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“Elefsis, please tell me your computational capabilities and operational parameters” Execute command

Tears gushed down my cheeks and I opened blood vessels in my face in order to redden it This did not

“The clothing rinse cycle is in progress, water at 55 degrees Celsius All the live-long day-o”

Neither of their faces exhibited expressions I have come toassociate with positive reinforcement

Finally, I answered her as I would have answered Ceno I turned into an iron cauldron on her lap The sudden weight change made the leather creak

Cassian looked at her daughter questioningly The girl reddened—and I experienced being the cauldron and being the girl and reddening, war, as she did, but also I watched

“I’ve…I’ve been telling it stories Fairy tales, ht it should learn about narrative, because most of the frames available to us run on so has a narrative, really, and if you can’t understand a story and relate to it, figure out how you fit inside it, you’re not really alive at all Like, when I was little and daddy read ht: daddy is a dancing prince, and he ht in a beautiful castle with beautiful girls, and that’s why he sleeps all day I tried to catch him at it, but I never could, and of course I know he’s not really a dancing prince, but that’s the best way I could understand as happening to hiet Elefsis toon simple stories andis like anything else, findones, like hohen I first saw it it made a jewel for me to say: I am like a jewel, you are like a jewel, you are like me” Cassian’s mouth had fallen open a little Her eyes shone, and Ceno hurried on, glossing over es “It doesn’t do that often, though Mostly it copies me If I turn into wolf cub, it turns a wolf cub I make myself a tea plant, it makes itself a tea plant And it has a hard ti desk, ok, fine, sour notes or whatever, but it isn’t a writing desk Agogna is like a snow fox, but she is not a snow fox on any real level unless she beco, existentially I’rasps existential issues yet It just…likes new things”

“Ceno”

“Yeah, so thisI told it the one about the cauldron the could never be emptied No matter how much you eat out of it it’ll always haveto answer your question I think…the actual numbers are kind of irrelevant at this point”

I made my cauldron fill up with apples and almonds and wheat-heads and raw rice and spilled out over Cassian’s black lap I was the cauldron and I was the apples and I was the alreen, raw rice Even in that ood at uistically I looked up at Cassian from apple-me and wheat-head-me and cauldron-me

Cassian held me no differently as the cauldron than she had as the child But later, Ceno used the face her mother made at that moment to illustrate human disturbance and trepidation “I have a suspicion, Elefsis”

I didn’t say anything No question, no command It remains extremely difficult for me to deal conversationally with flat statements such as this A question or command has a definable appropriate response

“Show me your core structure” Shohat you’ve done

Ceno twisted her fingers together I believe now that she knee’d done only on the level of metaphor: we are one We have become one We are family She had not said no; I had not said yes, but a system expands to fill all available capacity

I showed her Cauldron-me blinked, the apples rolled back into the iron mouth, and the almonds and the wheat-heads and the rice-stalks I became what I then was I put myself in a rich, red cedar box, polished and inlaid with ancient brass in the shape of a baroque heart with a dagger inside it The box from one of Ceno’s stories, that had an beast-heart in it instead of a girl’s, a trick to fool a queen I can do it, I thought, and Ceno heard because the distance between us was unrepresentably s you want me to have the ability to do