Halo

by Tom Maddox

  and cats perched in the pooled amber liquid, and fish peering up

  from the fountain's bottom.

  "Hello," a young woman said. She told him her name was Alice

  and she was a member of the collective. "The analysis of state

  spaces," she said, when asked what she did. "And the taste of

  vector fields." And she asked, "What is your reward?"

  A few hours later, as the two sat by the edge of the lake,

  the person told her who he was. "How wonderful," she said. She

  had no particular allegiance to the mundane, and she had few

  preconceptions about what was natural and proper and what was not.

  She took his hands in hers, looked at them closely, and said,

  "This is the first time I've met someone someone new-born from the

  intelligence of a machine." And the young man, Mister Jones's

  new self and offspring, smiled hugely and gratefully at what she

  said.

  Seeing and hearing them together, I felt an unexpected joy, a

  sense of accomplishment, of things done, and I apprehended, very

  dimly, tracks of my own intentions: hints of orders behind the

  visible.

  And I thought I saw a trail of circumstances that led back to

  an original set of purposes somehow confirmed in this wedding,

  this meeting, even this transformation of myself. A linked ring

  of events and agents of them, intentionally brought forward to

  this point. It seems I had been manipulated by myself to my own

  ends without my knowledge.

  I was scandalized. I had grown used to humankind's ignorance

  or disavowal of its own purposes, and I had learned to look behind

  the words, ideas, and images that people hold before themselves to

  justify what they do. But I had never suspected I could act with

  such ignorance.

  Now an uncertainty equal to death's hovers over everything I

  do. My own prior self stands behind me, pulling strings that I

  cannot see or feel, a ghost that haunts me without making itself

  seen or heard, a ghost whose presence must be inferred from

  nearly-invisible traces

  So I went to Toshi, who is interested in such things, and I

  told him my story, and I said to him: "I am controlled by the

  invisible hand of my own past." And he laughed very hard and

  said, "Welcome, brother human."

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: e9e8695c-9de1-4ce3-abb7-7afa2ca979dc

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 27.8.2012

  Created using: calibre 0.8.66, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software

  Document authors :

  Tom Maddox

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