INTERLUDE 1
Shônsair stood upright and motionless as the morning progressed. Behind her, stone blocks radiated heat energy, which she felt through the sensor hierarchies in her back. Somehow, she knew, she had to become one with this sensory information; she had to experience it, just as she had to experience inebriation, drugs, sensuality, and all the rest of it.
Life was experience. Living was being experienced.
Later in the morning a woman approached, smiling when Shônsair inclined her head to observe. “Morning,” the woman said. “You two got a moment? Bit of a prob you could help us with.”
Shônsair’s fellow guard Lizlaini replied, “Piss off, y’bloody beanpole. Can’t you see we got jobs to do?”
“I only wanted a chat. Not a damn lecture.”
“Just piss off or else, y’bloody posh bitch.”
The woman scowled as Shônsair glanced at her. “I only need a bit of advice,” she insisted. “Looking for gynoids, weird ones, for a friend. Nothing urgent, just a job. We all got jobs, ain’t we?”
Shônsair pondered this. Something curious here. Eventually she said, “What kind of gynoid were you after?”
“Is there any particular haunt around here where they go?” the woman countered.
“One or two. Gynoids are rare. Only a few fall prey to hedonistic existence, and consequently their numbers are small.”
After a moment’s thought, the woman replied, “I’m looking for a mad gynoid, a loony. Just the one, I s’pose. You must know something.”
Lizlaini belched, then turned to Shônsair and shouted, “Stop playing up to her, y’damned freak. You speak bad as her. Unclench your arse and get smashed like normal people!”
Shônsair’s thoughts remained calm as she considered the animal at her side. She turned away, to tell the woman, “I know little of gynoid haunts. You might try Cider Central, which is a notorious drinking hall.”
“Gynoids drink?”
“Not alcohol. There are other substances that can intoxicate them.”
“Fuck this!” Lizlaini yelled, pulling out a rusty sword from her belt. “Piss off, bitch, or it’s worm time!”
The woman ran off. Shônsair turned to Lizlaini and said, “Do you have to act like a barbarian?”
“Why don’t you get off y’bloody podium? Just ‘cos you’re educated you think you’re better than everyone else. Have a drink! Get stoned! It’s what Blissis is all about.”
“I understand that. It is partly why I was drawn here. But alcohol does not affect me in quite the way it affects you.”
“Then what you here for? Fuck off, y’old bag. I’m sick of you.”
With that, Lizlaini deserted her post. For an hour Shônsair stood motionless, considering Lizlaini and the Shrine behind her. Her search was far from over. Somehow, she must understand the world around her. If she could somehow experience all its highs and lows, its nobility and decadence, then she might acquire the secret wisdom that had obsessed her for so long. Certainly in Blissis she had ample opportunity to observe people acting decadently… but something in her wanted now to do more than observe. She wanted to participate.
But she was artficial. She was cold.
If she temporarily left her post the chaotic clerics of the Shrine of Complete Inebriation, of whom Lizlaini was one, would not notice her absence. Their whole philosophy was of hedonistic, emotional existence. They would probably approve.
For Shônsair dared to consider the experience of her body; but she was frightened of it.
In an alcove behind her post she kept a kettle. On a blue methane flame she heated it, just for a few minutes, until the fluid inside was warm. Then she poured out a mugful.
She studied the blue and red swirls inside the mug. Coloured steam rose into her face, and she inhaled sweet vapours. But fear held her back. She had never been drunk before. Self-control had been the foundation of her moral code. Suddenly angry at herself—amazed that she felt the emotion of frustration—she downed the hot softpetal in one. She felt it line her bioengineered innards.
She laughed. The simultaneous mystery and absurdity of the world reached into the deepest part of her mind and forced the reaction. She laughed. The knowledge that welled up with this laughter she treasured. It released her from the tyranny of logical comprehension. She realised that she was enacting behaviour coded into the condition of human beings, who once she had despised. But she did not care. She could remain artificial and still learn everything of value that humans knew.
She staggered to her feet and ran away, falling into muddy puddles when her muzzy head could no longer keep balance. Spinning, spinning, the world was spinning. But at last she had joined the clerics of the Shrine of Complete Inebriation, and no longer would she consider herself a fraud, eternally sober, eternally rational.
She sat, and watched the slowly rotating world around her. This was horrible, but fun.
In the privacy of her mind, she cried out.
Baigurgône, we must talk, where are you?