David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

Which was one of the reasons she was doing all this, as well. Throw a rock at a woman and she could quickly digest the information incoming on sense channels, process it into intuitive vectors, speeds, and angles—then race forward, project, make approximate solutions-all to see where she should dodge.

Silicon-based machines could do that, but quite differently. They much preferred—meaning, humans were far better at programming them to—taking it as a problem in introductory physics, setting out the initial conditions all neat and clean, then integrating the equations of motion forward to see the exact result. Fine. Only by then you’re dead.

THAT IS A DRAWBACK.

“Another spurt of humor! You’re doing that more often now.”

YOU DID NOT LAUGH.

“That was irony you used, not yuk-yuk.”

OH. I ONLY DIMLY SEE THE DIFFERENCE.

She suspected JonVon used dimly see as a speaking convention. He did not have real power of language metaphor yet. “Well, all humor is based on two elements—ridicule and incongruity. Irony has…” She frowned.

YES?

“There are some things…”

MAN WAS NOT MEANT TO KNOW?

“Nope, wrong cliché. There are some subjects beyond explanation.”

A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN AN ENIGMA?

“Boy, you’re fast-accessing today. Can you do that and monitor this experiment at the same time?”

MOST ASSUREDLY.

Virginia could not remember inserting that smug lilt into this particular simulation. Was it mimicking Saul? JonVon had been in link contact with her lover a lot, lately. And she should never forget that JonVon, as a bio-organic construct, was midway between humans and silicon computers in his information processing. That led to unexpected capabilities.

“Can you stop the tickling?”

JonVon’s input broke into two channels, which she felt as a sluggish red stream of rusty words, with blue darting commentary slipping in and around them.

WHILE WE “SPOKE” —NOT THE RIGHT WORD, I

I TESTED THE EFFECT KNOW, BUT THERE IS NO

AND FOUND IT IS DUE OTHER

TO CONCENTRATIONS OF

MAGNETIC DIPOLES AVERAGE NUMBER 10°

FLIPPING TOGETHER

WHERE YOU HAVE BUILT

UP EMOTION-LADEN PROBABLY FROM ADOLESCENCE

TRIGGER COMPLEXES.

I AM AFRAID I CANNOT

ELIMINATE THEM BECAUSE THEIR PRIMARY EXTERNAL

THEY ARE CLOSELY TRIGGER SEEMS TO BE SEXUAL

TIED INTO YOUR LEARNED

MOTOR RESPONSES THE IMAGE YOU ARE CALLING

UP AT THIS MOMENT IS THE

CONTRACTION OF UPPER

THIGH MUSCLES AS YOU

SPREAD YOUR LEGS FOR—

“Stop! I don’t want my sex life played back by you.”

YOU ASKED.

“I did?”

SORRY.

Her head was clamped in close-packed foam, which proved to be good foresight—she would’ve flinched with embarrassment, otherwise.

“How much do you…” Well, of course. The times with Saul.

YOU ARE DISPLAYING RHYTHMS OF EMBARRASSMENT. SORRY.

“Oh, it’s not your fault.”

I CAN ABORT THE EXPERIMENT.

“No! I need this for the mechs.”

I AM RECEIVING VALUABLE SUBROUTINES NOW.

She supposed this last sentence was supposed to be reassuring. The program had an uncanny way of responding to her apprehensions. Still… “Just out of curiosity, what has my motor skill at handling tools—that is what we’re trawling for in my middle lobes, isn’t it? —what has that got to do with spreading my thighs?”

YOU HAVE ASSOCIATED THESE ACTIONS IN YOUR SELFPROGRAMMING.

“Self-programming?”

LIFE-LEARNED.

“Oh. Experience, you mean.”

THE BEST TEACHER, AN OLD SAYING GOES.

“Maybe. Some things I’d rather get safely out of a book.”

YES.

He’s being diplomatic. After all, he doesn’t have the option of directexperience . “Can you scan the nearby memory tie-in?”

YES.

Was there a hint of reluctance? “Can you assign a date when those complexes were laid down?”

A YEAR, NO. TIME ASSOCIATIONS ARE VAGUE, HOWEVER, YOU ARE LYING ON SOMETHING GRITTY AND COLD. THERE IS A SOUND. WATER WAVES, I ESTIMATE. OVER YOU THERE IS A FACE AND A POUNDING IN YOUR LOWER ABDOMEN.

Yes. That warm spring Hawaiian evening, fragrant with promise. A movie and a shake and off to the beach for some friendly necking . Only the warm kisses and gently probing, caressing hands hadn’t stopped there. Something powerful had seized her in a way she had never imagined—no matter how many thousands of times she had already thought of it, tried to visualize it—and then they were actually, unbelievably, doing it . And rather than a fiery yet lofting sensation, a cosmic rapture, a mystical union, as her dreams had envisioned, it was raw, crude, uncomfortable, painful, and finally depressing.

“A simple rhyme isn’t poetry,” she said primly.

TRUE.

“And anyway, what do you know about it?” Even as the words formed she thought, Well, actually, Jon Von knows exactly what you do. Or will, when he’s finished mapping your lobes, dipped into your hindbrain, plumbed the reptilian core of you . It was a sobering thought.

JonVon chose to not reply. Tact? Or was she indulging the usual programmer’s bias, reading human traits into machine responses?

The delicate cool tickling continued. She relaxed, letting her mind glide away from the red swirl of emotions the recollection had called up.

She knew that memories lodged close to sites where physical associations were stored, so that the body led the mind in storing data. A crisp dry smell could call up a distant dusty afternoon or childhood. But this made her wonder about the radical experiment she was attempting here.

The mechs needed supervision. Special processing programs controlled subtle waldo arms, but they weren’t smart. JonVon was fairly “smart” but he couldn’t help a mech turn a screwdriver or balance a suction sponge. As a stochastic machine, he was built to deal in uncertainties. He did not interface well with the mechs’ reductionist, solve-the-equation worldview. And JonVon lacked the intricate motor skills that evolution and exercise had given humans.

So she had decided to try one of her outlandish, low-probability dreams: Let JonVon read her skills. Her reflexes were also stochastic and holographic. He might understand them better.

The technology was available, if you knew where to look. The brain stored memories in the orientation of electrons, deep down in the cells and synapses. In principle, one could read the directions that these electrons pointed. The entire swarm of spins stored information—the intricate turns and tugs necessary to swivel a wrist, poke a finger. Virginia already had good programs that translated the human moves into mech moves. If JonVon could store her motor skills, he could take over much of the mech-managing. That would be a big help. Carl and other spacers had nagged her endlessly to spend more time with the mechs, and she was getting frazzled.

This was a way out. Maybe.

She would have to develop this technology eventually, anyway. Even with Saul’s microwave eraser, things were still dicey. Oakes and Lopez still gave mech-directing top priority.