The Expert System's Brother (Expert System, #1)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Our people do not need to think about the world or struggle with it, because our ancestors cared for their children and gave them what the House calls artificial ecosystems to protect them. Not just the wasps, but the lice and fleas, all the crawling and jumping and flying things that bite and sting us, and change our bodies so we can survive the world. And, incidentally, allow us to recognise each other. They are part of a system, and because they live on us and inject us with their gifts, we are part of that system, too, and when one of us is Severed from that system, everyone knows it. No wonder my friends abandoned me. I must have seemed a walking corpse, a monster wearing a mask of human skin. Our ancestors feared that their children would die on this poison world, and so they gave their children ghosts to advise and guide them. The ghosts were not meant to decide for them, but if you came into the world with a wise voice always telling you the best way, would you not grow accustomed to doing what it said? A voice to tell you how to run your lives and a voice to tell you how to build and plan, and a voice to tell you how to get well. And others. The hives hold many ghosts most villages never see, like the smithy ghost that Ostel spoke of. Our ancestors made sure that we would never lack for advice, but they did not realise that meant we would forget to find things out for ourselves. As Sharskin said, we are less than we were. I think our ancestors were desperate becau...