There was a silence.
It didn't last long.
As though the decision had already been foreseen, premade and preplanned, the Confessor's hands
moved easily upward and drew back the hood - revealing an unblended face, strangely colored skin and shockingly distinctive features. A face out of forgotten history, which could only have come from a time before the genetic mixing of the 21st century, untouched by DNA insertion or diaspora.
Even though Akon had been half-expecting it, he still gasped out loud. Less than one in a million: That was the percentage of the current human population that had been born on Earth before the
invention of antiagathics or star travel, five hundred years ago.
"Congratulations on your guess," the Confessor said. The unaltered voice was only slightly different; but it was stronger, more masculine.
"Then you were there," Akon said. He felt almost breathless, and tried not to show it. "You were alive
- all the way back in the days of the initial biotech revolution! That would have been when humanity first debated whether to go down the Super Happy path."
The Confessor nodded.
"Which side did you argue?"
The Confessor's face froze for a moment, and then he emitted a brief chuckle, one short laugh. "You have entirely the wrong idea about how things were done, back then. I suppose it's natural."
"I don't understand," Akon said.
"And there are no words that I can speak to make you understand. It is beyond your imagining. But you should not imagine that a violent thief whose closest approach to industry was selling uncertified hard drugs - you should not imagine, my lord, my honorable descendant, that I was ever asked to take sides."
Akon's eyes slid away from the hot gaze of the unmixed man; there was something wrong about the thread of anger still there in the memory after five hundred years.
"But time passed," the Confessor said, "time moved forward, and things changed." The eyes were no longer focused on Akon, looking now at something far away. "There was an old saying, to the effect that while someone with a single bee sting will pay much for a remedy, to someone with five bee stings, removing just one sting seems less attractive. That was humanity in the ancient days. There was so much wrong with the world that the small resources of altruism were splintered among ten
thousand urgent charities, and none of it ever seemed to go anywhere. And yet... and yet..."
"There was a threshold crossed somewhere," said the Confessor, "without a single apocalypse to mark it. Fewer wars. Less starvation. Better technology. The economy kept growing. People had more resource to spare for charity, and the altruists had fewer and fewer causes to choose from. They came even to me, in my time, and rescued me. Earth cleaned itself up, and whenever something threatened to go drastically wrong again, the whole attention of the planet turned in that direction and took care of it. Humanity finally got its act together."
The Confessor worked his jaws as if there were something stuck in his throat. "I doubt you can even imagine, my honorable descendant, just how much of an impossible dream that once was. But I will
not call this path mistaken."
"No, I can't imagine," Akon said quietly. "I once tried to read some of the pre-Dawn Net. I thought I wanted to know, I really did, but I - just couldn't handle it. I doubt anyone on this ship can handle it except you. Honorable ancestor, shouldn't we be asking you how to deal with the Babyeaters and the Superhappies? You are the only one here who's ever dealt with that level of emergency."
" No, " said the Confessor, like an absolute order handed down from outside the universe. " You are the world that we wanted to create. Though I can't say we. That is just a distortion of memory, a romantic gloss on history fading into mist. I wasn't one of the dreamers, back then. I was just wrapped up in my private blanket of hurt. But if my pain meant anything, Akon, it is as part of the long price of a better world than that one. If you look back at ancient Earth, and are horrified - then that means it was all for something, don't you see? You are the beautiful and shining children, and this is your world, and you are the ones who must decide what to do with it now."
Akon started to speak, to demur -
The Confessor held up a hand. "I mean it, my lord Akon. It is not polite idealism. We ancients can't steer. We remember too much disaster. We're too cautious to dare the bold path forward. Do you know there was a time when nonconsensual sex was illegal?"
Akon wasn't sure whether to smile or grimace. "The Prohibition, right? During the first century pre-Net? I expect everyone was glad to have that law taken off the books. I can't imagine how boring your sex lives must have been up until then - flirting with a woman, teasing her, leading her on, knowing the whole time that you were perfectly safe because she couldn't take matters into her own hands if you went a little too far -"
"You need a history refresher, my Lord Administrator. At some suitably abstract level. What I'm trying to tell you - and this is not public knowledge - is that we nearly tried to overthrow your government."
"What?" said Akon. "The Confessors? "
"No, us. The ones who remembered the ancient world. Back then we still had our hands on a large share of the capital and tremendous influence in the grant committees. When our children legalized rape, we thought that the Future had gone wrong."
Akon's mouth hung open. "You were that prude?"
The Confessor shook his head. "There aren't any words," the Confessor said, "there aren't any words at all, by which I ever could explain to you. No, it wasn't prudery. It was a memory of disaster."
"Um," Akon said. He was trying not to smile. "I'm trying to visualize what sort of disaster could have been caused by too much nonconsensual sex -"
"Give it up, my lord," the Confessor said. He was finally laughing, but there was an undertone of pain to it. "Without, shall we say, personal experience, you can't possibly imagine, and there's no point in trying."
"Well, out of curiosity - how much did you lose?"
The Confessor seemed to freeze, for a moment. "What?"
"How much did you lose in the legislative prediction markets, betting on whatever dreadful outcome you thought would happen?"
"You really wouldn't ever understand," the Confessor said. His smile was entirely real, now. "But now you know, don't you? You know, after speaking to me, that I can't ever be allowed to make decisions for humankind."
Akon hesitated. It was odd... he did know, on some gut level. And he couldn't have explained on any verbal level why. Just - that hint of wrongness.
"So now you know," the Confessor repeated. "And because we do remember so much disaster - and because it is a profession that benefits from being five hundred years old - many of us became Confessors. Being the voice of pessimism comes easily to us, and few indeed are those among the