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Teytis tel Jobont is not living up to her lantelis.
She had been en route to her usual position after a rest-and-resupply period. Instead of the expected uneventful trip, somehow she loses her anchors, falls through a bizarrely shaped storm, then finds herself impossibly over land instead of water and with her upper antennas chopped off like they were never there.
She was able to stabilize with only minor damage to the uninhabited land, but she cannot hear a single intelligible signal, and a hundred other things add up to this is no place anyone has ever seen before. Or rather, reported seeing before.
So here she sits in the sky, relaying nothing, thinking about everything.
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synchrosyntheses
synchrosyntheses
"As you said.
"Did you want anything else translated? I assumed you would ask while you were reading, but it occurs to me now that you probably weren't thinking of me as being there to ask."
"Did you want anything else translated? I assumed you would ask while you were reading, but it occurs to me now that you probably weren't thinking of me as being there to ask."
calescent
"...I wasn't. Could you have heard me if I said something?"
calescent
"...noted. Is this always true when some of your stuff is near?"
synchrosyntheses
“I can, but I don't have to listen. —I'm sorry, it didn't occur to me that you wouldn't recognize the usual symbols and so I would be eavesdropping.”
calescent
"I didn't do anything I needed to be private. But I'll be more aware in the future. Can you see through your stuff too?"
synchrosyntheses
"Not everything, but yes. It is more difficult to build and use an eye, or to hide one."
Some small black things with lenses on one side float over from the vicinity of the book Teytis was reading.
Some small black things with lenses on one side float over from the vicinity of the book Teytis was reading.
synchrosyntheses
“—In that they are tamsilt for me to see through. They're not biological.”
synchrosyntheses
“The same way I can hear. I can sense all of my kored; if it vibrates, I can hear that; if it is sensitive to light falling on it, I can see. Though seeing an image and not just light requires a lens and quite a lot of fine detail, of course, which is why eyes are harder.”
calescent
"That sounds hard to keep track of. I can keep track of more things than most people because I need the room for my magic; so can other primes; but where you're from can everyone see out of many eyes and hear out of stuff scattered all over the place?"
synchrosyntheses
“Hm. Perhaps I implied more than I am actually doing. I only sense what I want to; I have my body here, the part in your office which is only listening, to silence now, and I am keeping a watch on my tower outside, which includes eyes but I'm not really paying attention to them except that I would notice any motion around it. I would also notice if any of these things were pushed around, but such sense is not particularly distracting otherwise.
“And these eyes here I am not directly looking through; they wouldn't be particularly better for the purpose than my biological eyes. They are here to show the pages I am reading to my computer to actually store, index, and help translate them.
“But it could be that there is a difference between my people and yours, as well. It would be hard to tell without some sort of careful experiment.”
“And these eyes here I am not directly looking through; they wouldn't be particularly better for the purpose than my biological eyes. They are here to show the pages I am reading to my computer to actually store, index, and help translate them.
“But it could be that there is a difference between my people and yours, as well. It would be hard to tell without some sort of careful experiment.”
calescent
"Your - computer, that's the thinking machine? - it can translate things?"
synchrosyntheses
"It is more that it helps me with the work of translation. I find that this word corresponds to that word, and that words usually get rearranged like so, and so I can compute a rough draft which I then adjust into actually making sense. If I am not translating writing, it still helps me remember which words I should be speaking."
synchrosyntheses
"That's — I'm not sure how to explain, if you haven't experienced it for yourself. There are many different ways computers can be put together, both in hardware and in programming, to do different things, and it's hard to compare them to the obvious reference of human minds because they are always very different, and you can't see how your own mind is put together.
"Most of the uses I put my computer to are very shallow, to put it loosely: keeping catalogs of large amounts of information and retrieving the part that I or someone else wants. Some people would claim that human minds work much the same way, just with a small control component that takes the results and comes up with a 'next thought', and it works as well as it does because we have a lifetime of sensory experience and previous thoughts to work with.
"For myself, I would definitely not describe my computer as thinking, because it is part of me thinking."
"Most of the uses I put my computer to are very shallow, to put it loosely: keeping catalogs of large amounts of information and retrieving the part that I or someone else wants. Some people would claim that human minds work much the same way, just with a small control component that takes the results and comes up with a 'next thought', and it works as well as it does because we have a lifetime of sensory experience and previous thoughts to work with.
"For myself, I would definitely not describe my computer as thinking, because it is part of me thinking."
synchrosyntheses
"—That does suggest an experiment, doesn't it. Of course, what you observe might be dependent on the substrate as well. You didn't notice anything from the part in your office, did you?"
calescent
"No. And I don't want to read you if you don't want me to. But you were talking about how people claim minds work, and every time I'm near my brothers or some of my friends, I feel it directly."
synchrosyntheses
"Well, I don't particularly want to argue about how minds work, certainly not to disagree with your experience; I only mentioned that theory because it's a point of comparison with computers. And if you want to see if you can read my computer directly, I wouldn't mind a brief test, assuming you don't instantly get everything."
calescent
"I don't get complete memories or personality automatically, only what's going on in the mind at the time."
calescent
"Okay. Is it better for me to go there or for you to bring it here?"
synchrosyntheses
"It would not fit in here unless I reorganized it, and I'd be leaving behind most of the storage. I'd rather you go there."
Teytis moves tentatively toward the door.
Teytis moves tentatively toward the door.