David:
2 quoted lines
It's easy to imagine a program that the Chems can run but can't
consciously access--they can "do it", but are made so they can't figure out how they do it. I mean, people can have kids, but for most of history, if you'd taken two people aside and said--"When you have sex and out comes a kid, how does that work? I'm thinking of using hearts for power packs on my new catapults," well you get the picture.
And for all of history, the parents would tell you where to go. I'd especially not like to try such a request on a heavily armed robot soldier. I think the whole chem reproduction process was just an idea that seemed neat to Wolfe at the time - I'm sure it wasn't intended to stand up to a lot of scrutiny.
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Matt Freestone II zzz. /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,. matthew at matthewf.demon.co.uk II |,4- ) )-,. ,\ ( `'-' www.matthewf.demon.co.uk/ II '---''(/--' `-'\)
*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.