Prodigy (Complete)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Mara led the way to the library. When they arrived, they stopped at the entrance and stared into the vast assortment of written knowledge. It was impossible not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the collection. At one point in time, the library would have represented the world's best knowledge, but now that same amount of information could be stored in something the size of a fingernail.  

"Please tell me this is organized," Aris said.

"Yes, it's organized according to the Dewey Decimal System." 

"I have no idea what that means, but let's get started." 

Mara walked them through the narrow rows that were packed tightly with old and dusty books. The shelves extended to the ceiling, which was over twelve-feet high. The science section was at the far end. 

As Alex passed through the rows of books, she felt like she was walking inside a giant brain. She extended her arms out to her sides and allowed the books to graze her fingertips as if she could absorb the information just by touching them.  

"Okay, so these three shelves are all our books on science. Please remember to put the books back where you found them." 

The four of them branched out in separate ways and combed through the vast collection of books trying to find anything related to symptoms of gold poisoning. 

"I couldn't imagine living in a world where people had to read books to get information," Milo said to anyone within earshot. Nobody responded. "It must have taken them forever to get through it, and how much of the information could they possibly retain?" 

He picked up a book with a familiar title, Plato's Republic. As he flipped through the pages he could not help but think of how long it would take if he actually had to read it. He had downloaded the book many years ago and the complete transfer only took a few seconds. He flipped through a few pages and happened to stumble onto the section about the guardian class. 

The premise was Socrates, Adeimantus, and Glaucon discussing a theoretical city that would be both just and prosperous. They recognized that people's natural abilities varied and each person was born with aptitudes that fit them for different jobs. Each person would therefore adopt a role in society, such as builders, weavers, farmers, cobblers, doctors, and so on. In regards to who ought to rule, it was determined that someone who was expert in kingship would be required - the guardian class. 

Milo continued to read about what Socrates thought a guardian should possess.  

'The guardians will be gentle with friends and high-spirited with enemies, they'll also be courageous, fast, strong, and have keen senses. The guardians will be the eldest and will have the best skill in watching over society. These men are instilled with great power, so every precaution must be made to preserve them. Therefore, they'll be selected from a very young age from the ones that demonstrate a certain guardian disposition, and will be nurtured all the way up until they can fulfill their role. This class will be few, but the ones selected will prevail as sublime leaders. Among other things, they will be self-disciplined, which is the opposite of having a weakness of the will. As such, they will not be easily persuaded or tempted by things that might corrupt their soul.'

Milo, now thoroughly getting into the text, smirked when he encountered the next part. 

'It is said that when a person is around bad company or a bad upbringing, these negative forces will incline his personality to be weak and corrupt, which will overpower any good inclinations. But if a person is self-disciplined, the better part will rule over the worst part.'

'That's so true,' he thought.  

'Since children inherit their parent's traits, it will be advantageous to breed within classes and not mix them. It could be said that two farmer parents will likely raise a good farmer, and likewise, two guardian parents will likely raise a good guardian. Therefore, if a farmer breeds with a guardian for instance, then it will ruin the city because it will disrupt the purity of their roles. Guardians will oversee that people do not procreate between classes.'

Milo stopped for a moment to think of how much this resonated with the society he lived in. The philosophy was the same, but instead of selective breeding and carefully nurturing guardians their whole lives, guardians were clones that had all the desirable guardian dispositions programmed into them. Technology enabled the process to be much more efficient with less chance for error. 

"Hey, Milo, did you find something?" Alex called out. Milo quickly closed the book and carried on with his search.  

"Have you found anything yet?" he asked as he approached Alex. 

"I think so. It says here you can get poisoning from overexposure to gold. It lists the symptoms as headaches, nausea, bone marrow depletion, jaundice, dermatitis, cholestasis, pneumonitis, gastrointestinal bleeding, ocular chrysiasis, and nephrotic syndrome. Any one of these symptoms could kill a person." 

"I wonder why I haven't come across this in the archives." 

"It's probably because the government removed it from the digital records because news like that would cause mass hysteria. If they allowed this information about the air being toxic to circulate, then there would be a huge public outcry. Everyone would demand they fix the problem and I don't think they know how to."