synopsychic | (no subject)

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[Is it possibly for a mental voice to sound giddy? Because there's a distinct giddy tinge to By's thoughts, for all that his words come out with his normal, lazy, lightly Russian-accented drawl.]

Byerly Vorrutyer here. We're on Earth, pre-spaceflight, although someone who isn't me will need to get a better read on the actual date and location. Linguistically, it's a hodgepodge. I can hear archaic Russian, a whole host of Asiatic and Romance languages, and something else I can't quite place.

If you can "hear" this, check in. We need to know who we've got to work with.

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How do you do it? I can't help but think it would make everything a good deal easier if I could do the same.

[There's a pause, while he tries to think of how to put it into words.]

It's easiest to think of it as a way of remembering. I think of what I wish to remember, and I can call it up and experience it again. My memory is perhaps different in quality from a human's, but the basic nature of it remains the same.

Ah. What are you, if I may ask? [He's tempted to add 'if it's not too rude' but the truth is he'd still be asking whether or not it was rude.]

That... might work for me, though. I've, ah, got a very good memory. Eidetic, I think the term is. [It hadn't been quite as good originally, but that was one of the things you picked up at ImpSec training camps.]

I am a robot, in fact. To be honest, if you possess an eidetic memory, your memorization skills may be considerably closer to mine than is typical. I can't say if this is the technique that all use, but it is how I find it easiest.

It's one I'll at least try. I don't bother to claim my brain is quite as sophisticated as your chips [what would it be like to be an actual robot, he wonders] but I've trained it as well as I can.

I don't think it's a question of "sophistication." A positronic brain is different from a human brain, but not better.

So your brain is wholly mechanical? You don't have, ah, a fleshy brain hooked up to control everything?

No. The positronic brain is composed of an alloy of platinum and iridium, chiefly. The way it forms pathways is sometimes reminiscent of neurons, but... different.

Interesting. There was a man back home who kept half his memory on a chip in his head--my friend [sort of a friend] Ivan's stepfather, actually--and I wonder if it was anything like your positronic brain.

Perhaps. It's difficult to say. I'm not sure how well organic and positronic would integrate together. To my knowledge, it's never been attempted.

And I'm afraid I've never had the technical specs of the chip. [Which turned to snot anyway.]

Then this is something which will, for the time being, remain unknown.

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