She's not the first person to try to startle or scare Harold into admitting his role with the Machine, but she is the first Harold thinks is doing it just to be difficult and flex her authority, as it were. Everyone else had been trying to pry him apart so they could use him. That doesn't seem likely to be the case here -- she doesn't seem like she's asking because she's interested in building a kind of competitor A.I., which Harold would refuse to do -- she just seems...
Like a teenager. Trying to make sure the new kid knows where she ranks in school. Maybe that's too juvenile an allegory, but Harold thinks fundamentally people under threat spend a lot of time jockeying for positions of security. And they are all under a profound threat here.
Harold just figured out his own coping mechanisms for that some time ago, and his involve being as passive and mysterious as possible.
"I'm not familiar with the term Tinker," he informs her, which is true, and he wouldn't mind an explanation. He doesn't comment on being called modest; he is, which means anything he can say about it comes off as immodest, and he's aware other people tend to think he's done something incredible, whether good or bad. The circumstances under which he met Root echo unpleasantly in his mind.
"Respectfully, I disagree." Harold holds his tea in his lap, tracing an idle finger around the lip of the mug. "A betting analogy implies we have something to bet with. As tempting as it is to afford ourselves an illusion of power, in a position where we are this dependent on our captor's good graces, there's nothing we can bargain with.
"Refusing to engage is therefore a dangerous gamble to be making. There's no bluff to call, no opting out; whatever is going on, we are subject to it."
If you're completely and utterly dependent on your captors for existence with no outward authority enforcing moral grounds, like a political prisoner in a gulag or a prisoner of war, there's no point in defying the rules. There's no grand moral stand to be made with your death or your suffering. Harold just wants to get through this having given himself, his world, and everyone else the best possible chance of survival.
no subject
Like a teenager. Trying to make sure the new kid knows where she ranks in school. Maybe that's too juvenile an allegory, but Harold thinks fundamentally people under threat spend a lot of time jockeying for positions of security. And they are all under a profound threat here.
Harold just figured out his own coping mechanisms for that some time ago, and his involve being as passive and mysterious as possible.
"I'm not familiar with the term Tinker," he informs her, which is true, and he wouldn't mind an explanation. He doesn't comment on being called modest; he is, which means anything he can say about it comes off as immodest, and he's aware other people tend to think he's done something incredible, whether good or bad. The circumstances under which he met Root echo unpleasantly in his mind.
"Respectfully, I disagree." Harold holds his tea in his lap, tracing an idle finger around the lip of the mug. "A betting analogy implies we have something to bet with. As tempting as it is to afford ourselves an illusion of power, in a position where we are this dependent on our captor's good graces, there's nothing we can bargain with.
"Refusing to engage is therefore a dangerous gamble to be making. There's no bluff to call, no opting out; whatever is going on, we are subject to it."
If you're completely and utterly dependent on your captors for existence with no outward authority enforcing moral grounds, like a political prisoner in a gulag or a prisoner of war, there's no point in defying the rules. There's no grand moral stand to be made with your death or your suffering. Harold just wants to get through this having given himself, his world, and everyone else the best possible chance of survival.