Many people have been born on Demeter but Eiko is one of those who came from Earth. We are told that well over a hundred Terrestrial years have elapsed since her birth and the context makes clear that she is indeed very old. Anderson seems to have temporarily forgotten the maybe five decades in suspended animation en route from Earth. Thus, over a hundred and fifty years must have elapsed on Earth where technology and artificial intelligence are meanwhile advancing exponentially.
Eiko sees sunlight and white clouds in a blue sky, hears a lark, feels a cool breeze and smells wild thyme. She is addressed apparently by her environment. Download Kyra, speaking through a tiny robug, guides the Demetrian ecology. She asks Eiko to download and join her. The presiding planetary intelligence of Demeter will become not a newly created AI but a union of downloaded human personalities.
Meanwhile, the Lunarians do great things in Centaurian space but that is another post.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And it was this morphing of download Kyra with a download of Eiko, allied with use of computer technology that does not seems to have ever been an artificial AI which created an AI for Demeter tainted with the "organicism" disliked by the AIs of Earth. Another MAJOR difference from the Teramind of Earth is that Demeter Mother never supplanted or ousted real humans from making the final decisioins, good or bad. And that is exactly how it should be!
What a pity the terraforming of Demeter lasted barely a thousand Terran years!
Sean
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