natural calluses, and that was carrying naturality to extremesâsomething I tried not to do. I could sense my oxygen demand rising, both physically and through the selfnet. My lips curled, and I forced my legs to stretch out despite the discomfort.
Dialogue line two: No aliensânot even the cybs? Next youâll be saying thereâs no difference between virtual-net real and whole-body real.
Conthesis one: Is there a difference between reality, symbolic reality, and representative/virtual reality? One might as well ask whether there is a difference between women, pictures of women, and mannequins dressed as women ⦠or soulsongs of beloved women.
Soulsongs of beloved women ⦠beloved woman ⦠.
I ran with the breeze, breathing heavily, setting each foot in harmony, mind out ahead and scouting the trees and the path, relaying the information to my body. The scent of the meleysen leaves to the northeast drifted into my nostrils, and I stepped up the pace.
Conthesis two: I donât have one.
As I panted up to the top of the next hill to the west, the breeze strengthened, cooling me, and bringing the slightest acrid scent of a distant vorpal. My hand touched the knife, and my lips curled, but no vorpal would come after me, not with my luck.
As I kept moving across the hilltop, dodging rocks and cedars and junipers, the coolness did nothing to unscramble the thoughts and emotions within.
Fine excuse for a demi I was, unable to break free of the hold of the past, the hold of the memory of floral essence on bare skin, the hold of ⦠.
Too bad the cybs had forsaken integration in favor of crystalline clarity. I almost laughed at that, and had Morgen been there in more than soulsong, I would have.
Instead of staying on the path, I turned due south and darted this way and that downhill and through the piñons, trying to avoid any spot where I might have run before. The soil wasnât cryptozoic, even away from the meleysens. It just hadnât ever been that fertile, although it was richer under the trees and around the pale blue-green of the sagebrush. Lava takes millions of years to degrade in a dry climate, and the sagebrush hadnât been working on the black stone anywhere near that long.
I kept running, and the pressure of the physical shut down my internal dialogues.
When I slowed to a fast walk near the top of the next rise, I was breathing heavily, and sweating. Through the trees to the north, I could see the grasslands and the hummocks of the prairie dog town, rising above the chest-high and browned grasses. Swift-Fall-Hunter circled, then passed on, looking for easier prey.
The sourness of my sweat and the panting confirmed that Iâd neglected my physical condition more than I should have. With the slowing down, something from a pile of rocks caught my eye and sensesârather, the absence of something did.
Under another old and twisted cedar, among the lichen-covered dark gray rocks, lurked a chunk of darknessâa blackness that swallowed light, that turned seeking eyes from it: a curved fragment of black adiamante. I squatted, letting my fingers ease the adiamante up.
How long had it rested there, impervious to age, to deterioration, to anything but the mighty lines of force that had sheared it into a smooth-sided and round polygon whose exact dimensions still eluded the eye?
I lifted the adiamante, a relic of the great confrontation between the demis and the cybs that had led to the Rebuilding. Neither warm nor cool to the touch, neither seeking nor releasing heat, the smooth blacknessâheavier than hardwood, lighter than iron, and stronger than anything made by man before or sinceâlay in my hands.
After a moment, I replaced it in the rocks and straightened up. Adiamanteâharder than the diamond from which its name had been derived, and virtually useless except in a handful of applications like armor and spacecraft hulls ⦠and, I supposed,
Dialogue line two: No aliensânot even the cybs? Next youâll be saying thereâs no difference between virtual-net real and whole-body real.
Conthesis one: Is there a difference between reality, symbolic reality, and representative/virtual reality? One might as well ask whether there is a difference between women, pictures of women, and mannequins dressed as women ⦠or soulsongs of beloved women.
Soulsongs of beloved women ⦠beloved woman ⦠.
I ran with the breeze, breathing heavily, setting each foot in harmony, mind out ahead and scouting the trees and the path, relaying the information to my body. The scent of the meleysen leaves to the northeast drifted into my nostrils, and I stepped up the pace.
Conthesis two: I donât have one.
As I panted up to the top of the next hill to the west, the breeze strengthened, cooling me, and bringing the slightest acrid scent of a distant vorpal. My hand touched the knife, and my lips curled, but no vorpal would come after me, not with my luck.
As I kept moving across the hilltop, dodging rocks and cedars and junipers, the coolness did nothing to unscramble the thoughts and emotions within.
Fine excuse for a demi I was, unable to break free of the hold of the past, the hold of the memory of floral essence on bare skin, the hold of ⦠.
Too bad the cybs had forsaken integration in favor of crystalline clarity. I almost laughed at that, and had Morgen been there in more than soulsong, I would have.
Instead of staying on the path, I turned due south and darted this way and that downhill and through the piñons, trying to avoid any spot where I might have run before. The soil wasnât cryptozoic, even away from the meleysens. It just hadnât ever been that fertile, although it was richer under the trees and around the pale blue-green of the sagebrush. Lava takes millions of years to degrade in a dry climate, and the sagebrush hadnât been working on the black stone anywhere near that long.
I kept running, and the pressure of the physical shut down my internal dialogues.
When I slowed to a fast walk near the top of the next rise, I was breathing heavily, and sweating. Through the trees to the north, I could see the grasslands and the hummocks of the prairie dog town, rising above the chest-high and browned grasses. Swift-Fall-Hunter circled, then passed on, looking for easier prey.
The sourness of my sweat and the panting confirmed that Iâd neglected my physical condition more than I should have. With the slowing down, something from a pile of rocks caught my eye and sensesârather, the absence of something did.
Under another old and twisted cedar, among the lichen-covered dark gray rocks, lurked a chunk of darknessâa blackness that swallowed light, that turned seeking eyes from it: a curved fragment of black adiamante. I squatted, letting my fingers ease the adiamante up.
How long had it rested there, impervious to age, to deterioration, to anything but the mighty lines of force that had sheared it into a smooth-sided and round polygon whose exact dimensions still eluded the eye?
I lifted the adiamante, a relic of the great confrontation between the demis and the cybs that had led to the Rebuilding. Neither warm nor cool to the touch, neither seeking nor releasing heat, the smooth blacknessâheavier than hardwood, lighter than iron, and stronger than anything made by man before or sinceâlay in my hands.
After a moment, I replaced it in the rocks and straightened up. Adiamanteâharder than the diamond from which its name had been derived, and virtually useless except in a handful of applications like armor and spacecraft hulls ⦠and, I supposed,
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