It's just struck me that there may be a possibility of a
golem-like legend on the Whorl. One version of the legend of the golem tells of an incident where the golem is told to fill a bath, but not to stop when it's full enough, with the result that the golem went into an infinite loop, constantly filling the bath. Now I wonder if a chem ever went into such a loop on the Whorl, either through accident or deliberate sabotage. Hmmm... Gene Wolfe could make a whole novel out of that!
Derek
*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.