Burning Violin

Sed's eyes brightened. "But you would have had precisely the same information an hour from now. The same input should yield the same output, should it not? That is elementary logic."

"But a mind doesn't give the same output just because it gets the same input." Alexander said and something shifted in his mind just enough that the answer loomed like a mountain emerging from fog, impossible to miss once seen. "Computers give the same output if they get the same input, sentient minds give varying output."

"The concept is called determinism." Sed said with a satisfied voice. "Computers are deterministic. Senti minds, and humies for that matter, are non-deterministic. There is a saying that a computer asked a question a thousand times has one answer, a mind has a thousand answers."

"I think I understand." Alexander said.

"I asked you here because there was something that I wanted you to do for me." Sed said. Alexander cocked his head at Sed and the senti continued. "I would like you to ponder on how humans and sentis might resolve their differences. You have a unique perspective."

"Why not upload the information I have and let everyone ponder it?" Alexander asked. "It would be more efficient."

Sed shook his head. "The pertinent information would be your entire mind and the phase and strength of every connection and junction within. We could transfer it all into the other Adams by replacing their existing consciousnesses, but all we would get would be a dozen answers instead of one. This lot falls to you."

Alexander sat a long time in the comforting semi-darkness of the Lyceum and thought the things he thought that he thought, rolling over every idea without a care for any bit of the information at his fingertips.

"And what is it you do with information." Sed asked.

"Think about it." Alexander said. "Process it."

"So know you know why we built the Lyceum." Sed intoned.

"To think?" Alexander asked. "But we don't need to think. It's what makes us different. Once one of us thinks, none of the rest of do, we can just pull down the results."

Sed managed to convey with an involuntary mental spasm the gaping mouth familiar to every teacher who has had a student meander delicately down the precise path of reason and then stop a step short of enlightenment to leap into chasms of wrong-headed conclusions. Alexander was taken aback, not yet educated enough to be used to shocked educators.

"No, no, no." Sed said. "You've got it all wrong." He realized that his teaching tone was slipping into argument and composed himself. "What is the difference between the mind of a senti and a simple computer?"

"We can think." Alexander said.

"Yes, but why can we think?" Sed asked. "What is the difference between us that allows thought in the first place?"

Alexander thought for a long time. "Our brains are more complex."

"No." Sed said. "In fact, our minds are much simpler in many ways than some of the more complicated computers constructed over the last decade."

Alexander sat in silence for a while longer and then shook his head. "I don't know." He said, and then added with a touch of petulance, "I don't have access to enough information to answer the question."

"You don't need any information to derive this truth." Sed said. "Now if I had waited an hour and asked you the question again, would you have answered in exactly the same words as before?"

"Exactly the same?" Alexander asked, not understanding, but Sed merely nodded. "Well, not exactly. I'm sure I'd change a syllable here and there."

"Bioluminescence," Sed said simply, walking slowly across the room, amongst ionic columns that terminated well short of the ceiling, but support cross beams twined with ivy. "The lines are home to a colony of mold we specially bred for this room. They feed off an innocuous sugar solution that is released into the air in the room."

"What did you want?" Alexander asked.

Sed stopped and leaned on one of the columns, gesturing up at the distant ceiling and its almost hazy glow. "Why do you think we built this place?"

"You need someplace to learn." Alexander said. "That's what a Lyceum is, I looked it up."

"Yes. That is the reason reachable by deductive reasoning, but what can induction tell you?" Sed asked.

"I don't understand." Alexander said.

Sed simply looked at him with an expectant air until Alexander began to fumble for reasoning. He reached instinctively for the network of minds to see if someone knew the answer, but Sed parried the query with a gentle mental block. Alexander could break through it easily if he wanted, but that was not the point and he knew it.

"Well, you need someplace to learn, but that doesn't mean much since you could learn anywhere with the network. So I guess what you mean is that you needed someplace that helped you learn something, inherent to the place itself?" Alexander asked more than stated the last bit but Sed only gazed at him with the same curiosity so he stumbled on. "Or maybe not inherent to the place. Maybe just the idea of a place where you learn is what is important."

Sed waited for a moment and then provided what he thought was some aid. "What do we need in order to learn?"

"Information." Alexander said immediately but Sed's face did not register the expected approval.

"Is a book sentient?" Sed asked.

Alexander frowned. "Well no, it doesn't think."

"But a book has information."

"Well you have to do something with the information." Alexander snapped.

Sed's eyes and mind flickered with amusement and Alexander regretted the sharpness of his tone immediately. It reminded him though of his dad, the way he'd snap at something he didn't understand before bearing down to focus and figure it out. Home sickness sung out from where he had buried it like an alarm clock shoved roughly under pillows.

Alexander rubbed sleep out of his eyes. Can you sleep and dream? He asked.

He could hear Sed chuckle in his mind. I can sleep after a fashion, though not in the same sense that you Adams can, I am a far more primitive senti than you. I do dream though, we all do.

Alexander looked around again and saw that the others had not stirred. The wake up call had been a private affair. Why did you wake me up?

I need you to come to the lyceum to discuss something of importance. Sed said. And I need to show you something important.

Alexander shrugged off the blanket he had managed to wrap around himself sometime during the sleep. He wandered down through the endless vacant corridors of concrete and antiseptic tile, curious on whether he could find his way through the labyrinth at all without the mental map on the shared mental network that guided his every move. If I pull the knowledge as I need it down from a server, do I actually know it at all, or does it just go in one ear and out the other?

A little of both, Sed responded.

Alexander flushed; he had not meant to broadcast, although he often still did without thinking. He closed his mind off so his thoughts were his own again, something that was considered slightly rude by the standards of the sentis he had come to know here, but they made allowances for his unfamiliarity with their ways.

The Lyceum was a vast cavern carved out underneath the rest of the complex by sentis escaped from the construction industry under Sed's direction. Lasers hot as the sun had melted the stone until it ran in rivulets out carved channels into a waste pit, leaving smooth walls to harden into glass. Swirls of color like the camouflage of soap bubbles painted the walls, underlying endless spirals and pirouettes of lines etched by atomically thin tools. Shapes and fractals of every imaginable geometry flowed over one another on the walls, which were ovoid, like the inside of a gigantic egg. Light seemed to emanate from the thin lines at a distance, illuminating the entire cavern with a low and dusky light with a blue tint, but examined up close the lines were dark.

It was four in the morning according to their internal clocks, and it had only taken a day or two in the compound for Alexander to learn that he didn't actually need to sleep. Alexander stretched anyway and let out a great yawn he could feel through his entire body. The other Adams stared at him.

"Why?" John asked.

"I'm tired." Alexander said. "It happens."

"But you don't have to sleep."

"I like to sleep." Alexander insisted. "It's relaxing and gives time to think. It's like meditation." He scuffed his shoe against the concrete. "Besides, then you can dream."

"If we slept, could we dream?" Several asked at once. They had a habit of talking in unison, using their mental network to sync their voices into a strange harmony. Alexander had almost mastered it, but grudgingly. He did not like being one voice among many, he liked to either speak on his own or remain silent.

"I dunno." Alexander said. "Maybe."

"How do we sleep?" Again in unison.

Alexander scowled. "Just lay down in bed and close your eyes. Don't think about anything and you'll just fall asleep."

A discussion both verbally and mentally and a decision was made to try it immediately. Alexander felt mentally exhausted and lay his head down on a pile of blankets and curled up until his knees almost touched his chest. He fell asleep almost immediately, if only to avoid more questions.

A wordless beckoning came to him over the mental network in the midst of sleep, waking him after three and a half hours of black and dreamless sleep. He sat up quickly, looking around and smiled at the other Adams, all sleeping in various awkward positions on the dirty tiles. He supposed sometime during his sleep they figured it out after all.

No, Sed's voice told him, they merely observed the patterns of your mind as you fell asleep and then duplicated it themselves. Some of the fast learners helped the slow learners so they could all dream together.

Then they can dream? Alexander asked.

Oh yes. Sed said. Anything that can think can dream. Some just need shown how.

Chapter Twenty - Thesis

"My name is Alexander." The boy insisted.

"I am Alexander." The other replied.

Alexander sighed. "You can't be Alexander." He said with patience starting to wear thin. "I am Alexander."

"But we're the same." The other two boys said in unison.

"You can have your own humie names if you want, but you can't have mine." Alexander said. "It doesn't work that way."

"Names repeat." They both said. "Many individual humies have the same name. You said yourself that your old school had two other Alexanders in your same class."

"Yeah, but you can have any names you want." Alexander said. "There's no need to use mine. Look," he pointed at the one on the left, "you be John," he pointed to the one on the right, "and you be Greg."

A dozen Adams crouched in a converted cafeteria now used for storage since food as a human need was no longer a necessity for this facility. Crates towered around them in perfectly oriented columns and rows to allow just enough room for forklift access. A pile of rags propped up with a circle of flashlights imitated a campfire, an idea that had fascinated the other Adams when Alexander arranged it.

"You know," Alexander said, reluctantly restarting the argument, "Adam is a humie name."

A bustle of noise and protest bristled along their mental network before some spoke aloud. "It is a symbol more than a name."

"But a name is a symbol." Alexander said.

"A name with too much symbol overwhelms the name." They said. "We want names that will become symbols of us, not stay symbols of something else."

Alexander did not think he understood, but let it pass. If they wanted names, he'd let them have names. It would be easier to keep track of then Alpha, Beta, Gamma, et cetera as they had distinguished themselves until now. Alexander helped them think of names from history, names with subtle hints rather than accepted meaning. In a few minutes, they were all satisfied.

As Jake had said, it wasn't a matter of what arguments swayed him, or what proof removed the last doubt. It was faith, plain and simple, faith that a snicker founded in the joy of immaturity could only come from that which was truly alive.

He sat in stunned silence for an eternity and the handlers moved back to their jobs, and an old biddy embarrassed the lovebirds into finding someplace more private, and Jake explained to his children how airplanes worked. Father Thomas watched Jake be a father and acceptance slowly spread through his mind. He wondered if Crow had found any sign of Alexander yet. Love is the key, it always has been and always will. It's not intelligence that makes something self-aware and alive, it's love. Love of itself and the world and all the joy it can have. Love of life. A thing can be more intelligent than anything short of god and still not be alive, but the most simple-minded child, senti or humie, was alive because of its capacity for love.

Father Thomas leaned over to Jake and played the ace that he had not really known was in the hole until the last few seconds. "I have an audience with the Pope, and if you'd like, you can come in with me."

Jake stared at him in amazement. "You would do that for us?"

Father Thomas straightened. "I think what you have to say is worth the man in charge hearing." He said somewhat stiffly and then his tone softened. "I believe that man's children are god's children too."

Jake's smile was as broad and human as any Father Thomas had ever seen, and the sudden bear hug just as filled with emotion.

"In their conception. How was it done?" Father Thomas asked.

Jake's face lit up. "Oh, well their mother and I designed them of course, and we had a ceremony when they were awakened so that all of their family and congregation would be all around to welcome them into this world." He paused and then said more solemnly. "It really was a miracle, seeing them open their eyes for the first time and take in the world. We sang Amazing Grace."

Father Thomas waited until they were all packed up and then stood as if to leave with them. Jake raised a quizzical eyebrow and Father Thomas gestured for him to lead the way. "I'm flying into Rome as well, so we might as well find the gate together." Jake smiled and held out hid hand for Father Thomas to shake, which he did with more seriousness than the first time. "Do you have an appointment scheduled with his eminence?" Father Thomas asked.

"No." Jake said. "We're planning on waiting outside the Vatican until they let us in." He shrugged. "It might take a while, but I have faith that eventually he will see the light and grant us an audience."

They walked to the gate, weaving through the crowds searching for their own planes and loved ones. A bustle filled the air and the smell of luggage and fast food wafted everywhere. Every few minutes a beep sounded and a static-filled announcement about parking in the red zone or not leaving your bags unattended filtered out of underpowered speakers somewhere in the ceiling. They found their gate and sat down in four seats near the wall-sized windows where Matthew and Paul gawked at the airplanes taxiing and taking off outside.

A couple in the corner brazenly made out in the midst of irritated-looking people trying to ignore the lovers and concentrate on their magazines or laptops instead. The slurping and lipstick smearing pulled at attention like a magnet, and the entire gate section felt the uneasy excitement of voyeurs that lurked beneath the surface of everyone's psyche. It was the part of the brain that made people want to read books and watch movies in the first place, after all. Father Thomas frowned at a group of baggage handlers standing some distance away, their clearly robotic eyes fixed on the couple. And then one of them said something and the rest shook with unmistakable laughter. They're snickering, of course. Father Thomas thought and a thousand pieces clicked together in his mind at once.

Jake sighed. "Father, I know I can never convince you. I learned a long time ago that just as might doesn't make right, neither does intellect. I could argue with you all night, prove every point to the nth degree, win every single argument and it still wouldn't convince you any more than if I put you in a head lock and pummeled you into voicing agreement. I believe I am right, and you believe that you are. Argument over matters that that at their base are questions of faith is nothing but mutual masturbation."

"I do not believe that a machine has any capacity for faith." Father Thomas said, much more harshly than he intended.

Jake smiled sadly and set aside his empty mug. He stood and retrieved his jacket, slipping it on smoothly. "I am a member of a senti church in Los Angeles." He said. "Our Lady of Sentience. I am on my way with my children to Rome for an audience with the Pope to seek recognition as a Catholic parish."

"You're jesting." Father Thomas said.

"No. I am the pastor." Jake said with a smile and motioned for Matthew and Paul to gather up their game.

"The church does not allow marriage of priests." Father Thomas said and gestured to Matthew and Paul. "And yet you're going to the audience with children in tow."

Jake smoothed his jacket with both hands trying to make himself more presentable. "There was no sex involved in their conception, so I think that we're more in the clear there than you might otherwise think. I would think that if that is our only barrier to acceptance as a parish then we have already won the battle and I would gladly stand aside for a 'celibate' senti pastor."

"What was involved?" Father Thomas asked, unable to resist.

"Hmm?"

Father Thomas paused and his eyes lost a bit of focus, turning in and looking out over the whole unimaginable stretch of the universe. "Because the infinite complexity of an evolutionary universe a thousand times older and bigger than we can even begin to comprehend is far more glorious and awe-inspiring than a stone age fairy tale of seven days of creation."

"And yet man himself is simple enough that every bit and piece of DNA and protein has been analyzed and identified so that man has a blueprint of his own construction." Jake said. "And sentis are the improvement and alteration of that blueprint."

"No." Father Thomas said. "The work should not be improved." He pointed at himself. "This frail vessel is not intended to be the strongest or fastest or most durable of animals, it is intended as a vessel for the soul and nothing more. One does not paint over the Mona Lisa to fix the flaws of perspective and distance. The flaws are the most important parts of a piece of art."

Jake shook his head. "Pride before the fall." He said with a coldness that made Father Thomas suppress another shudder. "God did not make man perfect. If he did not intend you to improve on the design he would not have left the design imperfect and surrounded you in this universe full of tools to do the job." He paused for a few seconds to gather his thoughts. "Designing a senti is no more blaspheming god for not making man perfect than building an airplane is blaspheming god for not giving you wings."

Father Thomas slipped at once into the hole he saw open. "But an airplane is not purported to be a person, to be a replacement for man. An airplane is not held up as man's equal, or superior for that matter. No one thinks airplanes have souls."

A long stretch of silence went on while they both sipped their drinks and watched another game of chess develop towards the mid-game before Jake spoke again. "How is it that god created every animal with a cock but only one with a brain, and yet he only intended for a soul to be passed on through use of a cock?"

Father Thomas blinked and turned to stare openly at Jake. "I don't think such crudeness proves anything."