Tisarwat (disconnected thoughts)

[mirrorshard]

Anaander Miaanai's motivation is interesting. In order for her plan as Breq tells us she understands it to make sense, AM would have had to be entirely convinced that the implants and the download would take in a host not genetically identical, that her own personality would continue to dominate, and that AM(T) would either not be discovered, or would be allowed to continue unhindered. It's a plan with multiple points of failure, no graceful fallback, and no contingencies, which seems uncharacteristic.

More interesting, though, is that AM deliberately sent AM(T) out of communication with the rest of herself. We can probably safely assume that fragments which are physically close find their identities hybridising—AM, and for that matter Justice of Toren, can probably be usefully modelled as a scale-free network. But AM(T) has no other selves there to reinforce them and correct for personality drift, even before Breq starts in on her. So my feeling is that (some of) AM expected to end up with a third-at-least actor, partly because not all of AM('s knowledge) went into AM(T), who becomes a stripped-down, rebooted, possibly even uncontaminated, version.

It's pretty clear that Breq is not correct in her assertion that the cooption process murders the victim—the whole narrative logic demands that—so what we end up with is a Tisarwat who does not fit Breq's judginess preconception of her character, an unpredictable free agent (insofar as Radchaai are at all free agents) with three millennia of political experience and some really bad poetry. And while Breq confines herself to acting on the smallest possible scale and with the shortest possible range she can manage (and it's still not very short) Tisarwat won't.

Comments

[fadeaccompli]

See, I disagree about the beginning of the last paragraph: I read Breq as being completely correct that the cooption process murders the victim. The resulting character acts like someone who is not a seventeen-year-old spoiled baby lieutenant whenever new!Tisarwat forgets to pretend it, and there's that whole complicated resentment when that person, disconnected from the rest of Anaander, does start reacting automatically in some ways like a real subordinate and not the god-emperor of the civilized world. This is arguably a new person once disconnected, in the same way Breq is no longer Justice Of Toren, but she's also clearly not the original Tisarwat--even if she kept some memory--any more than Breq is the long-ago-frozen person who that particular ancillary unit came from.

[mirrorshard]

That's true, but persistence of identity is a complex issue, and you & I aren't the same people we were before time changed us. So it may be a matter of terminology, whether the violence of colonialist assimilation the ancillary process can be considered murder or not.

[davidgillon]

I read Tisarwat as a 17yo who doesn't know who she was, but does know what she is now. I'm not convinced all of Tisarwat is gone - her childhood built the brain structure AM's download is now running on, but her original personality* may entirely be (c.f. the scene in AJ with replacing 1 Esk's dead ancillary when they are ordered back to JoT and the comments about horrified reactions from the newly awakened ancillary, some of which never go away - though that may just be typical Radchaai ruthlessness, easier to decant another body and start again than actually understand what is happening).

* 'personality' gets complicated here, because we normally think of personality as the sum of life experiences plus (for want of a better word) nature. AM has dumped in life experience, but I'm not sure nature will have been so thoroughly targetted, plus Tisarwat is still physically a 17yo, with likely implications for emotional stability.

[davidgillon]

It's a plan with multiple points of failure, no graceful fallback, and no contingencies, which seems uncharacteristic.

Looked at from another angle, if even part of AM's download takes, then that gives AM an agent in system who is at least in part influenced by AM's thought processes, which is more than she started with. So it's actually almost a guaranteed win.

And from a third angle it may be an extended loyalty test for Breq - will Tisarwat still be alive when AM and Breq next meet up, and what does that tell AM about how her new agent thinks and reacts.

[strikeslip]

Yes, I agree- this is the Anaander Mianaai of which was wrote:

“The Lord of the Radch arrived in the middle of the day, on foot, a single one of her walking down through the upper city, no trace of her in the tracker logs, and went straight to the temple of Ikkt. She was old, gray-haired, broad shoulders slightly stopping, the almost-black skin of her face lined-- which accounted for the lack of guards. The loss of one body that was more or less near death anyway would not be a large one.”

Throwing away a copy or two is no trouble at all.

I also disagree with the OP's "can probably be usefully modelled as a scale-free network" comment-- we had two opposite faction Anaander Mianaai bodies standing right next to each other and not acknowledging they were enemies in Justice. There's gates between bodies of one type or another, either a One Esk / Two Esk / Etc setup like ships, or something else. Going to try to write more about this at some point...

[mirrorshard]

Ooh, all interesting points. Please do write more!