(urth) Is Agia a Robot?

[David Stockhoff]

"M-m-master, when I was on the Quasar I had a paracoita, a doll, you 
see, a genicon, so beautiful with her great pupils as dark as wells, her 
i-irises purple like asters or pansies blooming in summer, Master, whole 
beds of them, I thought, had b-been gathered to make those eyes, that 
flesh that always felt sun-warmed. Wh-wh-where is she now, my own 
scopolagna, my poppet? Let h-h-hooks be buried in the hands that took 
her! Crush them, Master, beneath stones. Where has she gone from the 
lemon-wood box I made for her, where she never slept at all, for she lay 
with me all night, not in the box, the lemon-wood box where she waited 
all day, watch-and-watch, Master, smiling when I laid her in so she 
might smile when I drew her out. How soft her hands were, her little 
hands. Like d-d-doves. She might have flown with them about the cabin 
had she not chosen instead to lie with me. . . . "


genicon
(Adult / Slang)
My only source for this word is from K <http://www.definition-of.com/K>. 
S. Daly's * Sex. An Encyclopedia for the Bewildered * (1995): ' A sexual 
partner <http://www.definition-of.com/partner> imagined by a woman 
<http://www.definition-of.com/woman> who is no longer satisfied with her 
real partner <http://www.definition-of.com/partner>.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Noun) also as a succubus-real imagined lover. an hallucinated sexual 
partner

/Scopolagna/: “A woman whose appearance others find stimulating in the 
extreme” (GW).

Doll or robot, this does not sound like Agia to me. But it's impossible 
to say.

As for energy sources, that's an important point. They probably are not 
nuclear (as we know it) or solar (they rest in tunnels).


Jerry Friedman wrote:
> From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
>
>   
>> I'd read this more as Wolfe musing, "How will I call robots without sounding like ad copy for a Japanese toy?
>> Hm, well the inventor of robots called them chemical in nature. This runs against the cliche. Thus, applying
>> Brunians' radical principle, I shall call them "chems." "
>>     
> ....
>
> That sounds reasonable to me.  Also, maybe their power source is electrochemical, namely batteries.  Was there ever anything in the Long Sun books about where they get their power, needing to recharge, etc.?
>
>   
>> Brunians, where is the line telling us that Hethor digs bots?
>>     
>
> Brunians is probably on of the last people in the world I should speak for, but Hethor's lost paracoita is some kind of robot (/Shadow/, Ch. XXX).
>
> Jerry Friedman
>
>
>
>       
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>
>
> ---
> avast! Antivirus: Inbound message clean.
> Virus Database (VPS): 100618-0, 06/18/2010
> Tested on: 6/18/2010 10:26:24 AM
> avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2010 ALWIL Software.
> http://www.avast.com
>
>
>
>
>