Not very, was the unhelpful reply but Davida repented of her surliness almost immediately. It can mold itself to any purpose you might require, she said. If you need a cocoon in which to sleep, or to immerse yourself in VEalthough youll probably find a hood appropriate to most purposes.
Not exactly a utility mist, then. I said.
She didnt recognise the term, so I elaborated. PicoCons bolder admen used to look forward to a day when all the matter in the world except for humans would consist of a gray fog of nanomachines that would obligingly manufacture anything its masters desired, according to their command. At that point in future history the distinction between reality and Virtual Experience
was expected to break down, because reality itself would be programmable. You dont seem to have gone quite that far.
No, she admitted. Theres a sense in which the whole microworld is a single machine, of course, but most of its components are as functionally independent as the cells in your body, and as limited in their scope. Walls do what walls are equipped to do.
So theres no central intelligence no Microworld Mastermind?
Theres a hierarchy of managing AIs, culminating in a master supervisor, but theres no central ego. The AIs arent authentically intelligent, individually or collectively. They dont have self-conscious minds in the sense that you and I do.
The silvery artificial geniuses of my day had seemed very smart to their users, and everyone had had an opinion as to whether they would one day make the evolutionary transition to self-consciousness and personality, but the real geniuses making and programming them had always assured us that it couldnt and wouldnt happen. Apparently, theyd been right. Excelsior might have a brain the size of a small planet, but if Davida could be believed it wasnt home to a person .
You might try something simpler, I suggested, nodding toward the uneaten food. Manna will do. Theres no need to try to make it more interesting. The culinary art is a lot more difficult than mere recipes imply.
Im sorry, Davida said, plaintively. Well try to produce something more to your liking.
But not for my benefit, I guessed, wryly. This was another trial run, wasnt it? You wouldnt want Adam Zimmerman to react this way to his welcoming banquet, would you? I suppose youll want to let me try out a few more experimental meals before you set the menu for the big celebration. Or is the ship from Earth bringing supplies fit for a thousand-year-old messiah? Did you think to ask the UN to send a chef as well as an ambassador?
The ship thats coming from Earth is a shuttle, she told me, with just the slightest hint of resentment in her voice. It has no cargo space, and only six cocoons. The ship from the outer system is much bigger, but the outer satellites produce their food in exactly the same way that we do, using artificial photosynthesis. We didnt know that this problem would arise, and well try to address it as best we can. We didnt mean to cause you any distress.
Having thought it over while she was speaking I pulled the plate back again and took another forkful. It still wasnt good, but it was even less offensive than its predecessors.
This fancy second skin youve fitted me with is already compensating, isnt it? I said. All I have to do is keep shoveling the stuff in, and eventually Ill get to like it.
She didnt seem certain. Your internal technology is programmed to compensate for discomfort, she admitted, but not to substitute a positive reward. That would be dangerous.
I nodded, to signify that I understood the distinction and the reasons for making it. One of the first uses to which experimental internal nanotech had been put was feeding the so-called pleasure areas in the hind brain. That way lay addiction, and severe distraction from the business of living. The systems that had been released on to the market in my day were supposed to be finely tuned to administer pain relief without blissing people out. The masters of PicoCon were firmly committed to the idea that people ought to earn their pleasures.
Even a dedicated rebel like me could see the sense in that. The only gratification worth having is the gratification of achievement, even if the achievement in question is the mere exercise of good taste.
I deduced, therefore, that I would get used to the food if I persisted, but I wouldnt be forced to like it. I wondered how many other aspects of my second lifetime would be subject to the same principle. Perhaps Id even get used to being a specimen in a zoo but I certainly wasnt going to learn to like it.
I ate a little more, but I really wasnt hungry. I had other things on my mind.
Can I take a look around now? I asked my captor-in-chief. Not through the picture-window Id like to look at Excelsior itself. The houses and the fields. The real windows.
There are no real windows, she told me. Nor any fields. The artificial photosynthetic systems are like big black sails. There is a garden, but its sustained by artificial light. Youll be able to see it tomorrow.