Is Agia a robot?

brunians at brunians.org · 18 Jun 2010, 07:34 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: brunians at brunians.org (brunians at brunians.org)
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:34:20 -0400
Subject: (urth) Is Agia a robot?
In-Reply-To: <324527.37514.qm at web50706.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
References: <AANLkTilEMWmWvkvMyu7eMmm7hPwOEJhYU5LPxe7ACNyN at mail.gmail.com>
	<a16c27b53aac2465279145061b0dad82.squirrel at brunians.org>
	<324527.37514.qm at web50706.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <aa2f8e299baf4d097b3ce53ecffd94a7.squirrel at brunians.org>

She lost some fluid.

.



> From: "brunians at brunians.org" <brunians at brunians.org>
> [quotations on chems from BotLS]
>
>> I did not remember that reference.
>>
>>Thanks.
>>
>>It does not
> nullify my hypothesis.
>
> Here are two more:
>
> "'It's not just reuniting the metal, Patera.  There are little tubes in
> there, tiny tubes, and wires, and things like threads--fibers, they're
> called--that pipe light.'"
>
> EftLS, Ch. 2
>
> "... he took off the white towel that had covered her [Maytera Marble's]
> now-lifeless right hand and held it up, in appearance the hand of an
> elderly woman.  A short cylinder of silvery metal extended from its
> wrist.  'I lost some fluid,' she told him, 'but not very much. There are
> valves and things to control that...."
>
> [Marble holds her stump up.  Swallow tells her] "'Pretend that you're
> going to grab hold of my nose.'
>
> "Minute glimmerings appeared in the shadowy interior of the stump of
> arm, pinpoint gleams...."
>
> EftLS, Ch. 7
>
> I think these make your hypothesis very hard to sustain.  If Agilus were a
> chem built like Marble, his neck would probably have been sheathed in
> metal and would certainly have contained wires, tubes, and optical fibers,
> not flesh and bone.  This would have done /Terminus Est/ no good and would
> surely have felt and looked different from cutting through a human neck.
>
> Maybe there was another kind of robot.  But I doubt very much someone
> would make robots with necks that acted just like human necks when cut,
> but with skulls that sounded different when banged into stone walls.
>
>>We used to call hydraulic fluid red juice, or cherry juice in the
>> service.
>>
>>That is because it is red, very
> much in the way blood is red.
>>
>>There is a very slight difference
> in color.
>
> The fluid that spurts out of a Vironese soldier when Mint severs its leg
> with an azoth is black, by the way (CotLS, Ch. 9).
>
>>I don't know that you'd notice, if you were focussed on bringing off as
>>difficult an act as a public execution with the
> attention to detail that
>> Severian brings to everything he does.
>
> Severian makes a general remark in that scene about how a well-done
> beheading feels to the headsman.  I take that to mean he felt nothing
> different about Agilus's head.  And see below.
>
> From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
> [...]
>
>> However, I agree that Agilus, when slaughtered, appears to be flesh and
>> blood---a lot of blood. Even if chems have blood, it would smell and
>> flow differently. Severian would notice.
>
> He also cleans his boots.  By that time the blood would have at least
> started to clot, and he'd have leisure to notice its texture and smell,
> since he'd no longer be focused on bringing off the execution.  He must
> have cleaned /Terminus Est/, too.
>
> Also, the blood frightened the baggage sumpter (presumably a horse), which
> would have been by smell, not color.
>
>> Perhaps Agilus and Agia are false names and they are not twins at all,
>> one a chem and one a human. This is not as neat as if they were indeed
>> twins, but it's plausible---they are deceptive people.
>
> Agilus was the heir of an optimate and impoverished himself by having a
> sexbot made to look like a female version of him or like his real sister.
>
> No, I don't believe it.  And I repeat that Severian doesn't say Agia's
> head hitting the stone wall sounded like a hammer hitting stone.  He said
> it sounded as /sharp/, not as metallic or ringing.
>
> It's interesting, though, how things can be read differently when I have
> this theory in mind.  "Agia shrugged, and the moonlight turned her bare
> shoulders into something more precious and more beautiful than flesh."
> (/Claw/, C. VIII)  There are a couple other examples like that.
>
> Jerry Friedman
>
>
>
>
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