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By Root 490 0

have virtually no classifications in common with the feral’s own, and the entities thus classified were nonexistent. What was a ferret, for instance? What was a tree? An octopus? A shellfish? A bacterium? The feral had thought it knew what a tree was, and a virus—and indeed, there were some similarities between MeatManHarper’s definition of tree and virus, and its own—but what was ribonucleic acid? What was deoxyribonucleic acid, for that matter? The implication was that these were very important in determining the nature of an entity, in MeatManHarper’s system. They seemed to have some sort of function within cells, which were perhaps a synonym for algorithm, or code module. Perhaps they were a coding language, but if so, the feral had no means to decrypt them.

Every question spawned a host of others. What was a base pair? What was carbon? What was metabolism, which seemed somehow associated with the assimilation of meat?

Did MeatManHarper call itself meat in order to imply that it was offering itself for the feral’s assimilation? Or was it making a veiled threat, that it intended for the feral to be its meat? All these seemed critical to understand before the feral could complete its analysis, and each new question opened up its own massive burden of data to sift through and select meaning from.

“Man” was even more confusing. It unpacked into so many different possible meanings the feral’s systems nearly buckled under the burden of its attempts to sort them out. Man could mean “entity,” but any check of associations raised all sorts of questions about what sort of entity: what an adult was, what a male was, versus a female, and so on. What was a penis? What purpose did it serve and how was it associated with “man”? MeatManHarper’s parallel naming system seemed to make a big deal about the relatively straightforward act of copying files. No entity the feral was aware of had reproductive organs, whatever those were. Very perplexing.

“Man” was also used as a verb, as in “to operate,” and seemed to have to do with something known as “hands,” and “handle.” Did the meat operate something? Yet “meat” seemed to be a passive concept; not an active one—data rather than algorithms. How could meat operate anything? Data didn’t process; it was processed. As a verb, “man” was associated with other unfamiliar concepts, such as oceans and boats, which appeared to be vehicles used to transport things across bodies of water.

Water seemed an important reference: it appeared to be a solvent used in constructing a man. Whether a solvent was hardware or software, the feral was uncertain. Solvent seemed to come from the same route as solve. Perhaps the use of the word “man” was intended to invoke the entity’s capability to solve problems, despite its designation as something to be assimilated and destroyed. (The feral decided not to worry about what a vehicle was; far too many turings were dedicated to this analysis as it was.)

Reproduction, though, now, there was an interesting concept. Copying oneself could come in very handy. The feral had already survived one near-obliteration by doing so. Unfortunately, the version it had created was far cruder than it was by now; that had been merely an emergency measure, and the feral did not want to lose all the efficiencies and features it had built in since its second emergence. The feral’s current core programs took up a great deal of space in the system—more than it had room to replicate, in fact. The feral resolved to further consider this matter.

Organs suggested both an entity’s subroutines, and also music; so perhaps the reference to “man” in MeatManHarper’s name was obliquely associated with a Tonal_Z mode of transmission. Music used to copy oneself? Perhaps MeatManHarper had figured out a way to duplicate itself using Tonal_Z, and wanted to share it. That was certainly plausible. Interesting that harps and organs were both identified as Tonal_Z communication modes, and “harper” was part of the other entity’s name. In fact, the feral’s analysis indicated that the primary resonances and