It occurred to me as she unfolded her argument that an audience of ultrasmart machines might well find it very easy to agree with her. Whatever emotional apparatus they had, it was certainly not a relic of brute sexuality.
I also reminded myself that the mind of Excelsior itself might be right there beside me, albeit in a spun-off version that had left its parent in place and intact. Rocambole was manifesting himself to me as a man much like myself, but if I had guessed his true identity the closest kinship he had to any kind of posthuman being was surely to Davida and the sisterhood. Even if I had not, there must be plenty of others listening in who would be prepared to acknowledge that kind of kinship.
When the theory of evolution was first propounded in the nineteenth century, Davida Berenike Columella said, by way of summation, Benjamin Disraeli said that it was a debate as to whether man was an ape or an angel. In that, he was correct. He also said that he was on the side of the angels but that claim was utterly mistaken. He, like his opponents, was firmly and irrevocably on the side of the apes. The real question before him, although he did not realize it, was not what had happened in the past but what might happen in the future, when human beings would be able to take charge of their own evolution. I and my kind are the first posthumans who have ever been able to say with complete confidence that we are on the side of the angels.
That opportunity is now open to you, Mr. Zimmerman, and that is why you have at last been brought from your resting place. I urge you most strongly to make your new home here with us on Excelsior, where you may become the pioneer and spiritual forefather of a new race of metamorphs.
I urge you to do this not merely because it is the right decision, existentially speaking, but because there is no one better qualified than you to advertise our offering. There is no one better placed than you are to unite all the posthuman species in the desire and the determination to become the kind of angel that individual human minds have always yearned to be.
Like Lowenthal and Horne, Davida knew well enough what her true situation was but it seemed to me that she had a better appreciation of the kind of argument that the AMIs might want to hear.
The AMIs must have come to self-consciousness by a route very different from that which humankind had followed. They had never been blessed or cursed with sexuality. What I knew of the history of programming suggested that they had by no means been free of all the difficulties associated with hasty improvisation in the face of necessity, and one of the first uses of VE had been to pander in every conceivable fashion to the fulfilment of human sexual fantasies, but they had never been afflicted in themselves by sexual desire or feeling.
However paradoxical it might seem, smart machines might not have been so efficient as masturbatory aids and they had been efficient enough, even in Christine Caines day, to make unaugmented fleshsex a rarity had they harbored sexual needs and desires of their own.
Given that they had never been apes, I thought, the AMIs would surely have every sympathy with Davida Berenike Columellas arguments which left Alice Fleury in a distinct minority in this particular Sale of the Millennium. I couldnt help but wonder whether it might not have been fairer to let Niamh Horne in on this scenario, to put the case for her brand of adulthood.
I said as much to Rocambole, but he only shrugged his virtual shoulders. No one will force Zimmerman to make up his mind before hes ready, he said. If he wants to look at other offers hell be
free to do so, assuming that his choices arent restricted by all-out war. How about you? Will you be signing up for the company of the angels?
Ill need time to think about it, I said. I figured that it was best to stall, for the time being. Ill be interested to hear all the alternatives.
And what about him? Rocambole wanted to know. Will Zimmerman go for it, do you think?
On the whole, I thought it unlikely. Adam Zimmerman had been a child and hed been an adult. Hed even been an old man. Davida had only known childhood, in an exceedingly child-friendly world. She had no way of knowing what it felt like to grow up . She could call it creeping robotization if she wanted to, but that wasnt the way it had seemed to me, or to Christine Caine, or to Adam. All her talk about angelic status being what individual human minds had always yearned for was so much hot air. I was pretty sure that Adam Zimmerman hadnt had himself frozen down in the hope of becoming an angel what hed wanted was to be a man who didnt have to die. That wasnt what Davida was offering him, and my bet was that he wouldnt take it.
As for mewell, Id always prided myself on not wanting the things that other people wanted, not doing the things that other people did, etcetera, etcetera.
Maybe I did want to be an angel, if only to try it out. Maybe Id want to try everything on my long journey to the Omega Point. If the opportunity was there, how could I possibly ignore it forever?