The Radiant Warrior

Interlude One

I hit the STOP button.

"So what killed them, Tom?"

"I don't know. I can check it out if you wish."

He turned on a keyboard and began typing.

"With all our technology, why hasn't somebody developed some decent artificial-intelligence programs? It can't be all that difficult. Then you wouldn't have to use that silly keyboard," I said.

"Such programs have been developed. I've just forbidden their use. Machine intelligence is dehumanizing to the people that use it. I like people and I want to live in a human world."

"Aren't you exaggerating a bit?"

"I don't think so. The ballet they put on last night. Did you enjoy it?"

"Sure. It was great. What does that have to do with computers?"

"Everything. That whole show could have been simulated by a computer and displayed in one of our tanks to a degree of accuracy such that you couldn't tell if it was real or not. Would it have been the same?"

"Hmm… No, somehow I don't think so, but I'm not sure why."

"Well I am. What makes ballet or any other art form worthwhile is the fact that it is done by people. When you watched the dancers, you were putting yourself in their place, imagining what they were thinking and feeling. A recording or transmission of that performance would not have been as good, because you would have been farther removed from the people doing it. A mere computer display of the same show would have been absolutely worthless."

"But if you didn't know-"

"Maybe you could have been fooled. But you would have been angry when you found out. Back to that dead family. It was an onion mold got them. Toxin 8771 from mold 15395, extinct in 1462. The really deadly ones don't last very long. Killing your host, or the people who cultivate your host, is bad ecology and not good for your own survival."

He hit the START button.