He approached her in that slow, almost snakelike way that he moved, his attention rerouting from his internal world to the real world. She’d told him a while ago he didn’t need to ask permission to touch her anymore—at this point their relationship didn’t warrant that level of formality. He raised a finger, placing it on her neck and grazing it upward along her skin, a little too gently. She flinched and giggled. “Sorry, that tickles.”
She felt a similar sensation from the other side of her neck—a surprise attack from his other hand, and she giggled and shied away from him. She started to correct him, but then realized he was doing it on purpose. This was him being playful. She shot an eye at the security camera in the corner, dark and barely visible, but its lens shining at her. She hoped there was no one on the other side of that camera who could see this.
“You are anxious about the situation. Would it lessen your anxiety if I meet with them?”
“Yes.”
“If you wish it, dear one,” he said, pulling his arms back into his neutral posture. “For you. Not for them.”
PRESS RELEASES
HOME | NEWS | PRESS RELEASES
January 18, 2008
HOUSE COMMITTEE JOINS JANO MIRANDA
TO TALK “PERSONHOOD THIRD OPTION”
WASHINGTON-The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Chair Carolyn Wang (D-WA) and Vice Chair Ryan Mellin (R-GA) joined Jano Miranda of the Aristotle Institute for Human Rights to discuss the Select Committee’s work. Established in 2007 as part of Hillsdale College, the Aristotle Institute is committed to “combining philosophy and technology to create a constructive debate and authentic dialogue in order to meaningfully outline what it means to be human, and how we should define personhood in the 21st Century.”
The Chair and Vice Chair spoke about options regarding the potential legal status of autonomous extraterrestrial intelligences, and the recent recommendations outlining a special set of legal standing and personhood rights for potential nonhuman intelligences as they might differ from rights for humans.
4
“Calm yourself.”
“Sorry.”
She took a deep breath and pushed herself closer to him. It had been a couple of weeks, and what was at first exciting had become routine. Ampersand would arrive around 10:00 P.M. and stay with Cora until she slept. She used the opportunity to turn it into an information exchange, walking him through certain aspects of human culture, and in turn, he answered her questions about life, the universe, and everything, and sometimes he wasn’t even frustratingly coy about it. It felt like a relationship. A friendship form of relationship, of course. A friendship-relationship. Yes.
He had her all but pinned up next to the wall as he always did, his body on one side of her and one hand on the other. She glanced at that hand, arguably the most alien thing about him, mere inches from her face, and once again was struck by the thought that this was not normal, and she really should not be okay with this. The four digits on the top were structured more like human fingers, with the two on the bottom on either side; the “thumbs” bore a striking resemblance to the forelimbs of a spider. His fingers weren’t attached with dozens of metacarpals but seemed to her more like hydraulics attached at a ball joint, held together up to the “knuckles” with a film that looked like a layer of skin rather than a meaty palm as seen in humans. It should be horrifying, but it wasn’t. Maybe humans could get used to anything with enough time.