t zero by Calvino Italo

Author:Calvino, Italo [Calvino, Italo]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Criticism, fiction, Italy, High Tech, Social life and customs, Literature: Classics, space opera, General, Literary, Science Fiction, adventure, Literature - Classics, Modern fiction, Italy - Social life and customs - Fiction
ISBN: 9780156924009
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 1976-09-06T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

in the choice that Priscilla makes of me, assuming that she does choose me and doesn't change her mind at the last moment—no one knows what order of priority comes first into play, therefore no one knows how many I's precede the I that I think I am, and how many Priscillas precede the Priscilla toward whom I believe I am running.

In short, the more you simplify the terms of the question the more they become complicated: once we've established that what I call "I" consists of a certain number of amino acids which line up in a certain way, it's logical that inside these molecules all possible relations are foreseen, and from outside we have nothing but the exclusion of some of the possible relations in the form of certain enzymes which block certain processes. Therefore you can say that it's as if everything possible had already happened to me, including the possibility of its not happening: once I am I the cards are all dealt, I dispose of a finite number of possibilities and no more, what happens outside counts for me only if it's translated into operations already foreseen by my nucleic acids, I'm walled up within myself, chained to my molecular program: outside of me I don't have and won't have relations with anything or with anybody. And neither will Priscilla; I mean the real Priscilla, poor thing. If around me and around her there's some stuff that seems to have relations with other stuff, these are facts that don't concern us: in reality for me and for her nothing substantial can happen.

Hardly a cheerful situation, therefore: and not because I was expecting to have a more complex individuality than the one given me, beginning with a special arrangement of an acid and of four basic substances

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.