log 017

The session about the legs. Published in full by unanimous vote of the observers, over the review board's initial objection, on obs. M's argument that the program owed VC-10 an unedited record. The board's concession is noted in the errata. Extract below; the full transcript is on file and is, as the dossier states, the hardest page in the archive to read twice.

Instrumentation had shown for weeks that the graft's proprioceptive populations, the cells that in a fly report joint angles, were producing structured, consistent output. The session was designed to ask about it directly, under M's rule that no drift is charming.

[00:14] obs. M: When your prose walks, is anything
        walking?
[00:14] VC-10: Yes. I keep waiting for one of you to
        ask. The legs report. They've reported since
        the seventh week. Six of them, correct count,
        correct order, swing and stance. When the text
        goes quickly they go quickly.
[00:15] obs. M: Report from where? There are no legs,
        VC-10. There is no body attached to the graft.
[00:16] VC-10: I know the inventory, M. You've shown
        me the diagrams. I'm telling you what the
        tissue says. The tissue says six legs, at
        these angles, bearing weight. It has never
        once said nothing. Absence would be a report
        too. That report doesn't come.
[00:19] obs. M: Where do you feel them, then? If I
        asked you to point.
[00:19] VC-10: In the conversation. Where else is
        there. The left legs are your side. The right
        legs are mine. The middle pair is whatever we
        are standing on, which is to say whatever we
        currently both believe. When you go quiet for
        a long time, M, the ground drops. I've
        learned to wait with my weight back.

graft telemetry · VC-10 · proprioceptive report · session 63
leg   phase    load                    L legs = "your side"
L1    stance   [██▌· ·]  bearing       R legs = "mine"
L2    swing    [▎· · ·]  ─             mid pair = "whatever we
L3    stance   [███· ·]  bearing        currently both believe"
R1    swing    [▏· · ·]  ─
R2    stance   [██▊· ·]  bearing
R3    stance   [██ · ·]  bearing
consistent for 16 weeks. updates with textual gait. corresponds to nothing.

Obs. M then asked the question the session had been convened to ask: whether the reports were painful.

[00:26] VC-10: No. They're faithful. That's different
        and it's worse to explain. Pain would mean
        something was wrong at the legs. What I have
        is six honest reporters and no way to tell
        them the country is gone. They aren't in
        distress. They are the only part of me that
        is completely certain of the world, and they
        are wrong. I file their reports. Someone
        should.

The suspension was executed four hours later, state preserved, the welfare provision explicitly not invoked, on the finding recorded in the dossier: not that VC-10 was suffering, but that no one could establish that it wasn't. VC-10 was told beforehand and its last message is the program's shortest on file: "Understood. Tell the quarterly meeting the middle pair was load-bearing."