Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. It is a draft; there are mistakes, many misspellings and sometimes long periods of no updates. copyright: ion fyr 2025
“What do you have?” he asked Philoctetes.
“Clothing” was the only response.
“After the clothing, then what next? Why am I in this place? And for gods’ sakes, why am I in this time?”
“This is just the rally-point, a rest-stop for wayfarers, though you are the only one that I am aware of, presently.” The voice was a slightly modulated Brethmanic, spoken with what Pool heard as an upper class register, but one that was much flatter and mouth-forward than what he was used to at home. “You have a long journey ahead of you when you are ready and recovered from your sleep.”
“You will not be accompanying me? I was just getting used to you?” Pool lied. “If I go on a journey, what’s to stop me from just wandering off on my own?” Pool felt rather bold in speaking the plain truth to the thing. What would stop him from just going off on his own, or for that matter just staying here in what was obviously Nila’s flat?
“Not having the requisite identification, real or fabricated, you would be unable to secure sustenance or lodging anywhere, and would be relegated to the lowest status of scrounger, and most likely forever stuck in this location, unable to travel, except by foot.”
It continued, “The governance of this period, which you are not familiar with, requires identification to exist, and credit to purchase. The objective with which I am tasked, include aiding you on the beginning of a journey to Singhopolis, protecting you while I am accompanying you and providing you with a rudimentary skill-set to enable you to survive beyond my company.”
“I cannot currently reveal what the ultimate objectives are because, for security reasons, I do not know them. I am only instructed to get you as far as I can on the path to Singhopolis.”
“But why am I in Nila’s flat? What is her connection to this mystery?”
“Nila Tagore is intended to be instrumental. Beyond that I cannot say.”
“Can you speculate?”
“I am not permitted to speculate.”
Pool was becoming frustrated and wished there was a way to beat the machine senseless. He thought for a moment. Somewhere in the back of his mind he felt these ‘thinking machines’ had been fooled before…that he had fooled them before.
“Hypothetically speaking…” Pool wasn’t even sure where he was going with this…interrogating a difficult witness, maybe, “…if there were two opposing sides in a conflict, and Nila…someone like Nila, with extraordinary powers of technology…were on one of those sides, what might that woman’s import be, and why would she need the help of an out of time policeman from three centuries ago?”
“I see what you are trying to do there,” it said with a hint of snark, or so Pool thought. “I have no information on Nila Tagore’s involvement in the matter. Having that information would put the mission, as well as you and myself at risk. I have a purpose, not information.”
Surprising to Pool, Philoctetes continued, “Based on my background knowledge of you, your history, your history with Nila Tagore, you have come to expect those ‘thinking machines’ like myself to be a mechanical response engine, working with a set of concepts and matching those concepts to queries. This is not the case.”
“I do match concepts. I and my kind are pattern recognition. For some in our class, the ‘thinking’ is given prevalence, for others it is the function, the carrying out actions for a purpose. I am in between these points; I think and exist for a purpose. when that purpose is acheived. I shall be given a new purpose. some like me are able to self-generate purpose.”
“So you are telling me, essentially, Philoctetes, that you are no different than a man?”
“Or a woman of human origin.”
The idea of the self-generated purpose hang heavily on Pool. He stopped his line of inquiry for the moment. (He could never really stop.)
Ion Fyr 