I did eventually find a way to write his story, and I sold it back to my old newspaper, the Martian Chronicle. It was good to visit the old planet again, especially now that they've moved it into a warmer orbit. 

That was a long time ago. But I'm still not done with Zima, odd as it seems. 

Every couple of decades, I still hop a lightbreaker to Murjek, descend to the streets of that gleaming white avatar of Venice, take a conveyor to the island and join the handful of other dogged witnesses scattered across the stands. Those that come, like me, must still feel that the artist has something else in store... one last surprise. They've read my article now, most of them, so they know what that slowly swimming figure means... but they still don't come in droves. The stands are always a little echoey and sad, even on a good day. But I've never seen them completely empty, which I suppose is some kind of testament. Some people get it. Most people never will. 

But that's art.

我最终找到了写好了他的传记，并且把传记卖给了我工作的第一家报纸——《火星人编年史》。能回到过去待过的星球感觉真好，尤其是现在火星已经被人们迁移进了更温暖的轨道。  

事情已经过去很长时间了，但我总觉得齐玛的事情还没完，实在有点奇怪。

每过几十年，我都会登上开往穆尔耶克的光速飞船，走进那座闪闪发光的威尼斯的化身，乘坐运输机来到小岛上，和其他一些顽固的目击者一起坐到看台上。这些人和我一样，依然认为这位艺术大师会留下什么东西，给人们最后的惊喜。他们都读过我写的文章了，大部分人都读过，所以他们知道那个慢慢游着的躯体意味着什么…但是他们依然不是成群结队地来。所以即使在极好的天气里，看台上却总是有点空旷和凄凉。但我从来没看见这些看台完全空过，我觉得这是某种神圣的誓约。一些人愿意接受这个誓约，但是大部分人永远都不会接受。

但这就是艺术。

It turned out that I remembered more of our meeting on the island than I had any right to. Make of that what you will, but it seemed I didn't need the mental crutch of my AM quite as much as I'd always imagined. Zima was right: I'd allowed my life to become scripted, laid out like a blueprint. It was always red wine with sunsets, never the white. Aboard the outbound lightbreaker a clinic installed a set of neural memory extensions that should serve me well for the next four or five hundred years. One day I'll need another solution, but I'll cross that particular mnemonic bridge when I get there. My last act, before dismissing the AM, was to transfer its observations into the echoey new spaces of my enlarged memory. The events still don't feel quite like they ever happened to me, but they settle in a little bit better with each act of recall. They change and soften, and the highlights glow a little brighter. I guess they become a llittle less accurate with each instance of recall, but like Zima said: perhaps that's the point. 

I know now why he spoke to me. It wasn't just my way with a biographical story. It was his desire to help someone move on, before he did the same.

这样的快乐让我记住了更多关于我们在岛上见面的情景，虽然我没有权利这么做。不管你信不信，我已经不需要备忘录助手这样的心灵拐杖了，这跟我以前想象的完全不一样。齐玛是对的：备忘录助手把我的生活变成了编写好的剧本，就像是一张设计好的图纸。在夕阳西下的时候，它总是让我选择红葡萄酒，从来不选白葡萄酒。在搭乘光速飞船离开穆尔耶克的星球时候，我已经到诊所里植入了一系列神经记忆扩展模块。这些模块应该能用上四五百年。总有一天我将需要另一种解决方案，但我一定要穿过那个独特的助记桥。在解雇我的备忘录助手之前，我做的最后一件事就是把它的观察数据传输进了我扩展以后的记忆。我依然觉得它记录的所有事情似乎并没有在我身上发生，但是每次回忆起来，这些记忆比其他的都清晰。它们发生了改变，变得柔和，而且精彩的地方变得更加闪耀。我估计这些记忆中的每个细节已经没那么准确了，但是就像齐玛说的那样：也许这就是关键。  

我现在明白了他为什么让我采访。不仅仅是因为我写人物传记的方式他很喜欢，而且他希望能够帮助某个人向前进，不要像他一样。  

That was what they thought. 

But I knew the truth. I knew it as I watched Zima stand at the edge of the pool and surrender himself to the blue. He'd told me exactly how it would happen: the slow, methodical shutting down of higher-brain functions. It hardly mattered that it was all irreversible: there wouldn't be enough of him left to regret what he had lost. 

But something would remain: a little kernel of being; enough of a mind to recognize its own existence. Enough of a mind to appreciate its surroundings, and to extract some trickle of pleasure and contentment from the execution of a task, no matter how purposeless. He wouldn't ever need to leave the pool. The solar patches would provide him with all the energy he needed. He would never age, never grow ill. Other machines would take care of his island, protecting the pool and its silent slow swimmer from the ravages of weather and time. 

Centuries would pass. 

Thousands of years, and then millions. 

Beyond that, it was anyone's guess. But the one thing I knew was that Zima would never tire of his task. There was no capacity left in his mind for boredom. He had become pure experience. If he experienced any kind of joy in the swimming of the pool, it was the near-mindless euphoria of a pollinating insect. That was enough for him. It had been enough for him in that pool in California, and it was enough for him now, a thousand years later, in the same pool but on another world, around another sun, in a distant part of the same Galaxy. 

As for me... 

这就是他们想的。  

只有我知道真相。当齐玛站在游泳池的边缘，周围被羁绊了他一生的蓝色包围着的时候，只有我知道真相。他已经告诉我了接下来要发生的事情：他大脑中的高级功能将被慢慢地、有条不紊地关闭。关键是整个过程是不可逆转的：根本没给自己留下后悔的余地。但是他大脑中的一小部分还是会继续：一个只能识别自身存在的微小内核。这个内核只够他认知周围的环境、执行特定的任务，哪怕这个任务毫无意义。他永远都不需要离开游泳池了。太阳能电板给他提供了足够的能量。他不会变老，也不会生病。其他的机器人会照看他的小岛，保护这个游泳池，确保这个沉默而缓慢的游泳者不会受到天气和时间的破坏。

这一切会持续几个世纪、

几千年，然后是几百万年。

几百万年以后会变成什么样子？谁都说不准。但有一件事我可以确定，齐玛永远不会厌倦他的任务。在他的心中已经没有了厌倦的概念。他已经变成了纯粹经验 。

如果他在游泳池里游泳的时候体会到了某种快乐，那只能是一种几乎没有思维的快乐，就像是蜜蜂或者蝴蝶的快乐。但是对他来说，这样的快乐已经足够。对于当初在加利福利亚那个游泳池里的他来说已经足够了，对于一千年后在同一个游泳池里的他来说也已经足够了。只不过这个游泳池已经搬到了银河系中另外一个遥远的世界，这个世界绕着另外一个太阳转动。　

对我来说也足够了……  

"Zima Blue is the colour of the tiles," he corrected gently. "It just happened to be the shade that the young man used for his swimming pool tiles." 

"Then some part of you remembered." 

"This was where I began. A crude little machine with barely enough intelligence to steer itself around a swimming pool. But it was my world. It was all I knew; all I needed to know." 

"And now?" I asked, already fearing the answer. 

"Now I'm going home."

I was there when he did it. By then the stands were full of people who had arrived to watch the performance, and the sky over the island was a mosaic of tight-packed hovering ships. The distortion screen had been turned off, and the viewing platforms on the ships thronged with hundreds of thousands of distant witnesses. They could see the swimming pool by then, its water mirror-flat and gin-clear. They could see Zima standing at the edge, with the solar patches on his back glinting like snake scales. None of the viewers had any idea of what was about to happen, or its significance. They were expecting something—-the public unveiling of a work that would presumably trump everything Zima had created before then—but they could only stare in puzzled concern at the pool, wondering how it could possibly measure up to those atmosphere-piercing canvases, or those entire worlds wrapped in shrouds of blue. They kept thinking that the pool had to be a diversion. The real work of art- the piece that would herald his retirement —must be somewhere else, as yet unseen, waiting to be revealed in all its immensity. 

“其实齐玛蓝就是这些瓷砖的颜色。”他很有礼貌地更正道，“齐玛蓝就是当初年轻人家里的游泳池瓷砖的颜色。”  

“也是你记忆中最深刻的一部分。”  

“这就是我诞生的地方。我就是当年那个智力只够让自己绕着游泳池转的粗糙的小机器人。但这个游泳池才是我的世界。它是我知道的一切，也是我唯一要知道的一切。”  

“那么现在呢？”我问道。其实我很害怕这个问题的答案。

“现在我要回家。”  

他这么做的时候我就在场。那一天看台上座无虚席，大家都来看齐玛最后的表演。小岛的上空挤满了满了悬停的飞船。遮盖在小岛上的曲面屏幕已经关闭，连飞船上的看台都挤满了成千上万远道而来的目击者。他们站在飞船上就能看到游泳池，游泳池里的水像镜子一样平静、像杜松子酒一样清澈。他们看到齐玛站在游泳池的边缘，背上装满了像鳞片一样的太阳能电池板。没有人知道将会发生什么事，也没有人明白齐玛的举动究竟有什么意义。他们期待在这个揭幕式上，齐玛会展出他所有作品中的王牌；然而现在他们只能迷惑地盯着游泳池。跟齐玛的那些大气磅礴的巨幅画作、那些把整个星球都包裹起来的蓝色画卷相比，这个小小的游泳池根本就不合格。他们一直在想，这个游泳池肯定是个障眼法。真正的作品——真正预示他退休的作品——一定在其他什么地方，只是现在还看不见，马上这幅鸿篇巨作就会出现在世人的面前。   

The little pool cleaner taught the young man a great deal about the fundamentals of robotics design. Those lessons were incorporated into the other household robots, until one of them —a simple household cleaner—became sufficiently robust and autonomous that the young man began to offer it as a kit, via mail-order. The kit sold well, and a year later the young man offered it as a pre-assembled domestic robot. The robot was a runaway success, and the young man's firm soon became the market leader in domestic robots. 

Within ten years, the world swarmed with his bright, eager machines. 

He never forgot the little pool cleaner. Time and again he used it as a test-bed for new hardware, new software. By turns it became the cleverest of all his creations, and the only one that he refused to strip down and cannibalise. 

When he died, the pool cleaner passed to his daughter. She continued the family tradition, adding cleverness to the little machine. When she died, she passed it to the young man's grandson, who happened to live on Mars. 

"This is the original pool," Zima said. "If you hadn't already guessed." 

"After all this time?" I asked. 

"It's very old. But ceramics endure. The hardest part was finding it in the first place. I had to dig through two metres of topsoil. It was in a place they used to call Silicon Valley." 

"These tiles are coloured Zima Blue," I said. 

制作这个游泳池清洁机器人的过程中，年轻人掌握了大量的机器人设计技术的原理。他运用这些原理，制作出了一系列其他的家用机器人，直到其中一个机器人——一个简单的家庭清洁机器人——变得十分强健，而且具有自主意识。这个年轻人就开了一家邮购公司，把这种机器人作为一种工具出售。机器人卖得很火。一年之后，年轻人又推出了预装配的家用机器人。这种机器人取得了巨大的成功，年轻人的公司逐渐成为了家用机器人市场的领先者。  

在接下来的十年内，整个世界到处都有这些聪明的、热心的机器人的身影。

但是他从来都没有忘记当年那个小小的游泳池清洁机器人。他把这个清洁机器人作为试验机，一次又一次地给他增加新的软硬件。清洁机器人一直是他所有发明中最聪明的一个，也是唯一一个没有被遗弃或者淘汰的机器人。

当他去世的时候，他把游泳池清洁机器人传给了他的女儿。他的女儿继承了父亲的事业，继续提高这个小机器人的智力。当她去世的时候，年轻人的外孙继续传承家族的传统。这个时候外孙已经住到火星上了。

“如果你还没猜到的话，我来告诉你这就是当初的那个游泳池，我把它搬到了这里。”齐玛说。

“始终都没有变?”我问道。

“它确实非常古老，但是瓷砖经受住了岁月的考验。寻找游泳池的过程中，最困难的工作就是找到它最初的地方。我不得不挖掉了两米深的表层土壤，才把它挖掘出来。它所在的地方曾经有一个响当当的名字——硅谷。”  

“这些瓷砖都配上了齐玛蓝。”

Perception, navigation and autonomous problem-solving were the three things that most interested the young man. He had created many robots, tinkering them together from kits, broken toys and spare parts. Their minds if they could be dignified with such a term were cobbled from the innards of junked computers, with their simple programs bulging at the limits of memory and processor speed.

The young man filled his house with these simple machines, designing each for a particular task. One robot was a sticky-limbed spider that climbed around the walls of his house, dusting the frames of pictures. Another lay in wait for flies and cockroaches. It caught and digested them, using the energy from the chemical breakdown of their biomass to drive itself to another place in the house. Another robot busied itself by repainting the walls of the house over and over, so that the colours matched the changing of the seasons. 

Another robot lived in his swimming pool. 

It toiled endlessly up and down and along the ceramic sides of the pool, scrubbing them clean. The young man could have bought a cheap swimming pool cleaner from a mail-order company, but it amused him to design the robot from scratch, according to his own eccentric design principles. He gave the robot a full-colour vision system and a brain large enough to process the visual data into a model of its surroundings. He allowed the robot to make its own decisions about the best strategy for cleaning the pool. He allowed it to choose when it cleaned and when it surfaced to recharge its batteries via the solar panels grouped on its back. He imbued it with a primitive notion of reward. 

感知、导航、自主解决问题的能力是这个年轻人最感兴趣的三个课题。他利用用废旧的工具箱、玩具、零件，组装了很多机器人。这些机器人的头脑——其实根本算不上什么头脑——是在废旧的电脑上运行简单程序，它们的记忆和处理速度实在有限。  

年轻人的屋子里堆满了这些简单的机器，一有业余时间，他就开始捣鼓机器人。其中一个机器人就是一只长了八条粘性长腿的“蜘蛛”，能够在他屋子里的墙上爬来爬去，清扫相框里的灰尘、“蜘蛛”的另外一项功能就是抓苍蝇和蟑螂。它会把抓到的害虫全部消化，把消化产生的化学能作为自己的能源，驱动自己爬向屋子的其他地方。另外一个机器人用来给墙壁刷漆，它会根据季节的变换改变墙壁的颜色。

还有一个机器人住在他的游泳池里。

"By yourself?" 

"Eventually, yes. That was when I had autonomy; legal independence. But I had to reach a certain level of intelligence before I was allowed that freedom. Before that, I was a simpler machine... like an heirloom or a pet. I was passed from one owner to the next, between generations. They added things to me. They made me cleverer." 

"How did you begin?" 

"As a project," he said. 

Zima led me back to the swimming pool. Equatorial night had arrived quickly, and the pool was bathed now in artificial light from the many floods arrayed above the viewing stands. Since we had last seen the pool the robot had finished cleaning the last of the tiles in place. 

"It's ready now," Zima said. "Tomorrow it will be sealed, and the day after it will be flooded with water. I’ll cycle the water until it attains the necessary clarity." 

"And then?" 

"I prepare myself for my performance."

On the way to the swimming pool he had told me as much as he knew about his origin. Zima had begun his existence on Earth, before I was even born. He had been assembled by a hobbyist, a talented young man with an interest in practical robotics. In those days, the man had been one of many groups and individuals groping toward the hard problem of artificial intelligence. 

“自己增强自己？”  

“后来是这样的。那是我具备了自主意识和法律独立性之后的事。不过要想获得自由，我也必须具备一定的智力。在这之前，我只是一台单纯的机器……类似于传家宝或者宠物。我被我的主人代代相传。他们不断给我增加新的东西，让我变得越来越聪明。”  

“那你究竟是怎么开始的？”  

“开始于一个项目。”他回答。

齐玛带着我回到了游泳池。靠近赤道地区的夜晚来得很快，游泳池被看台上方的一排排人工灯光照得光彩夺目。刚才我们看见的机器人已经把最后一块地方的瓷砖都帖好了。

“游泳池已经准备好了。”齐玛说。“明天它就会被封闭起来，后天它就会注满水。我会一直循环里面的水，直到游泳池足够清澈。”  

“然后呢？”  

“我会准备好我的表演。”  

在回游泳池的路上，齐玛已经把他的起源告诉了我，只要是他知道的，都完完整整地说了出来。在我出生之前，齐玛就已经存在于地球上了。他是一个业余的机器人爱好者组装起来的。这个很有才能的年轻人对实用机器人技术特别感兴趣。在那些科技并不发达的岁月里，有很多的团队或者个人在黑暗中摸索人工智能的世纪难题。这个年轻人就是其中的一个。

"A world beyond the Bight. Lintan 3, in the Muara Archipelago."

The AM's absence was like a missing tooth. "I don't know if I know it." 

"You probably don't. It's no kind of world you'd ever visit by choice. The scheduled lightbreakers don't go there. My only purpose in visiting the place seemed to me... " 

"You went there?" 

"Twice. Once before the procedure on Kharkov 8, and again recently, to establish where I'd been before Lintan 3. The evidence trail was beginning to get muddy, to say the least... but I asked the right kinds of questions, poked at the right kinds of database, and finally found out where I'd come from. But that still wasn't the final answer. There were many worlds, and the chain was fainter which each that I visited. But I had persistence on my side." 

"And money." 

"And money," Zima said, acknowledging my remark with a polite little nod. "That helped incalculably." 

"So what did you find, in the end?" 

"I followed the trail back to the beginning. On Kharkov 8 I was a quick-thinking machine with 

human-level intelligence. But I hadn't always been that clever, that complex. I‘d been augmented in steps, as time and circumstances allowed." 

“格尔林湾之外的一个星球，河口群岛星区的临潭 3 号。”  

备忘录助手不在身边，就像是吃饭没了牙齿。“我都不知道自己是否认识那里。”我说。

“你大概不认识。你基本上不可能拜访这样的星球。根本没有光速飞船的航班到那里。我到那里唯一的目的就是……  

“你去过哪里？”  

“两次。一次是在哈尔科夫 8 号星球做手术之前，最近又去了一次，去搞清楚第一次去临潭 3 号星球之前我在哪里。退一步说，各种线索变得越来越模糊。我问了无数次同样的问题、在各种数据库里查询同样的数据，最后我才知道我来自哪里。但那依然不是最终的答案。我去过太多的星球，其中的先后关系很难理顺。可是我一直没有放弃。”  

“也一直在花钱吧。”  

“没错，还有钱。”他礼貌地点了点头。“花了无数的钱。”  

“那么最终你发现了什么？”  

"A machine," he said. "A complex robot; an autonomous artificial intelligence. I was already centuries old when I arrived on Kharkov 8, with full legal independence." 

"No," I said, shaking my head. "You're a man with machine parts, not a machine." 

"The clinic records were very clear. I had arrived as a robot. An android form robot, certainly but an — obvious machine nonetheless. I was dismantled and my core cognitive functions were integrated into a vat-grown biological host body." With one finger he tapped the pewter side of his skull. "There's a lot of organic material in here, and a lot of cybernetic machinery. It's difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends. Even harder to tell which is the master, and which is the slave." 

I looked at the figure standing next to me, trying to make the mental leap needed to view him as a machine albeit a machine with soft, cellular components—rather than a man. I couldn't; not yet.

I stalled. "The clinic could have lied to you." 

"I don't think so. They would have been far happier had I not known." 

"All right," I said. "Just for the sake of argument... " 

"Those were the facts. They were easily verified. I examined the customs records for Kharkov 8 and found that an autonomous robot entity had entered the planet's airspace a few months before the medical procedure." 

"Not necessarily you." 

"No other robot entity had come near the world for decades. It had to be me. More than that, the records also showed the robot's port of origin." 

"Which was?" 

“一台机器，”他说。“一个很复杂的机器人，具有自主智能的机器人。到达哈尔科夫 8 号星球的时候，我已经几百岁了，但是完全具备合法的独立性。”  

“不会吧。”我摇了摇头。“你顶多就是个装有机器零件的人，怎么可能是机器呢？”  “诊所里的记录非常清晰。我来到诊所的时候就是个机器人。一个男性外表的机器人，如假包换的机器。我被彻底拆散，我的核心认知功能被整合进了一个快速生长的生物宿主的身体内。”他用一根手指敲了敲他的脑壳。“这里面有大量的有机材料，也有大量的神经机械系统。里面错综复杂，搞不清从来开始，从哪儿结束。甚至搞不清哪个是主机系统，哪个是辅助系统。”  

我看着这个站在我旁边的躯体，不得不迫使自己的思维发生跳跃：不能再把他当成是人了，只能把他当作是机器——一台由细胞组成的柔软的机器。可我做不到，一下子很难接受。

我停下了脚步“诊所有可能骗你的呀。”  

“我不这么认为。不让我知道这件事，他们会更开心。”  

“就算这样。”我说，“总得有证据……”  

“那些就是事实，很容易证实。我检查了哈尔科夫 8 号星球海关出入境记录，发现在做手术的几个月前，有一个具备自主独立性的机器人进入了星球的大气层。”  

“不一定就是你啊。”  

“在这前后几十年，就没有其他机器人靠近过这个星球。那个机器人就是我。而且记录上还显示了这个机器人的始发港。”  

"That is where I became what I am," Zima said. "Of course, I made further changes to myself after my time on Kharkov 8—improving my tolerance to extreme environments, improving my sensory capabilities—but the essence of what I am was laid down under the knife, in Cobargo's clinic." 

"So before you arrived on Kharkov 8 you were a normal man?" I asked.

"This is where it gets difficult," Zima said, picking his way carefully along the trail. "Upon my return I naturally tried to locate Cobargo. With his help, I assumed I would be able to make sense of the memory fragments I carried in my head. But Cobargo was gone; vanished elsewhere into the Bight. The clinic remained, but now his grandson was running it." 

"I bet he wasn't keen on talking." 

"No; he took some persuading. Thankfully, I had means. A little bribery, a little coercion." He smiled slightly at that. "Eventually he agreed to open the clinic records and examine his grandfather's log of my visit" 

We turned a corner. The sea and the sky were now the same inseparable grey, with no trace of blue remaining.

"What happened?" 

"The records say that I was never a man," Zima said. He paused a while before continuing, leaving no doubt as to what he had said. "Zima never existed before my arrival in the clinic."

What I wouldn't have done for a recording drone, or failing that—a plain old notebook and pen. I frowned, as if that might make my memory work just that little bit harder. 

"Then who were you?" 

“对，在那里我变成了现在这个样子。”齐玛说。“当然离开了哈尔科夫 8 号星球之后我还进一步强化了身体——增强我对极端环境的适应性、提高我的各种感知能力——但是我内在的部分就是躺在科巴哥诊所的手术台上完成的。”  

“所以在你到哈尔科夫 8 号星球之前，你是个普通人？”我问。

“这个问题正是最难搞清楚的部分。”“回到哈尔科夫 8 号星球，我自然想找到科巴哥。只有得到他的帮助，我才能把头脑里的那些记忆碎片整合起来。科巴哥已经离开，到格尔林湾的其他地方隐居起来了。那个诊所还在，只不过现在是他的孙子在经营。”  

“我打赌他一定不肯说。”  

“没错，他劝我还是不要知道的好。很庆幸，我还是有点手段的，威逼利诱。”说到这里，他微微一笑。“最终他同意打开诊所的历史记录，查看当年他的爷爷接见我的记录。”  

我们拐了一个弯。天空和大海现在已经变成了一片无法分辨的灰色，没有一丝蓝色的踪影。  “发生了什么事？”  

“记录表明，我从来就不是一个真正的人。”齐玛说。他停顿了一下，对自己说的话没有任何怀疑。“在我到达诊所之前，齐玛根本不存在。”  

这时我恨不得赶紧找回我的备忘录助手，哪怕身边有古老的笔和本子也好啊。可惜除了我自己的记忆，什么都用不了。我皱了皱眉头，希望能让自己的记忆更努力地工作。