I took my time answering. "I like flying saucers better."

"Oh, fiddle! I'm tempted to turn you in on Marcy Choy-Mu."

"The smartest thing you could do."

"No, I'll keep you; I'm used to your foibles. But I may keep you in a cage."

"Hazel. Listen carefully. Computers do not think. They calculate with great speed in accordance with rules built into them. Since we ourselves calculate by using our brains to think, this designed-in capacity to calculate gives computers the appearance of thinking. But they do not think. They operate the way they do because they must; they were built that way. You can add 'animism' to the list of nonsense notions to which I do not subscribe."

"I'm glad you feel that way, Richard, because this job will be touchy and difficult. I need your healthy skepticism to keep me straight."

"I'm going to have to write that down and examine it carefully."

"Do that, Richard. Now here is what happened back in 2075 and -6: One of my adoptive fathers, Manuel Garcia, was the technician who took care of the big computer of the Authority. This one computer ran almost everything... handled all the utilities of this city and of most of the other warrens-except Kong-bossed the first catapult, ran the tubes, handled banking, printed the Lunatic-did practically everything. The Authority found it cheaper to expand the functions of this one big computer than to spread computers all through Luna."

"Neither efficient nor safe."

"Probably, but that's what they did. Luna was a prison then;

it did not have to be either efficient or safe. There was no high tech industry here and in those days we had to accept whatever was handed us. As may be, dear, this one master computer got bigger and bigger... and woke up."

(It did, eh? Sheer fantasy, my sweet... and a cliche that has been used by every fantasy writer in history. Even Roger Bacon's Brass Head was one version of it. Frankenstein's monster is another. Then a spate of stories in later years and still they come. And all of them nonsense.) But what I said was:

"Go ahead, dear. Then what?"

"Richard, you don't believe me."

"I thought we settled that. You said that you needed my healthy skepticism."

"I do! So use it. Criticize! Don't just sit there with that smug look on your face. This computer had been operating by voice for years-accepting spoken programs, answering with synthesized speech or printout or both."

"Built-in functions. Techniques two centuries old."

"Why did your face shut down when I said it 'woke up'?"

"Because that's nonsense, my love. Waking and sleeping are functions of living beings. A machine, no matter how powerful and flexible, does not wake up or go to sleep. It is power on or power off; that's all."

"All right, let me rephrase it. This computer became self-aware and acquired free will."

"Interesting. If true. I don't have to believe it. I don't."

"Richard, I refuse to become exasperated. You are simply young and ignorant and that's not your fault."

"Yes, Grandmaw. I'm young and you're ignorant. Slippery bottom."

'Take your lecherous hands off me and listen. What accounts for self-awareness in a man?"

"Huh? I have no need to account for it; I experience it."

"True. But it is not a trivial question, sir. Let's treat it like a boundary problem. Are you self-aware? Am I?"

"Well, I am, monkey face. I'm not sure about you."

"The same, vice versa."

"That's fun, too."

"Richard, let's stick to the subject. Is the sperm in a male body self-aware?"

"I hope not."

"Or the ova in a female?"

"That's your question to answer, beautiful; I've never been female."

"And you are dodging questions just to tease me. A spermatozoon is not self-aware and neither is an ovum-and never mind silly remarks; that's one boundary. I, an adult human zygote, am self-aware. And you are, too, however dimly this is true for males. Second boundary. Very well, Richard; at what point from the freshly fertilized ovum to the mature zygote now named 'Richard' did self-awareness enter the picture? Answer me. Don't dodge it and, please, no silly remarks."

I still thought it was a silly question but I tried to give it a serious answer. "Very well. / have always been self-aware."

"A serious answer. Please!"

"Gwen-Hazel, that answer is as serious as I can make it. So far as I know I have lived forever and have been self-aware the whole time. All this talk about things that went on before 2133-the alleged year of my alleged birth-is just hearsay and not very convincing. I go along with the gag to keep from annoying people or getting funny looks. And when I hear astronomers talk about the world being created in a big bang eight or sixteen or thirty billion years before I was born-if I was bom; I don't recall it-that's a horse laugh. If I was not alive sixteen billion years ago, then there was nothing at all. Not even empty space. Nothing. Zero with no rim around it. The universe in which I exist cannot exist without me in it. So it's silly to talk about the date I became self-aware; time started when I did, it stops when I do. All clear? Or shall I draw you a diagram?"

"All clear on most points, Richard. But you are wrong about the date. Time did not start in 2133. It started in 2063. Unless one or the other of us is a golem."

Every time I have a go at solipsism something like this happens. "Honey, you're cute. But you are a figment of my imagination. Ouch! I told you to stop that."

"You have a lively imagination, darling. Thanks for thinking me up. Do you want another proof? Up to now I've just been playing-shall I now break one of your bones? Just a small one. You pick it."

"Listen, figment. You break one of my bones and you'll regret it for the next billion years."

"Merely a logical demonstration, Richard. No malice in it."

"And once I set the bone-"

"Oh, I'll set it, dear."

"Not on your life! Once I have it set, I'll phone Xia and ask her to come over and marry me and protect me from small figments with violent habits."

"You're going to divorce me?" Again she was suddenly all big eyes.

"Hell, no! Just bust you down to junior wife and put Xia in charge. But you can't leave. Permission denied. You're serving a life sentence, whether it's straight ahead or at right angles. I'm going to get a club and beat you until you give up your evil ways."

"All right. As long as I don't have to go away."

"Ouch! And don't bite. That's rude."

"Richard, if I am just a figment of your imagination, then any biting I do is your idea, done by you to yourself for some murky masochistic purpose. If that is not true, then I must be self-aware... not your figment."

"Either/or logic never proves anything. But you're a delightful figment, dear. I'm glad I thought of you."

"Thank you, sir. Sweetheart, here is a key question. If you will answer it seriously, I'll stop biting."

"Forever?"

"Uh-"

"Don't strain yourself, figment. If you have a serious question, I'll try to give it a serious answer."

"Yes, sir. What accounts for self-awareness in a man and what is there about this condition or process or whatever that makes awareness impossible for a machine? Specifically for a computer. In particular the giant computer that administered this planet in 2076. The Holmes IV."

I resisted the temptation to give a flip answer. Self-awareness? I know that one school of psychologists insists that awareness, if it exists, is present just as a passenger, no effect on behavior.

This sort of nonsense should be lumped with transubstan-tiation. If true, it can't be proved.

I am aware of my own self-awareness ... and that is as far as any honest solipsist should go. "Gwen-Hazel, I don't know."

"Good! We're making progress."

"We are?"