no_fastolfe | 8.0 Day in the Library (Spamlogs)

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8.0 Day in the Library (Spamlogs)

[Private to Sherlock]
At your convenience. I will understand if the way is impassable, however. I found myself among a wetland on my way this morning.

Library Spams]
[Vasilia is in the library, shelving books and generally getting the lay of the stacks. When she sees something out of place she goes for it-- surgical, putting it back in order as if she blames it for being out. Patterns, she's always been good at patterns.]

[OOC: Sorry about the lateness, Nemo!]

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And what is your opinion of them? Wishing you'd pushed for the laboratory after all?

[She shakes her head]

It is not onerous work and it is quiet. As long as you continue to permit, I will use the lab for work of my own choosing.

I am near satisfied with my logical simulations and have begun drafting work on basic proto-automata programs that could function in what is known as the Grid. This would be under supervision of a warden, of course: Rinzler is one of the Barge experts on the Grid, being a native thereto.

[He nods.] By all means.

The grid. [His intonation is entirely steady, but it's a question all the same.]

The Grid, as I understand-- and I am new to the concept as well-- is the societal system developed within the environment of a machine's circuits. Impossibly-- the day to day running of an electronic processor represented as a city of autonomous beings, 'programs' with individual motive and personality.

Humans can through some means be transmuted inside it, becoming part of the system without harming the machine. [Isn't this amazing? her tone implies. Isn't this bewildering and fascinating?]

Ah, I take it he's another fictional construct. [He says it somewhat snidely, despite the fact his own life is pressed between the pages of a book only a few aisles across from them.]

[She bridles.]

Fictional! A bizarre claim to make of anyone, least of all a friend of mine!

[She's stopped shying away from the f-word. Whatever it means to a simple Auroran robot-- whatever it doesn't mean to the usual Auroran citizen-- she has chosen to appropriate it to properly describe her relationship with Rinzler.]

[He raises an eyebrow.] You don't- No, of course you don't. Earth. [He debated obtaining a copy of the alternate Sherlock Holmes stories, but ultimately decided against it, if she wanted she could always find them herself.] We're not all from alternate worlds. Some of us are from each other's fictions.

That sounds highly improbable. Alternate timelines I can accept. The spontaneous creation of individuals from fiction? Nonsense.

[He spreads his hands to indicate the barge.] Organic matter randomly appearing in the corridors, ghosts, invisible beings? People turning into animals?

Very little here makes actual sense.

The barge is a limited environment, however. Or do you posit that the 'fictional' members aboard are creations of the barge-- that their memories of a vast world outside of these environs are false?

[She crosses her arms, the bridge of her nose wrinkling with irritation.]

I'm simply saying our previous notions of what is and isn't possible may bear some further scrutiny.

[Though her idea is more than a little unsettling. He frowns, how would he know? Does a construct believe it's real right up until the point it ceases to exist?]

You construct an over-elaborate scenario. Given what evidence we have, it is the simpler solution that the authors of this 'fiction' were exposed to an environment containing multiple time-lines. The barge exists and other such environments may. Thus 'fiction' is in fact decontextualized history, and my friend is no more fictional than you, sir.

That would give rise to broad similarities, stories more like myths or legends. But correct down to the specifics? Down to the things people would never tell? ... I'll have to get hold of those Potter books for you...

We were only recently forced to speak with one another with great candor--and you are in possession of a file that I am certain is more complete than I would prefer.

And beyond the general case, remember that we are speaking specifically about an individual of great value to me. I will not easily be convinced of his non-existence.

[He shakes his head.] Then it would only work for- [he breaks off at the second part of her statement.]

Ah, well. Great value. [He doesn't make that into a question, just lets it hang there.]

[It's a form of progress-- if only in regards to her mental state-- that she doesn't react as emotionally as she did when they spoke about Giskard. Instead she glares at him.]

Returning to your hypothesis: which members of the barge do you consider only fictional constructs?

[He sighs, it's a very long-suffering, pointed sigh. And then he abruptly walks away, finds one of the Conan Doyle books, and brings it back.]

Myself.

[Of course he isn't the best example what with the time period difference, but there's his alternate self to point out.]

[She the book with pursed lips, flipping through it, eyes darting across the words with a great deal of confusion-- she not having the context for Victorianna-- then eyeing the woodcut on the cover and looking at him dubiously.]

And the ramifications of being a fictional construct, and what this means about your competencies and validity as a thinking being, if you please?

Alternate universes, millions upon millions of alternate universes. In many Sherlock Holmes is a fictional construct. In mine, he is a living, breathing, thinking being. Both are true. Both must be true because here I am and here that is, both existing simultaneously.

It certainly raises interesting questions of pre-destination and free will, but then those are much the same questions theologians have attempted to reconcile for centuries. Only in my case, I know there is a God, and his name is Conan-Doyle. [He may make a good show of not being fazed, but that last is said with more than a hint of bitterness.]

Aboard the barge you can at least be certain that you are outside of his sphere of prediction. Likewise Rinzler! So I do not see why his status is pertinent to our experiments at all. [She lifts her chin]

I refuse to compromise my few points of stability because you are apparently fictional, sir. I will not take it into consideration with Rinzler, nor with you nor anyone else. And you cannot convince me to do otherwise. [Which, besides being imperious and self centered, is also an admission that she depends on Sherlock to some extent. But then, she's darkly convinced that he's deduced it somehow already, so no harm in admission.]

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8.0 Day in the Library (Spamlogs)

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