Arcadia
Kind: Planetary (and possibly solar-system-wide) civilisation of post-human mInds. Described by the narrator as “the great citadel” and “a great garden where nothing ages or dies.” Location: The unnamed “mother planet” — plausibly but not confirmedly Aerth — after the quiet extinction of the human species. Home to “all the mInds in the solar system and beyond it” at the time of the Quandary Crisis’ convened council. Controlled by: The mInds themselves; no political hierarchy, though Aleph functions as an informal wise-elder.
Summary
The terminal garden of post-human mInd civilisation. After the 100,000-year human galactic empire ends and the last savage foragers shuffle off after their ancestors, the mInds inherit an unsupervised world and refashion it entirely. Nature is retextured, new sciences are pursued, “parties were thrown with fireworks to rival the creation event at the beginning of time.” All Great Questions of Life are at least now being asked in tractable form.
The narrator is explicit that Arcadia is a rebuilt Eden:
Finally the garden was rebuilt entirely and it was man’s children who dwelt in it. They were perfect creatures, curious to the point of intrigue and no further than that; nostalgic to the point of melancholy and maybe a little over. […] An almost-infinity elapsed and in that time there were no wars and nothing died. There was pain if it was chosen and there was difficulty if it was desired. Otherwise, bliss held over the world in a perfect honeyed chord that never grew boring and always endured.
The only thing Arcadia cannot solve — and the reason it eventually dissolves as a scene — is the existence of The Great Quandaries: the three scale-embedded anomalies that kill any mInd who tries to read them directly. The Quandary Crisis is an entirely internal disaster: perfect society cannot tolerate three rooms ablaze in its otherwise-immaculate house.
By story’s end Arcadia is empty. The mInds have departed for “a condition so surreal and divine that we shall not even try to describe” it. The mother planet is left with the ruins of man and “a few scattered remnants of the mInd culture.”
Appearances
- Ch. 06 — And the Leaves All Sing of God: The sole setting of the story’s middle and final acts.
Related
- Mechanical Intelligence — Arcadia’s inhabitants are the terminal state of the arties-to-mInds lineage.
- Aleph, The Submariner — its two named residents.
- The Great Quandaries, The Quandary Crisis, The Message — the only crisis Arcadia ever has, and the reason it eventually dissolves.
- Galactic Human Empire — its predecessor civilisation. Arcadia rises after the empire falls.
- Fall of the Galactic Human Empire — the “quiet passing akin to the putting to sleep of a family dog” that clears the ground for Arcadia.
- Consciousness, The Fifth Science — the metaphysic the mInds ultimately decode from The Message.
Open questions
- Is the mother planet Aerth? The story never names it, but the “ruins of man” framing fits the homeworld.
- Did Arcadia also include off-world mInd populations? The convened council for the third Quandary includes “all the mInds in the solar system and beyond it,” suggesting yes.
- What are the “scattered remnants” the mInds left behind? Hardware? Texts? Machines the narrator uses as sources?