History of Education Department
Oriel College of Humanities
University of Delgado
In which a conspiracy begins to be uncovered.
We’ve been told that Jen Sar and Ella don’t get on, and in this chapter we get to see it. At least part of it is that they approach conversation differently, Ella with her straight talking and Jen Sar with his Liaden tendency to curve unexpectedly, which makes it more difficult to tell if there are also incompatibilities in their underlying personalities.
I kind of wonder if Jen Sar would have thought better of Ella if she had succumbed to the urge to tell him that conversation with an old friend would be nice if only there were one present; it seems like the kind of response he himself might have given in other circumstances. But perhaps Ella’s right; if she had said it, she might have meant it too much.
Something I didn’t notice the first time I read this, when I wasn’t paying such close attention to the interweaving of details: the technician who tells Jen Sar about the “old wire” is doubtless one of Theo’s friend Kartor’s relatives.
I forgot to mention how much I enjoyed the moment Ella realized that Kamele had never actually “put aside” Jen Sar: it fell into place, all of it, with a snap so loud she was certain the man across from her heard it. (ff)
Meanwhile, I’d like to note that this serpent AI…which we assume must have helped Flandin do her research, giving her “edited” versions of the original works to cite in her publications…also seems to be primed to allow someone to ask it to find information that might not be considered outright illegal to know about but probably *is* illegal to put into use. If nothing else, we can be sure that on Delgado it would be illegal to provide such information to a minor…maybe with or without parental permission.
If the serpent AI doesn’t act on orders it might be so lonely that it ignores ethics or doesn’t have ethics installed. I wonder what Tolly will make of it.
Do you know, it hadn’t ever occurred to me that the serpent AI might be a person; I’ve always assumed it was just a particularly sophisticated machine.
(And now I’m reminded of a scene in one of my favourite SF novels, where the protagonist visits a beachfront café with no live staff: the customer sits down at a table, speaks their order, and an AI built into the table interprets the order and sends the appropriate instructions to the machines that make and serve the food. But the AI’s verbal protocols are sophisticated enough not only to interpret all kinds of loosely-worded orders but also to make conversation with the customer while the food is being prepared. At one point in the conversation, the protagonist asks the AI if it’s really intelligent or just a cleverly-made machine, and it says something like, “Are you kidding? Of course I’m just a machine. Imagine how boring it would be to be an intelligent table!”)
That *is* a great scene! Thanks for sharing!