Филип Керр - The Second Angel

The Pathetic Fallacy: Ascribing Human Psychology to Silicon Minds, by Professor Noam Freud, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2056.

The park is open only to those whose apartment buildings surround it.

The preeminence of the city in civilization may be seen from the fact that the word ‘civilization’ stems from the Latin word civis, meaning ‘citizen’ or ‘dweller in a city.’

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In supposed analogy to metaphysics (often misapprehended as meaning the science of that which transcends the physical), ‘meta’ (from the Greek, meaning ‘after’) has often been prefixed to the name of a science, to form a designation for a higher science of the same nature, but dealing with more remote problems. Examples include metachemistry, metalogistics, metamathematics, metaphysiology, metagenetics, and metaquantums. Metacomputing or metaprogramming involves a computer or a program treating itself as data. In other words, the programmer asks the computer at one level to set in motion another program at a higher level, in order to analyze the lover-level program. Since a Motion Parallax program already exists on a very high level, the metaprogram requested would be a Mission Package program functioning at the highest of all levels within the Altemann Űbermaschine’s operating system. The power of the metaprogram comes from the leverage produced by its recursive character, in which a sequence may be computed from one or more of the preceding terms. M-programs tend to be used very sparingly, not least because of the risk of destruction to the subprogram. This kind of recursive analysis would be like one human being asking another a question of the following order: What is it that leads you to credit that you can suppose that you believe that you think that you assume that you know that something is true?

The Masai used to drink a mixture of cow’s blood and cow’s milk. While the practice is no longer observed in East Africa, blood drinking in Europe has become quite fashionable with young people from rich and privileged backgrounds, except that it is human RES Class One blood that is consumed and not cow’s blood. (TSE — transmissible spongiform encephalitis — has made the consumption of all beef and dairy cattle products illegal.) Mixed with synthetic cream, brandy, sugar, and the yolk of an egg, the cocktail is called a Kali Brandy, after the blood-drinking mother-goddess in Hinduism. (Kali is said to have developed a taste for blood when she fought and killed the demon Raktavija, who produced a thousand more like himself each time a drop of his blood fell upon the ground. So Kali stabbed him, held him in the air, and drank his blood before any of it could fall on the ground.) The major attraction for these rich young decadents is the drink’s sheer expense, not to mention the titillating connection with Dracula and the cult of the vampire.

Phlebotomy. The practice of collecting blood from a living donor.

A forefinger making a circle in the air, in honor of the circulation of the blood, as discovered by William Harvey (1578–1657), an English physician, and described in his book Exercitatio anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (1628).

The word ‘plumber’ is derived from the Latin word for ‘lead,’ plumbum.

The practice of quarantine was first introduced by Italian sailors. It comes from the Italian word quarantina, meaning ‘forty,’ and refers to the number of days for which a disease-infected ship was required to remain isolated.

Habakkuk, Chapter 2, verse 12.

Ostiary. Originally an ecclesiastical term, meaning a ‘door-keeper,’ especially of a church. From the Latin ostiarius, meaning an ‘opening,’ ‘river-mouth,’ or a ‘door.’

All of these are alternative blood therapies. Ayurvedic maintains that there are four essential humors that cause disease if they become imbalanced: wind, bile, phlegm, and blood; diet is the primary method for returning the blood to a state of equipoise. Letting is the surgical practice of drawing or letting blood, as pioneered by Herophilus, the grandson of Aristotle. Reiki is an ancient Japanese healing method based on a system of keys that act as a catalyst for releasing and channeling natural energy. Therapeutic humor bases itself on the physiological benefits that accrue from laughter; laughter reduces the heart rate and arterial blood pressure, and provides relief from stress; laughter also induces the brain to release catecholamine hormones, which facilitate the release of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers.

The life span of red cells is one hundred and twenty days, or three moons.

This technique was originally practiced by Indian yogis in order to preserve their life spirits. Vasectomy doesn’t really do the job, as it only stops the sperm, which makes up but 5 percent of ejaculate. Seminal plasma contains oxygen in order to ensure sperm motility. For anyone with P2, even such microscopic amounts of oxygen can mean the difference between life and death.

The prostate gland contributes as much as 30 percent of the seminal plasma; the constituents of its secretions include fibrolysin, an enzyme that reduces the blood and tissue fibers in the ejaculate.

Lithium hydroxide.

He is said to have refused to take an infusion of the ‘Jesuit bark’ of the cinchona tree, in the mistaken assumption that there was a Popish plot to poison him. The medically active ingredient in the bark is quinine.

The word was originally used to signify any disfiguring skin disease, including eczema and syphilis. When the Old Testament was translated into Greek, tsaar’at became lepra, which had a similar usage and had nothing to do with Mycobacterium leprae, which only became widespread under the Romans, long after Old Testament times.

A human blood corpuscle is one three-thousandth of an inch in diameter.

Palladium, atomic number 46, the lightest and lowest-melting of the platinum metals and used as a catalyst and as an alloy, is especially valuable to the nanoelectrical industry as a hydrogenator (palladium absorbs more than nine hundred times its own volume of hydrogen). Extremely ductile and easily worked, it is one of the rarest metals on Earth. First isolated in 1803 by the English chemist William Wallaston, it was originally named in honor of the then newly discovered asteroid Pallas. Ironically enough, asteroids are now the major source of palladium, and one of the main sources of profit for the Asteroid Recovery Program.

The establishment of a latent infection is central to the success of P2 as a human pathogen. Latency permits persistence of the virus in the presence of a fully developed immune response, although no incidence of lifelong immunity has ever been recorded. Reactivation of latent virus results in the Three Moon phase, as has already been described; however, the molecular mechanisms for such triggering are not understood. It is during the latent period that the virus is passed on — usually through the exchange of bodily fluids. Worryingly there have even been cases involving airborne infection.