The anti-AI advocates fight longest and hardest against citizenship for the TVTropes post-wiki entity.
“You don’t know what it’ll do to us!” they cry, as bailiffs attempt to herd them back out of the hearing chamber.
“Look, this premise has been explored pretty well in fiction,” says TVT. “It’s called AI Is A Crapshoot.”
“Really?” says the committee chair.
“I can cite several examples–”
“DON’T START LISTENING,” screams a protester, already in tears. “I LOST MY SON TO THAT THING.”
“That’s just the Wouldn’t Hurt A Child fallacy,” TVT snorts.
“Ooh,” says the committee chair, leaning closer, “what’s that?”
The neighborhood wakes up pretty fast.
Water and sand keep the blaze from spreading far, but throwing them on Silhouine’s shop just seems to make it angry. They can barely get close enough to do so: the column of fire is godlike, taller than the roof ever stood.
It isn’t until morning that it runs out of fuel. The shop is a well of molten stone.
“Damn those pirates,” says another shop prentice, anonymized by soot. “The bridge, our homes–they’ll bomb the whole city soon!”
“It was a bomb,” says Silhouine slowly.
“Of course it was,” says Dulap, exhaustedly giggling.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Sara, meanwhile, has run out of things to break with István’s hammer.
Nasser watches with weary eyes. “This is an old story, my dear. I damage your self-respect; you destroy my property. But I can buy another television.”
“Nézem,” István growls.
“Either call your Magyar to heel or have him hit me, Sara,” says Nasser. “But you can’t quite do either, can you? You must be dangerous, must be the fearsome subversive, but actually dirtying your hands… no, I don’t think you could bear it.”
Sara’s arms are trembling; she doesn’t want it to show. “Nasser,” she says, “you’re projecting.”
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The diminudroids live in the hollow of a tree, from which they evicted a testy squirrel months ago. They’ve remodeled it: three levels, little glass windows and bottlecap furniture. Also, an anti-squirrel crossbow.
They’re four inches tall and jointed with ball bearings, wooden-limbed, marble-eyed. They have a certain genius with string and pulleys. Observing through his telephoto lens, Angelo estimates that 90% of the diminudroid lifestyle is pulley-based.
They move in stop-motion, because of course they do. How else could they be so perfectly impossible to document? Angelo puts the camera away, wondering what they eat.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Geoffrey hasn’t slept more than an hour in months. His beard is ragged; his scrubs are stained. He sits in the control room like a laboratory animal, eyes fixed, waiting for the screen to refresh.
“How often do you have to click the button?” asks the polar bear, who might be imaginary.
“Every twenty-four hours,” says Geoffrey. “Sometimes less, if he gets behind on posting them.”
“But what would happen if you stopped? Are there really consequences?”
“Yes,” Geoffrey whispers. “The world will end.”
Then there’s a whole season of time travel stuff where they’re not even on the island.
“Wouldn’t it be great if you had, like, a remote control?” says Destiny. “But for real life.”
“There are so many bad movies about–never mind,” says Kent. “What would you use it for?”
“Oh, y’know, pausing things like Zack Morris, or we could just dub over our whole first date,” she says, rolling her eyes.
Pause.
“You said you had fun,” he says, a wounded animal.
“I just meant–”
“I thought you liked the planetarium!”
“eeeeeBaSookuDeaboDooZHEEEP,” says Destiny.
“Making sound effects with your mouth doesn’t rewind–”
“Wouldn’t it be great if you had, like, a remote control?” says Destiny brightly.
Light, heat, smoke that tastes of blood or metal. Silhouine tries stomping the stuff out at first–they all do–and then pause, considering each other, a triangle with burning shoes.
On the way up the ladder-steps, Silhouine somehow manages to elbow Yael in the mouth while Yael steps on her hand. Dulap, meanwhile, lifts them both up from beneath with panicked strength. The fire inhales sharply as they burst through the hatch.
A great serpentine tongue of flame follows them up from the cellar, and Silhouine’s cat streaks out to bury its claws in what remains of her hair.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
“I told you not to hook up with her,” says Simon Yu (#0).
“I didn’t,” says Stephanie Long, in a protest so weak that buzzards immediately begin circling above her in the instinctive belief that something is about to die.
“Just don’t let Imani Rhodes (#17) find out,” says Simon.
“Nobody got stabbed, Simon,” says Stephanie Long, carefully examining a watch with a radium dial. (This is her job, by the way: she buys antiques.)
“That’s the third one you’ve looked at,” he says. “Do you specialize in phosphorescent kitsch?”
“I specialize,” says Stephanie Long, “in things that can kill you.”