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

2.0 equivalent of

a pyramid scheme crossed with a 419 scam. As it happens, most of the

runaway corporate ghosts out beyond the router are wise to that sort

of thing, so it hacked the router’s power system to give us a beam to

ride home in return for sanctuary. That’s as far as it goes.”

 

“Hang on.” Sirhan’s eyes bulge. “You found something out there? You

brought back a reallive alien?”

 

“Guess so.” Amber looks smug.

 

“But, but, that’s marvelous! That changes everything! It’s incredible!

Even under Economics 2.0 that’s got to be worth a gigantic amount.

Just think what you could learn from it!”

 

“Oui. A whole new way of bilking corporations into investing in

cognitive bubbles,” Pierre interrupts cynically. “It seems to me that

you are making two assumptions - that our passenger is willing to be

exploited by us, and that we survive whatever happens when the

bailiffs arrive.”

 

“But, but -” Sirhan winds down spluttering, only refraining from

waving his arms through an effort of will.

 

“Let’s go ask it what it wants to do,” says Amber. “Cooperate,” she

warns Sirhan. “We’ll discuss your other plans later, dammit. First

things first - we need to get out from under these pirates.”

 

*

 

As they make their way back toward the party, Sirhan’s inbox is

humming with messages from elsewhere in Saturn system - from other

curators on board lily-pad habs scattered far and wide across the huge

planetary atmosphere, from the few ring miners who still remember what

it was like to be human (even though they’re mostly brain-in-a-bottle

types, or uploads wearing nuclear-powered bodies made of ceramic and

metal): even from the small orbital townships around Titan, where

screaming hordes of bloggers are bidding frantically for the viewpoint

feeds of the Field Circus’s crew. It seems that news of the starship’s

arrival has turned hot only since it became apparent that someone or

something thought they would make a decent shakedown target. Now

someone’s blabbed about the alien passenger, the nets have gone crazy.

 

“City,” he mutters, “where’s this hitchhiker creature? Should be

wearing the body of my mother’s cat.”

 

“Cat? What cat?” replies City. “I see no cats here.”

 

“No, it looks like a cat, it -” A horrible thought dawns on him. “Have

you been hacked again?”

 

“Looks like it,” City agrees enthusiastically. “Isn’t it tiresome?”

 

“Shi - oh dear. Hey,” he calls to Amber, forking several ghosts as he

does so in order to go hunt down the missing creature by traversing

the thousands of optical sensors that thread the habitat in loco

personae - a tedious process rendered less objectionable by making the

ghosts autistic - “have you been messing with my security

infrastructure?”

 

“Us?” Amber looks annoyed. “No.”

 

“Someone has been. I thought at first it was that mad Frenchwoman, but

now I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s a big problem. If the bailiffs figure

out how to use the root kit to gain a toe hold here, they don’t need

to burn us - just take the whole place over.”

 

“That’s the least of your worries,” Amber points out. “What kind of

charter do these bailiffs run on?”

 

“Charter? Oh, you mean legal system? I think it’s probably a cheap

one, maybe even the one inherited from the Ring Imperium. Nobody

bothers breaking the law out here these days, it’s too easy to just

buy a legal system off the shelf, tailor it to fit, and conform to

it.”

 

“Right.” She stops, stands still, and looks up at the almost invisible

dome of the gas cell above them. “Pigeons,” she says, almost tiredly.

“Damn, how did I miss it? How long have you had an infestation of

group minds?”

 

“Group?” Sirhan turns round. “What did you just say?”

 

There’s a chatter of avian laughter from above, and a light rain of

birdshit splatters the path around him. Amber dodges nimbly, but

Sirhan isn’t so light on his feet and ends up cursing, summoning up a

cloth of congealed air to wipe his scalp clean.

 

“It’s the flocking behavior,” Amber explains, looking up. “If you

track the elements - birds - you’ll see that they’re not following

individual trajectories. Instead, each pigeon sticks within ten meters

or so of sixteen neighbors. It’s a Hamiltonian network, kid. Real

birds don’t do that. How long?”

 

Sirhan stop cursing and glares up at the circling birds, cooing and

mocking him from the safety of the sky. He waves his fist: “I’ll get

you, see if I don’t -”

 

“I don’t think so.” Amber takes his elbow again and steers him back

round the hill. Sirhan, preoccupied with maintaining an umbrella of

utility fog above his gleaming pate, puts up with being manhandled.

“You don’t think it’s just a coincidence, do you?” she asks him over a

private head-to-head channel. “They’re one of the players here.”

 

“I don’t care. They’ve hacked my city and gate crashed my party! I

don’t care who they are, they’re not welcome.”

 

“Famous last words,” Amber murmurs, as the party comes around the

hillside and nearly runs over them. Someone has infiltrated the

Argentinosaurus skeleton with motors and nanofibers, animating the

huge sauropod with a simulation of undead life. Whoever did it has

also hacked it right out of the surveillance feed. Their first warning

is a footstep that makes the ground jump beneath their feet - then the

skeleton of the hundred-tonne plant-eater, taller than a six-storey

building and longer than a commuter train, raises its head over the

treetops and looks down at them. There’s a pigeon standing proudly on

its skull, chest puffed out, and a dining room full of startled

taikonauts sitting on a suspended wooden floor inside its rib cage.

 

“It’s my party and my business scheme!” Sirhan insists plaintively.

“Nothing you or anyone else in the family do can take it away from

me!”

 

“That’s true,” Amber points out, “but in case you hadn’t noticed,

you’ve offered temporary sanctuary to a bunch of people - not to put

too fine a point on it, myself included - who some assholes think are

rich enough to be worth mugging, and you did it without putting any

contingency plans in place other than to invite my manipulative bitch

of a mother. What did you think you were doing? Hanging out a sign

saying ‘scam artists welcome here’? Dammit, I need Aineko.”

 

“Your cat.” Sirhan fastens on to this: “It’s your cat’s fault! Isn’t

it?”

 

“Only indirectly.” Amber looks round and waves at the dinosaur

skeleton. “Hey, you! Have you seen Aineko?”

 

The huge dinosaur bends its neck and the pigeon opens its beak to coo.

Eerie harmonics cut in as a bunch of other birds, scattered to either

side, sing counterpoint to produce a demented warbling voice. “The

cat’s with your mother.”

 

“Oh shit!” Amber turns on Sirhan fiercely. “Where’s Pamela? Find her!”

 

Sirhan is stubborn. “Why should I?”

 

“Because she’s got the cat! What do you think she’s going to do but

cut a deal with the bailiffs out there to put one over on me? Can’t

you fucking see where this family tendency to play head games comes

from?”

 

“You’re too late,” echoes the eerie voice of the pigeons from above

and around them. “She’s kidnapped the cat and taken the capsule from

the museum. It’s not flightworthy, but you’d be amazed what you can do

with a few hundred ghosts and a few tonnes of utility fog.”

 

“Okay.” Amber stares up at the pigeons, fists on hips, then glances at

Sirhan. She chews her lower lip for a moment, then nods to the bird

riding the dinosaur’s skull. “Stop fucking with the boy’s head and

show yourself, Dad.”

 

Sirhan boggles in an upward direction as a whole flock of passenger

pigeons comes together in mid air and settles toward the grass, cooing

and warbling like an explosion in a synthesizer factory.

 

“What’s she planning on doing with the Slug?” Amber asks the pile of

birds. “And isn’t it a bit cramped in there?”

 

“You get used to it,” says the primary - and thoroughly distributed -

copy of her father. “I’m not sure what she’s planning, but I can show

you what she’s doing. Sorry about your city, kid, but you really

should have paid more attention to those security patches. There’s

lots of crufty twentieth-century bugware kicking around under your

shiny new singularity, design errors and all, spitting out turd

packets all over your sleek new machine.”

 

Sirhan shakes his head in denial. “I don’t believe this,” he moans

quietly.

 

“Show me what Mom’s up to,” orders Amber. “I need to see if I can stop

her before it’s too late -”

 

*

 

The ancient woman in the space suit leans back in her cramped seat,

looks at the camera, and winks. “Hello, darling. I know you’re spying

on me.”

 

There’s an orange-and-white cat curled up in her nomex-and-aluminum

lap. It seems to be happy: It’s certainly purring loudly enough,

although that reflex is wired in at a very low level. Amber watches

helplessly as her mother reaches up arthritically and flips a couple

of switches. Something loud is humming in the background - probably an

air recirculator. There’s no window in the Mercury capsule, just a

periscope offset to one side of Pamela’s right knee. “Won’t be long

now,” she mutters, and lets her hand drop back to her side. “You’re

too late to stop me,” she adds, conversationally. “The ‘chute rigging

is fine and the balloon blower is happy to treat me as a new city

seed. I’ll be free in a minute or so.”

 

“Why are you doing this?” Amber asks tiredly.

 

“Because you don’t need me around.” Pamela focuses on the camera

that’s glued to the instrument panel in front of her head. “I’m old.

Face it, I’m disposable. The old must give way to the new, and all

that. Your Dad never really did get it - he’s going to grow old

gracelessly, succumbing to bit rot in the big forever. Me, I’m not

going there. I’m going out with a bang. Aren’t I, cat? Whoever you

really are.” She prods the animal. It purrs and stretches out across

her lap.

 

“You never looked hard enough at Aineko, back in the day,” she tells

Amber, stroking its flanks. “Did you think I didn’t know you’d audit

its source code, looking for trapdoors? I used the Thompson hack -

she’s been mine, body and soul, for a very long time indeed. I got the

whole story about your passenger from the horse’s mouth. And now we’re

going to go fix those bailiffs. Whee!”

 

The camera angle jerks, and Amber feels a ghost re-merge with her,

panicky with loss. The Mercury capsule’s gone, drifting away from the

apex of the habitat beneath a nearly transparent sack of hot hydrogen.

 

“That was a bit rough,” remarks Pamela. “Don’t worry, we should still

be in communications range for another hour or so.”

 

“But you’re going to die!” Amber yells at her. “What do you think

you’re doing?”

 

“I think I’m going to die well. What do you think?” Pamela lays one

hand on the cat’s flank. “Here, you need to encrypt this a bit better.

I left a one time pad behind with Annette. Why don’t you go fetch it?

Then I’ll tell you what else I’m planning?”

 

“But my aunt is -” Amber’s eyes cross as she concentrates. Annette is

already waiting, as it happens, and a shared secret appears in Amber’s

awareness almost before she asks. “Oh. All right. What are you doing

with the cat, though?”

 

Pamela sighs. “I’m