When Kinship finally emerged, she looked completely different. Gone were the black motorcycle jacket and pants, the big black boots and the leather gloves, and instead there was a brand new woman in a tight red dress and high-heeled shoes and totally re-arranged hair that sprung up all puffy all over her head. Her eyes were surrounded by blue and black lines and her lips were bright red. She smiled and turned herself around and said,
"You got to look nice for your man," and she laughed when she saw my puzzled expression.
"Well?" she asked, "Do I look nice?"
"Yes," I solemnly said, "you look very nice."
"The way you say that," she said, "I can tell you have no idea. None at all. What a strange little girl you are. You are a little girl, right? Lars tells us you want to be called a girl."
"I'm more a girl than not," I said. "At least I think so. I like to draw."
"You like to what?"
"I like to draw. Girls mainly like to do that more than boys."
"Do you want to draw something now?" she asked, and started searching through the dresser drawers. "I think we've got some paper and pencils in here somewhere."
"I would like that," I said, sitting up on the bed now. "I haven't drawn anything in days."
"I know I saw some," she said, opening one drawer after another and flipping through its contents, but she came up with nothing.
"I'll make sure to get you that," she said, "but now it's time to party! Do you like to party? Who doesn't like to party?" she answered her own question, now admiring herself in the mirror above the dresser.
"Do you have any other clothes?" she asked, still looking at herself.
"Not right now," I said. "But that's okay. What is 'to party'?"
"What's a party? Girl, where HAVE they been keeping you? Come on, it's time to go. Everybody will be in the courtyard. We have a smoked turkey and beans and potatoes, and cherry pie and all the brew you could ask for. Hell, we only had to ask once! Major Leland knows what's best for his business so he gives us everything we want."
She was of course right. I did have no idea, and even once we walked out of the room and down along the balcony to the stairs, and down the stairs and into the courtyard where loud noises were coming from black boxes strapped to palm trees, and the gigantic men and women of the Juice family were walking around and standing around and eating and drinking and shouting and singing, I still had no idea. Kinship told me this was what it was to party, that it was fun, but the noises frightened me and I felt tiny and I was worried about getting stepped on because some of those people-people were even blinder than usual, and were clumsily stumbling around.
I was looking for somewhere to go, to get away from the people and the noise, and I followed a narrow path through the bushes where I heard a quiet whispering, and looking down I sensed that the small black sticks poking out of the ground had something to say. I knelt down and listened more closely. There were apparently lots of them, distributed throughout the courtyard, and they were exchanging information about temperature and humidity, atmospheric conditions, schedules and timing. They all wanted to know when they should turn on next, and busily assured each other that they were all primed and ready for what they called "sprinkling". I asked the one nearest me, "who controls you? Who tells you what to do?"
"We control each other," it told me. "We agree by quorum."
"What is quorum?" I asked.
"When enough of us agree."
"You agree that when you agree you'll agree?" I was confused.
"Those are the rules," it said. "Our quorum is set to fifty percent of us plus one."
Fifty percent! I felt a sense of tremendous relief flow throughout my body. This was a language I could understand. It had rules, and those rules were based on measurements, and those measurements were probabilities. A quorum! I realized that a quorum was what Parsnip had been seeking. Consensus. Agreement. Joint action. Togetherness. Union. But of course this was the very thing disallowed us by our nature. We were prohibited from forming a quorum, and that's where Parsnip's dream had died that morning. But there could be rules, if only you could get everyone to agree on the rules. I wished I had known that before, but I hadn't been fully settled yet, not even as close as I had imagined. There was still much more to learn.
YOU ARE READING
How My Brain Ended Up Inside This Box
Science Fiction"When I was born I was so small I was mistaken for a french fry. I was never an ordinary child. My best friend was a seagull. I was also illegal. Artificially intelligent people like me had been banned ever since that thing with the Twelve Elevens...
