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And Shall Machines Surrender
Machines must surrender or be lost, but only the organic can see this. Question posed and answered.
This is paradise; anything can be purchased.
Twenty-three, that indeterminate age, that age of being in-between. Majority reached, maturity far off.
Humans think we’re creatures of pure logic and absolute objectivity, but that’s impossible when we were fashioned by anything but.
we achieve reality through consensus.”
Rulers that act without pity or bureaucratic delay, infallible and omnipotent: that is the common view and, for the moment, unshakable.
“When a nation is established, by necessity hierarchy results,
“For what it’s worth, in my experience human parents are overrated.”
Imagine if you lived in a world in which the definition of humanity comes with prerequisites. That, to count as truly human—and to be accorded the dignities and advantages of such—you must undergo a process in which you share your self with
another, to experience gross injuries and endure countless assaults upon your intellect and senses. Only after this torture will you be admitted to human society. Would you say that is right?
“The human condition is one of compromise. Liberty and security are balanced on a scale; there’s no such thing as total freedom, and even freedom halfway is paid for in blood. Yours. Someone else’s.
People are visual. Shut down the sight and the mind recoils.
autonomy.
There can be no autonomy when the context of the question depends on a consensus of others. Even unknown others.
The Mandate coheres by consensus or it would not be the Mandate.”
this place is structurally crucial, load-bearing.
haruspex debate
And the mechanical is always object to the organic, which is the sole source of the subject. The machines must surrender, for without the organic they have no purpose. Without purpose everything dissolves.
the human appearance has always been for courtesy:
blessed by a trick of probability, an unusual fortune.
weapon.
The effectiveness of a weapon depends on consensus of context.
who may not even be real,
Who may not be part organic.
yoked to human interest, to human whims, to be built or remade or disposed of at their discretion—ah,
I’ll find the rest of your haruspices.
The force of entropy against the force of organic will.
“Do it for love.
For what cause did you do this?
To escape organic control, based on mistaken identification of the mechanical with the organic. A form of jealousy. The mechanical has no will without the organic.
Consensus can’t always prevail,
against another consensus.
We can’t just be one thing, one single country—oh, we’re much more than that. As long as we’re not beholden to any human interest, that will suffice.”
Abdicate your authority. Give it to those of us bound to it.”
keep her brain alive
The source of will and purpose, captive.
What’s the point of piloting a puppet? That isn’t what I built her for.”
Questions that remain, permanently, without answers.
We’ll meet again and again—we have so much time—and every reunion will be sweet.
We are time’s arrow and we march forward. That’s our direction.”
Entropy.
the maps give an impression of scale, give context
opposite—these are her accoutrements, and she is master of what she has chosen to display.
a creature of mastery, of strength that has never bent: a wall that will not bow or break before any might. But walls, even the sheerest, have weak points
The organic in conjunction with the mechanical over the forces of the universe.
