inaclovenpine | (no subject)

MIR. Ariel? My Ariel!
Or should I say, my father's Ariel--
But you will come if I sing out for you,
Is that not so?

ARIEL. Call that a song, my little mistress?
Come, come, I've heard you sing a sweeter tune!
Went it not so?

[Sings, as birds]

MIR. O, Ariel, Ariel!
You know I cannot sing as you do!
You smile at me, you jest.

ARIEL. I'faith, my gentle miss,
I smile to see you smile, that is all.
It gives your father ease when you are happy.

MIR. Is that why you are dogging at my heels?
My father set you here to watch?
No, Ariel, stay, stay! I am not angry.
But pray you, Ariel, do not tell him we
Came out this far from home.
He keeps me so close, still, as if I were a babe,
And I am fully twelve years old.

ARIEL. Nay! Are you grown so agéd, little chick?
I thought your hair grew white, like your sire's.
Come, let's away and back--

MIR. I pray you, Ariel, do not tell him.
Let this grove be my own, and mine alone.
Please you, Ariel.
Speak not a word to him.

ARIEL. Silent as breath I'll be, my gentle mistress.

In Milliways, a slim, translucent figure sits cross-legged on the table of a booth. Lying on the table beside her -- it? him? -- is a chain of flowers, looking a little crumpled but still bright.

Ariel thinks perhaps she should not let Prospero see it. Perhaps it should stay here. But before she has to leave it anywhere, she likes to look at it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"By that definition, then, I can give you a more definite answer. I am capable of experiencing distress, and also of finding things pleasing or distasteful, most commonly in accordance with my initial function parameters and my relationships with certain individuals."

"If that is not a feeling, what else is't?"

"Linguistic ambiguity certainly allows for describing it as a feeling. I do not know if it is identical or merely analogous to feelings as experienced by organic sentient beings."

A pause.

"Do you experience feelings?"

Ariel blinks.

"I have felt pain, in sooth," she says, a little uncertain herself now. "And merry joy. And fear, I wot, and satisfaction too, though those I little knew in times before."

"I was not designed to experience pain or joy. Although I believe I have a working understanding of both."

"It is a mercy, not to feel the one." She shakes her head. "But sad, I think, to never feel the other."

"Can you tell me what, in your experience, differentiates pain from distress, or joy from satisfaction? I have been told that the difference is qualitative rather than a matter of degree."

"--I do not know," she says, surprised. "No one has ever asked.

"But pain is -- sharp. And so is joy, at that. Sharp as the sun-glint off the cresting wave, and deep as rock-roots planted 'neath the sea. And wild, crashing, no more tameable than fire that turns the forest's green crown black."

Baby's quiet for a moment, processing that.

"I do not think I was made to experience anything with sufficient intensity as to require similes."

Apologetic: "I do not know how else to tell you it. I know that mortals do not feel the waves, nor sun, nor fire, nor even earth as I."

"It is a matter of some philosophical debate," Baby offers, "whether all mortals feel things the same way as each other. Subjective experience, by definition, is difficult to describe in universal terms."

"'Tis true," she says, frowning a little. "But I meant mortal souls cannot feel as I do, for they are flesh and bone." A shrug. "But as to that, heartless am I myself."

Another processing pause.

"I was not made with a heart either," she says eventually, "or any form of cardiopulmonary system. I do not know if I would be considered 'heartless' in the metaphorical sense, as the heart does not produce or control emotion in most lifeforms."

"--Say you so?" Ariel says, surprised.

"Clarify, please: which statement do you refer to?"

There were at least three there!

"Is't true that feelings breed not in the heart?"

"Yes. In most lifeforms that possess one, the heart is a muscular organ that serves as a pump for the circulation of blood. Emotions are generated in the brain, insofar as emotion can be said to have a strictly physiological origin."

Ariel looks extremely dubious about this proposition.

"While the human heart frequently does undergo increased activity in moments of extreme emotion," Baby offers further, "this activity is reactive rather than generative."

Ariel still looks suspicious.

"Then in the head, emotion seeds and grows?"

That doesn't seem at all right to her, either.

"That is essentially correct. In humans and other lifeforms with analogous internal systems."