collection. He would never change, never grow out of his teenage geekiness. “We’re raising them on the same stuff that we were raised on.”
“We? You mean our originals?”
Bartek had watched thousands of hours of recordings, including recordings of himself, from parties that he usually couldn’t even remember, city archives, work functions, other people’s videos from Facebook. He had stared at himself – himself in the body of Bartek 1.0 – and tried to feel his way into the old humanity.
But how was he supposed to emote this humanity today? And what had been irretrievably lost, somewhere between feeling and emoting?
“What an absurd question!” exploded Jarlinka. “There is no ‘between.’ Where would it be? We express anger and joy with emotes, we cry with emotes, and we love with emotes. Emotes
are
our feelings.”
But Bartek still remembered 1K PostApoc in Tokyo, with all those shatteringly sad performances of humanity played out by transformers turned into graceless mechs, with their clumsy simulations of drunkenness at the bar in Chūō Akachōchin, the heartrending parodies of tenderness converted into tons of metal and the megajoules of servomotors, the rituals of biological buddyhood cultivated in the forms of awkward machines; how they chinked glasses filled with alcohol they couldn’t drink; how they gaped at pornography that couldn’t evoke the least desire in them; how they turned up their speakers to crank up the atmosphere of a conversation. He remembered it perfectly, because he had recorded it.
And now, at 10K PostApoc, they no longer even tried to
simulate simulation
or
pretend to pretend
, when there was no need and nobody was watching.
So what did they do when they weren’t working or watching films from Paradise?
Nothing.
They were statues of cold metal. Robots out of work.
“The thing is,” said Bartek, trying to explain himself to Jarlinka while his display spat out a hodgepodge of stroboscopic associations, “that in a few years’ time, they’ll start to multiply and raise their own children, the first/second litter, and then all this will inevitably copy itself down through all the generations to come. Just as in the first instant after the Big Bang a microscopic quantum irregularity determined the shape of whole galaxies and clusters of galaxies, so right now those few years of their childhood – the games, lullabies, nannies, fairy tales, punishments and rewards – will determine the shape of Humanity 2.0 and beyond.”
Jarlinka emoted the shrugging of a thousand shoulders with his Burg.
“Well, then go and play with them.”
Alicia was five years old and she always recognized Bartek from the subconscious subtleties of his behavior, no matter which mech he happened to have chosen. Sometimes he wouldn’t even have emoted anything, or said anything, and she would run straight to him, climb up onto his slashed steel plates, and doodle in marker pen all over his head and display.
“We going hurray!”
“We’re going to go hurray.”
We will be friends until forever, just you wait and see
Bartek had manifested in a municipal Taurus, which had a huge blower nozzle instead of a right hand. They walked out onto Vassar Street, towards the western end of the campus, behind the overgrown and waterlogged baseball fields, already covered with an autumnal coating of leaves from the first 2.0 trees, which Cho had planted zealously in the early days of the tests. Now a maple-like species with a bark unknown to the natural world of Paradise was growing in Cambridgeport. There were also self-stunting little oak trees, like bonsai, and weedy bushes resembling regurgitated wigs – the ludicrous mistakes of neo-flora that could never be eradicated.
Bartek blasted a small hurricane from the gaping maw of his right hand, raising colorful clouds of leaves and driving them systematically into the corner of the Westgate courtyard onto a former parking lot. Alicia frolicked in
“We? You mean our originals?”
Bartek had watched thousands of hours of recordings, including recordings of himself, from parties that he usually couldn’t even remember, city archives, work functions, other people’s videos from Facebook. He had stared at himself – himself in the body of Bartek 1.0 – and tried to feel his way into the old humanity.
But how was he supposed to emote this humanity today? And what had been irretrievably lost, somewhere between feeling and emoting?
“What an absurd question!” exploded Jarlinka. “There is no ‘between.’ Where would it be? We express anger and joy with emotes, we cry with emotes, and we love with emotes. Emotes
are
our feelings.”
But Bartek still remembered 1K PostApoc in Tokyo, with all those shatteringly sad performances of humanity played out by transformers turned into graceless mechs, with their clumsy simulations of drunkenness at the bar in Chūō Akachōchin, the heartrending parodies of tenderness converted into tons of metal and the megajoules of servomotors, the rituals of biological buddyhood cultivated in the forms of awkward machines; how they chinked glasses filled with alcohol they couldn’t drink; how they gaped at pornography that couldn’t evoke the least desire in them; how they turned up their speakers to crank up the atmosphere of a conversation. He remembered it perfectly, because he had recorded it.
And now, at 10K PostApoc, they no longer even tried to
simulate simulation
or
pretend to pretend
, when there was no need and nobody was watching.
So what did they do when they weren’t working or watching films from Paradise?
Nothing.
They were statues of cold metal. Robots out of work.
“The thing is,” said Bartek, trying to explain himself to Jarlinka while his display spat out a hodgepodge of stroboscopic associations, “that in a few years’ time, they’ll start to multiply and raise their own children, the first/second litter, and then all this will inevitably copy itself down through all the generations to come. Just as in the first instant after the Big Bang a microscopic quantum irregularity determined the shape of whole galaxies and clusters of galaxies, so right now those few years of their childhood – the games, lullabies, nannies, fairy tales, punishments and rewards – will determine the shape of Humanity 2.0 and beyond.”
Jarlinka emoted the shrugging of a thousand shoulders with his Burg.
“Well, then go and play with them.”
Alicia was five years old and she always recognized Bartek from the subconscious subtleties of his behavior, no matter which mech he happened to have chosen. Sometimes he wouldn’t even have emoted anything, or said anything, and she would run straight to him, climb up onto his slashed steel plates, and doodle in marker pen all over his head and display.
“We going hurray!”
“We’re going to go hurray.”
We will be friends until forever, just you wait and see
Bartek had manifested in a municipal Taurus, which had a huge blower nozzle instead of a right hand. They walked out onto Vassar Street, towards the western end of the campus, behind the overgrown and waterlogged baseball fields, already covered with an autumnal coating of leaves from the first 2.0 trees, which Cho had planted zealously in the early days of the tests. Now a maple-like species with a bark unknown to the natural world of Paradise was growing in Cambridgeport. There were also self-stunting little oak trees, like bonsai, and weedy bushes resembling regurgitated wigs – the ludicrous mistakes of neo-flora that could never be eradicated.
Bartek blasted a small hurricane from the gaping maw of his right hand, raising colorful clouds of leaves and driving them systematically into the corner of the Westgate courtyard onto a former parking lot. Alicia frolicked in
Similar Books
