Page 30. An interesting part of town.
I need to take off next week’s update to finish another project, but in the meantime, I have updated and expanded the cast page, and there will be character designs for the next section of OHS in my new Patreon sketchbook, which is coming out later this week.
I wonder what they are doing at that table. I hope they’re playing D&D or something.
Trading parts, maybe?
I wondered about that; memory upgrades? ROM chips with apps in them? They each have a folded card next to them, like a sign. I think the 64bit question here is how much humanity do these AI revenants have? Each is somehow based on a person’s brain scan, so are they a new iteration of the scanned person or a new person with a seed of memory from a real person? Do they yearn for their meat bodies and wish they were someone else, and are they playing a role-playing game?
Al….run
They are all programmed knowing that he is the C.R.E.A.T.O.R.
Droid #1: Hey, that guy looks like Alistair Sterling!
Droid #2: I thought he was dead.
Is that hope we see in those blank faces? The Man is back, we’re saved!
Droid #1: Hey, that guy looks like Alistair Sterling!
Droid #2: Another one?
OH dear. The synthetic slums. The social structure of this world just got that much more interesting.
Right??
Re cast page – so Sully was created the day after Al died… if that’s accurate that seems quite harsh and somewhat unlikely?
It is my understanding that Brendan scanned Al’s brain on the day he died and did his best to recreate his lover.
Also seems a bit improbable. There were no robots before he died, so if she was the first one built how is she by far the most advanced one we’ve seen?
Blue said she only got a humanoid body at the age of 6 of 7, so I assume she’s gotten to her current physical state through multiple updates. As for why she’s smarter (or at least acts smarter) than Gimel, etc., we’ll just have to wait and see.
Brendan is the best, most innovative, and richest roboticist in the world, because he and Al started it all. Not only that, but “For God’s sake help me save Al” must have been on all his friends’ phones. No surprise if she has the best hardware, but she must also be the most carefully-emulated mind in all cybernetics. And how smart IS Gimel? No expression to give away, but who’s in that head?
Not THE most carefully emulated. After all, she doesn’t have Al’s memories, and Al does… I see your point, though.
Looks like Alisar is remembering chatting with a younger Brendan about how roboticists fear, more than a layman because they know more intimately, how much truly sentient robots existing can overnight make the entire world change. And yet, hey, how the same it is.
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. Sometimes, you’d rather lurk . . .
OKAY! Now that we’re starting to learn a teeny tiny bit more about the robot-human social structure, let’s talk about anagrams and the meaning of Hanukkah!
…no, it’s going to make sense, I swear. Bear with me. It starts with the play Rossum’s Universal Robots, from which O Human Star gets its name. Now, it’s been a while since I read it, so this may not be 100% accurate, but basically what happens is at one point the robots are rising up against their oppressors, the humans, who are holed up in a building. The humans see a light on in one of the factories, meaning that there are other humans still holding out. They use the light as a metaphor for the human spirit, and then there’s this quote:
“You still stand watch, O human star, burning without a flicker, perfect flame, bright and resourceful spirit. Each of your rays a great idea – O torch which passes from hand to hand, from age to age, world without end.”
…and then the lights go out.
Now remember at the end of Chapter 2 when there were a bunch of references to Brendan and Hanukkah? At first my reaction was, “Okay, he’s Jewish, I GET it,” but then I realized that it wasn’t about Judaism in general, it was about Hanukkah in particular. Here’s the Hanukkah story:
The Greeks were oppressing the Jews, preventing them from practicing their religion. When the Jews finally fought them off they found that the sacred light in the sacred Temple had been put out. They only had enough oil for it to burn for one day, but they needed it to last eight days until they could make more oil. But it lasted eight days, and that was the miracle of Hanukkah: that a light that was supposed to go out lasted.
See any similarities?
Furthermore, this is probably the sheerest coincidence, but ALASTAIR STERLING is an anagram of A LAST STAR, I LINGER.
A light that gives hope, the oppressed and the oppressors… what does it mean about human and robot relations? Are things really as sunny as the ballerina told Al at the very beginning?
…wow that’s a lot of words.
I think you are definitely on the right track. There’s a whiff of Rudy Rucker’s SOFTWARE to this, where the robots escape to the moon but send a secret mission to upload their aging and impoverished creator into a robot body. Madcap hijinks ensue. But unlike Capek’s ‘robots,’ these AIs seem to have begun as human. We’ve only talked to Sulla, and she’s being carefully nurtured as a daughter; what’s the story on these faceless robots in the bazaar? Do they all have flashes of being someone else once? Why are they ghettoized like that?
I think the sacred light is Sulla, kept flickering by effort and hope and even prayer, burning until Al himself returned with more fuel for Brendan. I don’t think these AIs want to rise up against humans, they want to be human again, or more than they are. I think Al might be about to abolish death and send mankind out to the stars in metal bodies, set minds free to be anything they like, and finally get the damn validation of himself that he’s deserved. He’s been treated badly by life, and in return he’s massively enriched life for everyone.
Wow. I actually never knew that about the title, but the Hanukkah connection seems spot on! And deciphering anagrams is always tricky bidness, but if Blue were to come out and confirm that I actually wouldn’t be surprised at all. Good thinking!
If you saw your GOD at the flea market, and knew he was looking surprised to see you, wouldn’t you be unsettled?
I do need to ask the real question though, ‘why build machines to be as smart as people?’
There is no answer to this question that ends well for biological humanity. When intelligence itself is manufactured, like any human endeavor or feat compared to the capacity of a machine, it becomes pointless and quaint.
Like Frankenstein, RUR was written as a warning. It was not in any shape or form the least bit optimistic about where the humans end up when they build their own superior replacements.
But now Al has become his own superior replacement. Are the robots in danger of just becoming containers for our minds instead of finding their own destiny? And what is Sulla if not a shy teenage girl?
I think we’re going to see a reply to R.U.R here, not a repeat. Humanity wouldn’t fall as neatly as it did in Capek’s play. The human star will shine, even inside a metal case.
I’d hate for intelligence to be condemned to the time-limited prison of biology, certain to disappear sooner or later.
As far as we know, we might be the only intelligent artifacts in the galaxy, possibly in a *very* large chunk of the universe. We bear responsibility in ensuring that intelligence keeps shining, even at the cost of our own species.
Little Bitaly