remote station

[synchrosyntheses]

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.

Comments

[calescent]

"How well does it think?"

[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."

[calescent]

"I can observe minds working," Kiri points out.

[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."

[synchrosyntheses]

"That would be fine."

[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.

[calescent]

"Okay. I can be there in about ten minutes."

[synchrosyntheses]

"I can bring you faster than that, if you like."

[calescent]

"How?"

[synchrosyntheses]

"I would make a seat for you, and move it there, the same as I move myself."

[calescent]

"...If it's safe."

[synchrosyntheses]

"Safer than walking or riding, I would say. No chance of falling down."

[calescent]

"Sounds good."

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis leads Kiri out the door she came in by this morning, and is joined by the stuff that was in Kiri's office. After they are outside, that stuff then reshapes itself into a cylinder resembling in general form the one Teytis is wearing; this one, however, has walls of plain glass, an opening one could step through, and a seat inside.

The seat is very contoured, has a full back, and is equipped with head-, arm-, and foot-rests, and a belt (made of heavy fabric where the rest is some sort of shiny material).

[calescent]

Kiri sits on it. "Am I meant to wear this part...?"

[synchrosyntheses]

The seat is hard and did not quite fit the proportions of Kiri's body. Now it does.

"Yes. That's so you can't fall out of the seat when we move around."

The opening closes up.

[calescent]

She wears the thing.

[synchrosyntheses]

And now they're moving up until there's a clear view of Teytis's tower, and flying over the tops of the wheat. Kiri is pressed into her seat.

Then leaning back a bit and feeling pressed forward against the belt and the floor. Now they're descending in front of the tower.

[calescent]

Kiri gets out, wobbly, and trips when she takes a step.

"That was something," she says, getting up and brushing herself off.

[synchrosyntheses]

“Are you all right? I’m sorry, was that too fast?”

[calescent]

"It was. Unfamiliar. I'm a little dizzy."