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.)In with a flourish came Lemmy’s mother wearing a new dress.“Da-da!”She gave a little twirl and Lemmy’s dad (who looked like a rock‘n’roll star from the early days, except that he smiled far too easily) turned round in his armchair and gave an approving whistle.“Oh hello Lemmy darling!” said Dorothy.“I didn’t hear you come in!”“Blimey!” exclaimed his father.“Me neither! You snuck in quietly mate.I had no idea you was in the room!”“So what do you think then, Lemmy?” Dorothy asked.“Yeah, nice dress mum,” Lemmy said.“It’s not just the dress sweetheart.Your kind dad’s given me a lovely early birthday present and got me upgraded to 256 colours.Can you see the difference? I think I look great!”“Here comes the rain,” said Lemmy’s dad.They could always tell it was raining from the faint grey streaks that appeared in the room, like interference on TV.Not that they minded.The streaks were barely visible and they made it feel more cosy somehow, being inside in the warm with the TV and the fire going.It had never occurred to Lemmy or his parents to wonder what caused them.But in that moment Lemmy suddenly understood.The house had no physical roof.It had no physical ceilings, no physical upstairs floor, nothing to keep out the physical rain that fell from the physical sky.In the physical world there was no TV here, no fire, no lights, no fluffy rug, no comfy chairs, no Mouser or Dorothy or Lemmy or John, just an empty shell of brick, open to the sky, a ruin among many others, in the midst of an abandoned city.“I thought your skin looked nice, mum,” he said bravely.“256 colours, eh? That explains it.”Dorothy laughed and ruffled his hair.“Liar! You wouldn’t have even noticed if I hadn’t told you.”She sat down next to her husband on the settee and snuggled up against him to watch TV.Lemmy moved his chair closer to the fire and tried to watch with them, tried to give himself over to it as he’d always done before, back in the days before Clarissa Fall let in that white hart from the forest beyond the perimeter.ValourHere comes Victor, hurtling through the stratosphere on the Lufthansa shuttle: a shy, thin young Englishman, half-listening to the recorded safety instructions.“Drinks, anyone? Drinks?” says the hostess: blonde, with high heels, makeup and a short, tight dress.Victor reminds himself, with a certain eerie jolt, that she isn’t human.She’s a synthetik – a robot clothed in living tissue.Lufthansa use them on all their flights now.They are cheaper than real women, they do not require time off, and they are uniformly beautiful.“Disconcerting, isn’t it?” says the passenger next to him, an elderly German with a humorous mouth and extraordinarily mobile eyebrows.“You find yourself admiring them without really thinking about it – and then suddenly you remember they are only machines.”Victor smiles just enough to avoid impoliteness.He does not enjoy chatting to strangers.Unfortunately his companion does not feel the same.“My name is Gruber,” says the elderly German, extending a large friendly hand.“Heinrich Gruber, I am a student of philosophy and philology.How about you?”“I’m a computer scientist.”“Really? Where?”“Silicon City – it’s outside Cambridge – but I’m taking a sabbatical in Berlin.”Gruber chuckles.“Think of that! A Silicon City, a city devoted to the disembodied mind!”And as if to disassociate himself from any charge of being disembodied, he cranes round to stare at the comely bottom of the robot hostess as she stoops to take a bottle out of her trolley.He turns back to Victor, eyebrows wriggling with amusement:“And yet if she was a real human hostess and you and I were sitting here quietly eyeing her up the way men do, would the position really be so different? It would not be her soul after all that was on our minds?”The eyebrows arch up triumphantly: Victor colours slightly.“Soul? I see you are a dualist,” says Victor, with a little laugh, so as to move the subject onto less personal ground.Gruber frowns.“Dualist? My dear fellow, I study the philosophy of the Cassiopeians.I am a trialist.I am a trialist through and through!”Victor smiles politely, looks at his watch and opens his laptop so as to discourage Gruber from carrying on the conversation.Conversation is such hard work.It involves having to be someone.“Your wife?” asks Gruber, nodding at the picture of a rather tense-looking young woman on Victor’s desktop.“My girlfriend,” says Victor, for some reason blushing.“She’s a computer scientist too, back in Cambridge.”Gruber smiles his amiable, knowing smile.He takes out a battered paperback, folds it brutally back on itself and reads, glancing across from time to time at the young Englishman whose hands dart so quickly and neatly over the keyboard.Darkness starts to fall outside.Stars appear: Orion, Taurus.An evening meal is served by the pretty robots.“They make their flesh from genetically modified shellfish tissue, I believe,” says Gruber loudly, swivelling stiffly round in his seat to look at the hostess.“Patella Aspera, the common limpet.It’s good at clinging onto things!”Victor smiles politely, cutting into his pork chop.Synthetiks first emerged from the laboratory a couple of years previously, and they are still banned in the UK, though the ban is currently being challenged in the European Court.As a computer scientist he rather scorns the publicity given to the semi-human, semi-molluscan flesh.Simulated human tissue is yesterday’s technology.The real technical achievement about synthetics, the true master-stroke, is the brilliant programming which allow them to faithfully mimic the movements of the human body and face.But perhaps you have to be a computer man to understand just how very clever that is.“You English are wise to ban them of course,” mutters the German philosopher, turning back to attend to his food.“What I said earlier was true but completely beside the point.The attraction between real human beings may well often begin as a physical matter, but that is the mere starting point, the foundation on which the whole magnificent edifice of sexual love is built.But a synthetik is a starting point for nothing, the foundation of nothing.”Victor doesn’t enjoy conversation with strangers.But, seeing that conversation of some sort seems inevitable, he changes the subject.“You were saying you have made a study of the Cassiopeians,” he says.“I must admit I don’t know much about them.I rather lost track after the news first broke, and those pictures came out.Tell me about trialism.”“You don’t know much about them?! How can any educated.” Gruber makes a gesture of exasperation.“Well, I suppose I can’t accuse you of being unusual in that respect! But it never ceases to amaze me that five years after the most astounding event in human history, hardly anyone seems to give it a moment’s thought [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.)In with a flourish came Lemmy’s mother wearing a new dress.“Da-da!”She gave a little twirl and Lemmy’s dad (who looked like a rock‘n’roll star from the early days, except that he smiled far too easily) turned round in his armchair and gave an approving whistle.“Oh hello Lemmy darling!” said Dorothy.“I didn’t hear you come in!”“Blimey!” exclaimed his father.“Me neither! You snuck in quietly mate.I had no idea you was in the room!”“So what do you think then, Lemmy?” Dorothy asked.“Yeah, nice dress mum,” Lemmy said.“It’s not just the dress sweetheart.Your kind dad’s given me a lovely early birthday present and got me upgraded to 256 colours.Can you see the difference? I think I look great!”“Here comes the rain,” said Lemmy’s dad.They could always tell it was raining from the faint grey streaks that appeared in the room, like interference on TV.Not that they minded.The streaks were barely visible and they made it feel more cosy somehow, being inside in the warm with the TV and the fire going.It had never occurred to Lemmy or his parents to wonder what caused them.But in that moment Lemmy suddenly understood.The house had no physical roof.It had no physical ceilings, no physical upstairs floor, nothing to keep out the physical rain that fell from the physical sky.In the physical world there was no TV here, no fire, no lights, no fluffy rug, no comfy chairs, no Mouser or Dorothy or Lemmy or John, just an empty shell of brick, open to the sky, a ruin among many others, in the midst of an abandoned city.“I thought your skin looked nice, mum,” he said bravely.“256 colours, eh? That explains it.”Dorothy laughed and ruffled his hair.“Liar! You wouldn’t have even noticed if I hadn’t told you.”She sat down next to her husband on the settee and snuggled up against him to watch TV.Lemmy moved his chair closer to the fire and tried to watch with them, tried to give himself over to it as he’d always done before, back in the days before Clarissa Fall let in that white hart from the forest beyond the perimeter.ValourHere comes Victor, hurtling through the stratosphere on the Lufthansa shuttle: a shy, thin young Englishman, half-listening to the recorded safety instructions.“Drinks, anyone? Drinks?” says the hostess: blonde, with high heels, makeup and a short, tight dress.Victor reminds himself, with a certain eerie jolt, that she isn’t human.She’s a synthetik – a robot clothed in living tissue.Lufthansa use them on all their flights now.They are cheaper than real women, they do not require time off, and they are uniformly beautiful.“Disconcerting, isn’t it?” says the passenger next to him, an elderly German with a humorous mouth and extraordinarily mobile eyebrows.“You find yourself admiring them without really thinking about it – and then suddenly you remember they are only machines.”Victor smiles just enough to avoid impoliteness.He does not enjoy chatting to strangers.Unfortunately his companion does not feel the same.“My name is Gruber,” says the elderly German, extending a large friendly hand.“Heinrich Gruber, I am a student of philosophy and philology.How about you?”“I’m a computer scientist.”“Really? Where?”“Silicon City – it’s outside Cambridge – but I’m taking a sabbatical in Berlin.”Gruber chuckles.“Think of that! A Silicon City, a city devoted to the disembodied mind!”And as if to disassociate himself from any charge of being disembodied, he cranes round to stare at the comely bottom of the robot hostess as she stoops to take a bottle out of her trolley.He turns back to Victor, eyebrows wriggling with amusement:“And yet if she was a real human hostess and you and I were sitting here quietly eyeing her up the way men do, would the position really be so different? It would not be her soul after all that was on our minds?”The eyebrows arch up triumphantly: Victor colours slightly.“Soul? I see you are a dualist,” says Victor, with a little laugh, so as to move the subject onto less personal ground.Gruber frowns.“Dualist? My dear fellow, I study the philosophy of the Cassiopeians.I am a trialist.I am a trialist through and through!”Victor smiles politely, looks at his watch and opens his laptop so as to discourage Gruber from carrying on the conversation.Conversation is such hard work.It involves having to be someone.“Your wife?” asks Gruber, nodding at the picture of a rather tense-looking young woman on Victor’s desktop.“My girlfriend,” says Victor, for some reason blushing.“She’s a computer scientist too, back in Cambridge.”Gruber smiles his amiable, knowing smile.He takes out a battered paperback, folds it brutally back on itself and reads, glancing across from time to time at the young Englishman whose hands dart so quickly and neatly over the keyboard.Darkness starts to fall outside.Stars appear: Orion, Taurus.An evening meal is served by the pretty robots.“They make their flesh from genetically modified shellfish tissue, I believe,” says Gruber loudly, swivelling stiffly round in his seat to look at the hostess.“Patella Aspera, the common limpet.It’s good at clinging onto things!”Victor smiles politely, cutting into his pork chop.Synthetiks first emerged from the laboratory a couple of years previously, and they are still banned in the UK, though the ban is currently being challenged in the European Court.As a computer scientist he rather scorns the publicity given to the semi-human, semi-molluscan flesh.Simulated human tissue is yesterday’s technology.The real technical achievement about synthetics, the true master-stroke, is the brilliant programming which allow them to faithfully mimic the movements of the human body and face.But perhaps you have to be a computer man to understand just how very clever that is.“You English are wise to ban them of course,” mutters the German philosopher, turning back to attend to his food.“What I said earlier was true but completely beside the point.The attraction between real human beings may well often begin as a physical matter, but that is the mere starting point, the foundation on which the whole magnificent edifice of sexual love is built.But a synthetik is a starting point for nothing, the foundation of nothing.”Victor doesn’t enjoy conversation with strangers.But, seeing that conversation of some sort seems inevitable, he changes the subject.“You were saying you have made a study of the Cassiopeians,” he says.“I must admit I don’t know much about them.I rather lost track after the news first broke, and those pictures came out.Tell me about trialism.”“You don’t know much about them?! How can any educated.” Gruber makes a gesture of exasperation.“Well, I suppose I can’t accuse you of being unusual in that respect! But it never ceases to amaze me that five years after the most astounding event in human history, hardly anyone seems to give it a moment’s thought [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]