Foundation’s Triumph

1.

R. Zun Lurrinwasastonished to discover something that Daneel had kept from his closest aides-humans lived on Eos!

The ancient repair base for Zeroth Law robots had been chosen for its remoteness and inhospitability to organic life. It was the deepest cryptic heart of a secret the masters should never penetrate, or even imagine. And yet, here they were! A small community of men and women, living quietly under a transparent dome that lay just beyond the frozen metal lake.

Robots stood at their beck and call, silently anticipating every person’s need. With their physical requirements taken care of by attentive machines, the humans were free to direct all their concentration toward a single goal.

Achieving stillness.

Serenity.

Unity.

“For ages, the answer stared me in the face, and yet I never saw it,” Daneel Olivaw told Zun. “A blindness that arose because I am fundamentally a creature of chaos.”

“You?” Zun stared. “But Daneel, you’ve fought chaos for nearly all of your existence! Without your ceaseless efforts…and i

“That may be so,” Daneel answered. “Nevertheless, I share many of the assumptions that were held by my creators-brilliant human roboticists who lived in a time of dynamic science. The first great techno-renaissance upheaval. Those programmers’ deep assumptions still dominate my circuits. Just like them, I habitually believe that all problems can be solved by direct experimentation and analysis. So it never occurred to me that our masters-in their present-day ignorance-had already stumbled onto another way of penetrating to truth.”

Zun watched the humans, about sixty of them, who sat quietly in rows across a carpet made of woven natural reeds. Their backs were straight and their hands unfolded, empty on their laps. No one said a word.

“Meditation,” Zun commented. “I have seen it often. Most of the popular religions and mystical systems teach it, along with countless schools of mental hygiene and discipline.”

“Indeed,” said Daneel. “This type of mental regimen predates technological civilization. Human beings trained their minds in similar ways throughout a variety of cultures. In fact, just about the only society that largely ignored it was techno-Western civilization.”

“The one that built robots.”

“The one that unleashed the first great killer chaos.”

“I see why you’ve encouraged meditation, across the mille

“One of many tools we’ve used.” Daneel nodded. “The outcomes achieved by meditation are compatible with overall goals of the empire, to keep individuals busy developing their own personal spirituality, instead of engaging in the kind of arrogant cooperative projects we see during a scientific age.”

“Hmm. This will also be important early in the post-imperial era, won’t it?”

“That’s right, Zun. One of the first crises to face Seldon’s Foundation will be solved when its leaders on Terminus figure out how to manipulate these same religious response sets, using them to gain sway over their immediate neighbors in the periphery kingdoms.”

Zun was silent for a while, watching sixty humans sit almost motionless on their mats. They weren’t the only living things under the transparent ceiling. He saw that Daneel had arranged for a water garden to be established nearby, complete with miniature trees and golden fish splashing near a gentle waterfall. Just above, several dozen white birds nested in the branches. All at once Zun saw them take off, fly a complete circuit of the dome in unison, and settle back to roost again. Superficially, none of the humans seemed to react. But Zun could sense that they knew all about the birds. Indeed, the men and women had beeninvolved in the flight, somehow.

At last he spoke again.

“I have a feeling there is more involved here than you’ve told me, Daneel. If meditation is simply a useful way to keep humans diverted, distracting them away from chaos states, you would not be performing this research here on Eos, our most secret place.”

“That is right, Zun. You see, adherents of meditation have long promised several things. That it can provide serenity, detachment, and a degree of organic self-control-these are undisputed. The techniques have proved useful in helping the Galactic Empire to remain calm and peaceful, most of the time. But believers also promised something else, something that I dismissed for many thousands of years, as mere superstition.”

“Oh? What is that?”

“A way to co

“For thousands of years, I dismissed this aspect, making use of meditation primarily as a social tool, one of many that helped to create a gentle, conservative civilization, safe from chaos. Then something happened.”

“What was it?”

“An agent of mine, seeking to improve his emulation of human beings, joined a group of meditators, participating in their sessions and pretending to be one of them. He was a robot with mentalic powers, like you, Zun. Only this time, when he began meditating, many of his safeguards dropped. He entered into contact with the entire group.”

“But we are only supposed to do that under carefully controlled conditions!” Zun objected. “We may adjust the minds of individual humans, and groups-even whole planets-but only following strict procedures. That’s the policy laid down long ago by you and Giskard!”

“It was an act of carelessness,” Daneel agreed. “But one with magnificent results. You see, once our mentalic robot joined the meditation group, suddenly a link existed among several dozen human minds that had already been working for decades to learn disciplined blankness, a null state in which the raucous noise of daily life is minimized. Almost instantly, they were in communion! The very thing that so many sages had promised for thousands of years was achieved at last, with a little help from a single mentalically equipped robot.”

Zun looked across the open arena at the sixty humans, all of them adults in their middle years, and noticed for the first time that a small robot sat behind each person. With his own mentalic sensors, Zun reached out and realized that each of the small machines had a single purpose, to act as a bridge between the nearby human and all the others. Broadening his search, using sifting fingers of thought, Zun made contact at last with the psychic mesh that had been created under the dome.

Zun’s mind recoiled instantly, as if from a powerful alien touch! Alien…and yet incredibly familiar. He was used to contacting human mind-sometimes many at the same time, especially when some Zeroth Law imperative required that he make a group adjustment-but never had he linked to a throng who were all thinking the same thoughts…focused on the exact same images…amplifying each other even as the machines resonated with organic mentalic force!

“This is awesome, Daneel,” he murmured. “Why, it is the exact opposite of chaos! if the masters could all be taught to do this…”

Daneel nodded. “It pleases me that you grasp the implications so quickly, Zun. You can see how this could be the foundation of an entirely new type of human culture, one that is inherently more immune to the chaos plague than even the Galactic Empire at its best. After all, the empire was kept stable by seventeen major influence-what Hari Seldon labeled damping state-to prevent isolated worlds from spiraling off into so-called renaissances. But what if humanity could instead be helped to achieve one of its own ancient dreams! A true communion of spirit and of mind!”