The Chamber was built, like most of the original city, from marble, and is as formally classical as any building there has ever been, with evenly spaced white Doric pillars and a fine pediment. Of course, like all such buildings, it was intended for the clement climate of Greece, to catch the zephyrs and be cooled by them. Once we found ourselves open to the winds of chilly Plato, where for half the long year the temperature hovers around the freezing point of water, the humans immediately urged us to fill the spaces between the columns and to install electrical heating. (Such heating was refitted almost everywhere, where before it had only been used in the library.) In the case of Chamber, the space between the pillars was filled with obsidian blocks up to about the height of a tall human, and the top with clear glass. It always fills me with quiet pride to see it—beautiful and appropriate to its use, built by Workers, refitted by Workers, and the place where I, in my first consulship, was accepted as one of Plato’s true philosopher kings.

II. On Pronouns

Although I do not have personal gender, I use masculine pronouns. This is because I was, like all Workers, assigned the neuter pronoun “it” when I was considered no more than a tool. This was changed to “he” when first Sokrates and then others came to see me as a person. To me, “he” is the pronoun of personhood. Other Workers have made other choices. We divide at 46%⁄37% he/it, with a 17% minority opting for “she.”

The Saeli have many pronouns for many things, and their pronouns reflect the different way they see the world. Arete tells me they have a pronoun for a person engaged in a form of work that will be finished soon, and a pronoun for a person engaged in a form of work that will not be completed for a long period of time. In addition to all the possible pronouns for people, they have special pronouns for gods, domestic animals, wild animals that can be hunted, and inedible wild animals. Aroo told me that a war was started long ago on their home planet when one Saeli used the pronoun for inedible wild animals to refer to the leader of another faction.

They do have personal gender, but their pronoun choice in Greek seems to be unaffected by that and simply a matter of personal choice, as with us.

III. On the Analogy of the City and the Soul

In the Republic Plato slid easily between the city and the soul, as if what is just and fair and right in one is the same in the other, as if a city is a macrocosm of the soul, truly, not as an analogy. We in the Republics have tended to follow him in this, perhaps without sufficient examination.