Is Agia a Robot?

Jeff Wilson · 19 Jun 2010, 15:55 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2010 10:55:18 -0500
Subject: (urth) Is Agia a Robot?
In-Reply-To: <4C1CC9EC.9050605 at verizon.net>
References: <AANLkTik8q4okRfHDUjNPoRh68A6eWmfNwUq7cf5HfOQd at mail.gmail.com>	<4C1B7A59.1090406 at verizon.net>	<f33ba678b6152753adbcf652dbeb9483.squirrel at brunians.org>	<FEFD6649-58AB-45D7-ADF1-BBCDC5AF4892 at liftingfaces.com>	<4C1B8EE9.6090706 at verizon.net>	<36006D71-A703-4BE6-AB12-C541923ADD88 at liftingfaces.com>	<4C1B97F1.7020902 at gmail.com>	<6F357DDC-786A-45FC-8C3B-1BB454062421 at liftingfaces.com>	<4C1BB20D.4040700 at verizon.net>	<4C1BF06B.6040207 at gmail.com>	<B1084096-1609-4646-871C-2BADE99CAB82 at liftingfaces.com>	<4C1BFB0C.5060009 at io.com>	<4C1C01FE.8020206 at verizon.net>	<1dff316488fc42f85415e9747fe7b944.squirrel at brunians.org>	<4C1C0512.2040908 at verizon.net>	<8AC1B1AC-C5A8-4824-A6A5-2B17E597558A at liftingfaces.com>	<4C1C1E8E.2060009 at verizon.net>	<4C1CBAC1.9070701 at verizon.net>	<4731274a877f648ef5ab97bfc57cfcfe.squirrel at brunians.org>	<4C1CC42D.1040602 at verizon.net>	<414bd9fdc0075e2200c7aaafbf3991ce.squirrel at brunians.org>
	<4C1CC9EC.9050605 at verizon.net>
Message-ID: <4C1CE866.4050802 at io.com>

On 6/19/2010 8:45 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> It doesn't explain the eye color change, though perhaps that is such a
> minor alteration as to allow us to jettison the "facedancer" technology
> (she never changes gender either), except for one point. How does she
> resemble Agilus so closely? Is that just Severian's inability to
> distinguish Asians? Or is Agilus fresh off the ship too, and Nessus has
> not seen his kind for millennia? Why do they not have Asian names?

After many chiliads of racial mixing from mechanized travel, there would 
be a  much smoother distribution of "Asian" features. Severian has seen 
many people with broad cheekbones and elongated eyes, at least by the 
time of his writing.

> Who made her? How is she so light and yet so strong? Are those common
> sex-doll specs?

She's light because she's a slender woman, and Severian has been trained 
to be able to handle even burly men. Her strength comes from her 
determination of purpose and her acquired disregard for human life over 
many con jobs and murders for profit. Was it Severian or Latro who 
discusses learning to overcome the common reluctance to strike another 
person with full force? It's the same thing here.


-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net