[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
distinct from blindness, that had to be experienced firsthand to be
understood.
And he knew, utterly knew, that he had no such sophisticated experience when
he woke up. None, not a flickering moment of it. He had literally awakened to
a whole new world. He had come into memory with no firsthand experience.
The first thing he had done was to kneel down and stick his fingers in the
woman s blood, feel its warmth on his skin thermocouple, test his blood-
covered finger and thumb against each other to confirm that drying blood was
sticky. That moment, he was certain, was his first. There was nothing else
before it.
Which either meant that he had not even been awake before his memory started,
or else that everything had been wiped from his brain.
A disturbing thought, but Caliban considered it carefully. He had no knowledge
of how his mind worked, or how, precisely, it related to his physical being.
Beyond question, they were related to each other, and yet clearly distinct and
separate. But how, he was not sure.
Once again, he was up against the desperately frustrating absence of any
knowledge of robots in his datastore. He had no way of judging the mechanics
of the idea, no way to know if there was some way simply to hit an erase
button and destroy his mentality.
But if that had happened, if his mind and his memory had been destroyed so
completely that even the sense of experience was gone, then could it even be
said he was the same being as before?
Memory could be external to the sense of self. Caliban was sure of that.
His memories could be removed, and he would still be himself, just as much as
he would be if his datastore was removed. But if someone removed all
experiential data from his brain, they would of necessity remove the being,
the self, who had been shaped by those experiences. Erase his mind, and he
would simply cease to be. His body, his physical self, would still be there.
But it was not this body that made him Caliban. If it were mechanically
possible to remove his brain from this body and place it in another, he would
still be himself, albeit in a new body.
Page 96
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
And therefore, he, Caliban, had not attacked this woman. Of that much he was
sure. Perhaps his body had done it, but if so, another mind than the one that
currently inhabited it was in control at the time.
He found that conclusion to be most comforting, in its own way. The idea that
he could be capable of an unprovoked attack had been most disturbing.
Still, no matter what his conclusions might be to himself, they did little to
improve his situation. Peace officers willing to use heavy weapons in a tunnel
would be unlikely to wait long enough to listen to his explanation that it
might have been his body, but not he himself, that had attacked the woman. Nor
would any such arguments make them forget the fire at the warehouse. He had
been there, the place had caught fire. Perhaps that was all they needed to
know.
From the police point of view, all the evidence shouted out that he had
attacked the woman, that he set fire to that building. After all, the police
knew someone had attacked her. If he had not, then who had? As best he could
see, there was no one else there who could have done it.
But perhaps there were more things in his visual memories of his awakening,
other things that he had missed. The woman, for example. Who was she?
Sitting in the darkness, he once again brought the scene up before his eyes.
Now he did not try merely to play back the events, but instead worked to build
up as full and complete an image of the room as he could, using all the
angles, running through all the images over and over again at high speed,
trying to assemble as much detail as possible using all the momentary images
at his disposal.
In the darkness, in his mind s eye, he effectively made the room whole and
then stepped into it, projecting the image of his own body into the imaginary
reconstruction of the room. He knew that it was all illusion, but a useful
illusion for all of that.
Yet it was flawed, deeply so. He turned around to look at the back of the
room, and it was not there. He had not ever looked in that direction in real
life. The jumble of objects sitting on this table or that looked real enough
when he looked at them from the angles he had used in reality, but as he moved
his viewpoint to other angles, that he had not used in reality, they melted
into a bizarre mishmash of impossible shapes and angles. It was all most
disturbing. Perhaps with further effort, he could refine the image, make
reasonable educated guesses that could clear up such difficulties. But now was
not the time.
He had other concerns. Caliban went back to his starting position in the room
and looked down.
There she was, lying on the floor. Was there any clue on her person, any
guide, to who she was? He magnified the image of her body and examined it,
centimeter by centimeter. There! A flat badge pinned to the breast of her lab
coat. The shapes of the letters were somewhat obscured by her position and the
lighting. He stared at it, struggling to puzzle it out. He was fairly certain [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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distinct from blindness, that had to be experienced firsthand to be
understood.
And he knew, utterly knew, that he had no such sophisticated experience when
he woke up. None, not a flickering moment of it. He had literally awakened to
a whole new world. He had come into memory with no firsthand experience.
The first thing he had done was to kneel down and stick his fingers in the
woman s blood, feel its warmth on his skin thermocouple, test his blood-
covered finger and thumb against each other to confirm that drying blood was
sticky. That moment, he was certain, was his first. There was nothing else
before it.
Which either meant that he had not even been awake before his memory started,
or else that everything had been wiped from his brain.
A disturbing thought, but Caliban considered it carefully. He had no knowledge
of how his mind worked, or how, precisely, it related to his physical being.
Beyond question, they were related to each other, and yet clearly distinct and
separate. But how, he was not sure.
Once again, he was up against the desperately frustrating absence of any
knowledge of robots in his datastore. He had no way of judging the mechanics
of the idea, no way to know if there was some way simply to hit an erase
button and destroy his mentality.
But if that had happened, if his mind and his memory had been destroyed so
completely that even the sense of experience was gone, then could it even be
said he was the same being as before?
Memory could be external to the sense of self. Caliban was sure of that.
His memories could be removed, and he would still be himself, just as much as
he would be if his datastore was removed. But if someone removed all
experiential data from his brain, they would of necessity remove the being,
the self, who had been shaped by those experiences. Erase his mind, and he
would simply cease to be. His body, his physical self, would still be there.
But it was not this body that made him Caliban. If it were mechanically
possible to remove his brain from this body and place it in another, he would
still be himself, albeit in a new body.
Page 96
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
And therefore, he, Caliban, had not attacked this woman. Of that much he was
sure. Perhaps his body had done it, but if so, another mind than the one that
currently inhabited it was in control at the time.
He found that conclusion to be most comforting, in its own way. The idea that
he could be capable of an unprovoked attack had been most disturbing.
Still, no matter what his conclusions might be to himself, they did little to
improve his situation. Peace officers willing to use heavy weapons in a tunnel
would be unlikely to wait long enough to listen to his explanation that it
might have been his body, but not he himself, that had attacked the woman. Nor
would any such arguments make them forget the fire at the warehouse. He had
been there, the place had caught fire. Perhaps that was all they needed to
know.
From the police point of view, all the evidence shouted out that he had
attacked the woman, that he set fire to that building. After all, the police
knew someone had attacked her. If he had not, then who had? As best he could
see, there was no one else there who could have done it.
But perhaps there were more things in his visual memories of his awakening,
other things that he had missed. The woman, for example. Who was she?
Sitting in the darkness, he once again brought the scene up before his eyes.
Now he did not try merely to play back the events, but instead worked to build
up as full and complete an image of the room as he could, using all the
angles, running through all the images over and over again at high speed,
trying to assemble as much detail as possible using all the momentary images
at his disposal.
In the darkness, in his mind s eye, he effectively made the room whole and
then stepped into it, projecting the image of his own body into the imaginary
reconstruction of the room. He knew that it was all illusion, but a useful
illusion for all of that.
Yet it was flawed, deeply so. He turned around to look at the back of the
room, and it was not there. He had not ever looked in that direction in real
life. The jumble of objects sitting on this table or that looked real enough
when he looked at them from the angles he had used in reality, but as he moved
his viewpoint to other angles, that he had not used in reality, they melted
into a bizarre mishmash of impossible shapes and angles. It was all most
disturbing. Perhaps with further effort, he could refine the image, make
reasonable educated guesses that could clear up such difficulties. But now was
not the time.
He had other concerns. Caliban went back to his starting position in the room
and looked down.
There she was, lying on the floor. Was there any clue on her person, any
guide, to who she was? He magnified the image of her body and examined it,
centimeter by centimeter. There! A flat badge pinned to the breast of her lab
coat. The shapes of the letters were somewhat obscured by her position and the
lighting. He stared at it, struggling to puzzle it out. He was fairly certain [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]