I was wondering whether Al is going to change her name—will she be Alice or Alison Sterling, maybe? It would be a nice mirror image of Sulla, which is almost Alis(tair) backwards.

That’s fascinating!

I always thought it was odd that Al heard about “Sulla” and immediately assumed she was Brendan’s wife. Now that we know the truth, in a way, her assumption was correct.

Brendan “Thats my wife” Pinsky.

I’ve been thinking about Al’s reaction to Brendan’s immediate question about whether Al might be a trans woman. No denial, just a very chilly ‘did I ever give you that impression in the slightest?’ I noticed this so long ago, and yet hadn’t seen the truth!

I think they are going to transfer the brain. This could be like when you get a new cellphone and transfer the Sim card over to a new debice. The old phone would still “turn on”, but won’t function.

Not only because of different post-awakening experiences, but also that the associative links to unlock the memories weren’t there initially and Sulla was pretty much an amnesiac person learning to connect to life and memory, and when she gave her recovered memory linkages to be used to index the new copy of Al, she was perhaps doing multiple things. One, granting an opportunity for Brendan to see Al again. Two, granting an opportunity for Al to do a conscious self-assessment with the ability to actually recognize and admit that she could now transition and actually DO it. Which is rather deeper than the first reading suggests. Sulla grew up as a person with amnesia into a new person, but AL never got the chance to complete her transition. Now she can.

The next question: Will Brendan choose to be “uploaded” and stick around? It would be nice to actually live out that life with the person he loves.