Transition dreams, an old man learns in this story, are dreams that your new, robotic brain has as it is being "filled up" with the patterns copied from your old, organic brain. There is a good deal of discussion about the questions of how we know about these dreams and why we cannot know precisely what they will be. All of this discussion refers to "mathematical modeling", and the latter has a flavor very reminiscent of Turing's halting problem.
Originally published in
Interzone #76, October 1993 and republished in the anthology "Luminous". |