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.

I hesitate even to warn you, because that frustration had an important, even a beneficial effect on my work. I reached a point in my 70's when I had surpassed every mind around me. Jane Strassen, Yanni Schwartz, Denys and Giraud Nye, and of course Florian and Catlin, were among the friends who still challenged me. But I passed even them. I went more and more inward, and found myself more and more solitary in the personal sense. Then I confess to you that I was extremely happy in my professional work, and I was able to confine my sexual energies to a mere physical release, on a very frequent basis, which, with the satisfactions of my work and the company of a few reliable friends, kept me busy. In some ways I was very lonely, but in the main I was happy. It was a very productive period for me.

But now, above a century, I know that I am launched on projectsnone of which I will finish, that I am doing things that may save humankind or damn it, and I will never know the outcome.

Most of all that anger drives me now, impatience with the oncoming wall, impatience with time and the limits of those around me; there is no chance to stop and breathe, or rest. I can no longer travel freely, no longer fly, the dream I had of seeing space is something I have no right to indulge in, because security is so difficult and finishing this work is so important. Sex used to relieve the tensions; now it interlocks with them, because the anger is linked with it and with everything I do.

The most terrible thing—I have hurt Florian. I have never done that in my life. Worse than that—I enjoyed it. Can a child understand how much that hurt? Worst of all—Florian understands me; and forgives me. Whatever you do, young Ari,use the anger, don't let it useyou.

Because the anger will come, the pain will come, because you are not like everyone else, no more than I could be.

You arenot my life's work. I hope that does not touch you in your vanity, and that you will understand why I reactivated my psychogenesis study and devoted so much of my time to creating you. My life's work is not psychogenesis, but sociogenesis, and no one but you has ever heard that word in any serious context. I have shifted the entire course of humanity by the things I have done. Your own unique perspective as a psychogenetic replicate can tell you something of the damage that might be done to Union if people becameaware of what I have done. Ithad to be done, by everything that I saw.

But I worked increasingly alone, without checks, and without consultation with anyone, because therewas no one who understood what I understand.

I can tell you in capsule form, young Ari,as I have told the press and told the Council repeatedly: but few seem to understand the basics of what I am saying, because it runs counter to short-term goals and perceptions of well-being. I have not been able to model simply enough the complex of equations that we deal with; and I fear demagogues. Most of all I fear short-term thinkers.

The human diaspora, the human scattering, is the problem, but Centrism is not the answer. The rate of growth that sustains the technological capacity that makes civilization possible is now exceeding the rate of cultural adaptation, and distance is exceeding our communications. The end will become more and more like the beginning, scattered tribes of humans across an endless plain, in pointless conflict—or isolate stagnation—unless we can condense experience, encapsulate it, replicate it deliberately in CIT deep-sets—unless psychogenesis can work on a massive scale, unless it can become sociogenesisand exceed itself as I hope you will exceed me. Human technology as an adaptive response of our species has passed beyond manipulation of the environment; beyond the manipulation of our material selves; beyond the manipulation of mind and thought; now, having brought us out of the cradle it must modify our responses to the universe at large. Human experience is generating dataflow at a rate greater than individuals can comprehend or handle; and the rate is still increasing. We must begin compression: we must compress experience in the same way human history compresses itself into briefer and briefer instruction—and events on which all history depended rate only a line in passing mention.