# new chems

*The Whorl list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 03 Nov 1998*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/570>

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### Matthew Freestone
*03 Nov 1998, 09:15*

David:

> 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.
--                              II         |\      _,,,---,,_
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.

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