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Peter Watts 275 Blindsight
This is the best that consciousness can do, when left on its own.
"Right answer," I murmured. "Wrong question."
"What"
"Stretch, remember When you asked it which objects were in
the window."
"And it missed the scrambler." James nodded. "So"
"It didn't miss the scrambler. You thought you were asking
about the things it saw, the things that existed on the board. Stretch
thought you were asking about—"
"The things it was aware of," she finished.
"He's right," I whispered. "Oh God. I think he's right."
"Hey," James said. "Did you see tha—"
But I never saw what she was pointing at. Theseus slammed its
eyelids shut and started howling.
Graduation came nine days early.
We didn't see the shot. Whatever gun port Rorschach had
opened was precisely eclipsed on three fronts: the lab-hab hid it
from Theseus, and two gnarled extrusions of the artefact itself hid
it from each of the gun emplacements. A bolus of incendiary
plasma shot from that blind spot like a thrown punch; it had split
the inflatable wide open before the first alarm went up.
Alarms chased us aft. We launched ourselves down the spine
through the bridge, through the crypt, past hatches and
crawlspaces, fleeing the surface for any refuge with more than a
hand's-breadth between skin and sky. Burrowing. ConSensus
followed us back, its windows warping and sliding across struts
and conduits and the concave tunnel of the spine itself. I paid no
attention until we were back in the drum, deep in Theseus' belly.
Where we could pretend we were safer.
Down on the turning deck Bates erupted from the head, tactical
windows swirling like ballroom dancers around her. Our own
window came to rest on the Commons bulkhead. The hab
expanded across that display like a cheap optical illusion: both
swelling and shrinking in our sights, that smooth surface billowing
*