Merlin (The Chronicles of Amber) - Ghostwheel

Ghostwheel

Ghostwheel is a trump- and pattern-based computer constructed by Merlin in a Shadow where Earth physics do not apply. By Merlin's description Ghostwheel's operations involve "a lot of theoretical crap involving space and time and some notions of some guys named Everett and Wheeler". Ghostwheel speaks with Merlin's voice, occasionally causing confusion, and usually takes the appearance of a spinning circle of light. Ghostwheel usually addresses Merlin as "Dad."

After finishing construction, Merlin set Ghostwheel to work indexing Shadows in the same way that a search engine indexes the internet. Similar to a search engine, Ghostwheel can find, track, and retrieve objects from Shadow; this includes the ability to move people and objects between Shadows. Ghostwheel operates by creating pseudo-Trumps for every mutation of Shadow and then searching them.

Merlin designed Ghostwheel as a tool to be used by Random, King of Amber, for keeping watch on Shadow for the protection of Amber. When introduced to Ghostwheel and its abilities, Random was immediately struck by the construct's potentially dangerous power and ordered Merlin to deactivate his creation. However, by this time Ghostwheel had attained sentience and resisted shutdown.

After regaining Ghostwheel's trust, Merlin came to rely heavily on his powerful creation, and Ghostwheel features as a major subcharacter throughout Merlin's saga. By the conclusion of the series, Ghostwheel had developed enough that his support of Merlin forced the Pattern and the Logrus to treat the pair as nominal equals rather than pawns.

At one point, Ghostwheel asks Merlin whether it is a god. In the consideration of sentient machines with godlike resources for accessing and processing information, this draws interesting parallels to Isaac Asimov's short story The Last Question.

Merlin also remarks that Ghostwheel is certainly capable of passing the Turing Test, which is a test for a machine that can demonstrate the ability to convince an observer of a human-like personality.

Ghostwheel seems to take its name from Gilgal Refaim, an ancient stone circle in the Golan Heights of Israel. Gilgal Refaim may have once been a pagan place of worship or calendar, similar to Stonehenge.

In 2011, Raised By Machines created a soundscape in honor of Zelazny's construct. The piece, entitled Ghost Wheel, was uploaded to SoundCloud on February 02, 2012.