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Andrew smiles at the same lines that had moved the robot.
You pass the Turing test, too, the robot says.
Andrew laughs harder still.
>>>>>
The robot is digging entirely through basalt flow now, layer upon layer.
It's the bottom of the raft, Andrew says. It is dense, but the plates are as light as ocean froth compared to
what's under them. Or so we think.
The temperature increases exponentially, and the humans in the support wagon would be killed instantly if
they did not have nuclear-powered air conditioners.
The robot does not become bored at the sameness of the rock, but finds a comfort in the steady digging,
a rhythm, as the robot comes to call this feeling. Not the rhythm of most music, or the beat of the
language in poetry all of these the robot identifies with humans, for when they arise, humans have been
doing the creating but a new rhythm, which is neither the whine of the robot's machinery nor the crush
and crumble of the rock, nor the supersonic screech of the pile making diamond glass from the rock's
ashes. Instead, it is the combination of these things with the poetry, with the memories of the field and the
forest.
So it is one day that the robot experiences a different rhythm, a different sound, and realizes that this
rhythm is not the robot's own, and does not belong to the humans. At first, it is incomprehensible, like
distant music, or the faded edges of reception just before a comlink relays to satellite or to ground tower.
The robot wonders if the rhythm, the sound, is imaginary. But it continues, and seems to grow day by day
in increments almost too small to notice, until it is definitely, definitely there, but where, the robot cannot
say. In the rock. That is the only way of putting it, but says nothing.
Andrew does not know what it could be. So there is nothing to do but note it, and go on digging.
>>>>>
The robot begins to read fiction. But the feelings, the resonances and depths of the poetry, are not so
much present in prose. There is the problem of knowing what the author might be talking about, since the
robot's only experience living in the human world is the field and now the dig. Dickens leaves the robot
stunned and wondering, and after a week attempting Oliver Twist, the robot must put the book aside until
the situations and characters become clearer. Curiously, the robot finds that Jane Austen's novels are
comprehensible and enjoyable, although the life of English country gentry is as close to the robot as the
life of a newt under a creek stone. The robot is filled with relief when Emma finally ceases her endless
machinations and realizes her love for Knightley. It is as if some clogged line in the robot's hydraulics had
a sudden release of pressure or rock that had long been hard and tough became easy to move through.
For some time, the robot does not read books that were written closer to the present, for the robot
wants to understand the present most of all, and in reading them now, the robot thinks, much would go
unnoticed.
You can always reread them later, Andrew says. Just because you know the plot of something doesn't
mean it isn't worth going through again, even though sometimes it does mean that.
I know that, the robot says. That is not what I'm worried about.
Then what are you worried about?
The old books get looser, the farther back in time they go, like string that's played out. The new ones are
bunched and it's harder to see all of them.
What?
For the first time, the robot feels something that either cannot be communicated or, nearly as
unbelievable, that Andrew cannot understand. Andrew is a scientist. The robot will never be a scientist.
>>>>>
Two months after the robot has walked along the Quinault with Andrew, it is July, and Andrew tells the
robot that Laramie will visit over the weekend.
The robot is at first excited and thinks of things to ask her. There are so many memories of Laramie, but
so much is blurred, unconnected. And there are things the robot wishes to tell her, new things about the
land that Victor never knew. So much has happened. The robot imagines long conversations between
them, perhaps walking in the woods together once again.
Andrew tells me that you may not be happy with the enthalpic impression of your father being
downloaded into me. No, that wouldn't be the way to say it. But getting too metaphorical might upset
her, remind her of ghosts. Of Victor Wu's death.
No. That's all right. Go on, says the imaginary Laramie.
Well, I don't know what to tell you. I remember you, Laramie. I remember you and I would be lying if I
didn't say that your being here profoundly affects me.
I can't say how I feel about this, robot. What should I call you, robot?
But just as quickly, the robot puts aside such hopes. I am a robot, all of metal and ceramics. I am not
Laramie's father. There are only vague memories, and that was another life. She may not even speak to
me. I am a ghost to her. Worse than a ghost, a twisted reflection. She'll hate me for what has happened
to her father. And again the robot imagines Laramie's disdain, as just and foreseeable as the man's death
in "To Build a Fire," but cold in that way, too.
Finally, the robot resolves not to think any more of it. But while Andrew sleeps on the Friday night before
Laramie's visit, the robot inhabits the mu, and goes roaming through trackless woods, along crisscrossed
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