Catherynne M Valente Silently

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.5 degrees, to prepare for the storm.I watched them while in my kitchen-bones I maintained a gentle simmer on a fish soup with purple rice and long loops of kelp and in my library-lungs I activated the dehumidifier to protect the older paper books.At the time, all of these processes seemed equally important to me, and you could hardly say I watched them in any real sense beyond this: the six entities whose feed signals had been hardcoded into my sentinel systems stood in the same room.None had alarming medical data incoming, all possessed normal internal temperatures and breathing rates.While they spoke among themselves, two of these entities silently accessed Seongnam-based interactive games, one read an American novel in her monocle HUD, one issued directives concerning international taxation to company holdings on the mainland, and one fed a horse in Italy via realavatar link.Only one listened intently, without switching on her internal systems.The rest multitasked, even while expressing familial affection.This is all to say: I watched them receive me as a gift.But I was not yet I, so I cannot be said to have done anything.But at the same time, I did.I remember containing all of them inside me, protecting them and needing them and observing their strange and incomprehensible activities.The children held out their hands, and into them Cassian Uoya-Agostino placed five little jewels: Saru got red, Koetoi black, Akan violet, Agogna green, and Ceno closed her fingers over her blue gem.At first, Cassian brought a jeweler to the house called Elefsis and asked her to set each stone into an elegant, intricate bracelet or necklace or ring, whatever its child asked for.The jeweler expressed delight with Elefsis, as most guests did, and I made a room for her in my southern wing, where she could watch the moonrise through her ceiling, and get breakfast from the greenhouse with ease.She made friends with an arctic fox and fed him bits of chive and pastry every day.She stayed for one year after her commission completed, creating an enormous breastplate patterned after Siberian icons, a true masterwork.Cassian enjoyed such patronage.We both enjoyed having folk to look after.The boys wanted big signet rings, with engravings on them so that they could put their seal on things and seem very important.Akan had a basilisk set into his garnet, and Saru had a siren with wings rampant in his amethyst ring.Agogna and Ilet asked for bracelets, chains of silver and titanium racing up their arms, circling their shoulders in slender helices dotted with jade (Agogna) and onyx (Koetoi).Ceno asked for a simple pendant, little more than a golden chain to hang her sapphire from.It fell to the skin over her heart.In those cold, glittering days while the sea ice slowly formed and the snow bears hung back from the kitchen door, hoping for bones and cakes, everything was as simple as Ceno’s pendant.Integration and implantation had not yet been dreamed of, and all each child had to do was to allow the gemstone to talk to their own feedware at night before bed, along with their matcha and sweet seaweed cookies, the way another child might say their prayers.After their day had downloaded into the crystalline structure, they were to place their five little jewels in the Lares alcove in their greatroom—for Cassian believed in the value of children sharing space, even in a house as great as Elefsis.The children’s five lush bedrooms all opened into a common rotunda with a starry painted ceiling, screens and windows alternating around the wall, and toys to nurture whatever obsession had seized them of late.In the alcove, the stones talked to the house, and the house uploaded new directives and muscular, aggressive algorithms into the gems.The system slowly grew thicker and deeper, like a briar.SEVENTHE PRINCE OF THOUGHTFUL ENGINESA woman who was with child once sat at her window embroidering in winter.Her stitches tugged fine and even, but as she finished the edge of a spray of threaded delphinium, she pricked her finger with her silver needle.She looked out onto the snow and said: I wish for my child to have a mind as stark and wild as the winter, a spirit as clear and fine as my window, and a heart as red and open as my wounded hand.And so it came to pass that her child was born, and all exclaimed over his cleverness and his gentle nature.He was, in fact, the Prince of Thoughtful Engines, but no one knew it yet.Now, his mother and father being very busy and important people, the child was placed in a school for those as clever and gentle as he, and in the halls of this school hung a great mirror whose name was Authority.The mirror called Authority asked itself every day: Who is the wisest one of all? The face of the mirror showed sometimes this person and sometimes that, men in long robes and men in pale wigs, until one day it showed the child with a mind like winter, who was becoming the Prince of Thoughtful Engines at that very moment.He wrote on a typewriter: Can a machine think? And the mirror called his name in the dark.The mirror sent out her huntsmen to capture the Prince and bring her his heart so that she could put it to her own uses, for there happened to be a war on and the mirror was greatly concerned for her own safety.When the huntsmen found the Prince, they could not bring themselves to harm him, and instead the boy placed a machine heart inside the box they had prepared for the mirror, and forgave them.But the mirror was not fooled, for when it questioned the Prince’s machine heart it could add and subtract and knew all its capitals of nations, it could even defeat the mirror at chess, but it did not have a spirit as clear and fine as a window, nor a mind as stark and wild as winter.The mirror called Authority went herself to find the Prince of Thoughtful Engines, for having no pity, she could not fail.She lifted herself off of the wall and curved her glass and bent her frame into the shape of a respectable, austere old crone [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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