“I wanted to talk to Thisbe again, or to that Servicer named Mycroft who apparently comes here a lot?” Carlyle’s voice had that slight shrill edge of someone who fears he might be less than plausible. “Yours is a very important bash’, and this is a very special situation. When you all have the same sensayer and something happens to them you all need to mourn at once, but you’ve just lost the one person who could help you do it. I need to help you get comfortable with me as quickly as I can, and sometimes that’ll mean repeat sessions.”
<yeah, it’s a problem all having the same sensayer. are you sitting yet?>
Carlyle had not sat, and paled now catching himself staring at Eureka, at her mouth, the pale edge of the tastepad that filled it like a gag just visible between slack, silenced lips. “Sorry.” He settled on the sofa. “A bash’ all sharing a sensayer is tough in this one situation, but it’s still absolutely what I recommend. We can do so much more when we have the whole bash’ in context. You’re really wise to ask for it, it speaks well of how carefully you’re being custodians of yourselves, as well as of the system.”
Eureka twitched, but there was no way to guess whether it was a response to Carlyle or the lunch hour of some distant capital. <it’s just easier on ockham, not vetting multiple people through security stuff. but i don’t know why you’re the new pick. we asked for a humanist, and i specifically asked for a sensayer who’d done cartesian set-sets before.>
“There were a lot of factors in picking someone for your bash’, you all have special needs. I know I have a lot to learn, but I’m excited to get started.”
<i also said no cousins. that shouldn’t’ve been hard. no brillists and no cousins.>
Carlyle fiddled with his flowing gray-green Cousin’s wrap, uncomfortable watching a face that could not watch back. “Just because set-set training is illegal in my Hive doesn’t mean I’m personally uncomfortable working with you.”
<but are you against set-set training in general? personally, i mean. i have a right to know. it’s not a religious question, it’s a political question, you don’t get to plead sensayers’ neutrality.>
“Fair question,” Carlyle answered cheerfully, “but I don’t have a firm opinion.”
<don’t dodge. lesley & ockham have a right to know too. first kid they have’ll be sent off for training same as i was. they have a right to know if their sensayer is thinking ‘child abuse’ every time it comes up, and i have a right to ask for a sensayer who doesn’t think i’m a horrible human experiment.>
(At this point I received a message from Eureka’s brother Cato Weeksbooth, asking me to get the sensayer out of the living room.)
Carlyle smiled the slow, patient smile of one struggling to swallow something difficult with grace. “Let me clarify. I have an opinion, but my opinion isn’t firm. I’m fully aware that I don’t really know anything about what it’s like being a set-set. I have a gut reaction, that to me it sounds horrific growing up all wired to a computer, never playing with other kids, or seeing the real sun. But I also know there’s a lot of propaganda surrounding set-sets, and I don’t even know if those clichés are true. I want to have my mind made up by getting to know you. I’ve met other kinds of set-sets briefly, a flash set-set and an abacus set-set, and they both said they were very happy, and I respect their opinions more than mine, since I know I don’t know anything.”
<that’s acceptably unbigoted. either that or you’re being cagy ’cause you don’t want to be fired.>
The Cousin’s face was hard to read at that moment, sad perhaps. “I could get another assignment, but I was proud to be trusted with one this important, so I would appreciate it if you would give me a chance.”
<do you really think you can work with me fairly?>
“I think I can if you help me. You can clear a lot of the propaganda.”
<like what?>
“Did you really grow up in a computer, isolated from your ba’siblings? Or is that propaganda?”
<i wasn’t in isolation, i always knew cato & cardie & ockham & thisbe & the twins, we texted all the time when we were growing up, it’s not like we couldn’t be real ba’sibs just cause my meat was in seoul.>
A shade of melancholy protest darkened Carlyle’s face. I can guess the sorts of deprivations that trickled through his mind: no horseplay by the beach in this text-only childhood, no irresponsible late nights making fortresses of bunk beds, no hugs changing month by month as ba’sibs grow at different paces. Perhaps he thought of his Cousin-run foster bash’, swarming with colors, games, too effervescent for even the pain of lost parents to linger. Hers must have seemed a nightmare. As for Eureka’s thoughts during the long pause, I can no more guess than I can imagine the set-sets’ all-sensory dreams, or take over their all-important task. “May I ask another—”
<less politeness, more asking.>
Carlyle smiled. “I presume it’s also propaganda that you never saw the sun?”
<true, actually. well, training is totally different for different kinds of set-sets, but for a cartesian it’s true. i first saw it when i was 17. it was smaller than i thought, and glarier. but now i can go watch a sunset anytime, i just don’t want to, it’s boring, so slow, monosensory. and before you fuss, i may have grown up never seeing a sunset, but you’ve never seen a six-dimensional homoskedastic crest up from the data sea, and you never will because you’re wasting those nerves on telling you your knee itches.>
Carlyle ran his fingertip across his knee. “Can you tell me what it’s like? You were watching my car, you said. Are you watching another one now?”
<now? right now i’m reviewing every car that flew in the last 10 hours, played back at 20x speed, and i can keep them all straight, speed, destination, age of vehicle, i can even tell which ones need the climate control retuned.>
“I’ve heard it looks like schooling fish?” Carlyle asked.
<that’s your abacus set-set talking, totally different training, sight-focused instead of all-sense, optimized to do mass calculations fast, not over extended time. i can keep it up for hours and hours, five days straight if I take anti-sleeps, and I use everything. right now i’m tracking nine variables with sight, ten with hearing, five really complicated ones with taste and smell, nine with tactile, six with temperature, and eighteen with nerves your body would use for pain, but mine are totally reregistered, not unpleasant at all, so none of that crap about torture, it isn’t torture, it’s a sense, I just cultivated it differently, same as when kids learn music early, or languages, it’s all different ways of cultivating brain growth.>
Carlyle winced at ‘cultivating,’ probably remembering the infamous Ongaro anti-set-set poster, clippers snipping the last rebellious shoot from a tightly trimmed rosebush, superimposed over a brain. “So what does it look like to you? Not fish?”
<not fish. it doesn’t *look* like anything, trying to say what looks like with just sight is like explaining how pumpernickel tastes to someone who can only taste sour. you don’t have the right senses. see, here you are, salty little yellow ball of light, but if i zoom select, there, now you’re a salty polygon, with gradients, ooh, you’re pricky on one end, no, two ends, but you have five ends so that’s not very pricky.>
(At this point I received a second, more frantic and incoherent message from Cato Weeksbooth, simultaneously commanding and begging me to get the scary sensayer out of the living room. I started up the stairs.)