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"The best way to get close to you would come at this odd Grey Man event, with
the clothes gambit. It was only logical. "
Hari blinked. "And you say / am calculating. "
"The woman won't die. You would have, though, wrapped up in microagents when
they ignited. "
"Thank goodness for that. I would hate "
"My love, 'goodness' is not operating here. I wanted her alive so she could be
questioned. "
"Oh, " Hari said, feeling suddenly quite naive.
4.
Joan of Arc found in herself both bravery and fear.
She peered inside her Self, as Voltaire had. She turned to confront him and
plunged down through her own inward layers. She had simply intended to turn.
Below that command, she saw that if she simply took a smaller step to make the
turn, she would fall outward. Instead, unconscious portions of her mind knew
to start the turn by making herself fall a bit toward the inside of the curve.
Then these tiny subselves used "centrifugal force" (the term jumped into full
definition and she understood it in a flash) to right herself for the next
step... which required a further deft calculation.
Incredible! Her huge society of bone and muscle, joint and nerve, was a
labyrinth of small selves, speaking to each other.
Such abundance! Clear evidence of a higher design.
"Now I see it! she cried.
"The decomposition of us all?" Voltaire said forlornly.
"Be not sad! These myriad Selves are a joyous truth. "
"I find it sobering. Our minds did not evolve to do philosophy or science,
alas. Rather, to find and eat, fight and flee, love and lose. "
"I have learned much from you, but not your melancholy. "
"Montaigne termed happiness 'a singular incentive to mediocrity, ' and I can
now see his reasoning. "
"But regard! The fogs around us betray the same intricate patterns. We can
fathom them. And further my soul! It proves to be a pattern of thoughts and
desires, intentions and woes, memories and bad jokes. "
"You take these inner workings as a spiritual metaphor?"
"Of course. Like me, my soul is an emergent process, embedded in the
universe whether a cosmos of atom or of number, does not matter, my good sir.
"
"So when you die, your soul goes back into the abstract closet we plucked it
forth from?"
"Not we. The Creator!"
"Dr. Johnson proved a stone was real by kicking it. We know that our minds are
real because we experience them. So these other things around us the strange
fog, the Dittos are entries in a smooth spectrum, leading from rocks to
Self. "
"A deity is not on that spectrum. "
"Ah, I see to you He is the Great Preserver in the Sky, where we are all
'backed up, ' as the computer types say?"
"The Creator holds the true essence of ourselves. " She grinned maliciously.
"Perhaps we are the backups, made new every jump of clock time. "
"Nasty thought. " He smiled despite himself. "You are becoming a logician,
m'love. "
"I have been stealing parts of you. "
"Copying me into yourself? Why do I not feel outraged?"
"Because the desire to possess the other is...
love. "
Voltaire enlarged himself, legs shooting down into the SysCity, smashing
buildings. The fog roiled angrily. "This I can fathom. Artificial realms such
as mathematics and theology are carefully built to be free of interesting
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inconsistency.
But love is beautiful in its lack of logical restraint. "
"Then you accept my view?" Joan kissed him voluptuously.
He sighed", resigning. "An idea seems self-evident, once you've forgotten
learning it. "
All this had taken mere moments, Joan saw. They had quick-stepped their
event-waves so that their clock time advanced faster than the fogs. But this
expense had exhausted their running sites around Trantor. She felt it as a
sudden, light-headed hunger.
"Eat!" Voltaire crammed a handful of grapes in her mouth a metaphor, she saw,
for computational reserves.
In your present lot of life, it would be better not to be born at all. Few are
that lucky. "Ah, our fog is a pessimist, "
Voltaire drawled sarcastically.
Abruptly the vapors condensed. Lightning crack-led and snorted around them in
eerie silence. Joan felt a lance of pain shoot through her legs and arms,
running like a livid snake of agony. She would not give them the tribute of a
scream.
Voltaire, however, writhed in torment. He jerked and howled without shame.
"Oh, Dr. Pangloss!" he gasped. "If this is the best of all possible worlds,
what must the others be like?" "The brave slay their opponents!" Joan called
to the thickening mists. "Cowards torture them. " "Admirable, my dear, quite.
But war cannot be fought on homeopathic principles. "
A human pointed out to another that the rich, even when dead, were ornately
boxed, then opulently entombed, residing in carved stone mausoleums. The other
human remarked in awe that this was surely and truly living.
"How vile, to jest of the dead, " Joan said.
"Ummm. " Voltaire stroked his chin, hands trem-
beling from the memory of pain. "They jibe at us with jest. "
" Torture, surely. "
" I Survived the Bastille; I can endure their odd humor"
"Could they be trying to say something indirectly?"
[IMPRECISION IS LESS]
[WHEN IMPLICATION USED]
"Humor implies some moral order, " Joan said. [IN THIS STATE ALL ORDER OF
BEINGS] [CAN SEIZE CONTROL OF
THEIR PLEASURE
SYSTEMS] [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]