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

these questions of self-selected identity. There was no

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,