Accelerando by Charles Stross (books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📖

Isn’t that it?” Su Ang

asks hesitantly. She’s looking distracted, most of her attention

focused on absorbing the experiences of a dozen ghosts she’s spun off

to attend to perimeter security.

 

“Who are we selling this to?” asks Sadeq. “If you want me to make it

attractive -”

 

“It doesn’t need to be a complete replica of the Earth. It just has to

be a convincing advertisement for a presingularity civilization full

of humans. You’ve got two-and-seventy zombies to dissect for their

brains; bolt together a bunch of variables you can apply to them, and

you can permutate them to look a bit more varied.”

 

Amber turns her attention to the snoozing cat. “Hey, furball. How long

have we been here really, in real time? Can you grab Sadeq some more

resources for his personal paradise garden?”

 

Aineko stretches and yawns, totally feline, then looks up at Amber

with narrowed eyes and raised tail. “‘Bout eighteen minutes,

wall-clock time.” The cat stretches again and sits, front paws drawn

together primly, tail curled around them. “The ghosts are pushing, you

know? I don’t think I can sustain this for too much longer. They’re

not good at hacking people, but I think it won’t be too long before

they instantiate a new copy of you, one that’ll be predisposed to

their side.”

 

“I don’t get why they didn’t assimilate you along with the rest of

us.”

 

“Blame your mother again - she’s the one who kept updating the digital

rights management code on my personality. ‘Illegal consciousness is

copyright theft’ sucks until an alien tries to rewire your hindbrain

with a debugger; then it’s a lifesaver.” Aineko glances down and

begins washing one paw. “I can give your mullah-man about six days,

subjective time. After that, all bets are off.”

 

“I will take it, then.” Sadeq stands. “Thank you.” He smiles at the

cat, a smile that fades to translucency, hanging in the simulated air

like an echo as the priest returns to his tower - this time with a

blueprint and a plan in mind.

 

“That leaves just us.” Su Ang glances at Pierre, back to Amber. “Who

are you going to sell this crazy scheme to?”

 

Amber leans back and smiles. Behind her, Donna - her avatar an archaic

movie camera suspended below a model helicopter - is filming

everything for posterity. She nods lazily at the reporter. “She’s the

one who gave me the idea. Who do we know who’s dumb enough to buy into

a scam like this?”

 

Pierre looks at her suspiciously. “I think we’ve been here before,” he

says slowly. “You aren’t going to make me kill anyone, are you?”

 

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, unless the corporate ghosts think

we’re going to get away from them and are greedy enough to want to

kill us.”

 

“You see, she learned from last time,” Ang comments, and Amber nods.

“No more misunderstandings, right?” She beams at Amber.

 

Amber beams back at her. “Right. And that’s why you -” she points at

Pierre - “are going to go find out if any relics of the Wunch are

hanging about here. I want you to make them an offer they won’t

refuse.”

 

*

 

“How much for just the civilization?” asks the Slug.

 

Pierre looks down at it thoughtfully. It’s not really a terrestrial

mollusk: Slugs on Earth aren’t two meters long and don’t have lacy

white exoskeletons to hold their chocolate-colored flesh in shape. But

then, it isn’t really the alien it appears to be. It’s a defaulting

corporate instrument that has disguised itself as a long-extinct alien

upload, in the hope that its creditors won’t recognize it if it looks

like a randomly evolved sentient. One of the stranded members of

Amber’s expedition made contact with it a couple of subjective years

ago, while exploring the ruined city at the center of the firewall.

Now Pierre’s here because it seems to be one of their most promising

leads. Emphasis on the word promising - because it promises much, but

there is some question over whether it can indeed deliver.

 

“The civilization isn’t for sale,” Pierre says slowly. The translation

interface shimmers, storing up his words and transforming them into a

different deep grammar, not merely translating his syntax but mapping

equivalent meanings where necessary. “But we can give you privileged

observer status if that’s what you want. And we know what you are. If

you’re interested in finding a new exchange to be traded on, your

existing intellectual property assets will be worth rather more there

than here.”

 

The rogue corporation rears up slightly and bunches into a fatter

lump. Its skin blushes red in patches. “Must think about this. Is your

mandatory accounting time cycle fixed or variable term? Are self-owned

corporate entities able to enter contracts?”

 

“I could ask my patron,” Pierre says casually. He suppresses a stab of

angst. He’s still not sure where he and Amber stand, but theirs is far

more than just a business relationship, and he worries about the risks

she’s taking. “My patron has a jurisdiction within which she can

modify corporate law to accommodate your requirements. Your activities

on a wider scale might require shell companies -” the latter concept

echoes back in translation to him as host organisms - “but that can be

taken care of.”

 

The translation membrane wibbles for a while, apparently reformulating

some more abstract concepts in a manner that the corporation can

absorb. Pierre is reasonably confident that it’ll take the offer,

however. When it first met them, it boasted about its control over

router hardware at the lowest levels. But it also bitched and moaned

about the firewall protocols that were blocking it from leaving

(before rather rudely trying to eat its conversationalist). He waits

patiently, looking around at the swampy landscape, mudflats punctuated

by clumps of spiky violet ferns. The corporation has to be desperate,

to be thinking of the bizarre proposition Amber has dreamed up for him

to pitch to it.

 

“Sounds interesting,” the Slug declares after a brief confirmatory

debate with the membrane. “If I supply a suitable genome, can you

customize a container for it?”

 

“I believe so,” Pierre says carefully. “For your part, can you deliver

the energy we need?”

 

“From a gate?” For a moment the translation membrane hallucinates a

stick-human, shrugging. “Easy. Gates are all entangled: Dump coherent

radiation in at one, get it out at another. Just get me out of this

firewall first.”

 

“But the lightspeed lag -”

 

“No problem. You go first, then a dumb instrument I leave behind buys

up power and sends it after. Router network is synchronous, within

framework of state machines that run Universe 1.0; messages propagate

at same speed, speed of light in vacuum, except use wormholes to

shorten distances between nodes. Whole point of the network is that it

is nonlossy. Who would trust their mind to a communications channel

that might partially randomize them in transit?”

 

Pierre goes cross-eyed, trying to understand the implications of the

Slug’s cosmology. But there isn’t really time, here and now: They’ve

got on the order of a minute of wall-clock time left to get everything

sorted out, if Aineko is right. One minute to go before the angry

ghosts start trying to break into the DMZ by other means. “If you are

willing to try this, we’d be happy to accommodate you,” he says,

thinking of crossed fingers and rabbits’ feet and firewalls.

 

“It’s a deal,” the membrane translates the Slug’s response back at

him. “Now we exchange shares/plasmids/ownership? Then merger

complete?”

 

Pierre stares at the Slug: “But this is a business arrangement!” he

protests. “What’s sex got to do with it?”

 

“Apologies offered. I am thinking we have a translation error. You

said this was to be a merging of businesses?”

 

“Not that way. It’s a contract. We agree to take you with us. In

return, you help lure the Wunch into the domain we’re setting up for

them and configure the router at the other end …”

 

And so on.

 

*

 

Steeling herself, Amber recalls the address the ghost gave her for

Sadeq’s afterlife universe. In her own subjective time it’s been about

half an hour since he left. “Coming?” she asks her cat.

 

“Don’t think I will,” says Aineko. It looks away, blissfully

unconcerned.

 

“Bah.” Amber tenses, then opens the port to Sadeq’s pocket universe.

 

As usual she finds herself indoors, standing on an ornate mosaic floor

in a room with whitewashed walls and peaked windows. But there’s

something different about it, and after a moment, she realizes what it

is. The sound of vehicle traffic from outside, the cooing of pigeons

on the rooftops, someone shouting across the street: There are people

here.

 

She walks over to the nearest window and looks out, then recoils. It’s

hot outside. Dust and fumes hang in air the color of cement over

rough-finished concrete apartment buildings, their roofs covered in

satellite uplinks and cheap, garish LED advertising panels. Looking

down she sees motor scooters, cars - filthy, fossil-fueled behemoths,

a tonne of steel and explosives in motion to carry only one human, a

mass ratio worse than an archaic ICBM - brightly dressed people

walking to and fro. A news helicam buzzes overhead, lenses darting and

glinting at the traffic.

 

“Just like home, isn’t it?” says Sadeq, behind her.

 

Amber starts. “This is where you grew up? This is Yazd?”

 

“It doesn’t exist anymore, in real space.” Sadeq looks thoughtful, but

far more animated than the barely conscious parody of himself that

she’d rescued from this building - back when it was a mediaeval vision

of the afterlife - scant subjective hours ago. He cracks a smile:

“Probably a good thing. We were dismantling it even while we were

preparing to leave, you know?”

 

“It’s detailed.” Amber throws her eyes at the scene out the window,

multiplexes them, and tells them to send little virtual ghosts dancing

through the streets of the Iranian industrial ‘burb. Overhead, big

Airbuses ply the skyways, bearing pilgrims on the hajj, tourists to

the coastal resorts on the Persian Gulf, produce to the foreign

markets.

 

“It’s the best time I could recall,” Sadeq says. “I didn’t spend many

days here then - I was in Qom, studying, and Kazakhstan, for cosmonaut

training - but it’s meant to be the early twenties. After the

troubles, after the fall of the guardians; a young, energetic, liberal

country full of optimism and faith in democracy. Values that weren’t

doing well elsewhere.”

 

“I thought democracy was a new thing there?”

 

“No.” Sadeq shakes his head. “There were prodemocracy riots in Tehran

in the nineteenth century, did you know that? That’s why the first

revolution - no.” He makes a cutting gesture. “Politics and faith are

a combustible combination.” He frowns. “But look. Is this what you

wanted?”

 

Amber recalls her scattered eyes - some of which have flown as much as

a thousand kilometers from her locus - and concentrates on

reintegrating their visions of Sadeq’s re-creation. “It looks

convincing. But not too convincing.”

 

“That was the idea.”

 

“Well, then.” She smiles. “Is it just Iran? Or did you take any

liberties around the edges?”

 

“Who, me?” He raises an eyebrow. “I have enough doubts about the

morality of this - project - without trying to trespass on Allah’s

territory, peace be unto him. I promise you, there are no sapients in

this world but us. The people are the hollow shells of my dreaming,

storefront dummies. The animals are crude bitmaps. This is what you

asked for, and no more.”

 

“Well, then.” Amber pauses. She recalls the expression on the

dirt-smudged