Hum, I dont really understand what you're trying to search? to explain? there, malins ...
I'm not really ... explaining, -- searching/ exploring might be more of it.
It was inspired by Phlebas' AI Crux thread, but (as is my nature) goes off on a tangent right away. I'm not so much interested in the 'technical' aspect of AI,
I'm exploring questions of what it might mean to be human, how people become dehumanized when they accustom themselves to denying other people's humanity, or suffering.
Also yes the essentiality of pain and suffering to human existence, but still the wrongness of falsely elevating it.
Am I really planned for that ? Are we ?
...I'm persuaded that we all have a guardian angel...
Those are things that the character of Noemi asks herself...
if we are deeply religious, we will feel
we were planned for something by the Creator, who is infallible, omniscient, and in the end, we hope against all evidence, benevolent.
The Christian religion shows up in an extremely warped understanding in the world where Noemi is to be sacrificed... after millennia of disrupted transmission, their knowledge is like what we might guess of some ancient mysteries before Egypt, Babylon or Sumeria.
But, Noemi was created and planned for something not by omniscient gods, ... instead fallible people, some of whom are irredeemably corrupt and evil, others dispassionate, some maybe sensitive but they drown their consciences in laboratory alcohol. None of them are good.
Still there is perhaps something "residual" in her, something originally human, uncreated by anything but Nature or God if you should believe, that has escaped all cruelties of the process she went through. Because maybe it isn't true she was entirely created from nothing ...
And yes, someone told her a story once about something that .... might be a guardian angel,
a sister in the sky, whose soul had been poured into an invincible suit of armor. It was especially Instructor Lys who had often told stories that challenged her understanding; it had taken her much time and pain to understand that there were things to learn from stories even if they weren’t true.
Of course Biblical angels of great power tend to be male but in my story ... a 'sister in the sky in an invincible suit of armor' might just be a guardian angel. And yes,
supposedly that story isn't true. That might mean it's not true
literally (just like ... things in the bible...) -- or maybe in some way it is true, but 'Instructor Lys' was just making sure that if anyone ever asked Noemi about that particular story, she'd say it wasn't true, because it's actually a form of subversive information that Lys has passed on to Noemi
this need of pain which is rooted into us
Pain had not existed. That had been her nearly fatal flaw.
She knew that without pain, she could never have become herself.
Pain is in fact essential for our humanity in a way that we don't realize until we either imagine (which isn't really possible) -- or at least conceptionally encounter -- the consequences of what it means to not feel any pain at all. It is indeed a condition that can become fatal...
see
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insensibilité_congénitale_à_la_douleur
"Automutilation pour comprendre leur corps" -- that is what Noemi does at the beginning of part #4
Strips of pale translucent skin. Pulled from pulsing red. Peel, probe, dig. Deeper. See what comes up. See what is underneath. Where do I begin?
but then, thanks to Instructor Lys, she is ... introduced to pain.
If she had a true mother it was pain, the pain that had proven her worthy.
It had shaped her into what she was so it was no wonder that it was her destiny.
When she heard a voice inside her head it was most often that of Instructor Lys.
I am very proud of you today. We've made it through the entire session and I haven't had to push the button once!
Ouch! Don't we all love 'Instructor Lys' already (maybe
that is a person who should deservedly end up on a cross...)
the deep meanders of my (un)conscious
Sometimes I guess I just let that take over a bit and then see what I can make of it. Obviously this is in truth, neither really a science-fiction story, even though it's got a galactic empire; and it's not really any kind of BDSM story, even though it's got a girl who's sacrificed, ... to be honest I don't know what it is or exactly where it's going.