1n1REzE

Peter Watts 274 Blindsight
hostility. Just so profoundly alien that they couldn't help but treat
human language itself as a form of combat.
How do you say We come in peace when the very words are an
act of war
"That's why they won't talk to us," I realized.
"Only if Jukka's right. He may not be." It was James again, still
quietly resisting, still unwilling to concede a point that even her
other selves had accepted. I could see why. Because if Sarasti was
right, scramblers were the norm: evolution across the universe
was nothing but the endless proliferation of automatic, organized
complexity, a vast arid Turing machine full of self-replicating
machinery forever unaware of its own existence. And we—we
were the flukes and the fossils. We were the flightless birds
lauding our own mastery over some remote island while serpents
and carnivores washed up on our shores. Susan James could not
bring herself to concede that point—because Susan James, her
multiple lives built on the faith that communication resolves all
conflict, would then be forced to admit the lie. If Sarasti was right,
there was no hope of reconciliation.
A memory rose into my mind and stuck there: a man in motion,
head bent, mouth twisted into an unrelenting grimace. His eyes
focused on one foot, then the other. His legs moved stiffly,
carefully. His arms moved not at all. He lurched like a zombie in
thrall to rigor mortis.
I knew what it was. Proprioreceptive polyneuropathy, a case
study I'd encountered in ConSensus back before Szpindel had died.
This was what Pag had once compared me to; a man who had lost
his mind. Only self-awareness remained. Deprived of the
unconscious sense and subroutines he had always taken for
granted, he'd had to focus on each and every step across the room.
His body no longer knew where its limbs were or what they were
doing. To move at all, to even remain upright, he had to bear
constant witness.
There'd been no sound when I'd played that file. There was none
now in its recollection. But I swore I could feel Sarasti at my
shoulder, peering into my memories. I swore I heard him speak in
my mind like a schizophrenic hallucination: