a brief history of ooranye
29: the quest for solor

The captive Ghepion plotters, under hypnotic interrogation, made an extraordinary confession of their motives. It seemed that they had been moved, at least in part, by a “desire to have a soul”.

The questioners were baffled. Surely (they thought) the Ghepions must understand that any sentient being necessarily has a soul – defined as the entity’s qualitative aspect. Since qualia cannot be derived from quanta, or, to put it less technically, qualities from physical nature, the soul must be transcendent. Surely therefore the Ghepions must know that their material circuits were no more a denial of “soul” than the equally material veins and bones of a man. What were they worried about?

No one knew. No one could find out why these particular Ghepions, and no others, had harboured these fears of being soulless. But whatever the reason for their mental misfortune, it turned out to Syoom’s advantage. For these Ghepions, in their search for reassurance, had discovered a clue which suggested that the myth of Solor – a place in legend, in some ways equivalent to the Terrans’ Eden – might not be a mere myth after all.

According to tradition, Solor was a glowing, numinous land which conferred bliss on those who found it. Amazingly, the Ghepion plotters had wanted control of the Navy for no other reason than that they regarded it as essential to the task of locating this land, and of ensuring their access to it.

Now that the plot was foiled, and humans were back in control, the question remained: what to do with the knowledge of the reality of Solor? It was decided that the value of such a place could only be preserved if it remained a hope, an ideal which might be accessible to those willing to devote their lives to a quest for it; certainly not a pleasure park overrun by the merely curious.

Thus the Sunnoad and his advisers rejected the idea of a Syoomean campaign to locate Solor. To send out dozens of airships into Fyaym to search back and forth for the land of bliss would not only be dangerous and expensive; it would also be a crude vulgarity, and success would carry with it the great danger of annihilating the object of the search – a search which ought to be left to individuals.

The Gold Era lasted 9,066,758 Uranian days, or 369 Uranian years, equivalent to 31,029 Earth years. It was by and large a sane, healthy era. It did have some occasional quirks, arising from its distinct philosophical bent (for example, some states declared that the killing of a determinist could not be regarded as murder, since according to the victim’s determinist belief the killer could not be blamed). Syoom had become a culture which took philosophy more seriously than ever before. This was hardly surprising, since questions of identity and purpose and meaning were brought to the forefront of debate by the quest for Solor.

However, the main feature of the era was the great number of physical adventures which have contributed to the Uranian saga. These almost all involved the Quest; thousands of stories of individuals (human and Ghepion) in search of the land of the blessed.

A few did find it and returned to tell the tale, but were unwilling or unable to say where it was. After many lifetimes the truth was made public, that Solor was not in Fyaym after all, but actually in Syoom.

It had remained free from discovery for so long because it was a realm possessed of the power to curve space around it. On a much smaller scale this space-distorting power had been known for ages, as a defensive weapon, rare and expensive to use. No one had ever previously heard of an entire region of Syoom being rendered incognito by such a device.

The few who succeeded in their quest for Solor possessed either exceptional qualities or exceptional luck, to get round the invisible barrier of curved space. A time came, however, when Solor was thoroughly “bracketed”, curved space or not. An impatient generation of Syoomeans arose, no longer willing to respect the isolation of the magical realm. An expedition was mounted to break the barrier… and did so – to find Solor gone.

It had been there, but it was gone. Those few who had seen it before, confirmed that the surrounding topography was the same, but no blessed land existed in its midst any more.

The anger and sorrow which followed brought in their train an eomasp.

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