Gerhard’s Reviews > Firefall > Status Update

He dropped the sample onto the nearest countertop. The teardrop flattened and burst; the surface drank my blood as if parched. Szpindel smacked his lips. "Elevated cholinesterase inhibitors in the ret. Yum."

"I'm a synthesist." He knew that. Of course he knew, everyone did: you can't observe the system unless you stay outside the system.

'Humans didn't really fight over skin tone or ideology; those were just handy cues for kin-selection purposes. Ultimately it always came down to bloodlines and limited resources.'

Mmm.

"Exactly. Point being you can use basic pattern-matching algorithms to participate in a conversation without having any idea what you're saying. Depending on how good your rules are, you can pass a Turing test. You can be a wit and raconteur in a language you don't even speak."

And this written in 2006.

In a world in which Humanity had become redundant in unprecedented numbers, we'd both retained the status of another age: working professional.

Or Theseus herself, for that matter. It was easy to forget the Quantical AI at the heart of our ship. It stayed so discreetly in the background, nurtured and carried us and permeated our existence like an unobtrusive God; but like God, it never took your calls.