“Let me answer your question with some of my own,” he replied, his eyes flicking for a moment to where Neph and Mac were starting to wind down from the last of their katas. “What made you realize that you were a person? What lets you know it now?”
“Um, well…I guess I just know,” I answered, shrugging. “I think therefore I am, and all that.”
“How do you know that your conscious self is not simply an elaborate ruse?” Ferd asked next. “What if you were designed to think you were self-aware, altered and fitted with a lifetime of memories and responses so complete, so realistic, that you could not tell that they are false?”
“They’ve got computers that are pretty sophisticated,” I admitted. “They can layer on the artificial intelligence so thick and deep, some of them are nearly
