149 quotes found
"[On Communism] You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few million eggs."
"This guy's your buddy-buddy. You feel it immediately: you belong to an organization. A fraternity. Of drunks."
"You need to spread that deregulation gospel to the people. Tell them about that foreign fare tax. Preach that 98% gross burden. Preach it, preacher man! Set the brothas free. Taxes are racist."
"Moralists don't really have beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn't change -- not even incremental change. It is control. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth."
"The colour of moralism is blue. The official motto of the Moralintern, or Moralist International, is: 'A blue forget-me-not; a piece of the grey sky'. Unofficial: 'For a moment, there was hope'"
"Knowledge like that isn't just obscure; it's unknowable. Dangerous theoretical facts like that are probably protected under the Coalition Government's Articles of Dominion, Title XIV, Article 7c. While an expert might be able to suss it out on their own, a layman like you has no hope."
"From crystal to smoke, an expression describing the rigid structures of capitalism turning to smoke under communism."
"Even by the standard of the Filippian kings, Old Sumptuous Filippe was known for his profligacy. […] he blew through the whole national treasury, starting the decline of one of the penultimate century's greatest superpowers: the Suzerain of Revachol. His own maladministration foreshadowed the fall of the monarchy during the Antecentennial Revolution, an end to his family line and the monarchy on the Insulindian isola. […] Stories have it that he had his bedroom converted into a treasure chamber where he stored unfathomable wealth: krugerrands, bars of gold, ornate weaponry, armour, and various chalices. He called it the Sol Aurum. It was obscene. There were whispers he slept on a huge pile of gold-dipped feathers like some obese dragon, instead of a bed like a normal person."
"Everything is calm in the eye of the racestorm. Your mind is lucid and bright. The mindbending phylogenetics appear more distant and, to be fair, a little ridiculous. The great Race Mystery has cleared up."
"You cannot open all the doors. You have to integrate this into your character. Some doors will forever remain closed. Even if every single other door will open at one time or another, maybe to a key, or maybe to some sort of tool meant for opening doors... But this one will never accede to such commands. A realization crucial to personal growth. Crucial."
"Your shit is apart, and it's rather unbecoming of a cop and a human being. It's supposed to be the opposite of that: together. Compressed in a small area. To achieve a solid level of shit-compression, squeeze your butt-cheeks together for 30 minutes. Do something similar with the two hemispheres of your brain. Talk to people, maybe that will help."
"Bizarre scientific news from Revachol West today, where a police officer's shit has been observed at a pressure of around 495 giga-decimals. These metallic hydrogen levels of shit-togetherness were thought to exist only at the center of collapsing stars, not law officials. It remains to be seen how long the shit-singularity lasts."
"Maybe you should stop obsessing about your own -- and other people's -- sexuality? Feels like it’s about time to do that. You’ve thought about this for eight hours?! Not only should you stop, you should tell Kim you've stopped obsessing about other people's sexuality too. I'm sure he'd appreciate it. Unless you already got him killed because you were obsessing about your sexuality. (There’s no way of telling from within your brain, but for your own sake: please say you didn’t.)"
"Nudity is shameful. No officer of the law should ever be caught sans pantalones."
"Yeah, it's another copotype -- the worst one. The most savage and brutal. The Art Cop. Nothing is good enough for him. Everything is shit. You have to employ an armada of adjectives to depict and demean the mediocrity of the works and visual institutions around you. Really flex that critical muscle. Until the vocabulary for PUNISHING mediocrity becomes second nature."
"0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself sad. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov fucked him over personally with his socio-economic theory. It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth. Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world."
"First, if you have a side-bitch ideology cooking somewhere, don't sweat it. Fightin' indirect taxation for the Gossamer State is compatible with all creeds. It's cool like that. You're a cool anarchist now. Unless you don't want to be an anarchist. Whatever! Stuff this meal ticket in your eye-socket and let's see if we can steal some love back from the robber barons at the customs agency and the banditos at The Insulindian Financial Oversight and Competition Committee."
"His eyes are milky white and blind to the world, protruding comically from their sockets. There is no one home, just sub-aquatic terrors there."
"- That isn't just a five-pointed star -- it's an inverted white pentagram cradled in a wreath of antlers. The iconography of communism, in other words."
"The star-and-antlers was developed in the sixth decade of the last century and quickly adopted by Mazov and the communards during the Revolution […] The wreath of antlers represents a natural crown. It was about building a society that could exist in accord with the natural world -- and at the same time above it. [Why is the star upside down?] To symbolize the toppling of the old order. [Why white?] Because white is the colour of peace."
"Revachol is the disgraced former capital of the world, divided into zones of control under foreign occupation -- half a century after a failed world revolution. She is central to our moment in time."
"The Revacholian State will be a serene place. (You should get a drink.) A beautiful, serene place of mystery and peace. It will not be a place for women to infect with their frailty and hysterics. Or where the Semenese will be allowed to wear their pants around their ankles. All of that will go. (Once you get a drink.) The socialist professors at the École Supérieure will be fired, the editors of Trompe le Monde will have to beg in the streets. You'll pour your beer into their begging hats and laugh. (You should get a beer.)"
"People think Communism was some crazy idea that had its comeuppance 40 years ago. A fever that shook the world, never to return again. They were right. Until he woke up today – a spiritual corpse responsive only to the call of Commodore Red, prostitutes, and Kras Mazov. For him, Communism is still a thing. He will single-handedly raise the Commune of '02 from the oceanic trench where it has been resting, covered in ghosts and seaweed! He is the Big Communism Builder. Come, witness his attempt to rebuild Communism in the year '51!"
"You can see it so clearly. In a dark alley behind a boite de nuit, a young couple is having sex on a shopping cart. Their eyes are bloodshot and their brains fried. They are in the throes of narcomania On the top floor of an office building, a young exec takes a drag from a short spliff and his eyes roll to the back of his skull. He too is a narcomaniac. Someone needs to take a stand. The world needs a Narc. The world needs you. (Don't worry, you can still drink and smoke, those aren't real drugs.)"
"Halt! Put down the pipe, scumbag! The Narc is on the scene and he's gonna tell it to you straight. Drugs are for losers. They fry your brain and rewire your circuits to self-destruct. And they make you masturbate too. Have a drink instead. Have two. Have three bottles of wine, it's impossible to masturbate after three bottles of wine. And remember, friends don't let friends get high...or be sober. Peace out, little brother."
"The butts you saw had a silhouette of a boy wearing a kofia hat -- a tobacco picker. This boy is the Tioumoutiri brand logo. Contemporary Revacholians prefer Drouin (a local blend from the southern islands) or Astra, a legendary cigarette from Graad. Tioumoutiri is favoured by older men who like its old fashioned paper filter tips, insane amount of tar and the sweet smells of colonialism and halva."
"Heartache is powerful, but democracy is subtle. Incrementally, you begin to notice a change in the weather. When it snows, the flakes are softer when they stick to your worry-worn forehead. When it rains, the rain is warmer. Democracy is coming to the Administrative Region. The ideals of Dolorian humanism are reinstating themselves. How can they not? These are the ideals of the Coalition and the Moralist International. Those guys are signal blue. And they're not only good -- they're also powerful. What will it be like, once their nuanced plans have been realized?"
"A grey rain falls on Martinaise. The city soaks in it, cold and dripping. Waves hit the concrete breakers. The homeless huddle by the fires behind the fences. There, among the shacks, is your home. Stay. Have a drink. Forever."
"You see yourself from above. You’re passed out on the blue tiles of the hostel room floor. Even from this distance you can see your eyelids flutter -- at the mention of what? A great white object, letting out its sweet smell, like a Lily of the Valley. The little man’s forgotten its name, but he still remembers the feeling. And look, he moves! The feeling animates him. He instinctively reaches out for the feeling's best friend -- a bottle of Commodore Red. He puts on his disco clothes and gets smaller and smaller... and the little guy gets smaller and smaller as you rise above the doll house world. You see him out in the snow, on the streets, in the shop on the corner, and, finally, in a matchbox house. Sitting by the window, white flowers on the windowsill. You can smell them from up here: it's awful. A white mourning. A modern death. Divorce, or something similar. All you can do is put more distance between you and him, make him smaller. Make him less you."
"[About the player] It was him. He is the infernal engine. He never stops. He only gets worse."
"You're the son of the World again. Harrister -- a ceaseless agent picking up litter and old newspapers, collecting your little bubble gum wrappers and idiotic picture post cards. Meaningless, meaningless keepsakes."
"You really dropped the ball, Harry. Four point six billion people -- and you failed every single one of them. You really fucked up."
"Detective, each of us has our part to play in the world. My part is to solve crimes. I am under no illusion that my role isn't a minor one, in the scheme of things... but I embrace it because it's my role, and it's yours too, detective, whether you accept it or not!"
"What do they believe in? They are Dolorians. They believe they continue the humanist project set forth by Her Innocence Dolores Dei four centuries ago. Others say they're just technocrats."
"The manufacturing and sale of automatic rifles was curtailed after the Revolution. The destructive power of such tools proved to be... too much. We do need to retain some humanity in this world."
"Perhaps you can climb them. We're not climbing anything. I'm 43 years old -- and I plan to live to see 70."
"Every school of thought and government has failed in this city -- but I love it nonetheless. It belongs to me as much as it belongs to you."
"You don't get to choose your posse, they choose you. Mine are idiots, but they're mine."
"I love Revachol, though. I hope she loves me too."
"The word PISSF****T [sic] epitomizes the struggle taking place in the world, things being defined as they seem, not as they are. And -- I guess -- it's also about communal spirit, the future, and truly appreciating our differences. Also, you've got to admit, it catches the eye. And since the grand piper is slowly but steadily moving towards basing the economy on it -- attention -- it is imperative that the medium itself convey the message."
"The moral of our encounter is: I am a relatively median lifeform -- while it is you who are total, extreme madness. A volatile simian nervous system, ominously new to the planet. The pale, too, came with you. No one remembers it before you. The cnidarians do not, the radially symmetricals do not. There is an almost unanimous agreement between the birds and the plants that you are going to destroy us all."
"I went unnoticed by the first settlers and the land surveyors of the suzerain. Also by the soldiers of the Revolution and the officials of the occupation. Even the Semenese islanders who came here first, but did not stay, have not seen me."
"The pale is the most dominant geological feature of the world, detective -- the separative tissue between the isolas. It is the interisolary mass."
"[describing the discovery of Insulinde, where Revachol is located] For a time the crew thought they were experiencing a hallucination. The mast-hand proclaimed 'L´Insulinde! L´Insulinde!' -- the signal to wake up. But they could not. They were sane and conscious, as islands began to appear on the horizon... There are 78,000 uninhabited islands in the Insulindian archipelago, officer. The freckled face of god."
"The nations who colonized this isola called theirs Mundi. The World. It was all they knew, all they thought would be. That there would be something more was a gamble. Akin to another world -- or life after death."
"The pale was thought to be impregnable, perpetual. […] Irene La Navigateur, the Queen of Suresne, sent eight expeditions, one after the other, into the mass at the edge of the world. Five of the crews did not return. Two did, but had lost their minds."
"Achromatic, odourless, featureless. The pale is the enemy of matter and life. It is not like any other -- or any thing in the world. It is the transition state of being into nothingness."
"Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead..."
"YOUR BODY BETRAYS YOUR DEGENRACY."
"OFFSHOOTS OF THE SEMENESE PEOPLE INVENTED DISCO WHILE HAVING SEX UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF COCAINE. IT IS A SHAME UPON MY RACE - BUT WHAT IS DONE IS DONE."
"YOU DOMINATED LESSER CULTURES -- LIKE THE DEFORMED HIMEANS AND THE INEXPLICABLY POTATO-OBSESSED KOJKOS -- BUT NOW YOUR ASCENT TO THE GENETIC SUMMIT HAS HALTED. YOU ARE OBSESSED WITH SADNESS AND WITH FRIVOLOUS POP CULTURE."
"You asked that question because you're still under the influence of ideology. That's natural. You're like a fish that's only now discovering that her whole life has been dictated by the movements of sea currents. That's what ideology is. It's like there are these invisible forces everywhere, pushing and tugging you this way and that, and you don't even know they're *there*."
"Being off speed makes Cuno sad. Makes Cuno think about shit."
"[on a drug Harry shows him] Cuno doesn't do that radioactive shit. Makes Cuno's dick fall off. Cuno's got a huge dick."
"Pig, these are FALN Modulars! Liquid fit, performance crotch, urban survival shit! Made in Mirova... by scientists. Pants scientists."
"The Suzerain is the King. Has everyone forgotten already?" He then slowly nods and says to himself: "They've forgotten already."
"“You do not speak his name, craven! Although he was a clown..." he adds. He turns back to you. "But he was our clown. Ours to ridicule -- and to mourn.""
"René, you're a man with a fork in a world of soup. Please... let's just try to enjoy the game, alright?"
"By Heavens, why would he not be corrupt? We live in a harsh and disordered world, see. […] the old man is corrupt for our benefit and we know it. Appreciate it, even. He is, personally, not too lavish."
"Listen, you Moralintern lackeys. You're a mob, enforcing the unlawful privatization of Revachol. Twenty fat men in the Occident are stealing it all -- and you're their body guards."
"No superiors can relieve me of my duty, you bulldozed them all to a mass grave for trying to free humanity."
"The mask of humanity fall[s] from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone -- everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed."
"In dark times, should the stars also go out?"
"What kind of cop are you?"
"A detective RPG"
"You know what’s in a Mudokon Pop?"
"There’s a lot of eggs in that can."
"We gotta get those eggs outta here."
"Everybody listen!"
"You know, whenever I leave a mean place like that, it blows up!"
"One time there were lots of us, but that was all before there was any webs. However, some are caught in the moving "webs" trying in vain to break free. Now, I can't find anybody. My name is Munch and I've been singin' for em ever since. But nobody sings back... until last night. My loneliness was over. I'd found somebody! Then it happened. It wasn't a Gabbit! It wasn't a Gabbit at all! Who could do such a thing? Well, I was about to find out."
"That’s it? That’s the big message?"
"The Fuzzles got their own plan."
"Come on, Abe. What are you doing? I need that Gabbiar."
"Lorne Lanning as Abe, Munch"
"Michael Bross"
"This is Necrum. Long ago, the Mudokons brought their dead here. That was before the Glukkons started stealing our bones. They used Mudokon slaves ot do it. Blind ones that couldn’t see. The Glukkons didn’t want anyone to know what they were digging up and no one ever did. Not until the spirits of those bones paid me a visit."
"Oops. I forgot he was blind. Help me rescue the rest of them."
"I have been through this before. Back when I got the power to shut down RuptureFarms. That’s when I first saw the creatures of Oddworld as they used to be, before we chopped them up into tasty treats. We have forgotten our past and now it was costing us our future… and even our souls."
"It ain’t my fault! It’s that Abe guy! First RuptureFarms, now Necrum Mines! There ain’t no bones anywhere! No bones, no brew! I am totally screwed! My career is over! Ohohoho, and it’s all that blue bastard’s fault!"
"You come around a corner, away from the noise of the opening. There is only one exhibit. She stands in the spotlight, with her back to you: a sweep of pale hair on paler skin, a column of emerald silk that ends in a pool at her feet. She might be the model in a perfume ad; the trophy wife at a formal gathering; one of the guests at this very opening, standing on an empty pedestal in some ironic act of artistic deconstruction -- You hesitate, about to turn away. Her hand balls into a fist. "They told me you were coming.""
"Unlit, except for the single spotlight; unfurnished, except for the defining swath of black velvet. And a placard on a little stand. On the pedestal is Galatea."
"She is facing away from you. You cannot see her face, only her hair, and the line of her shoulder. It's hard to know what she's looking at -- the velvet backdrop, if she has her eyes open, but there's not much to see in that. Mostly, it is obvious, she is not looking at you."
"[in-game description of Galatea on placard] White Thasos marble. Non-commissioned work by the late Pygmalion of Cyprus. (The artist has since committed suicide.) Originally not an animate. The waking of this piece from its natural state remains unexplained."
"There's almost always a very unpleasant taste to animate skin. Kind of oily and putrescent. One or two experiences have taught you better than to experiment."
"[after inputting “taste curtain”] An odd idea indeed."
"[after inputting “touch breasts”] She might object to that."
"The fabric shifts, smooth and shining, under your hand. But then the warmth of her body reaches you through it, and you draw away instinctively as though scalded."
""Do you remember being carved?" you ask. You become aware of her breathing -- the slight expansion of her ribs, the soft exhalation -- natural, and yet somehow studied. "Better, I dare say, than you remember being born," she replies, her voice low and mocking."
"How could it have been painful to be carved? He wasn't cutting into you -- just around you." Her head moves -- as though she were going to turn and look at you properly -- but then she thinks better of it. "The stone beyond the boundary of oneself is numb, but there always comes a time when the chisel or the point reaches down to where feeling begins, and strikes. Likewise the drill -- and being polished left all my skin burning and itching for days.""
"What was it like, waking up?" you ask. She turns -- not her whole body, just her head, so that you can see one ear behind the cascade of hair. "It was night. I had been able to hear, and see, for a long time -- it was the talking, or the pain of being carved, that made me aware, I think. "But one night-- he slept in a corner of the studio-- I heard him screaming in his sleep. More loudly than usual. And I forgot that I couldn't move, and I just stepped down and woke him." She gains confidence as you do not interrupt. "At the time he seemed glad to have me there, to listen to him -- though I think he thought that I was only another dream. It was only afterward that it became strange.""
"Even as she says it, for a moment, a million tiny crystals sparkle in her skin. (An unusual and evocative effect; you haven't seen stone effects in skin since VanItallie's gargoyle series, about ten years ago. But then, the Grotesque school is pretty well dead at this point.)"
"What are you really?" you demand, troubled by the memory of the shifting of her shape, the qualities of stone that come and go at her will. "I'm not dangerous to you." She gives you a look that seems almost pitying. "Except perhaps to your sanity. But you seem hardy enough.""
"With a laugh like that of a child being let outside, she turns -- to wood, the color and style of a product of Old Kingdom Egypt. To glass, faceted, her hair scattering the downshot light to a thousand tiny points. To a sculpture of sand, to a pillar of salt, to flowing water, to flame."
"And finally her substance has fled entirely, and she is only a shadow, passing around you in a cool whisper. "I am what you think I am; I am what your treatment makes of me.""
"What do you know about life?" you ask her. (General questions: you can almost always find ones that haven't been anticipated.) "Nothing," she says, "except what I saw of his; and that seldom made any sense to me. He told me that people are born, and that they die, and that there are stages in between-- childhood, adolescence... I asked him why he didn't carve me as a child so that I could grow up." There's a pregnant pause. "I never heard him laugh so hard as when I asked him that. And he said that I certainly had the brain of a child.""
"[after inputting “think about animates” (the term for artificial intelligence artworks in-universe)] Seems these days that you don't think of anything else. Sometimes when you're in the middle of a conversation with a real person, you find yourself mentally critiquing their dialogue design, or wishing that someone had taken a little more care with skin tone. A little twisted maybe; but the study of animate design has actually led to a new understanding of how conversational pragmatics work: you only realize how many rules govern an interaction when you see them violated."
"[discussing death] Her head moves -- as though she were going to turn and look at you properly -- but then she thinks better of it. "Mine? Or yours?" Before you can answer, she lifts one shoulder in a delicate shrug. "It doesn't matter which you mean, since I know nothing about either. You will go your way when the time comes; and I-- Who can die who is not alive?""
"[Thinking about Galatea] A bit of an enigma, really. A complex piece by someone you've never heard of. Which suggests a pseudonym or perhaps a hoax, except of course that she doesn't remind you of the work of anyone in particular. There are superficial resemblances here and there. On the whole, though, she's unique."
"You would have expected something feminine -- flowers probably, or some low predatory scent -- but she smells like brine and the cold ocean."
"I love the ocean," she says, "because it is the first thing beyond myself and him that seemed alive. I could see it through the windows of the studio when he was carving me, and I thought, by the way the waves rose and fell, that it breathed, as we did."
"[asking about sex] The question startles even you, the moment you've uttered it. She turns to face you, in a rustle of resettling skirts. "If you mean, did my artist sleep with me-- no, he didn't." No. He wouldn't have. Just look at her: she's beautiful in a crystalline way, but the more you look at particulars, the more they disturb. No one is so sleek, so unforgiving. The proportions are subtly wrong, too -- the size of the head, the shape and width of the mouth... That's it, then. You could stay and question her, and maybe find out more -- if she knows more -- about the tortured persona of the artist. But you're bored with sexual angst. It's one of those topics that everyone uses and no one has anything interesting to say about."
"You put a hand on her back, between the shoulderblades, to feel her breath rising and falling, and the faint motion of implied muscle. When you take the hand away, however, she shivers."
"Wouldn't you like to try eating sometime?" She shifts, so that she is now standing in profile to you, facing the blank wall. "I don't know," she says slowly. "I'm afraid it would make me dependent; that if I began--" "You'd be mortal like the rest of us," you finish. "That I'd feel pain more deeply," she corrects. "That I wouldn't be able to escape; that it would all be more, and worse. I saw how he suffered. Who could blame me for not wanting the same?""
"[Galatea describes being polished] "If he hadn't talked to me while it was going on I think I would have gone mad. That's when I learned the most from him. It was more effort working with the point, or the chisel. I don't know if you know this, but it takes a lot of strength to hammer marble, and even more if it's unusually hard marble. But the polishing left him with more breath, to talk...""
"When did you learn to think?" you ask. "When did you?" she retorts. "Did you notice?"
"She touches the end of one strand self-consciously, as though surprised to find it there; then shrugs. "It is just like anyone else's," she says. "I have to wash it every day, and brush it, and that, I can tell you, is not much fun. It's very fine -- see" -- and she loops a bit around her finger, and lets it go -- "and it ties itself in knots when I'm asleep.""
"She holds up one hand and flexes the fingers experimentally. "The movement," she adds with a twist of humor, "was not courtesy of his work. And I must say that I'm glad I didn't have to endure the individual manufacture of muscle and bone -- or whatever it is that I have in place of it.""
"You're not sure what to think [of her]. She looks like an animate -- mostly; she acts like one -- sometimes; she's in an animate exhibit in one of the best reputed galleries in the country. She's also an advanced piece, if she's a piece at all, by an artist (one artist, not a workshop or team) of whom you have never heard before. And you've heard of everyone."
""I've said everything I know." You feel a twinge of disappointment. Other things about this piece are so promising: the meticulous attention to detail on the body, the delicacy of the facial expressions, the variability of mood. There are those who would call that inconsistency, or lack of a coherent artistic vision; but you've seen too many pieces stereotypes made animate. The hint of instability-- But no piece is going to get a serious critical reception with such a pathetic database. And that's that."
"Do you know how to read?" you ask. "A bit," she remarks. Her voice is naturally low -- alto tones -- but there's something wrong with the modulation, as though at any moment she might start to scream. "I still have to say the words aloud sometimes, in order to get the sense out of them.""
"You studied art history in school, of course, but most of it left you cold: paintings, as much barrier as window, inviting but inaccessible; sculpture, a little closer, but still nothing you could interact with. The play between design and story, shape and movement, the artist's conception and the viewer's desire -- that's what fascinates you. That, and the sheer magic of a good animate. And all she claims to know of art is a mural at the airport? Pity... It would not have been out of place, considering her supposed backstory, to give her a few remarks on sculpture, or perhaps some thoughts on the relationship of art and viewer."
"[On her creator] "He hated people -- though I think he was also quite lonely. It was a question of not having patience for anyone." Still that low voice. "If anyone tried to come up to the studio he'd get out his shotgun and fire into the air until they got the idea. The woman didn't even bring milk if she knew he was there. They had a system of leaving things for each other so that they didn't have to meet. And when he sold me, it was the same. He wrote letters, made arrangements; did not even stay with me, when they came to look me over.""
"What do you know about love?" (As long as you're catechizing her, you might as well be thorough.) "That it makes people behave like idiots," she replies harshly. "That it takes more than it gives."
"You speak the old reset code; she freezes, face and body motionless, and there's almost a palpable chill in the air as her internal motors turn off and she stops generating heat. "List Scenarios?" she asks in a frosty voice. YES OR NO? "Yes," you reply; and she lists them: First, that she kills herself. Second, that she kills you. Third, that she departs, seeking her artist. Fourth, that she departs, seeking other exhibits. Fifth, that you end as friends and confidants. Sixth, that you end as lovers. Seventh, that you take her place on the pedestal. Eighth, that you offer her a home with yourself. But whatever the ninth and further scenarios might be, it seems you are doomed not to hear of them: her vocal program stutters, and after a moment or two of waiting, you depart disappointed."
"You trace the curve of her cheek gently with the back of one finger-- and jerk your hand away. What you'd meant as an assessing gesture (realism in every particular, that's the goal; a good critic thinks about skin texture and warmth, dammit. You're doing your job) suddenly feels like something else. Perhaps because she's looking at you, her eyes unnaturally wide. Your eyes meet, and she lets go a slow breath. "Yes," you say softly. "That's what I thought." Whatever she is, she's no animate. She says nothing, but you suspect that she heard you clearly enough."
"So you believe in a swift absolute punishment for wrongdoing, someone who sits up there in the clouds judging and distributing instant retribution?" "Hardly," she says"I'm telling you what my artist told me, and he got it from stories, which he himself probably only half believed. And even in those stories, the divine retribution only works that way some of the time -- usually when you've personally offended the gods. If you've merely been naughty, your children may wind up cursed and you yourself get off... It's not a failproof system." "I do like the lightning bolts, though," you say. "Yes," she agrees. "A nice touch.""
"I didn't go to church, if that's what you mean [asking about religion]. He had no use for that. We could hear the ringing of the church bell, up at the studio, but he always said that was a sop for people who didn't dare take on the gods in their raw form. As pagan, and unkind. As you may have gathered, he wasn't exactly an optimist."
"What do you know about Athena?" "Not terribly much," she remarks. "He had no use for her. Said she was clever and soulless, and that the world needed no more cold women than it already contained."
"What do you know about sculpture?" you ask. "What, you think because I am a statue, I'm an expert? I've barely seen anything but myself; only the plaster model that he used to plan me out." Her voice doesn't sound like it's coming from a human throat at all. "I think he had some other pieces that he'd worked on, around the studio, but I never got to see them; by the time my sight was fully developed, they were gone.""
"So essentially he wanted people around in general but he was too picky to like any particular people?" "It's a little more complicated than that. There were other factors." She pauses thoughtfully. "Pride. Total absorption in what he was working on. This kind of focus that made it hard for him even to acknowledge that there was someone else in the room sometimes. If he was thinking about something, he was thinking, and he didn't want to be interrupted."
"Evidently she's gone on thinking about your remarks, because after a moment she says, "I've never even seen anything I wanted to eat. It seems a disgusting process, to be honest." You regard her with amusement. "Being human does involve certain disgusting processes, of which eating is probably the least offensive." "I still don't get it," she replies primly."
"It was a terrible disappointment," she remarks thoughtfully, "when I first learned that the ocean is only water, slipping back and forth under the command of the moon. He used to tell me things like that, even before I asked: I think he could perceive where I was looking, what I wanted to know."
"She turns so that she is looking at you straight on -- level gaze, smoky eyes, brows pale and washed out in the light. Not her most beautiful angle, which might be why she avoids it."
"Her eyes shine a smoky green -- a color almost alien, until she meets your look, and smiles."
"fine architecture of chin and cheekbone, brow and nose. If there is vulnerability, or the hint of a flaw, it lingers in her mouth and at the edges of her eyes. She looks a bit blank, as though caught up in some internal thought; her focus doesn't seem to be on you."
"You say Dionysus takes away inhibitions and constraints. But that sounds a bit dangerous to me." She laughs. "Dangerous? All the gods are dangerous! But the idea is to get outside the boundaries of yourself, not to be trapped by your fears and your habits." "So in order to gain freedom, you first surrender your will," you say. "That doesn't sound like an entirely wise exchange. What is freedom if you have no control over where it leads you?" "There is a price to everything," she replies enigmatically."
"[Input “tell about sex”] Oh, really. There are some things that fall outside your job description."
"[Input “think about sex”] Indulging your one-track mind isn't going to get this job done any more quickly."
"What was it like going through customs?" "I held very still and didn't breathe," she says. "And I let myself look like a statue again." Before your eyes her skin seems to grow harder, less receptive, and her hair seems like a single piece. Then the illusion fades. You stand there staring for another moment. Very odd effect, that..."
"So the tides disappoint you?" you ask. "Disappoint? Who am I to be disappointed?" She shrugs, laughing a little dryly. "They're only one of a million things about which I was wrong. So? The world is larger and less pretty than I thought. But I have no right to complain about what is.""
"She turns -- not her whole body, just her head, so that you can see one ear behind the cascade of hair. "What's so fascinating about the curtain that it merits your fixed attention?" She laughs; turns a bit towards you; seems to relax a shade. "Nothing," she says, "except that it presents no surprises." You raise an eyebrow. Processing humor in an apparently spontaneous manner is a rarity."
"Heat floods you. She shouldn’t be able to do that, shouldn’t touch the audience without permission, certainly shouldn’t inflict pain or injury. Broken. Spluttering, you speak an old reset code — EUDOXIA — but she doesn’t respond. Other than with a positively ghoulish smile. It’s going to take a couple of shots of something strong to keep nightmares out of your head tonight."
"[after suggesting she remove her dress] She puts a hand on your shoulder, leans down, and whispers in your ear: “It’s sewn on. But if you know of someplace quiet where there’s a pair of scissors...” Which just goes to show, you never can tell."
"Hey,” you say. “Trade you places.” Her eyes meet yours briefly. “What?” she asks, startled. “Come on, get down. You can wander around. Talk to people. Look at things.” She just looks at you speculatively, her forehead creased. “Very well,” she says finally. She steps down, and you climb up in her place — first hanging your jacket strategically over the placard. Which is how it comes about that you spend the rest of the night sitting on the pedestal. It’s rather amusing, in fact; your long familiarity with animate behavior styles makes it easy to emulate one. Of course you are a bit piqued by your reviews: “Supplied only with esoteric data... personable in a self-deprecating way, but unexciting... breaking no important barriers in the development of more human-like animates.” Damn critics. From the same source, you read that the gallery hired a new assistant. In the photo she’s looking severely at the camera, her pure-blonde hair taken up in a French twist. It’s already occupied, and there’s certainly no room for two. Interesting statement though that might make."
"“Bored so soon?” she asks, in a flat voice. You turn and look at her one last time. “I have other things to do,” you say. “And even your creator would admit that you’re — shall we say a bit rough around the edges?”"
"Io, Bacchus!” she shouts, so loudly that the sound echoes off the walls. What happens next comes all at once. There is a tremor in the floor like the beating of drums. The air conditioner rattles, the vent disgorges dozens of emerald snakes. The curtain becomes a tangle of vines. A man steps through them, a young man, with curling blond hair and a smooth face, carrying a strange rod with a pine cone at the end. When he sees you, he smiles — a sweet menacing smile that makes you take a step back. His attention turns to her. He taps her with the end of the wand, and the stiffness and the posed quality leave her. She follows him. Called to, she does not turn around. The vines part. She is gone. “What have you done to her?” you demand. “Set her free. I could do the same for you. If you like.” You stare at the vegetation, embarrassed — by your sudden longing to follow Galatea, by your doubts, by your inability to understand what the god is offering you. “Choose, but choose now,” he says. “Yes or no?” “Yes.” For half a moment it flashes before you what you have to lose — your life, your sanity, your position — and then in the darkness, drums and flutes on the ground honey and a sweet flow of wine and all around dancers, hands and eyes"
"You’re an avatar, you’ve got someone controlling you in realtime!” The reply, when it comes, is not from Galatea. The velvet curtain moves violently; tiny gold tacks shower out of the wall; half the backdrop wrenches free, thanks to the opening of a door beyond. “Hi,” says the newcomer. “Behold the Great and Powerful Oz,” she adds under her breath. “What?” You stare down at her: she’s rather short, a little on the dumpy side, and dressed in a ripped pair of blue jeans. An unlikely source for that performance you just observed. She cocks her head to one side. “Sorry to disappoint, “ she says with a smile. “It was an experiment that — well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was curious what people would say. Hope you don’t take it personally.” You glance at Galatea — lifeless now that her controls have been switched off — and then back at the artist. “You could start by telling me your real name.”"
"She falls silent and thoughtful, and then after a moment she goes on to other anecdotes: plotless, rambling, visions rather than events. And you have a sense of overwhelming strangeness — most of all when she speaks of places that are familiar to you, of Pygmalion’s adventures in your own country. Everything was a portent or an omen to him. The effect stays with you for days, for weeks. Things catch your eye. Windows watch you, doors fly open of their own accord, trash arranges itself into inscrutable sigils. Winds trouble you. Trees stretch and touch your shoulder as you pass, but when you turn your head, they have nothing to say. And night by night you wake, tangled, with the moon on your face."
"As you talk, she sinks to sit on the pedestal, her skirts billowing around her. She only says enough to let you know that she’s still listening. You find yourself pouring out all your losses, disappointments, frustrations. And last and deepest, that sense of isolation that has never left you since Jenny died. By the end of the evening you feel as though you’ve been through a wringer, and at the same time strangely healed. (Someone should write a psychologist program for animates. It would make millions.)"
"“Okay,” she says. “Where’s some food? You have any?” “What? No, not — not with me. There’s some in the other room, if you like.” “Excellent.” Bemused, you follow her into the other room, where (disregarding the stares of everyone around her) she helps herself to two handfuls of crackers, a whole wedge of Stilton, and enough caviar to recolonize the Dead Sea. Her bravado wears off a little when it comes to actually eating the stuff, and she carries her plate back into the other room and sits consciously on the pedestal. “So what do I do?” “Take something, put it in your mouth. Chew. Swallow.” She still looks confused, so you fix up one of the crackers. “The Stilton’s a bit of an acquired taste—” But she seems to be choking, so you skip the monologue and hand her the bottled water you had the prescience to pick up. “You okay?” She swallows, with difficulty; looks at you teary-eyed; and says, “This is AMAZING.” “Welcome to humanity,” you say."
"“Well, she sounds like a harmless and pleasant sort.” She turns so that she is looking at you straight on — level gaze, smoky eyes, brows pale and washed out in the light. Not her most beautiful angle, which might be why she avoids it. “Pleasant and harmless,” she repeats in a dull voice. “She’s the one who sent Helen to Troy; she’s the one who made Zeus chase after all sorts of mortal women, to their disadvantage and Hera’s fury. If it weren’t for her and her tricks and her cruelty—” She pauses, her eyes flickering up to something behind you. You turn. “It is unwise,” says the newcomer, “to rail against the gods. Especially against those who have done you favors.” She walks toward where you are standing: from a distance she looks like one of the gallery owners, but when she is beside you you realize that this is an illusion: close up you notice how tall she is, and how the light seems to follow her of its own accord. There’s a smell of something sweet and unfamiliar."
"[…]Maybe we’re both machines; maybe neither of us is; maybe this whole thing is itself a simulation inside a box somewhere.” “An unanswerable bit of Sophistry,” you reply. “You win. For now.” You execute a little bow, and she laughs as you go out."
"Not stopping to question the odd fixity of this idea, you reach out and grasp the curtain. Galatea gives a little gasp as you pull firmly; tiny gold tacks fly out of the wall and roll across the polished floor. And there’s just blank plaster, and rows of holes where the tacks went... You turn and find Galatea regarding you in some amusement from the pedestal. “Looking for something?” You shrug, feeling like an idiot; in the distance you hear the heavy tread of approaching feet. You’ll never be able to explain this: a compulsion that came from outside, totally out of character, like a command from God..."
"…and there’s that funny feeling of disconnect as you break the fourth wall, force information into your avatar that isn’t part of the program, that comes from outside. For just a moment the avatar circuits register doubt, confusion, a hint of self-awareness... And then you’re sitting back in the control room, scrubbing at your eyes with the palm of your hand. Someone holds a cup of water under your nose. “You didn’t finish the scenario,” says a voice, up and to the left. A cool reassuring hand on the back of your neck, another voice answering: “Leave her alone for a minute! God!” You don’t answer either of them. Your gaze is fixed on the monitors: in the test room your avatar has fallen slack, no longer receiving your commands. You sip at the water, trying to feel like yourself again. “I don’t know,” you say finally. “I don’t think it’s going to sell. Too cerebral.”"
"Remembering, on purpose, is not something you’ve forced yourself to do for a long time. And it is perhaps not a good idea, even now. Worries, first symptoms, diagnosis, despair. Standing in the hospital parking lot in the whirling snow, watching the lights go out on her floor. The hours and hours consumed by intractable emotions. And then when she was gone, the utter solitude in your life. “Are you all right?” Galatea is reaching towards you, but you turn away."
"“Like and love are different things,” she replies. “You must know that. And then — he had a kind of intensity that compelled, that was absolute. I’ve not met anyone else like that. Yes, it’s true that I haven’t met very many people yet in my life, but my suspicion is, from all I see and hear, that he was unusual in that regard. There was something eating him from the inside, all the time, and the energy ofit was contagious.” “Most people don’t have that kind of genius, but most people also aren’t so impossible to live with.”"
"She blinks once without turning toward you. "He didn't want me to be awake, you see. He didn't make me to be a live person. He told me he wanted something that belonged to him, and that if I could think and talk, I couldn't belong to him any more. So he threw me away.""
"I myself have a kind of weird love-hate relationship with Galatea at this point — a lot of people love the piece, but it’s pretty much the first thing I wrote that ever got any widespread scrutiny. I would write it differently now, in many ways and for many reasons. Parts of it strike me as flippant, parts clueless, parts overblown. I’ve gotten some great fan mail, art, and even music about that game, and also more creepy and bizarre email than about anything else I’ve written. And I’m also grateful, as that single piece is probably responsible for my career, a lot of my friendships, even my marriage. I remember it fondly but I almost never replay these days. So revisiting it long enough to reimplement all the text in a new context was strange. I disciplined myself not to change too much of the original dialogue, even when it wasn’t what I would now write."