change has been the combination of advanced experience with good health and vitality. The period of decline is usually brief, often under 2 years, and frequently there is no apparent decline. Death has become much more of a sudden event; and one enters one's 140's with the expectation onewill die, but faces it, not in the depressive effects of degenerative illness, but as an approaching time limit, a fearful catastrophe, or, quite commonly, with the I'm-immune attitude which used to characterize much younger individuals.
I digress with a purpose. I cannot predict for your time and your age what old age may be. I do know this, that the sense of limitations sets in early at Reseune, because of the very nature of our work, which is so slow, and involves human lifespans. By my 70's, I saw an experiment launched which I knew I might not see the end of. And you may not. But that knowledge is something foreign to you, at your age.
Remember this, when you read beyond 2345.
Changes happen. Therefore I have made access to certain keyword areas of my diary slower to access beyond the year 2362, based on a series of examinations this program will administer. I have fears for your psychological health if you attempt to deceive this program in this regard: expert as you may become at analyzing tests and guessing which answers are key to obtaining more information, I ask you to trust my mature judgment in this, remembering that I write this with the perspective of a woman who knows you in ways no one else does—even if you know how to trick the program, answer it with absolute honesty. If an emergency arises and youmust get that information, your skill should enable you to lie to the test and get what you need; but bear in mind two things: first, as I once told you, this program is capable of protecting Reseune from abuse, and certain attitudes, even if they are pretended, may cause it to take defensive actions; of course this means if you are a scoundrel, you can perhaps lie in the other direction, but your psych profile does not presently indicate you are one, or you would not be getting this information right now. Second, I will withhold no part of my working notes, and there will be nothing in those hidden portions that you will need for anything but personal reasons.
Last of all I remind you of this: I am safely dead and incapable of shock. The program will draw a firm line between your fantasies and your real actions as observed through House records. Treat the program with absolute honesty. You will occasionally see a new question surface, as your actions within the House or your chronological age activates a new aspect of the test. Never lie, even if you suspect the truth may cause the program to react. It is designed to detect lies, deceptions, evasions, and various other contingencies, but then, I knew I would be dealing with a very clever individual—with my impulses, if I am correct.
I will tell you that I have caused deaths and hurt others in my life. I will tell you something terrible: I have a certain sadistic bent I try to control. Self-analysis is a trap and I have had to do more of it to write this program than I have liked to do. I will tell you that my sexual encounters with CITs have been unsatisfactory from my adolescence onward; that they have inevitably ended in professional antagonism and ended a few valuable friendships; that the events of my childhood, lurid as some of them were, contributed more to my sense of independence and my sense of responsibility toward others. That my uncle was cruel to me and my household taught me compassion.
But that my compassion made me vulnerable to others, all CITs, whose egos did not take well to my independence and my intellect, caused me great pain; in plain language, I fell in love about as often as any normal human being. I gave everything I had to give. And I got back resentment. Genuine hatred. I tried, God knows, not to trample on egos. But my mere existence challenges people, and I challenged everyone past their endurance. Nothing I could do was right. Everything I did fractured their pride. My azi could deal with me, as yours can with you. But I felt an essential isolation from my own kind, a sense that there was an area of humanity I would never adequately reach or understand—on a personal level, no matter my brilliance or my abilities. That is a painful understanding to reach—at nineteen.
That pain created anger; and that anger of mine helped me survive and create. It drove me into that other aspect of myself, my studies of human thought and emotion—challenging all my ability, in short, which in turn fed back into the other situation and exacerbated it with lovers yet to come. I think that that cycle of sexual energy and anger are interlocked in me to such an extent that I cannot control it except by abstinence, and as you are no doubt aware, abstinence is not an easy course for me.