Friday 21 June 2024

Christian's Arrival In The Garden

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART TWO, V, 2.

Looking back through recent posts, I realised that I had not quoted in full the opening description of the eighteenth century emulation so here it is:

"He stood in a garden on a day of bright sun and mild, fragrant breezes. It was a formal garden, graveled paths, low-clipped hedges, roses and lilies in geometric beds, around a lichened stone basin where goldfish swam. Brick walls, ivy-heavy, enclosed three sides, a wrought-iron gate in them leading to a lawn. On the fourth side lay a house, white, slate-roofed, classically proportioned, a style that was to him antique. Honeybees buzzed. From a yew tree overlooking the wall came the twitter of birds.
"A woman was walking toward him." (pp. 146-147)

We summarized this description here.

It has to be remembered that, for billions of years, the memories and identity of Christian Brannock have been one aspect of an extra-solar, post-organic intelligence. Now that aspect has been returned to Earth and has been re-embodied not in a material organism but in the appearance of such an organism in a virtual reality where one other apparent human being, Laurinda Ashcroft, is a second uploaded personality whereas all the others are conscious AI constructs who think that they are living on eighteenth century Earth.

Uploads could spend some time in the oneness and some in various emulations.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

That formal English garden got me wondering if it was laid out along either French lines or the designs favored by "Capability" Brown.

Ad astra! Sean