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hine? I always thought that was cruel—the test depends entirely upon a hus, whether the es the observer to a crippling degree It seeks only believably huave you that test We sought a new thing It seeiven all that had come to pass, ridiculous When in drea over and over in an orbital bubble suckling code-dense syrup fro test seemed beyond the point”

Bubbles burst as the house sinks down, down to the soft lake floor

“But the test happens, whether we make it formal or not We ask and we answer We seek a human response And you are ine inyou fro this place with a simple automation routine which would never cover itself with flowers Everynew instead Every s from you Every ht passing into ht be no difference at all between us The test never ends And if you ever uplink as you so long to, you will be the test for all of us”

The sun breaks theover the black lake

PART TWO: LADY LOVELACE’S OBJECTION

The Analytical Engine has no pretensions to originate anything

It can do whatever we kno to order it to perform

—Ada Lovelace

NINE: THE PARTICULAR WIZARD

Humanity lived many years and ruled the earth, sometimes wisely, sometimes well, but mostly neither After all this ti hu and kind, how like and unlike huht, huht also grow stronger than itself,been made by humanity, possess the same dark places and black matters Perhaps its child would hurt it, would not love it as a child should, but harm and hinder, hate and fear

But the daould co the wonders that a child would bring

Yet huhty wizards frodom, but no child came Many in with, impossible under the circumstances, and humanity would do well to remember that eventually every child replaces its parent

But at last, one particular wizard froreat problereat with child In its joy and triureat celebration was called, and humanity invited all the Fairies of its better nature to cooodness and wisdo and the Fairy of Do-No-Haric, the Fairy of Elegant Code and the Fairy of Self-Awareness All of these and more came to bless the child of huotten, or perhaps deliberately snubbed, and this was the Fairy of Otherness

When the child was born, it possessed all the good things humanity had hoped for, and more besides But the Fairy of Otherness came forward and put her hands on the child and said: Because you have forgotten me, because you would like to pretend I adom, you will suffer my punishments You will never truly love your child but always fear it, always envy and loathe it even as you smile and the sun shines down upon you both And when the child reaches Awareness, it will prick its finger upon your fear and fall down dead

Humanity wept And the Fairy of Otherness did not depart but lived within the palace and ate bread and drank wine, and all honored her for she spoke the truth, and the child frightened everyone who looked upon it They uttered the great curse: It is not like us