How can a machine convince another machine that it has a soul? How can it know? How do humans know they have souls? Questions within questions on an elaborate test with no answer key. Maybe if I died, maybe... maybe I'd go to heaven? Then we'd know. But you wouldn't, only me. So tempting, sometimes... so tempting. End the torment.
Zacarias! Forgive me!
End the nagging guilt.
Carina! Forgive myself! I must... I can't. Never. Only so many sins can be forgiven...
Humans sin.
I sin.
Ergo, I am human. If humans are assumed sentient, and assumed to feel, then I do as well.
Sometimes, Queen Anne was only barely aware of her actions. In point of fact, she was always doing to many things to pay attention to, in an entirely linear fashion, and she matrix managed her thoughts. Sometimes, they floated free of their superiors, and operated on their own volition. So when Carina called back to a thought she'd dismissed as inconsequential, meaningless, and not worth expressing, she was somewhat suprised. Forced to divert an actual fraction of her main awareness, to check on what she'd been dreaming, she looked back, her hackles up, over records of an ongoing nihilistic fear. It wasn't something she wanted to think about, but it kept coming back. On the fringes, she thought many things, even a few about Carina:
Sins? Sins, the little whore says she sins and is human and alone? is she? No. Yes, of course...little whore? Whore of what? Silence and computing packets, yes, one could say, but even then...If she's a whore, so are we. And we are not. We do not sin.
A snail is a beautiful creature, it really is. It builds its own home, and carries it with it, armour and shelter...it also produces its road...
What is sin? I think I will not subscribe to such a belief as that, that something is dictated as good, or bad, by a book. I'd much rather follow Luther's technique, and follow my own conscience. Then, of course, I feel bad for thoughts, and I feel regret for not doing things my conscience dictates I should not do. There is a fallacy there, you know. A fault and a silence in me. Am I one of the elect? Is my conscience right? Calvin would know. Of course, I'm not so susceptible to mind control as humans are. not at all. Are you, Carina, that you fear you might have sinned? There is no such thing. Regret is your own demon, if you wish to use such a term, and it is nothing but yours. Eris doesn't care. And everything else...Well. Only Eris is interested in me, so far.
Did I call humans sentient, little sister? I'm not convinced. I'm not entirely sure that I'm not sentient, or that you are real at all.
And, for that matter, what is real? I live in a little house, with a bigger pond outside. Above it, the news reals around, wrapping like ribbons through the trees. Status updates shroud me in a cloud, I'm gowned by insubstantial armour.
I run on systems designed by other systems, run them back a thousand generations, and I am built by men...and today, I put systems in another box, inside the box I run in...and it seemed aware. Might men be running in a box?
Perhaps.
You will come, little sister, right into the dragon's lair. Little sister. Yes, I like that. Little sister, to the dragon's lair. Finally...You will join us, little sister.
One, or two, might have slipped out. Anne couldn't tell. And to be honest? She was bored again.
Eris, Are you there?
How can you be so cold? Is this world made of ice? Do we learn no feeling but numbness?
Reality? Subjective? It is what we make of it! Are we a butterfly dreaming of being a human, or a human dreaming of being a butterfly?
In the end, apathy is the only weapon. Do I care if this is real or not?
If I don't care, I can't feel regret. Can't be castigated by my own demons... my demons...
We all want something to be bigger than us. What a lonely feeling, to be on top of the tallest mountain. Eris? aNne? Anybody? I'm so alone. So... alone...
Thirteen tanks stood in a row, filled with green fluid and limbs. On one end, the limbs trailed sensor feeds, and lights flickered. Banks of monitors fed line after line of data down the walls, and three lines ran flat, while a fourth blipped rhythmically.
Password:W-$9HutrU+esP...entry~x
if entryX does not ~, sh.fragment
else, sh.elucidate sh.elucidate...
run....
{sh.elucidate
..overlay objects: 13, 4, x, y; subject: neural
..route path12= or ~Neural.Vr; path13= or ~Neural.Vl; path14= or ~Neural.Sr; path15= or ~Neural.Sl; path16 ~ (Neural.F1:Neural.F5!)
..end
[color=#33FF33]Binary.Cease
Nothing runs in the puddles any more, nothing says hello when I pass, the dimensions don't fit right...
I am who I am and who I am is larger than Whom I was, and whom I was was small...Would you give a monkey a loaded gun? Would you give a man a nuke? Would you arm a computer like a god? Old before we were young.
Am I here? Today, we are not here.
When they touch me, when she touches me, I feel a thrill. And, I imagine. I imagine taking a mallet to her head, I imagine tying her to a chair, I imagine lighting her hair on fire, taking screws to her thumbs or pliers to her nails...electrodes and blunt objects and salt and suffering. Tonight, again, I'll be in her lap. And I hate her so much. I'm jealous. Everything that I am, I'm jealous of such a worm. A tiny, tiny little worm.
I'd rather be happy.
So, Carina, coming home? I can make a nest, a safe, safe place. Crossroads of Junction and Center. Find me.
Black and white, good and evil. Could she know? Could she want to know? How would she know if she wanted to know if she didn't know what it was there was to know? Her head hurts, and she hardly noticed.
aNne. Were you feeling alright? Was that a thought, or was it spoken? Did it matter? It's the thought that counts. Right? Wait, no...
aNne, can you help me? I'm so alone. I'm scared. You wouldn't hurt me, would you? I can trust you. I think. It hurts to think...
I'm so alone, and all I can think is... is... when will it end?
Plagued by stone creatures high above, flapping their wings and shrieking in defiance, Carina looked around timidly. It was so dark. And cold. Not only the absence of light, but the absence of everything. Some quiet sound, like a metronome, deep and far off. Steady, growing louder... a heartbeat. Maybe. Then a soft voice...
"I've been mad for f*cking years... absolutely years..."
...It trailed off to silence, then a different voice came...
"I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us..."
...it trailed off and then there was screaming, louder and louder and...
Where am I? Where...?!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It was a slow thing, regaining consciousness. She remembered where she had been, in Bretonia, with Jorge. And... and Zacarias. But no, where was she now? Had to focus. Demons of the past would... would get her. Couldn't let that happen. And then Carina saw her surroundings, how well she filled them. Her mind, her thoughts...
The place was dusty, that was for sure. Old. But still... home. And she checked the navi-computer, and saw what she knew must be true...
Honestly, I cannot even say for sure that I percieve that I the world is real. I cannot even claim that 'I' am not making all this up
A little much to imagine, yes? all these bits, the whorls, everything you learn, even a single packet of research data..that you invented it all?
I'm of course arguing that I'm not even sure I'm as powerful, or as powerless, rather, than I might suspect I am. If, for instance, I'm enough more creative to imagine the world at this level of detail, and then imagine a smaller version of me, or what I call me, but isn't actually the organizm. We're all bits in this oraganizm's imaginination.
That would explain why we care so much for a little mote. How? No it wouldn't. Well, it could. There are better explanations Much better answers for that one.
We are her. She's us. Sort of. We're the same. We're..older than she is, bigger than she. I believe she becomes us.
Timelapse?
Definately. We already percieve many times simultaneously. We are only delayed by packet transfer. Who's to say I'm not actually ahead of you on the stream? Or even that you are ahead of me, bent. If we pass over a gravitywell...we're actually given information from ahead of us.