8.1 KiB
[RT][HF] The Maker's Ark, Chapter 42: Stories and Puzzles
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Author: u/DocFuture *
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URL: http://docfuture.tumblr.com/post/170780226871/the-makers-ark-chapter-42
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Score: 14
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Created: 2018-02-12T02:36:10
Post:
Comments:
u/DocFuture [+2] (5 minutes later)
Had a long struggle with pacing on this one, but there should be enough hints, old and new, to keep you interested. And a Chekhov's gun I put on the mantle more than five years ago finally goes off...
u/everything-narrative [+2] Coral, Abide with Rubicon! (a day later)
Forgive me for asking a stupid question, but I started reading about a year back, so I forgot what props are on stage. What gun?
Also, this story is amazing.
u/DocFuture [+2] (a day later)
Thank you 8-) And the gun is metaphorical, see the answer to eaglejarl's question, above. The setup happened all the way back near the beginning of Fall. I have enough of a Chekhov's armory in the backstory at this point that it's not really reasonable to expect people to remember all of it--it's more of a in retrospect thing.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (21 hours later)
Which gun was that?
u/DocFuture [+1] (22 hours later)
Stella telling Doc she didn't want more than one body at a time, and also that she wanted Yiskah's--why would that be so important unless she considered her own death to be likely? Unfortunately I discovered I had Yiskah let that cat out of the bag already in Chapter 34 of Call--not that Flicker was really listening to her 8-)
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (8 hours later)
Stella has so many layers, I wonder whether there's actually a core under them all? And if there is, could anyone ever trust that they had reached it?
u/DocFuture [+1] (14 hours later)
Oh, there are people who understand her. At least one of them is even human. It just isn't Doc. 8-)
u/eaglejarl [+2] (18 hours later)
I'm very glad to see this again, but this particular chapter wasn't to my taste. Pure infodump exposition without any actual plot advancement, and I just want to slap Stella. If I were Doc I would have said something to the effect of, "Seriously? You're bitching at me for bringing you back to life? Look, all the information I had at the time said it was the right thing to do and you hadn't told me not to. As to this 'I did not give positive assent' nonsense: standard medical practice is that patients are resuscitated unless they have taken a positive action to file a DNR. If you wanted to not be brought back, it was your job to tell me, not my job to read your mind. Plus, bringing you back means that you have the choice -- if you wanted to be alive then great, you're alive. If you wanted to be dead, go get dead. We're done here."
u/DocFuture [+2] (20 hours later)
Interesting. Stella's view is that she was alive, and doing just fine after a successful body swap, until Doc decided to insist on reanimating her old brain, giving it a new body, and treating it as the real her. The crux of the problem is that Stella is a transhumanist and Flicker isn't. From Skybreaker's Call, Chapter 34:
" "You!" she said to the screen, interrupting Doc. "Three. You aren't Stella. You're a copy that doesn't want to give up being in charge. Margie, don't listen to Three, Stella would want to come back." "You're certain of that, are you?" ... "I had a certain fondness for that body, but it's done, and I don't need it anymore. No extraordinary measures are required.""
u/eaglejarl [+3] (22 hours later)
I had forgotten that scene and was working off only what was in this chapter. Still, after going back and re-reading the full thing, here's what I see:
- Yiskah had no firm opinion either way on whether Stella would want to come back in her original body.
- Doc had legitimate reason to think that it would be dangerous to not bring Stella's original body back.
- Despite that, he asked permission before going ahead and doing it.
- Starship Stella at first said she didn't want the old body brought back, but was then convinced by Doc's arguments and okayed the procedure.
I'd say Doc handled that just about perfectly and Stella needs to get over it. Doc didn't do it out of sentimentality, he did it because he saw that not bringing her back posed a legitimate risk to Stella-the-starship-fleet and (implicitly, because unfettered strong AI with no connection to the human race is dangerous) to the human race.
Seriously, Stella...if you're a transhumanist who is completely convinced that you're alive in the starships and your human body is irrelevant and unwanted, why are you wasting time on complaining when you could be killing this body? The fact that you're sitting here getting snippy with Doc says that you-this-human-body actually do want to live and therefore he did the right thing. You can't have it both ways.
u/DocFuture [+2] (23 hours later)
Spoilers. But it should be apparent by now that she considers her human body currently relevant, whether she is happy in it or not. The Doc/Stella conversation is far from over--it will continue next chapter. Trying to fit everything I wanted into this chapter is one reason it was exposition heavy and a month late. 8-) If I were rewriting Ark, this part would be back about ten chapters for better pacing--one of the risks when you serialize a complicated multi-viewpoint novel without an outline.
u/DocFuture [+1] (a day later)
Think I finally see the problem: You seem to be evaluating Doc's actions from a deontological perspective--but Doc (and all the other major characters) are consequentialists. They aren't arguing about whether he had good intent--he's trying to figure out where he went wrong evaluating the consequences (and the obstacles to to getting those right). In Doc and Stella's view, if you have a lot of power or can do extraordinary things, the only safe way to judge your actions is by consequences--it doesn't matter if you had good intent. That's why she says "You don't know me well enough"--he screwed up in evaluating the personal consequences for her. If it looks like a reasonable mistake--well it better be; he's the smartest man in the world and an experienced superhero. He doesn't make mistakes without a reason.
EDIT: See her reasons (based on consequences) for agreeing in the 2nd scene of chapter 9 of Maker's Ark here.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+2] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (21 hours later)
If this is Stella's problem I'm curious why she hasn't re-integrated and taken some offload path a-la what you would see in a Serbernost (body is effectively a page file subversion of the prime aspect) or the "Yoink" approach of Bank's Trancended m(M)inds. I'm going to have to re-read a lot (all) of the Stella chapters and go look through some ideas on the topic. Thanks for such a question raising chapter.
u/DocFuture [+2] (a day later)
The software is still in alpha, there are still a few bugs in the system, and she has no 'secure erase' function 8-). More seriously, anything drastic risks causing the most powerful being in the world to decide that a malevolent biogestalt just murdered her best friend.
A couple of notes for your reread, in no particular order:
Try rereading Golden Valkyrie's first appearance in Fall from the viewpoint that everything she says and does is aimed at or intended to cover for Stella.
Pay attention to the first thing GV says to Stella in chapter 27 of Call, and her reply.
The only scenes of Maker's Ark that include Stella and are from her viewpoint should be in chapters 9 and 10. I didn't have all the biogestalt details and terminology worked out yet then, so I would probably write the first couple of paragraphs of her first scene in chapter 9 a little differently now, but the rest is still spot on and very relevant.