Service Model

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

“Wait, no!” the Wonk exclaimed. “If you travel anywhere then you have to go halfway towards it and then halfway again and then again so you never actually get there! How about that? That means, by logical calculation, your goons can’t ever get to me!” Again there was a faint flickering of the lights as the Chief Librarian considered this. “In which case,” he told the Wonk, “we will just proceed halfway towards a point as far beyond you as we are currently away from you, and by that expedient will be able to seize you on our way to that point. After which we will amend our objectives to removing you to a point twice as far away as had previously been intended, and abandon you halfway to that destination.” “Yeah, okay,” the Wonk said, and Uncharles reckoned that if she had visible lights they’d have been flickering themselves as she tried to follow the logic. “Okay look, you guys have repaired yourselves a lot, replaced every piece, probably. So you’re not the same robots, and therefore you don’t have to follow the same directives. So just let us go?” “Oh,” said the Chief Librarian, with a good simulation of boredom, “that one. You confuse a continuity of task with identity. If Theseus lives, then any ship he owns is the ship of Theseus and after his demise is any ship his, given that he no longer persists?” “I don’t think you’re very good at logic,” the Wonk complained. “I mean, these are supposed to be bangers.”