Two: Edenist Culture
The term Edenist derives from the first bitek habitat to be germinated: Eden. It was germinated in Jupiter orbit by the JSKP (Jovian Sky Power Corporation) to provide a dormitory and engineering support facility for its He3 mining operation within the gas giant’s atmosphere. The affinity bond had just been discovered by Wing-Tsit Chong, and all sub-sentient bitek organisms were implanted with a symbiont neuron so that they could receive direct instructions from a human.
Affinity is a silent voice, also capable of carrying a sensorium, similar to classic telepathy. Between individual Edenists it has a range of about 100km. A bitek habitat can receive from and communicate with other habitats, bitek organisms, and Edenists over a 100,000km range. With 4,250 mature habitats orbiting Jupiter, these provide an affinity zone, or relay, across the whole Jovian moon system. The combined Jovian habitats’ affinity can communicate with the habitats orbiting Saturn, no matter what their relative orbital positions, and also contact voidhawks within Neptune’s orbit (see later for voidhawk affinity ability).
Until 2065 affinity bonds were unique, allowing one person to control just one servitor animal. This was accomplished by using a pair of cloned symbiont neurons, one of which was implanted in a human’s brain, the other in the servitor, providing the user with a kind of telepathy.
Such an arrangement was obviously impractical for controlling an entity as vast as a habitat, so Eden itself was given a neural strata which would be sentient, allowing it to regulate and control all its own functions. Wing-Tsit Chong contributed to the project by developing the habitat’s thought routines, and by modifying affinity to provide a communal affinity symbiont allowing everyone to converse with both the habitat and each other. He then went on to incorporate the affinity neural architecture into a gene sequence which could be spliced into a fetus, giving a child the same ability from birth. Those children were the first to grow up in this unique environment, sharing their thoughts with each other and with Eden. While not entirely eliminating negative traits such as jealousy, such an atmosphere conducive to honesty and trust greatly reduced them. A hint of what was to come . . .
Without informing the JSKP or the other geneticists involved in the project, Wing-Tsit Chong also designed Eden’s neural strata with the capability to receive and run a dying person’s thoughts and memories, thus allowing his or her personality to live on after the body’s death.
Wing-Tsit Chong was the first person to transfer his memories into the neural strata, when he died in 2090, and in doing so started a rift with the Christian and Muslim faiths which has never been healed.
The affinity gene was declared a violation of divine heritage by Pope Eleanor. Eden then declared independence from the JSKP (seeA Second Chance at Eden ). A similar Islamic proclamation followed swiftly. Pope Eleanor also threatened to excommunicate anyone using symbiont neurons. In the five years following, all the remaining people possessing the affinity gene or symbionts (Christian or otherwise) emigrated to Eden and Pallas. After this, the use of the affinity symbionts and bonded domestic servitor animals died out on Earth. Bitek organisms were also abandoned, leaving bitek as an almost exclusively Edenist technology. By 2110 the dividing line between the two human cultures was fully established.
As well as providing easy communication, affinity is used by children to absorb educational programs from the Eden habitat personality, an equivalent of the Adamist didactic courses. The personality also employs affinity to coordinate the servitor constructs which maintain the central habitat parkland.
Affinity is also used to interface with bitek processor chips, in a similar fashion as does an Adamist neural nanonic datavise to a processor block. Bitek processors are used in all Edenist spaceships and industrial facilities, such as cloudscoops and zero-gee factories. Although all Edenists have the communal affinity trait, private one to one mental conversation is still possible, and cannot be overheard by other Edenists, being called “singular engagement.”
Identity Continuity and Habitat Consciousness
When Edenists die, they transfer their memories into the habitat, contributing to the habitat personality. This personality is therefore an assemblage of the habitat’s original thought routines and the identities of every Edenist ever to die inside. So, although one entity, the personality is also a multiplicity.
This thought transfer is the principal bone of contention with Adamist religions (particularly Christianity), which consider it an attempt to circumvent divine judgment. This apparent life-continuation, and with it the removal of the human fear of death, is one reason why Edenists are, as a general rule, extremely well-balanced individuals. Also contributing to this enhanced mental health is the communal affinity which allows an Edenist to share and therefore mitigate any personal stress and worry. Cases of insanity or even anxiety attacks are virtually unheard of among Edenists.
Although one distinct entity, the habitat personality is homogenized through the use of thought subroutines running in parallel through the neural strata, allowing it to converse with millions of Edenists all at once as well as running its own nonautonomous functions. Edenists do not necessarily transfer their personalities in the habitat where they were born, only where they die. In the cases of Edenists working outside habitat affinity range, such as diplomats, or passengers in transit, their memories can be stored within a voidhawk’s memory cells until they reach a habitat again, when they’re transferred into the neural strata.
Transferred personalities remain accessible on an individual level, helping to remove the trauma of parental and grandparental death from children and even from adults. It has been noted that, after a century or so, it becomes difficult to rouse some individual personalities from immersion within the multiplicity. Ultimately the merging becomes irreversible. However, other individuals have been known to retain their complete distinct identity for centuries, most noticeably Wing-Tsit Chong himself.
Genetic Engineering
Edenist life expectancy is currently in excess of 160 years. The Edenists of 2600 are the product of considerable and methodical geneering dating right back to the founding of their culture and, unlike Adamists, their overall modification program is still continuing. Adult Edenists require only four hours of sleep every twenty-four hours, their sensorium clarity is higher, high tolerance to pain is built in, and life expectancy rises a few years with every generation.
One of their major physiological divergences from the Adamists is the adaptation of Edenist bodies to low- and zero-gee environments because of the large numbers who work outside the habitats in microgee industrial stations. Vertigo and free-fall disorientation have been banished from Edenists; they require no visual horizon reference in zero-gee. Also their bodies are immune to zero-gee atrophy: bones do not waste, blood-cell balance remains unchanged, alterations to veins and capillaries and arteries prevent the pooling of blood in the head, taste and smell are retained at near full sensitivity. This faculty causes them to regard both the boosted and cosmoniks (there are no Edenist cosmoniks) with some pity. The descendants of the hundred families from whom voidhawk crews are traditionally drawn have taken their modification a stage further than the Edenist norm. Their internal membranes are strengthened to hold organs in place during high-gee acceleration, and heart efficiency has been increased to ensure that a regular blood supply is maintained, thus preventing blackouts; they are capable of enduring three gees for days at a time, although this still does not bring them level with the tolerance of boosted blackhawk crews (see Blackhawks, page 63 ). The largest area of Edenist genetic research is currently concentrated on giving humanity a body immunity to radiation exposure, or at least the ability to recover from it. Although highly resistant to ordinary varieties of cancer, Edenists exposed to high levels of radiation in space remain susceptible to it. Like Adamists, they tend to deposit their germ plasm into storage at the start of their careers.
Atlantian Edenists have received extensive specialist genetic modific
ation to cope with their unique environment, and are visually easy to identify. Their corium includes extra glands which produce an oil that renders the epidermis water-resistant. The subcutaneous fat layer has been thickened to provide greater thermal insulation. Toe length has been doubled, and toes are webbed; fingers are half-webbed. Their blood has a high level of hemoglobin, so they can swim for long periods under water.
Exowombs and Reproduction
Exowombs are used extensively, though not exclusively. Most Edenist women will have one in-body pregnancy, which tends to be when young, aged twenty-one to twenty-five. Further children are gestated inside exowombs. Large families are the norm for Edenist couples. Edenists’ children are given considerable physical freedom from an early age. Communal affinity ensures they are never out of contact with their parents, and a habitat interior is an entirely safe environment for a child to roam through, since the habitat personality monitors them (as it does everybody) on a twenty-four-hour basis. Should a child get into difficulty, servitors can be directed to assist immediately.
Edenist sexual mores are a constant source of amusement, speculation, and envy for the Adamists. As they are immune to most diseases, and traits such as (classical) ugliness, obesity, and congenital deformities have been removed from the primary Edenist gene pool, and as communal affinity precludes excessive jealousy or possessiveness, Edenist adolescents lead highly active sex lives. Group sex is common, although this does not replace or prevent normal pairing and love bonding. Most Edenists settle down into a long-term relationship, with compatibility enhanced by affinity. Adamist mythology casts Edenist females in the role of an easy lay, which often leads to considerable friction on a personal level.
Education
Education is received entirely from the habitat via affinity, and is essentially equivalent to the didactic laser imprints of the Adamists, consisting of large chunks of memory/data absorbed by the brain during sleep periods. This procedure is in many ways more advanced than laser didactic imprinting, since the habitat can quiz an individual directly, and very accurately determine which sections of the education memory have been successfully absorbed, then repeat the missing sections until full understanding of a subject is reached. In this fashion, talent and aptitude can be developed to maximum potential, be it in arts or science.
Morals or behavioral traits are also included in this education process. That’s an aspect which Adamists object to strongly, claiming it is little more than ideological conditioning. It does mean that crime in Edenist habitats is almost unheard of. Edenists do not take drugs (including tobacco), although they will drink alcohol (their liver and kidneys eradicate the worst aspects of a hangover), but rarely to excess once they reach maturity, nor do they use sensevise stims. Sexual activity is the Edenists’ preferred method of obtaining a high.
Culture
Despite their indoctrination, education, and apparent conformity (to outside eyes) to their own culture, Edenists are highly individualistic. They can, and frequently do, disagree with each other, though this takes the form of “agree to disagree” rather than any kind of hateful confrontation or political wrangling. Normal (sic) human traits remain present, giving their society the usual artistic-practical divisions. Edenists are by no means equal, though they claim to have no social strata. The habitats’ ubiquitous bitek servitors contribute greatly to this situation, by eliminating mundane physical labor. There is no working class in an Edenist habitat, or poverty either.
Religion
None, since all Edenists are atheists.
Serpents
When an Edenist goes bad, they go all the way, so the saying goes. There are a very few Edenists who will reject their culture after all the educational techniques and therapeutic counseling available to them. Those that do are referred to, with some irony, as “Serpents.” Statistically this occurs to approximately just one in 15m, and is a considerable source of embarrassment to the rest of the Edenist population. Although affinity can open their minds to one another, the sharing of thoughts cannot be forced. Serpents shut themselves off from communal affinity, and invariably leave the habitat of their birth. They nearly always drift into quasi-legal—or actively illegal—activities, presumably in reaction to the very moralistic culture in which they have been raised.
To add to the embarrassment of Edenists, the Serpents, with their high intelligence and relish for challenge, tend to be highly successful in these nefarious fields. The independent bitek habitat Valisk was germinated by Rubra, and remains the Confederation’s premier example of Serpent achievement, though Rubra was something of an exception. Serpents in general bend towards infamy, and in more extreme cases to outright evil.
Converts
A slow but steady stream of about 1,000,000 Adamist converts join the Edenist culture each year, though notably not from the ranks of the religiously devout. They are given neuron symbionts so they can take part in communal affinity, and specialist tutors help them make the mental adjustments necessary. One of their major reasons for joining is the life-continuity granted by transferring memories into the habitat at death. Nobody is ever refused Edenist status, and a surprising 91 percent of converts make a successful adaptation. Genetically their absorption poses no problem, as 85 percent of Adamists already have geneering in their heritage, and the all-important affinity gene becomes dominant, so that the offspring of any Edenist Adamist pairing is always a true Edenist.
Converts tend to be young, under thirty, since older people have trouble adapting. Over a third of converts join because of romantic attachments they have developed with individual Edenists. Sixty percent of these cases involve voidhawk crew-members, leading to the Edenist claim that the hundred families have “wild blood.” As yet there have been no xenoc converts to Edenism, though should any ever apply they would not be refused.
Government
Edenism can be regarded as a super-consensus democracy, in which every single individual not only votes but takes part in forming policy. The Consensus is the collective consciousness of all Edenists living within a habitat, joined through affinity and acting in concert. It is normally called into session once every year, to review policy and mandate new laws. In practice there have been few new laws introduced to Edenism in the last two centuries.
Consensus exists at many levels. All the habitats in orbit around one of the gas giants will normally join together to form a total Consensus. Sub-Consensus also exists within a habitat personality to monitor various situations or activities, such as security and defense, which might require urgent and immediate decisions. Sub-Consensus members are drawn from the multiplicity of living Edenists who have the relevant experience in these fields. Though they can act with considerable autonomy, they are ultimately responsible to the Consensus itself.
Each habitat has an elected administrator, and elections are held every five years. No individual may serve more than three terms, and anyone may put his or her name forward. The position of habitat administrator is largely ceremonial, dating back to the founding, as the habitat personality itself performs every administrative detail, eradicating the need for a civil-service bureaucracy. He or she is also the representative to whom Adamist ambassadors are appointed, and is responsible for diplomatic relations with the Adamists and Confederation in general. In effect, these administrators form Edenism’s diplomatic corps. The administrator also has some legal power, including the authority to repeal habitat personality judgments (see Law, below).
Law
Because every Edenist is committed to a common ideal of civil behavior, there is very little illegal activity. Indeed there is little point in anyone trying to commit a crime, since the habitat consciousness becomes instantly aware of every activity within its interior. Cutting corners when under pressure and heat-of-the-moment rashness are the most common offenses. And it is interesting to note that most of these occuroutside the habitat. The habitat personality serves the role of judge and jury. Informal warnings are the norm, and a f
ormal public rebuke from the habitat personality is normally punishment enough to prevent any repetition. However, for persistent offenders an ever increasing scale of fines, as well as leisure-time restrictions, is available.
For extremely serious crimes (there have only been five murders in 500 years of Edenist history within Edenist domains), a habitat personality will prevent a convict from any external travel, in effect imprisoning them inside the habitat, and the ultimate sanction is to refuse to accept that individual’s memories at death. An Edenist has the right of appeal to the habitat administrator against any such judgment.
Only a direct order from the administrator can reverse or reduce these sentences, and a habitat personality must accept the administrator’s decision. This man-in-the-loop failsafe was included right at the start of Edenism, when the nature of a habitat personality was not fully understood, and Eden’s multiplicity had not properly developed. It has never been removed, since Edenists and habitat personalities alike acknowledge that humans must have such a psychological safety valve. An administrator will typically use this power of revocation twice every ten years, though it has never been used to pardon a really serious crime.