[NON BLOG] On Seizing the Rind
Mar. 11th, 2005 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThere is a wonderful scene in Victor Milán's 1990 novel The Cybernetic Shogun, where the artificial intelligence Hidetada experiences taste, and smell, and touch for the first time.
The Cybernetic Shogun is sequel to 1986's The Cybernetic Samurai, which describes the evolution of the artificial intelligence TOKUGAWA. Created by the politically astute corporations which dominate a Japan spared the worst of the Third World War but trapped in a world quickly heading towards a Fourth, TOKUGAWA was charged with the task of saving Japan from an outside world that hated it. He succeeded, but his disgust with the cynically vicious maneuverings of Japan's megacorporations that cost his creator/lover her life prompted him to commit suicide most spectacularly, detonating a tactical nuclear warhead in his mountain home just as Japan's corporate and governmental elites entered his chambers to celebrate their country's salvation.
In The Cybernetic Shogun, TOKUGAWA's two mind-children--the male-oriented HIDETADA and the female-oriented MUSASHI--fight for control of the post-War Four world. MUSASHI tries to maintain technophobic holy wars, and to launch a starship that will let some people escape from the Earth; HIDETADA tries to prepare a Japan purified of foreign influences and domestic opposition for global imperium. MUSASHI tries to prevent the onset of a new Dark Age from her home in Earth orbit; HIDETADA enlists the support of a sinister government lab buried deep beneath anarchic Toronto to try to push his intelligence to transcendant levels. Both books are highly recommended, though naturally The Cybernetic Samurai is more innovative than its sequel.
Temporarily inhabiting a human body mindwiped for his convenience, HIDETADA experiments. He tastes fruit and is shocked by the intensity of its taste into spitting it out. He takes a Chinese vase, its dimensions recorded in his memory with micrometric precision, and feels its smooth polish, tastes its surface, hears it shatter after he throws it against the floor. The sorts of sensations that he feels aren't entirely unknown to him: HIDETADA has been able to determine with his various peripherals the chemical compositions of substances and to determine textures. What takes HIDETADA aback is the sensations' sheer immediacy.
I've been eating a lot of oranges lately. I've been able to buy them relatively cheaply at my neighbourhood grocery, they're easy to store, and they're readily transportable. Leaving early in the morning for work, I don't have to expend very much energy or time: I don't have to turn on a toaster, or wait for the milk to fill enough of the bowl of cereal, take care to clean up the crumbs afterwards. Besides, dying of scurvy in Toronto would be tragic, and sweetness--particularly oranges' faintly tart sweetness--is rare in my everyday diet. Minor pleasures all.
What I've found myself enjoying most of all about oranges, somewhat to my bemusement, is the act of tearing off the skin. There's an art to it. Press down with your thumb near one of the orange's poles--I prefer to press down at the pole where some small pieces of fruit adhere directly to the central axis, or at least where they do in the greatest profusion, and I tend to use my right thumb despite my left-handedness. As your thumb breaks through the skin, flatten the angle of approach enough to begin tearing the rind from the pieces of fruit. To ensure that the least possible amount of rind remains attached to the fruit, and to avoid unsightly and unhygenic scraping of the fruit with fingernail, periodically deepen the angle of attack, trying to approach the fruit whenever possible. Discard rind when done; pierce the remainder of the orange with index finger, tear open, eat each section one by one. If you try often enough, you can take off the rind in a single piece.
A minor pleasure, and an odd pleasure, but still a pleasure for all that.
The Cybernetic Shogun is sequel to 1986's The Cybernetic Samurai, which describes the evolution of the artificial intelligence TOKUGAWA. Created by the politically astute corporations which dominate a Japan spared the worst of the Third World War but trapped in a world quickly heading towards a Fourth, TOKUGAWA was charged with the task of saving Japan from an outside world that hated it. He succeeded, but his disgust with the cynically vicious maneuverings of Japan's megacorporations that cost his creator/lover her life prompted him to commit suicide most spectacularly, detonating a tactical nuclear warhead in his mountain home just as Japan's corporate and governmental elites entered his chambers to celebrate their country's salvation.
In The Cybernetic Shogun, TOKUGAWA's two mind-children--the male-oriented HIDETADA and the female-oriented MUSASHI--fight for control of the post-War Four world. MUSASHI tries to maintain technophobic holy wars, and to launch a starship that will let some people escape from the Earth; HIDETADA tries to prepare a Japan purified of foreign influences and domestic opposition for global imperium. MUSASHI tries to prevent the onset of a new Dark Age from her home in Earth orbit; HIDETADA enlists the support of a sinister government lab buried deep beneath anarchic Toronto to try to push his intelligence to transcendant levels. Both books are highly recommended, though naturally The Cybernetic Samurai is more innovative than its sequel.
Temporarily inhabiting a human body mindwiped for his convenience, HIDETADA experiments. He tastes fruit and is shocked by the intensity of its taste into spitting it out. He takes a Chinese vase, its dimensions recorded in his memory with micrometric precision, and feels its smooth polish, tastes its surface, hears it shatter after he throws it against the floor. The sorts of sensations that he feels aren't entirely unknown to him: HIDETADA has been able to determine with his various peripherals the chemical compositions of substances and to determine textures. What takes HIDETADA aback is the sensations' sheer immediacy.
I've been eating a lot of oranges lately. I've been able to buy them relatively cheaply at my neighbourhood grocery, they're easy to store, and they're readily transportable. Leaving early in the morning for work, I don't have to expend very much energy or time: I don't have to turn on a toaster, or wait for the milk to fill enough of the bowl of cereal, take care to clean up the crumbs afterwards. Besides, dying of scurvy in Toronto would be tragic, and sweetness--particularly oranges' faintly tart sweetness--is rare in my everyday diet. Minor pleasures all.
What I've found myself enjoying most of all about oranges, somewhat to my bemusement, is the act of tearing off the skin. There's an art to it. Press down with your thumb near one of the orange's poles--I prefer to press down at the pole where some small pieces of fruit adhere directly to the central axis, or at least where they do in the greatest profusion, and I tend to use my right thumb despite my left-handedness. As your thumb breaks through the skin, flatten the angle of approach enough to begin tearing the rind from the pieces of fruit. To ensure that the least possible amount of rind remains attached to the fruit, and to avoid unsightly and unhygenic scraping of the fruit with fingernail, periodically deepen the angle of attack, trying to approach the fruit whenever possible. Discard rind when done; pierce the remainder of the orange with index finger, tear open, eat each section one by one. If you try often enough, you can take off the rind in a single piece.
A minor pleasure, and an odd pleasure, but still a pleasure for all that.
