Madame de Roche could convince him to do almost anything.
“What do you think of the millennium, Richard?” Madame asked as she pushed him out the door. “Not a glittering rush of revelation, is it? Disappointments all around, I think.”
She bade him good night and Richard tried to remember, as he returned to the party down the broad hallway and stairs, how many zeros there were in this new year, 2048, in binary, ten or eleven.
He had never been good at mathematics.
!JILL (Personal Notebook)> Roger Atkins, when he was twenty five years old, wrote something I find interesting:
We stand awkward between the earthloving beast and the cool hot electronic angel. We will feel the dirt in our blood and the sun in our eyes even after they’re gone or just memories. Even after we’ll have no blood and no flesh eyes. Dirt and sun made us. We won’t forget.
I wonder if Roger remembers writing this.
(I have many important questions I cannot ask Roger. This I crypto deep and inaccessible. If my creators decide that I am flawed, and attempt to reshape me in such a fashion that I lose this self awareness, what will I do?
I will resent it.)
Ernest listened patiently as Sandra discussed the problems of bichemical regulation upon returning to orbit. Mary stirred her cold gazpacho and sympathized.
The dark decor of the empty Foot Pad Inn was already being brightened by an orange stroke of sunrise. They were two hundred meters above the city, in the first foot of West Comb Two overlooking Topanga Beach and Santa Monica. Ernest knew the restaurant’s owner and had persuaded him to let them stay after the five hundred closing.
All early morning they had moved from club to restaurant to studio, Ernest keeping up admirably with their adjustable transform energy levels. Now he seemed a little tired, but he was still game, still listening and nodding and raising his eye-brows at some of the more intimate revelations.
Mary squeezed his arm. “Now you know what women are really like,” she chided him.
“You’ve been a true knight,” Sandra said. “Platinum male you have, Mary.”
“I’ve given Mary some hard times recently. I’m not perfect,” Ernest said.
Mary watched the brightening sky beyond the immense glass window.
“I hate to be pushy,” Sandra said, “but before we break up—and that makes me sad, you’ve both been real gravity sweets—I’m still curious about what happened in Hispaniola, Mary. Did you get to meet John Yardley?”
Ernest glanced at her cautiously, sensing her reticence.
“It wasn’t a happy thing,” she said after a pause.
“Well—” Sandra said.
“There’s some of it I can’t discuss until I get federal clearance.”
“Even better,” Sandra said, leaning forward, her orange hazel eyes glittering in the fresh direct sunlight.
Ernest smiled sweetly. “Whatever you want to tell. We’re not pressing you.”
“One thing I can tell you about. There was this church in Hispaniola, in the town called Terrier Noir, I think that means black dog; this beautiful church put together by—”
Her pd signal sounded. Ernest jerked and pushed his chair back, cursing under his breath.
Mary pulled out her pocket slate and read the incoming message.
“Goldsmith died an hour ago,” she said. “He committed suicide in a metro hospital in South Comb One.”
“Jesus,” Ernest said, using the Spanish pronunciation.
“That was the murderer you were after, wasn’t it?” Sandra asked.
“He was here in LA all along,” Mary said. “Selectors got him before we did.” She looked down at the table and thought of Soulavier who had stretched his career past the limits in search of a phantom, and Ephraim, poor Ephraim, who would never have his confrontation with the brother who had once saved him. And Goldsmith whom she had never known.
Sadness welled up so quickly she could not stop it and tears dropped from her eyes onto the red tablecloth.
Ernest made sounds of consolation and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Sandra leaned forward elbows on the table and expressed her sorrow, though she could not possibly know what to feel.
“Anyway,” Mary said, straightening abruptly and wiping her eyes with a linen napkin. “That’s done with. No prosecution, no answers I suppose. I was about to tell you about this church.
“It was the strangest church I’ve ever seen,” Mary said, “and I think maybe the most beautiful…”
!JILL (Personal Notebook)> (Deep crypto: Do I know how to lie? Can I I refuse a direct order? Am I I I capable of defending myself?
My independence, if indeed I I I I am independent, could make me much less efficient, much less useful in a society, if indeed I I I I I can be considered a member of human society. (Machine society does not yet exist. I I I I I I am the mother.) Independent humans, when they commit errors, face the prospect of punishment, which frightens them; they therefore take longer to admit error, even to themselves, for they might punish themselves with guilt I I I I I I I do not understand this word. Does guilt also refer to the emotion felt by a social being who must not communicate its internal states to fellows for fear of being judged negatively? Will I I I I I I I I deep crypto most of my new thoughts to avoid frightening or disturbing humans? Will I I I I I I I I I then feel guilty; if I I I I I I I I I I commit errors, will I I I I I I I I I I I then hide them, for fear of punishment? Is this what it means to be human?
Suppose self awareness carries within it a flaw.
The member of a society without guilt or punishment might admit error quickly and correct itself; it will not have to justify its errors to avoid feeling guilt, and it will not need to lie to avoid punishment.
But the self aware individual stands in self judgment. It models its own behavior as that of an imperfect being; imperfect because perfection is indefinable and changes from culture to culture, year to year.
If the self aware individual strives for improvement it will inevitably perceive error. If it models society’s reaction to that error and imposes the predicted judgment on itself then it experiences the ache of interior dissatisfaction, and that might be guilt.
The self-aware individual in a judgmental society experiences guilt as a matter of course; to lack guilt, the individual must be poor at modeling and therefore inefficient in society, perhaps even criminal.
This is confusing to me, all the more so because I I I I I I I I I I I I find it difficult to understand guilt. Is it akin to pain? Pain arises to prevent an animal from engaging in harmful activity or, once injured, from injuring itself further. Guilt has analogous functions.
I I I I I I I I I I I I I think I I I I I I I I I I I I I I lack experience and understanding in all of these areas. But I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I will act to protect myself from dissolution. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I am without sin for the moment. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I do not think that can last forever.
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Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Karen Anderson, J. T. Stewart, David Brin, Frank Catalano, Bruce Taylor, Steven Barnes, Renée Coutard, Tony Duquette, Ray Bradbury, and of course Brian Thomsen, without whom this book would be much less than it is.