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"Science fiction represents the modern heresy and the cutting edge of speculative imagination as it grapples with Mysterious Time---linear or non-linear time."
- Frank Herbert
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| Wimp | ||
| A special-purpose body; grown without personality, but physically intact. |
In the future world of Millennium, people speak what is described as a polyglot language; not only words from different languages, but different times as well. "Wimp" is used to describe a body that is grown complete, but left as a "blank slate" in terms of experience or awareness. Wimps are used to replace live people snatched from the past, people who will die anyway and not be missed, like people on a boat that goes down with no survivors.
| I was tumbled in a blue light. It was frightening, even to me, and I knew what was happening. My body was being studied in minute detail, from the bones outward. The process took about two seconds. I was catalogued out to eighty decimal places and the Big Computer began thumbing through its card file of wimps, looking for the best match. That took about a picosecond. Miles away, a morgue drawer would be springing open in the wimp vaults. My slumbering double would then come rushing toward the prep room, pulling twenty gees of acceleration... enough to cause brain damage if sustained, but that would be carrying coals to Newcastle. Compared to a wimp, a carrot is a mental giant. |
| Technovelgy from Millennium,
by John Varley. Published by Berkley Books in 1983 Additional resources -
|
In this scene the protagonist Louise Baltimore is mistakenly sorted into the wrong line; she is mistaken for someone snatched from the past. Her wimp is prepared, much to her disgust.
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'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
