“Counselor, do you remember Ed Kohl?”

He wouldn’t respond.

“Earth was terrifying, now that I think about it.”

He wouldn’t take the bait.

“Or I guess I should say the Blue World was terrifying. You know, I used to have a bit of a crackpot theory that they VSoM’d everybody who boarded a generation ship, and that’s how our whole society got the idea that blue equals bad so fast. But really, now that I’ve had some time to really think about it, it’s no wonder we’re all freaked out by the color of the blue planet.”

He couldn’t take the bait.

“I’ve read that back then, there was a lot of positive stuff we thought of when we thought of blue. They called it ‘the blue vault of heaven’ and all that. Hey, speaking of heaven-”

He took the bait.

“I really am not sure your argument holds.”

A beat. The Counselor resettled his glasses on his soft face. He hoped the gesture was disarming. It seemed unlikely.

“You seem well-read. Think about wolves. They were well-known for slaughtering livestock.

Humans feared them. However, there were also domesticated canines. Dogs, they were called. Their ancestors were brutes. Slayers. Menaces. Despite that, humans held them in high esteem. Many were even selected to protect flocks. Would you fault these loyal hounds for the mayhem of the wolf? Why, then, would you fault the astraean for the crimes of the human?”

The prisoner leaned back and steepled its fingers. Its dark eyes were animated.

“There we go. You make a very interesting point, Counselor. Clearly you’ve done your fair share of reading yourself. Tell me, did you ever see an image of a wolf? What about an image of a dog?”

“I’ve seen several illustrations of each.”

“Great. That’s great. How would you describe the wolf?”

“The intended purpose of these sessions is to discuss the decisions and actions that led you here. I’m willing to talk about anything you need, but I’m not sure-”

“Humor me. What did the wolf look like?”

Another beat.

“...large, I suppose. It was large, with a long face and tawny fur.”

“I knew you had it in you, Counselor. What about the dog?”

“I remember one that was very small. It had a variegated coat and a doughy face.”

“It doesn’t sound very much like the wolf.”

“It was not. Domestication had altered its phenotype greatly. This was true of many sorts of dogs,

I believe.”

“The first time I saw those illustrations, it was hard to believe they were even the same species.

What about you and me, though? If High Command fed their prisoners and their grunts as well as they feed themselves, I bet we could be mistaken for any pair of humans who got to roam the Blue World.

“The library here has a bunch of ancient records. It’s where I first read about Ed Kohl. And you know what? Without your frames, you’d look just like his mugshot. Think about that for a minute. You’re proud to be astraean. You know that we’re a new species, an improvement on mankind. Shepherd dogs, upraised from the savage stock of wolves. And yet! In the photographs I’ve seen of ancient herding dogs, they’ve got huge ears. Red coats. They’re usually a good bit smaller than wolves, too. But you? Take off your glasses and you’re the spitting image of humanity’s last criminal, the Missouri Madman himself. What do you make of that, Counselor?”

“I would expect more creative thinking from a voracious reader like you. The domestication of wolves also involved selecting for tamer behavioral traits. The psychology of humans was similarly improved upon with the birth of astraeans. We’re hounds of the mind, you might say.”

“Then why am I here?”

“What?”

“If our brains were tamed and smoothed into those of a whole new species on those generation ships, then why have I been lifted from the flow of society? How have I come to commit an evil act?”

“I’m the Counselor here. A successful session would entail you explaining that to me.”

The prisoner was now tilted forward again, practically touching the thin glass barrier. The bruise-blue circles under its eyes crumpled as its self-satisfied grin widened.

“Right. I was an archaeologist, you know. After that last dig, I had a brief casual discussion about my findings with one of the committee members. I didn’t even get to give my real presentation. Both of us were in here inside the hour. No idea why they can’t just VSoM m-”

“That’s not what it’s called.”

His tone was sharper than he intended. The prisoner’s eyes blazed with a wan fire.

“That’s right. ‘Violation of the sanctity of the mind’ would be unthinkable, of course. Mnemonic quarantine, though? That’s fine, right? Your memories are an inviolable temple. Mine... mine are a disease.

“But hey, don’t scowl so much. I digress. Archaeology.

“We called them the Golden Herd. My Earth languages are rusty, but I think it’s a pun. We don’t have an endonym. They used pictograms, so by the time we figured out there was a language, it was too late.

“Because that’s right, they used pictograms. We can’t tell if they ever made the leap to real writing, but it’s clear they were far more advanced than those first humans on the planet gave them credit for.

“I guess you want me to call us astraeans, huh. It doesn’t really matter to me. Anyway, the first generation of astraeans thought of the Herd as something analogous to Earth chimpanzees fishing for termites. Sure, they have sticks, but they’re still dumb animals, right? Once they were all gone, though, the government recruited a few of us to go dig up their campsites.

“Not only did we find the pictograms, but we also found firepits. Jewelry. Statues, little effigies shaped like Herders. We even found a few of them shaped like us.

“And then we discovered the tombs. Before they were sealed up, every single deceased Herder we found had their eyes carefully removed. The bottom two pairs were then covered with discs of electrum. Ironically enough, this planet doesn’t really have native gold. Their metalworking must have gotten quite advanced.

“Finally, they covered the top two eyes and the top of the head with something we took to calling ‘the crown.’ The eyes part looked a little like a death mask, but as you went up the thing, it got all these elaborate decorations. Leaves, feathers, branches, tons of stuff, all sculpted out of gold. Every single one we found was unique. The last few graves we found even had sculptures of astraean spaceships and Herder weapons worked into their crowns.

“And that brings me to the last thing. We uncovered a human, sorry, an astraean skeleton in one of their burial sites. And guess what? I think they were a little stymied by the fact that there were only two eyes, but they had made this astraean soldier a crown. Whatever they thought happened to them after they died, they thought it happened to us too. They had that same reverence at the end of all sapient life.

“That’s what I discovered, and that is why I’m being killed.”

There was silence like ice, more than ice, like the frozen nitrogen that accumulated in the outermost reaches of the Earth system, like the forever black and hollow universe, an infinity of no molecules and no atoms. The silence was massless. It was so, so cold.

“That’s all I’ve been wondering. In such an advanced era, on such an enlightened planet, why kill me? I’m not sure what they’ll do. Maybe this cell will fill up with elemental nitrogen once you leave. Maybe they put barbiturates in my food. Maybe they’ll strap me into an electric chair. That’s what they did to Ed Kohl, you know. No matter how they do it, it must be pretty expensive. It would cost way less to brainwash me and send me on my merry way. It must be tough, too, to keep the entire process hidden from the world. I think I know why, though.”

Absolute zero.

“I think the humans of the Golden World haven’t evolved as far as we’d like to think.”

“There are no human inhabitants of the Golden World.”

“That is what we’re told. We’re the heritors of Astraea, just without error and pure without fault, having slipped the bonds of Earth and dwelling on a Golden World in a Golden Age.

“Ovid, the twice-ancient poet, wrote that in the Golden Age, ‘punishment, and the fear of it, did not exist, and threatening decrees were not yet read upon the bronze tablet. All were in safety without any avenger.’ That doesn’t sound like a world where the death penalty would be meted out for earnest pursuit of the truth.

“I saw firsthand what you were really killing when you scoured the Golden Herd from your perfect world. In those days, I thought a lot about Ed Kohl, the Missouri Madman who shot his wife, his daughter, and his two sons dead while they slept. He was completely convinced he was sending them off to Heaven, a perfect golden world where justice and peace would reign their eternal lives.

“It’s been nearly an hour now. Almost time for you to leave. If you can keep your human nature in check until then, I doubt I have more than a day to live. Looking at your face, it’s probably even less.

“Humor me one more time, Counselor. Picture yourself pulling on a cable. As you claw further and further from the post, it’s only gonna tighten, no? You’ve been pulling so, so hard, your entire life. It’s time for the cable to start pulling back. When it d-”

The cacophony of glass cut it off. Shards in each hand. The Counselor flailed. Each puncture in the golden skin spewed grimy, dusty blue. Wounds steamed with minute clouds. Blood solidified into dark continents. The Golden World lay silent. Its executioner screamed and screamed.