From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon Mar 27 2000 - 07:55:44 MST
At 03:22 AM 27/03/00 -0500, Dan Fabulich wrote:
>My favorite strategy for plots is to steal one wholesale, ideally from
>Shakespeare.
Hey, good plan!
>* Within a simulation, a weak-minded military officer receives a message
>from someone outside the simulation, informing him that his superior, who
>has recently been promoted under mysterious circumstances, is actually a
>deadly criminal, who has uploaded into this simulation to avoid the death
>penalty. The man receives orders to "kill" his superior, ejecting the
>criminal from the program, allowing him to be tried. He hesitates doing
>so, and [at least appears to] go insane. Fending off a number of attacks
>on his life, he ultimately "kills" his superior, though dying in the
>attempt. Emphasis on epistemology of "knowing" you're in the simulation.
>[It'd be good to get the women in here somehow, but in thinking about it a
>little while, I'm not sure how one would do it. <shrug>]
No, this goes wrong toward the end. What happens (bringing in those absent
women) is that the faux-mad officer, made incapable of action by lustful
feelings for his high-born mother, is saved by his ferocious grrlfriend who
kills the criminal superior for him (nicely fashionable feminist touch, you
see), and then together, with the help of his own uploaded AI associate, he
and she could transition into yet another virtuality, and have kids with a
mysterious natural affinity for tweaking cyberspace, while preparing to
return en famille and *really* set things right.
You could call it... I dunno... THE WIDE ABBOT'S CURSE.
Damien Broderick
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