“You’re quite right, Agent,” he said, “while I could find and absorb any and every piece of artistic theory known to the universe — experience is much more of an honest teacher than a few files could ever be.”
See, there was another thing. Pegasus had always…kind of had a tendency to refrain from direct downloading of information and, by extension, knowledge. He avoided it. Did it sometimes, when it was necessary or when he didn’t want to make a fool of himself, but he avoided it. There was something strangely…inauthentic about that action.
He’d never been one to place a great value on learning. Yeah, it was cool, to have knowledge, but it’d be a lie to say that some things were just better off not learning about. Like Komodo dragons and how many different types of bacteria floated happily around in their saliva! (He actually had downloaded that little morsel, in fact. A mistake.) Or…like what freedom felt like. Like what electricity felt like.
But he had learnt those things through experience. It was genuine, honest learning — not the leisurely sip and swallow from the goblet of fact and data.
But AI, oh, no. Gifted with the powers of analysis and collection, they were…well, there was something kind of dishonest about AIs. They could pluck facts like ripe berries from trees, squeeze them between cold fingertips until they burst and dripped, crunch the information with a calculating mental grip. But they had merely watched it burst, merely watched the juice and the pulp trail down - they hadn’t experienced it. He didn’t blame them - surely it wouldn’t be fun - but it was better than watching it go by with not a word or an attempt to stop it, and it was surely better than being the cause for it.
AI could not feel physical pain. Humans could. He did not envy them, not in the slightest — but the thing was, humans could survive pain. That was something a robot could not do, as far as he knew. They didn’t have any pain to feel, nor survive! Where they really as strong as they thought?
Great, your arm’s blown up. Go to restoration. Get it fixed.
Oh, your arm’s gone. You’re bleeding out. You probably won’t make it, but if you fight hard and if your fellow human beings devote their time and energy to helping you, maybe you can. Oh, and then you’ve gotta deal with the life-long aftermath of not having an arm.
It’s obvious who’s stronger, but who’s stronger?
Hey, look at that, you’ve been traumatised and put under a lot of mental stress. No worries, just get that oil’ memory wiped. Good as new but you literally don’t remember anything. Cool.
Oh, you’ve had a lifetime of bullshit? Well. You’re gonna remember it all and carry it with you until you die.
How could an AI say that humans are weak and truly believe it?
The facts said that humans are weak. That was undeniable. It could be crunched, processed. Easily.
But Pegasus wasn’t exactly one for facts. And it probably showed, because just as a feeling of agitation was rumbling like thunder into the brewing storm of his mind, he was snapped back into reality by Lincoln’s next words.
“I’d be interested in seeing your art, if you ever want to show me.”
Jesus fucking Christ he’d just skipped off back into his angry little wasteland again, hadn’t he?
Maybe that’s why he hadn’t been drawing. Didn’t want that stony ground crackling into innocent paper, didn’t want lava to melt those fine blue lines away. Didn’t want poisonous fumes smudging his etchings worse than the side of his hand did, did he?
After all. His drawings were records. They were the good memories — the memories that could possibly be hidden by bad ones within the confines of his own head — and they were the ones that were immortalised by pencil and ink. They were records of who he was before. He wasn’t going to ruin them with the drawings of who he was now.
So yeah. He vaguely sensed that the Agent was growing a tad restless, which was mildly alarming, but he guessed Lincoln could see the drawings.
“I would not be opposed to that,” he said lightly as he too followed in standing up - not with half as much struggle as the Agent, however muted such struggle was, might we add - “as I said, I’d like to make this pleasant for both of us. But with that in mind, you also mentioned that this is, as you put it, a ‘two-way street’. I’d like to propose a condition: if I show you my art, I’d like to see your musical skill. I’d like to see where such practice and experience leads.”
He brushed nonexistent pieces of dust off his sleeves. “I believe Agent Nashville owns an acoustic guitar,” Pegasus said, “but if you will accompany me to my quarters, I can retrieve my notebook? I haven’t shown many people my drawings. I’ve been meaning to use paint, though, so far I have only been able to use pens and dark pencils. Oh, and sand.”
