Peter Watts - Blindsight

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Blindsight

Peter Watts

Prologue 6

Theseus 11

Rorschach 115

Charybdis 300

Acknowledgments 307

Notes and References 309

Creative Commons Licensing Information 331

"This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of

imagining what is, in fact, real."

—Philip Gourevitch

"You will die like a dog for no good reason."

—Ernest Hemingway

Peter Watts 6 Blindsight

Prologue

"Try to touch the past. Try to deal with the past. It's not real. It's just a

dream."

—Ted Bundy

It didn't start out here. Not with the scramblers or Rorschach,

not with Big Ben or Theseus or the vampires. Most people would

say it started with the Fireflies, but they'd be wrong. It ended with

all those things.

For me, it began with Robert Paglino.

At the age of eight, he was my best and only friend. We were

fellow outcasts, bound by complementary misfortune. Mine was

developmental. His was genetic: an uncontrolled genotype that

left him predisposed to nearsightedness, acne, and (as it later

turned out) a susceptibility to narcotics. His parents had never

had him optimized. Those few TwenCen relics who still believed

in God also held that one shouldn't try to improve upon His

handiwork. So although both of us could have been repaired, only

one of us had been.

I arrived at the playground to find Pag the center of attention for

some half-dozen kids, those lucky few in front punching him in the

head, the others making do with taunts of mongrel and polly while

waiting their turn. I watched him raise his arms, almost hesitantly,

to ward off the worst of the blows. I could see into his head better

than I could see into my own; he was scared that his attackers

might think those hands were coming up to hit back, that they'd

read it as an act of defiance and hurt him even more. Even then, at

the tender age of eight and with half my mind gone, I was

becoming a superlative observer.

But I didn't know what to do.

I hadn't seen much of Pag lately. I was pretty sure he'd been

avoiding me. Still, when your best friend's in trouble you help out,

right? Even if the odds are impossible—and how many eight-year-

Peter Watts 7 Blindsight

olds would go up against six bigger kids for a sandbox buddy?—at

least you call for backup. Flag a sentry. Something.

I just stood there. I didn't even especially want to help him.

That didn't make sense. Even if he hadn't been my best friend, I

should at least have empathized. I'd suffered less than Pag in the

way of overt violence; my seizures tended to keep the other kids at

a distance, scared them even as they incapacitated me. Still. I was

no stranger to the taunts and insults, or the foot that appears from

nowhere to trip you up en route from A to B. I knew how that felt.

Or I had, once.

But that part of me had been cut out along with the bad wiring. I

was still working up the algorithms to get it back, still learning by

observation. Pack animals always tear apart the weaklings in their

midst. Every child knows that much instinctively. Maybe I should

just let that process unfold, maybe I shouldn't try to mess with

nature. Then again, Pag's parents hadn't messed with nature, and

look what it got them: a son curled up in the dirt while a bunch of

engineered superboys kicked in his ribs.

In the end, propaganda worked where empathy failed. Back then

I didn't so much think as observe, didn't deduce so much as

remember—and what I remembered was a thousand inspirational

stories lauding anyone who ever stuck up for the underdog.

So I picked up a rock the size of my fist and hit two of Pag's

assailants across the backs of their heads before anyone even knew

I was in the game.

A third, turning to face the new threat, took a blow to the face

that audibly crunched the bones of his cheek. I remember

wondering why I didn't take any satisfaction from that sound, why

it meant nothing beyond the fact I had one less opponent to worry

about.

The rest of them ran at the sight of blood. One of the braver

promised me I was dead, shouted "Fucking zombie!" over his

shoulder as he disappeared around the corner.

Three decades it took, to see the irony in that remark.

Two of the enemy twitched at my feet. I kicked one in the head

until it stopped moving, turned to the other. Something grabbed

my arm and I swung without thinking, without looking until Pag

Peter Watts 8 Blindsight

yelped and ducked out of reach.

"Oh," I said. "Sorry."

One thing lay motionless. The other moaned and held its head

and curled up in a ball.

"Oh shit," Pag panted. Blood coursed unheeded from his nose

and splattered down his shirt. His cheek was turning blue and

yellow. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit..."

I thought of something to say. "You all right?"

"Oh shit, you—I mean, you never..." He wiped his mouth.

Blood smeared the back of his hand. "Oh man are we in trouble."

"They started it."

"Yeah, but you—I mean, look at them!"

The moaning thing was crawling away on all fours. I wondered

how long it would be before it found reinforcements. I wondered

if I should kill it before then.

"You'da never done that before," Pag said.

Before the operation, he meant.

I actually did feel something then—faint, distant, but

unmistakable. I felt angry. "They started—"

Pag backed away, eyes wide. "What are you doing? Put that

down!"

I'd raised my fists. I didn't remember doing that. I unclenched

them. It took a while. I had to look at my hands very hard for a

long, long time.

The rock dropped to the ground, blood-slick and glistening.

"I was trying to help." I didn't understand why he couldn't see

that.

"You're, you're not the same," Pag said from a safe distance.

"You're not even Siri any more."

"I am too. Don't be a fuckwad."

"They cut out your brain!"

"Only half. For the ep—"

"I know for the epilepsy! You think I don't know? But you were

in that half—or, like, part of you was..." He struggled with the

words, with the concept behind them. "And now you're different.

It's like, your mom and dad murdered you—"

"My mom and dad," I said, suddenly quiet, "saved my life. I

Peter Watts 9 Blindsight

would have died."

"I think you did die," said my best and only friend. "I think Siri

died, they scooped him out and threw him away and you're some

whole other kid that just, just grew back out of what was left.

You're not the same. Ever since. You're not the same."

I still don't know if Pag really knew what he was saying. Maybe

his mother had just pulled the plug on whatever game he'd been

wired into for the previous eighteen hours, forced him outside for

some fresh air. Maybe, after fighting pod people in gamespace, he

couldn't help but see them everywhere. Maybe.

But you could make a case for what he said. I do remember

Helen telling me (and telling me) how difficult it was to adjust.

Like you had a whole new personality, she said, and why not?

There's a reason they call it radical hemispherectomy: half the

brain thrown out with yesterday's krill, the remaining half press-

ganged into double duty. Think of all the rewiring that one lonely

hemisphere must have struggled with as it tried to take up the

slack. It turned out okay, obviously. The brain's a very flexible

piece of meat; it took some doing, but it adapted. I adapted. Still.

Think of all that must have been squeezed out, deformed, reshaped

by the time the renovations were through. You could argue that

I'm a different person than the one who used to occupy this body.

The grownups showed up eventually, of course. Medicine was

bestowed, ambulances called. Parents were outraged, diplomatic

volleys exchanged, but it's tough to drum up neighborhood outrage

on behalf of your injured baby when playground surveillance from

three angles shows the little darling—and five of his buddies—

kicking in the ribs of a disabled boy. My mother, for her part,

recycled the usual complaints about problem children and absentee

fathers—Dad was off again in some other hemisphere—but the

dust settled pretty quickly. Pag and I even stayed friends, after a

short hiatus that reminded us both of the limited social prospects

open to schoolyard rejects who don't stick together.

So I survived that and a million other childhood experiences. I

grew up and I got along. I learned to fit in. I observed, recorded,

derived the algorithms and mimicked appropriate behaviors. Not

much of it was—heartfelt, I guess the word is. I had friends and

Peter Watts 10 Blindsight

enemies, like everyone else. I chose them by running through

checklists of behaviors and circumstances compiled from years of

observation.

I may have grown up distant but I grew up objective, and I have

Robert Paglino to thank for that. His seminal observation set

everything in motion. It led me into Synthesis, fated me to our

disastrous encounter with the Scramblers, spared me the worse fate

befalling Earth. Or the better one, I suppose, depending on your

point of view. Point of view matters: I see that now, blind, talking

to myself, trapped in a coffin falling past the edge of the solar

system. I see it for the first time since some beaten bloody friend

on a childhood battlefield convinced me to throw my own point of

view away.

He may have been wrong. I may have been. But that, that

distance—that chronic sense of being an alien among your own

kind—it's not entirely a bad thing.

It came in especially handy when the real aliens came calling.

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摘要：

BlindsightPeterWattsPrologue6Theseus11Rorschach115Charybdis300Acknowledgments307NotesandReferences309CreativeCommonsLicensingInformation331"Thisiswhatfascinatesmemostinexistence:thepeculiarnecessityofimaginingwhatis,infact,real."—PhilipGourevitch"Youwilldielikeadogfornogoodreason."—ErnestHemingwayPe...

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Peter Watts - Blindsight

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