Accelerando - Charles Stross (classic books for 10 year olds .txt) 📗
- Author: Charles Stross
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escape, merely escapism. Didn’t you ever have a problem knowing who
you were?”
The starters arrive, diced melon on a silver salver. Sirhan waits
patiently for his grandmama to chivvy the table into serving her. “The
more people you are, the more you know who you are,” says Sirhan. “You
learn what it’s like to be other people. Father thought that perhaps
it isn’t good for a man to know too much about what it’s like to be a
woman.” And Grandfather disagreed, but you already know that, he adds
for his own stream of consciousness.
“I couldn’t agree more.” Pamela smiles at him, an expression that
might be that of a patronizing elder aunt if it wasn’t for the
alarming sharkishness of her expression - or is it playfulness? Sirhan
covers his confusion by spooning chunks of melon into his mouth,
forking temporary ghosts to peruse dusty etiquette manuals and warn
him if he’s about to commit some faux pas. “So, how did you enjoy your
childhoods?”
“Enjoy isn’t a word I would use,” he replies as evenly as he can,
laying down his spoon so he doesn’t spill anything. As if childhood is
something that ever ends, he thinks bitterly. Sirhan is considerably
less than a gigasecond old and confidently expects to exist for at
least a terasecond - if not in exactly this molecular configuration,
then at least in some reasonably stable physical incarnation. And he
has every intention of staying young for that entire vast span - even
into the endless petaseconds that might follow, although by then,
megayears hence, he speculates that issues of neoteny will no longer
interest him. “It’s not over yet. How about you? Are you enjoying your
old age, Grandmama?”
Pamela almost flinches, but keeps iron control of her expression. The
flush of blood in the capillaries of her cheeks, visible to Sirhan
through the tiny infrared eyes he keeps afloat in the air above the
table, gives her away. “I made some mistakes in my youth, but I’m
enjoying it fine nowadays,” she says lightly.
“It’s your revenge, isn’t it?” Sirhan asks, smiling and nodding as the
table removes the entrees.
“Why, you little -” She stares at him rather than continuing. A very
bleak stare it is, too. “What would you know about revenge?” she asks.
“I’m the family historian.” Sirhan smiles humorlessly. “I lived from
two to seventeen years several hundred times over before my eighteenth
birthday. It was that reset switch, you know. I don’t think Mother
realized my primary stream of consciousness was journaling
everything.”
“That’s monstrous.” Pamela picks up her wineglass and takes a sip to
cover her confusion. Sirhan has no such retreat - grape juice in a
tumbler, unfermented, wets his tongue. “I’d never do something like
that to any child of mine.”
“So why won’t you tell me about your childhood?” asks her grandson.
“For the family history, of course.”
“I’ll -” She puts her glass down. “You intend to write one,” she
states.
“I’m thinking about it.” Sirhan sits up. “An old-fashioned book
covering three generations, living through interesting times,” he
suggests. “A work of postmodern history, the incoherent school at that
- how do you document people who fork their identities at random,
spend years dead before reappearing on the stage, and have arguments
with their own relativistically preserved other copy? I could trace
the history further, of course - if you tell me about your parents,
although I am certain they aren’t around to answer questions directly
- but we reach the boring dumb matter slope back to the primeval soup
surprisingly fast if we go there, don’t we? So I thought that perhaps
as a narrative hook I’d make the offstage viewpoint that of the
family’s robot cat. (Except the bloody thing’s gone missing, hasn’t
it?) Anyway, with so much of human history occupying the untapped
future, we historians have our work cut out recording the cursor of
the present as it logs events. So I might as well start at home.”
“You’re set on immortalism.” Pamela studies his face.
“Yes,” he says idly. “Frankly, I can understand your wanting to grow
old out of a desire for revenge, but pardon me for saying this, I have
difficulty grasping your willingness to follow through with the
procedure! Isn’t it awfully painful?”
“Growing old is natural,” growls the old woman. “When you’ve lived
long enough for all your ambitions to be in ruins, friendships broken,
lovers forgotten or divorced acrimoniously, what’s left to go on for?
If you feel tired and old in spirit, you might as well be tired and
old in body. Anyway, wanting to live forever is immoral. Think of all
the resources you’re taking up that younger people need! Even uploads
face a finite data storage limit after a time. It’s a monstrously
egotistical statement, to say you intend to live forever. And if
there’s one thing I believe in, it’s public service. Duty: the
obligation to make way for the new. Duty and control.”
Sirhan absorbs all this, nodding slowly to himself as the table serves
up the main course - honey-glazed roast long pork with saut�ed
potatoes a la gratin and carrots Debussy - when there’s a loud bump
from overhead.
“What’s that?” Pamela asks querulously.
“One moment.” Sirhan’s vision splits into a hazy kaleidoscope view of
the museum hall as he forks ghosts to monitor each of the ubiquitous
cameras. He frowns; something is moving on the balcony, between the
Mercury capsule and a display of antique random-dot stereoisograms.
“Oh dear. Something seems to be loose in the museum.”
“Loose? What do you mean, loose?” An inhuman shriek splits the air
above the table, followed by a crash from upstairs. Pamela stands up
unsteadily, wiping her lips with her napkin. “Is it safe?”
“No, it isn’t safe.” Sirhan fumes. “It’s disturbing my meal!” He looks
up. A flash of orange fur shows over the balcony, then the Mercury
capsule wobbles violently on the end of its guy wires. Two arms and a
bundle of rubbery something covered in umber hair lurches out from the
handrail and casually grabs hold of the priceless historical relic,
then clambers inside and squats on top of the dummy wearing Al
Sheperd’s age-cracked space suit. “It’s an ape! City, I say, City!
What’s a monkey doing loose in my dinner party?”
“I am most deeply sorry, sir, but I don’t know. Would sir care to
identify the monkey in question?” replies City, which for reasons of
privacy, has manifested itself as a bodiless voice.
There’s a note of humor in City’s tone that Sirhan takes deep
exception to. “What do you mean? Can’t you see it?” he demands,
focusing on the errant primate, which is holed up in the Mercury
capsule dangling from the ceiling, smacking its lips, rolling its
eyes, and fingering the gasket around the capsule’s open hatch. It
hoots quietly to itself, then leans out of the open door and moons
over the table, baring its buttocks. “Get back!” Sirhan calls to his
grandmother, then he gestures at the air above the table, intending to
tell the utility fog to congeal. Too late. The ape farts thunderously,
then lets rip a stream of excrement across the dining table. Pamela’s
face is a picture of wrinkled disgust as she holds her napkin in front
of her nose. “Dammit, solidify, will you!” Sirhan curses, but the
ubiquitous misty pollen-grain-sized robots refuse to respond.
“What’s your problem? Invisible monkeys?” asks City.
“Invisible -” he stops.
“Can’t you see what it did?” Pamela demands, backing him up. “It just
defecated all over the main course!”
“I see nothing,” City says uncertainly.
“Here, let me help you.” Sirhan lends it one of his eyes, rolls it to
focus on the ape, which is now reaching lazy arms around the hatch and
patting down the roof of the capsule, as if hunting for the wires’
attachment points.
“Oh dear,” says City, “I’ve been hacked. That’s not supposed to be
possible.”
“Well it fucking is,” hisses Pamela.
“Hacked?” Sirhan stops trying to tell the air what to do and focuses
on his clothing instead. Fabric reweaves itself instantly, mapping
itself into an armored airtight suit that raises a bubble visor from
behind his neck and flips itself shut across his face. “City please
supply my grandmama with an environment suit now. Make it completely
autonomous.”
The air around Pamela begins to congeal in a blossom of crystalline
security, as a sphere like a giant hamster ball precipitates out
around her. “If you’ve been hacked, the first question is, who did
it,” Sirhan states. “The second is ‘why,’ and the third is ‘how.’” He
edgily runs a self-test, but there’s no sign of inconsistencies in his
own identity matrix, and he has hot shadows sleeping lightly at
scattered nodes across as distance of half a dozen light-hours. Unlike
pre-posthuman Pamela, he’s effectively immune to murder-simple. “If
this is just a prank -”
Seconds have passed since the orangutan got loose in the museum, and
subsequent seconds have passed since City realized its bitter
circumstance. Seconds are long enough for huge waves of
countermeasures to sweep the surface of the lily-pad habitat.
Invisibly small utility foglets are expanding and polymerizing into
defenses throughout the air, trapping the thousands of itinerant
passenger pigeons in midflight, and locking down every building and
every person who walks the paths outside. City is self-testing its
trusted computing base, starting with the most primitive secured
kernel and working outward. Meanwhile Sirhan, with blood in his eye,
heads for the staircase, with the vague goal of physically attacking
the intruder. Pamela retreats at a fast roll, tumbling toward the
safety of the mezzanine floor and a garden of fossils. “Who do you
think you are, barging in and shitting on my supper?” Sirhan yells as
he bounds up the stairs. “I want an explanation! Right now!”
The orangutan finds the nearest cable and gives it a yank, setting
the one-ton capsule swinging. It bares its teeth at Sirhan in a grin.
“Remember me?” it asks, in a sibilant French accent.
“Remember -” Sirhan stops dead. “Tante Annette? What are you doing in
that orangutan?”
“Having minor autonomic control problems.” The ape grimaces wider,
then bends one arm sinuously and scratches at its armpit. “I am sorry,
I installed myself in the wrong order. I was only meaning to say hello
and pass on a message.”
“What message?” Sirhan demands. “You’ve upset my grandmama, and if she
finds out you’re here -”
“She won’t; I’ll be gone in a minute.” The ape - Annette - sits up.
“Your grandfather salutes you and says he will be visiting shortly. In
the person, that is. He is very keen to meet your mother and her
passengers. That is all. Have you a message for him?”
“Isn’t he dead?” Sirhan asks, dazed.
“No more than I am. And I’m overdue. Good day!” The ape swings hand
over hand out of the capsule, then lets go and plummets ten meters to
the hard stone floor below. Its skull makes a noise like a hard-boiled
egg impacting concrete.
“Oh dear,” Sirhan breathes heavily. “City!”
“Yes, oh master?”
“Remove that body,” he says, pointing over the balcony. “I’ll trouble
you not to disturb my grandmother with any details. In particular,
don’t tell her it was Annette. The news may upset her.” The perils of
having a long-lived posthuman family, he thinks; too many mad aunts in
the space capsule. “If you can find a way to stop Auntie ‘Nette from
growing any more apes, that might be a good idea.” A thought strikes
him. “By the way,
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