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"I kind of take it for granted that our great-grandchildren will regard us as a sort of precursor species. That they won't think of us as human and if we could see them, we probably wouldn't think of them as human either."
- William Gibson
 |
| Personality-Construct (Lazarus) | ||
| A chip providing a robotic body with the attributes of the selected person. |
| The watery blue eyes stared at her blankly.
“Gramps, you’re dead! You’re a lazarus, a personality-construct chip shoved into a casing of metal and plastic and God knows what. Certainly nothing with a right to run my life."
 (Personality-construct from 'Killing Gramps' by Ann K. Schwader) The eyes did not change expression. Pivoting its ’chair away from her, the lazarus headed for the living room’s front window at a fast walking speed. Phillipa nearly panicked. If the thing had fritzed, there was no way of stopping it from — what? Biomechanical suicide via the twentieth floor? Maybe a lazarus couldn’t survive being told what it was. Centimeters away from the window, the lazarus thumbed a remote button on the ’chair’s armrest. One wide pane slid open as ’chair and passenger sailed into a clear afternoon sky, the ’chair’s nullgrav adjusting to the drop. Cursing under her breath, Phillipa got up to shut the window. Midair exits had been Gramps’ favorite response to any argument — and he’d never bothered to close the pane behind him, either. Just how much personality did a “personality construct” preserve? |
| Technovelgy from Killing Gramps,
by Ann K. Schwader. Published by Aboriginal Science Fiction in 1988 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the Electronic Analogue of Living Brain from The Tunnel Under The World (1955) by Frederik Pohl, the construct from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson, recorded personality, from Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive. See also the personality simulator from The Dosadi Experiment (1977) by Frank Herbert and the Neuro-netsukes from Rim (1994) by Alexander Besher.
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