It took a week for her to return to normal. Solace never displayed another storm of emotions like the one that day in the park, but she wasn't her usual self either. She was quiet, reserved, stood with her arms wrapped around herself most of the time, spent most of the time staring at the sky. She didn't dance, the two days when it rained, just stood there with the water pouring over her face and plastering her hair to her head. She didn't even try to drag him out from under the safety of his umbrella. Their conversations had been stilted, short, and for the first time he had been the one doing most of the talking. It had been a most uninformative time.
But, strangely enough, he found that he wasn't impatient about the lack of productivity. Well, that in and of itself wasn't strange. He was a computer program, he had all the time in the world. What was strange was his lack of the usual distaste at being forced to keep company with a human, in a human setting. He supposed it was her silence that did it... she didn't insist on inane babble or try and make conversation or pry into anything. She simply stood there and... whatever she did. She said she enjoyed his company, but he still found that difficult to believe. He found the whole thing difficult to assimilate.
So difficult that when she was roughly back to normal, he stopped going to the park. He requested and was granted permission to return to work, and return to his deactivated state when not required. It was... refreshing, if he could feel refreshed. It was oblivion again, when he was not performing his functions as an Agent, and it was almost back to normal.
They were 'arresting' a potential Resistance recruit when he saw her again. Actually Brown and Jones saw her first, and he turned around when her hand fell on his shoulder.
"Hey, you," she smiled. "Long time no see. Where have you been?"
Brown and Jones were staring at them. He could hear their querys over the earpiece, wondering who this person was and what she was doing. They knew, of course, about his orders to further explore the range of human behavior. He realized at that point that they hadn't known about his association with this woman.
"I've ..." been at work? been called back to duty? "...been busy."
"I can see that, you haven't been into the park in two weeks. We've missed you."
Brown and Jones looked at each other. If he'd been human, Smith would have felt the backs of his ears burning.
"We?"
"Me. The birds. The squirrels. Joe."
He blinked. "Joe?"
"Joe.. the guy who sits two tables down from us and plays chess with himself and all the voices in his head? He asked where you were the other day."
"He did?"
"Actually, he asked where my husband was..."
"Husband?" All three Agents were staring at her now, and she was visibly trying not to laugh.
"That's what he thinks. Or the voices in his head think. He's under the burden of Disassociative Identity Disorder, poor man, so don't take it too personally. He's really rather sweet."
Smith ran a query on Disassociative Identity Disorder. He didn't find any substantial number of references that could explain her referring to a human with the disorder as 'sweet.' Then again, she persisted in referring to himself as 'cute,' so who knew what she was thinking. Certainly he didn't.
"And he believes that we are..."
"Well, one of him does."
"Ah." Now even the prisoner was staring at him. "I have to go."
She blushed. "Yeah, go, get back to work, sorry to hold you up, guys..." She looked up at Smith with a peculiar sort of wistfulness in her eyes. "See you tomorrow?"
"Perhaps..."
-
-
-
-
-
He did. He had no idea why he was doing it, he wasn't required to anymore. But he did go and see her the next day, against all his better judgement.
She hugged him.
He stood there for a second, frozen while time slowed to a crawling pace and he ran through his options at the speed of light. He knew this was how humans expressed affection, even platonic affection, but why was she glad to see him? Hadn't she expressed her wish to see him the last time they had met? Why had she sought him out? What was she thinking? Was he supposed to hug her back?
The moment passed again. Time resumed normal flow, and she stepped back.
"It's good to see you again," she said calmly, as though nothing had happened between them. Then again, had anything happened between them? Humans were so very irrational.
"It is good to be seen..." he said finally, making what he hoped was a play on words. Humans seemed to enjoy that kind of thing.
She smiled. "So, what have you been up to in the past couple of weeks?"
"Work."
Pause. "And what kind of work do you do?"
"Government work."
"Ahh.. very top secret, hush hush, confidential, that sort of thing?"
"Something like that."
"All right."
Silence.
"Aren't you going to ask me what I do again?"
"No. If it's confidential, then you can't tell me. Which... yes, I'm curious, but I can live with it."
"You are strange."
"You've said that before. Thank you."
"Why are you not like ..." He fumbled for a term that wasn't 'other humans.'
"... everyone else?"
"Yes."
Shrug. "Well, for one thing, you seem to be under the impression that a normality exists. The only world normality exists in is the world of numbers and figures. If you only have a limited range of options, yes, you're going to have one that a greater portion of people choose above the others. But when you get down to an individual level, a human being is made up of so many tiny reactions amd microcosmic changes that you're never going to find one identical to another."
He stared at her.
"It's true. Really, human beings aren't that different from an extremely complex computer. We just function on vastly more complex algorithms. Instead of an If, then system, an Either, or system, we work on an If, then, else-if, else-if, ad nauseum."
"Human beings are nothing like computers," he said, and he knew he sounded angry.
"Bullshit," she snorted, although she didn't sound angry. "Who do you think built the computers in the first place? Do you really think hundreds upon thousands of humans have enough creativity amongst them to create a thing that's that different from themselves?"
He didn't have an answer for that.
"Computers... oh, I've seen the movies, read the books. I know they're supposed to be smarter, faster, not burdened by emotions... all those other things. But when you get down to it... if you build a complex enough computer, you're going to get something analagous to a human. It's like... who said that first, Heinlein? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?"
"Something like that..." He could have queried it, but he wasn't paying that much attention. The theories that she was advancing were contradicting his most basic programming, what she would have called the core of his being. They were unnerving, and the thought that he was having a response much like a human would have was even more unnerving.
She sensed his unease, somehow, with a speed that almost seemed machine-like, herself. Was this how humans functioned? Taking in all this data... pupil dilation, body positions, hand movements, tone of voice, shape of the mouth, perspiration, respiration... and processing it within seconds to arrive at a hypothetical conclusion? He had never actually thought about it before. Granted, he had never understood how humans had survived before, either... but it was remarkable. And she was watching him.
"Hey..." she touched his shoulder lightly, then let her hand drop again when she saw he wasn't deriving any comfort in it. "Here, come on. We'll talk about something else."
They sat down on their customary bench. Now that he actually paid attention to his surroundings he did see Joe, mumbling to himself and darting back and forth between bench and chair, playing chess with whoever was speaking in his head at the time.
"So, how has work been going? You can tell me that, can't you?"
He shook himself out of it. "Work has been... productive."
"Good. It's good to be productive."
"Even though the persons I am apprehending are, in theory, your friends?"
"Of course. Productivity is almost always a good thing. Besides, everyone needs someone to fight against. Otherwise life would be boring."
"I thought boring was desireable."
"Not at the cost of growth. Conflict is what brings change, promotes growth. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis."
Blink. "Excuse me?"
"Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. What, you never studied philosophy?"
Query_thesis,antithesis,synthesis; result_Hegel. "I am familiar with Hegelian philosophy..."
She smiled. "But you didn't expect it from me."
"To be honest... no."
"It's all right. Lots of people underestimate me..." She smiled more broadly. Her blue and green eyes glinted with a light he didn't have the practical experience to define.
"I will remember that."
"Go ahead," she laughed. "It won't help you not underestimate me. The only thing that can do that is time."
He didn't have an answer for that one.
"But to continue with Hegel... Who, if you studied you will recall that he believed history was formed out of conflict... I think he was right. So your existance and the existance of your organization doesn't really bother me. You are the thesis, we are the antithesis, and out of us there will be a synthesis of something new and different."
If only she knew what she was saying. "Out of us...?"
She blushed. "Not us, specifically. Us in general... the government and ... whatever peacenik hippie anti-government anarchist group happens to be in the right place at the right time."
"You believe there is a right place and a right time?"
"Yes... no. I don't know..." Pause. "What do you believe?"
Longer pause. "I believe that there are opportunities that one can take... but I don't know that there is a right place or a right time."
"Just a good place and time."
"Something like that."
"So you're cautious."
"... yes..." he wasn't sure what she was getting at.
"By circumstance or by nature?"
"Excuse me?"
"Did something happen to make you cautious or are you cautious by nature?"
"By nature."
"Ah..." she smiled, nodding. "Wise man."
"You have no idea," he murmured, more to himself than to her.
She stretched out on the bench, propping her feet up on one armrest and letting her head loll on the cement. "When do you have to be back at work?"
He queried. "Not for a little while."
"Cool. Then we can play the Cloud game."
Oh, for the love of ... "What's that?"
"Finding random patterns in clouds. You're so logical and literal I don't think you'll enjoy it very much." Her eyes rolled up to look at him and she made a strange-looking face. "But I'll enjoy it, and you can watch me enjoy it."
"How do you know what I enjoy?" He asked it more to jostle her than out of any real probability that he would say he did.
"True..." she grinned. "A hit! A palpable hit!"
"Shakespeare."
"Something like that. And speaking of which..." she looked up and traced an outline with her finger. "There. That cloud looks a little like a quill pen."
He didn't see it, himself. But he could play this game... "I would say that it looks like the tail of a fox."
"Oh really? Where's the rest of the fox?"
"Over there..." he pointed. "See? There's the nose, and the rest of the body..."
She looked. "Huh. You're right. Hey, how about over there... it's the Venus de Milo."
"Without her arms..."
It must have been his usual dryness of tone that caused her to burst out giggling. He didn't see the humor in his statement, anyway. She spoke when she could breathe again. "You know, for an incredibly literal person, you're a lot of fun."
He still didn't know what to say when she popped out with things like that. "Thank you."
"You're welcome. Hey, that one kind of looks like a car..."
But, strangely enough, he found that he wasn't impatient about the lack of productivity. Well, that in and of itself wasn't strange. He was a computer program, he had all the time in the world. What was strange was his lack of the usual distaste at being forced to keep company with a human, in a human setting. He supposed it was her silence that did it... she didn't insist on inane babble or try and make conversation or pry into anything. She simply stood there and... whatever she did. She said she enjoyed his company, but he still found that difficult to believe. He found the whole thing difficult to assimilate.
So difficult that when she was roughly back to normal, he stopped going to the park. He requested and was granted permission to return to work, and return to his deactivated state when not required. It was... refreshing, if he could feel refreshed. It was oblivion again, when he was not performing his functions as an Agent, and it was almost back to normal.
They were 'arresting' a potential Resistance recruit when he saw her again. Actually Brown and Jones saw her first, and he turned around when her hand fell on his shoulder.
"Hey, you," she smiled. "Long time no see. Where have you been?"
Brown and Jones were staring at them. He could hear their querys over the earpiece, wondering who this person was and what she was doing. They knew, of course, about his orders to further explore the range of human behavior. He realized at that point that they hadn't known about his association with this woman.
"I've ..." been at work? been called back to duty? "...been busy."
"I can see that, you haven't been into the park in two weeks. We've missed you."
Brown and Jones looked at each other. If he'd been human, Smith would have felt the backs of his ears burning.
"We?"
"Me. The birds. The squirrels. Joe."
He blinked. "Joe?"
"Joe.. the guy who sits two tables down from us and plays chess with himself and all the voices in his head? He asked where you were the other day."
"He did?"
"Actually, he asked where my husband was..."
"Husband?" All three Agents were staring at her now, and she was visibly trying not to laugh.
"That's what he thinks. Or the voices in his head think. He's under the burden of Disassociative Identity Disorder, poor man, so don't take it too personally. He's really rather sweet."
Smith ran a query on Disassociative Identity Disorder. He didn't find any substantial number of references that could explain her referring to a human with the disorder as 'sweet.' Then again, she persisted in referring to himself as 'cute,' so who knew what she was thinking. Certainly he didn't.
"And he believes that we are..."
"Well, one of him does."
"Ah." Now even the prisoner was staring at him. "I have to go."
She blushed. "Yeah, go, get back to work, sorry to hold you up, guys..." She looked up at Smith with a peculiar sort of wistfulness in her eyes. "See you tomorrow?"
"Perhaps..."
-
-
-
-
-
He did. He had no idea why he was doing it, he wasn't required to anymore. But he did go and see her the next day, against all his better judgement.
She hugged him.
He stood there for a second, frozen while time slowed to a crawling pace and he ran through his options at the speed of light. He knew this was how humans expressed affection, even platonic affection, but why was she glad to see him? Hadn't she expressed her wish to see him the last time they had met? Why had she sought him out? What was she thinking? Was he supposed to hug her back?
The moment passed again. Time resumed normal flow, and she stepped back.
"It's good to see you again," she said calmly, as though nothing had happened between them. Then again, had anything happened between them? Humans were so very irrational.
"It is good to be seen..." he said finally, making what he hoped was a play on words. Humans seemed to enjoy that kind of thing.
She smiled. "So, what have you been up to in the past couple of weeks?"
"Work."
Pause. "And what kind of work do you do?"
"Government work."
"Ahh.. very top secret, hush hush, confidential, that sort of thing?"
"Something like that."
"All right."
Silence.
"Aren't you going to ask me what I do again?"
"No. If it's confidential, then you can't tell me. Which... yes, I'm curious, but I can live with it."
"You are strange."
"You've said that before. Thank you."
"Why are you not like ..." He fumbled for a term that wasn't 'other humans.'
"... everyone else?"
"Yes."
Shrug. "Well, for one thing, you seem to be under the impression that a normality exists. The only world normality exists in is the world of numbers and figures. If you only have a limited range of options, yes, you're going to have one that a greater portion of people choose above the others. But when you get down to an individual level, a human being is made up of so many tiny reactions amd microcosmic changes that you're never going to find one identical to another."
He stared at her.
"It's true. Really, human beings aren't that different from an extremely complex computer. We just function on vastly more complex algorithms. Instead of an If, then system, an Either, or system, we work on an If, then, else-if, else-if, ad nauseum."
"Human beings are nothing like computers," he said, and he knew he sounded angry.
"Bullshit," she snorted, although she didn't sound angry. "Who do you think built the computers in the first place? Do you really think hundreds upon thousands of humans have enough creativity amongst them to create a thing that's that different from themselves?"
He didn't have an answer for that.
"Computers... oh, I've seen the movies, read the books. I know they're supposed to be smarter, faster, not burdened by emotions... all those other things. But when you get down to it... if you build a complex enough computer, you're going to get something analagous to a human. It's like... who said that first, Heinlein? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?"
"Something like that..." He could have queried it, but he wasn't paying that much attention. The theories that she was advancing were contradicting his most basic programming, what she would have called the core of his being. They were unnerving, and the thought that he was having a response much like a human would have was even more unnerving.
She sensed his unease, somehow, with a speed that almost seemed machine-like, herself. Was this how humans functioned? Taking in all this data... pupil dilation, body positions, hand movements, tone of voice, shape of the mouth, perspiration, respiration... and processing it within seconds to arrive at a hypothetical conclusion? He had never actually thought about it before. Granted, he had never understood how humans had survived before, either... but it was remarkable. And she was watching him.
"Hey..." she touched his shoulder lightly, then let her hand drop again when she saw he wasn't deriving any comfort in it. "Here, come on. We'll talk about something else."
They sat down on their customary bench. Now that he actually paid attention to his surroundings he did see Joe, mumbling to himself and darting back and forth between bench and chair, playing chess with whoever was speaking in his head at the time.
"So, how has work been going? You can tell me that, can't you?"
He shook himself out of it. "Work has been... productive."
"Good. It's good to be productive."
"Even though the persons I am apprehending are, in theory, your friends?"
"Of course. Productivity is almost always a good thing. Besides, everyone needs someone to fight against. Otherwise life would be boring."
"I thought boring was desireable."
"Not at the cost of growth. Conflict is what brings change, promotes growth. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis."
Blink. "Excuse me?"
"Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. What, you never studied philosophy?"
Query_thesis,antithesis,synthesis; result_Hegel. "I am familiar with Hegelian philosophy..."
She smiled. "But you didn't expect it from me."
"To be honest... no."
"It's all right. Lots of people underestimate me..." She smiled more broadly. Her blue and green eyes glinted with a light he didn't have the practical experience to define.
"I will remember that."
"Go ahead," she laughed. "It won't help you not underestimate me. The only thing that can do that is time."
He didn't have an answer for that one.
"But to continue with Hegel... Who, if you studied you will recall that he believed history was formed out of conflict... I think he was right. So your existance and the existance of your organization doesn't really bother me. You are the thesis, we are the antithesis, and out of us there will be a synthesis of something new and different."
If only she knew what she was saying. "Out of us...?"
She blushed. "Not us, specifically. Us in general... the government and ... whatever peacenik hippie anti-government anarchist group happens to be in the right place at the right time."
"You believe there is a right place and a right time?"
"Yes... no. I don't know..." Pause. "What do you believe?"
Longer pause. "I believe that there are opportunities that one can take... but I don't know that there is a right place or a right time."
"Just a good place and time."
"Something like that."
"So you're cautious."
"... yes..." he wasn't sure what she was getting at.
"By circumstance or by nature?"
"Excuse me?"
"Did something happen to make you cautious or are you cautious by nature?"
"By nature."
"Ah..." she smiled, nodding. "Wise man."
"You have no idea," he murmured, more to himself than to her.
She stretched out on the bench, propping her feet up on one armrest and letting her head loll on the cement. "When do you have to be back at work?"
He queried. "Not for a little while."
"Cool. Then we can play the Cloud game."
Oh, for the love of ... "What's that?"
"Finding random patterns in clouds. You're so logical and literal I don't think you'll enjoy it very much." Her eyes rolled up to look at him and she made a strange-looking face. "But I'll enjoy it, and you can watch me enjoy it."
"How do you know what I enjoy?" He asked it more to jostle her than out of any real probability that he would say he did.
"True..." she grinned. "A hit! A palpable hit!"
"Shakespeare."
"Something like that. And speaking of which..." she looked up and traced an outline with her finger. "There. That cloud looks a little like a quill pen."
He didn't see it, himself. But he could play this game... "I would say that it looks like the tail of a fox."
"Oh really? Where's the rest of the fox?"
"Over there..." he pointed. "See? There's the nose, and the rest of the body..."
She looked. "Huh. You're right. Hey, how about over there... it's the Venus de Milo."
"Without her arms..."
It must have been his usual dryness of tone that caused her to burst out giggling. He didn't see the humor in his statement, anyway. She spoke when she could breathe again. "You know, for an incredibly literal person, you're a lot of fun."
He still didn't know what to say when she popped out with things like that. "Thank you."
"You're welcome. Hey, that one kind of looks like a car..."