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

briefly. “I’m not sure about the validity

of voting projects at all, these days. The assumption that all people

are of equal importance seems frighteningly obsolescent. Do you think

we can make this fly?”

 

“I don’t see why not. If Amber’s willing to play the People’s Princess

for us …” Annette picks up a slice of liverwurst and chews on it

meditatively.

 

“I’m not sure it’s workable, however we play it.” Manfred looks

thoughtful. “The whole democratic participation thing looks

questionable to me under these circumstances. We’re under direct

threat, for all that it’s a long-term one, and this whole culture is

in danger of turning into a classical nation-state. Or worse, several

of them layered on top of one another with complete geographical

collocation but no social interpenetration. I’m not certain it’s a

good idea to try to steer something like that - pieces might break

off, you’d get the most unpleasant side-effects. Although, on the

other hand, if we can mobilize enough broad support to become the

first visible planetwide polity …”

 

“We need you to stay focused,” Annette adds unexpectedly.

 

“Focused? Me?” He laughs, briefly. “I used to have an idea a second.

Now it’s maybe one a year. I’m just a melancholy old birdbrain, me.”

 

“Yes, but you know the old saying? The fox has many ideas - the

hedgehog has only one, but it’s a big idea.”

 

“So tell me, what is my big idea?” Manfred leans forward, one elbow on

the table, one eye focused on inner space as a hot-burning thread of

consciousness barks psephological performance metrics at him,

analysing the game ahead. “Where do you think I’m going?”

 

“I think -” Annette breaks off suddenly, staring past his shoulder.

Privacy slips, and for a frozen moment Manfred glances round in mild

horror and sees thirty or forty other guests in the crowded garden,

elbows rubbing, voices raised above the background chatter: “Gianni!”

She beams widely as she stands up. “What a surprise! When did you

arrive?”

 

Manfred blinks. A slim young guy, moving with adolescent grace, but

none of the awkward movements and sullen lack of poise - he’s much

older than he looks, chickenhawk genetics. Gianni? He feels a huge

surge of memories paging through his exocortex. He remembers ringing a

doorbell in dusty, hot Rome: white toweling bathrobe, the economics of

scarcity, autograph signed by the dead hand of von Neumann - “Gianni?”

he asks, disbelieving. “It’s been a long time!”

 

The gilded youth, incarnated in the image of a metropolitan toy-boy

from the noughties, grins widely and embraces Manfred with a friendly

bear hug. Then he slides down onto the bench next to Annette, whom he

kisses with easy familiarity. “Ah, to be among friends again! It’s

been too long!” He glances round curiously. “Hmm, how very Bavarian.”

He snaps his fingers. “Mine will be a, what do you recommend? It’s

been too long since my last beer.” His grin widens. “Not in this

body.”

 

“You’re resimulated?” Manfred asks, unable to stop himself.

 

Annette frowns at him disapprovingly: “No, silly! He came through the

teleport gate -”

 

“Oh.” Manfred shakes his head. “I’m sorry -”

 

“It’s okay.” Gianni Vittoria clearly doesn’t mind being mistaken for a

historical newbie, rather than someone who’s traveled through the

decades the hard way. He must be over a hundred by now, Manfred notes,

not bothering to spawn a search thread to find out.

 

“It was time to move and, well, the old body didn’t want to move with

me, so why not go gracefully and accept the inevitable?”

 

“I didn’t take you for a dualist,” Manfred says ruefully.

 

“Ah, I’m not - but neither am I reckless.” Gianni drops his grin for a

moment. The sometime minister for transhuman affairs, economic

theoretician, then retired tribal elder of the polycognitive liberals

is serious. “I have never uploaded before, or switched bodies, or

teleported. Even when my old one was seriously - tcha! Maybe I left it

too long. But here I am, one planet is as good as another to be cloned

and downloaded onto, don’t you think?”

 

“You invited him?” Manfred asks Annette.

 

“Why wouldn’t I?” There’s a wicked gleam in her eye. “Did you expect

me to live like a nun while you were a flock of pigeons? We may have

campaigned against the legal death of the transubstantiated, Manfred,

but there are limits.”

 

Manfred looks between them, then shrugs, embarrassed. “I’m still

getting used to being human again,” he admits. “Give me time to catch

up? At an emotional level, at least.” The realization that Gianni and

Annette have a history together doesn’t come as a surprise to him:

It’s one of the things you must adapt to if you opt out of the human

species, after all. At least the libido suppression is helping here,

he realizes: He’s not about to embarrass anyone by suggesting a

m�nage. He focuses on Gianni. “I have a feeling I’m here for a

purpose, and it isn’t mine,” he says slowly. “Why don’t you tell me

what you’ve got in mind?”

 

Gianni shrugs. “You have the big picture already. We are human,

metahuman, and augmented human. But the posthumans are things that

were never really human to begin with. The Vile Offspring have reached

their adolescence and want the place to themselves so they can throw a

party. The writing is on the wall, don’t you think?”

 

Manfred gives him a long stare. “The whole idea of running away in

meatspace is fraught with peril,” he says slowly. He picks up his mug

of beer and swirls it around slowly. “Look, we know, now, that a

singularity doesn’t turn into a voracious predator that eats all the

dumb matter in its path, triggering a phase change in the structure of

space - at least, not unless they’ve done something very stupid to the

structure of the false vacuum, somewhere outside our current light

cone.

 

“But if we run away, we are still going to be there. Sooner or later,

we’ll have the same problem all over again; runaway intelligence

augmentation, self-expression, engineered intelligences, whatever.

Possibly that’s what happened out past the B�otes void - not a

galactic-scale civilization, but a race of pathological cowards

fleeing their own exponential transcendence. We carry the seeds of a

singularity with us wherever we go, and if we try to excise those

seeds, we cease to be human, don’t we? So … maybe you can tell me

what you think we should do. Hmm?”

 

“It’s a dilemma.” A waitron inserts itself into their privacy-screened

field of view. It plants a spun-diamond glass in front of Gianni, then

pukes beer into it. Manfred declines a refill, waiting for Gianni to

drink. “Ah, the simple pleasures of the flesh! I’ve been corresponding

with your daughter, Manny. She loaned me her experiential digest of

the journey to Hyundai +4904/[-56]. I found it quite alarming.

Nobody’s casting aspersions on her observations, not after that

self-propelled stock market bubble or 419 scam or whatever it was got

loose in the Economics 2.0 sphere, but the implications - the Vile

Offspring will eat the solar system, Manny. Then they’ll slow down.

But where does that leave us, I ask you? What is there for orthohumans

like us to do?”

 

Manfred nods thoughtfully. “You’ve heard the argument between the

accelerationistas and the time-binder faction, I assume?” he asks.

 

“Of course.” Gianni takes a long pull on his beer. “What do you think

of our options?”

 

“The accelerationistas want to upload everyone onto a fleet of

starwhisps and charge off to colonize an uninhabited brown dwarf

planetary system. Or maybe steal a Matrioshka brain that’s succumbed

to senile dementia and turn it back into planetary biomes with cores

of diamond-phase computronium to fulfil some kind of demented

pastoralist nostalgia trip. Rousseau’s universal robots. I gather

Amber thinks this is a good idea because she’s done it before - at

least, the charging off aboard a starwhisp part. ‘To boldly go where

no uploaded metahuman colony fleet has gone before’ has a certain ring

to it, doesn’t it?” Manfred nods to himself. “Like I say, it won’t

work. We’d be right back to iteration one of the waterfall model of

singularity formation within a couple of gigaseconds of arriving.

That’s why I came back: to warn her.”

 

“So?” Gianni prods, pretending to ignore the frowns that Annette is

casting his way.

 

“And as for the time-binders,” Manfred nods again, “they’re like

Sirhan. Deeply conservative, deeply suspicious. Holding out for

staying here as long as possible, until the Vile Offspring come for

Saturn - then moving out bit by bit, into the Kuiper belt. Colony

habitats on snowballs half a light-year from anywhere.” He shudders.

“Spam in a fucking can with a light-hour walk to the nearest civilized

company if your fellow inmates decide to reinvent Stalinism or

Objectivism. No thanks! I know they’ve been muttering about quantum

teleportation and stealing toys from the routers, but I’ll believe it

when I see it.”

 

“Which leaves what?” Annette demands. “It is all very well, this

dismissal of both the accelerationista and time-binder programs,

Manny, but what can you propose in their place?” She looks distressed.

“Fifty years ago, you would have had six new ideas before breakfast!

And an erection.”

 

Manfred leers at her unconvincingly. “Who says I can’t still have

both?”

 

She glares. “Drop it!”

 

“Okay.” Manfred chugs back a quarter of a liter of beer, draining his

glass, and puts it down on the table with a bang. “As it happens, I do

have an alternative idea.” He looks serious. “I’ve been discussing it

with Aineko for some time, and Aineko has been seeding Sirhan with it

- if it’s to work optimally, we’ll need to get a rump constituency of

both the accelerationistas and the conservatives on board. Which is

why I’m conditionally going along with this whole election nonsense.

So, what’s it worth to you for me to explain it?”

 

*

 

“So, who was the deadhead you were busy with today?” asks Amber.

 

Rita shrugs. “Some boringly prolix pulp author from the early

twentieth, with a body phobia of extropian proportions - I kept

expecting him to start drooling and rolling his eyes if I crossed my

legs. Funny thing is, he was also close to bolting from fear once I

mentioned implants. We really need to nail down how to deal with these

mind/body dualists, don’t we?” She watches Amber with something

approaching admiration; she’s new to the inner circle of the

accelerationista study faction, and Amber’s social credit is sky-high.

Rita’s got a lot to learn from her, if she can get close enough. And

right now, following her along a path through the landscaped garden

behind the museum seems like a golden moment of opportunity.

 

Amber smiles. “I’m glad I’m not processing immigrants these days; most

of them are so stupid it drives you up the wall after a bit.

Personally I blame the Flynn effect - in reverse. They come from a

background of sensory deprivation. It’s nothing that a course of

neural growth enhancers can’t fix in a year or two, but after the

first few you skullfuck, they’re all the same. So dull. Unless you’re

unlucky enough to get one of the documentees from a puritan religious

period. I’m no fluffragette, but I swear if I get one more

superstitious, woman-hating clergyman, I’m going to consider

prescribing forcible gender reassignment surgery. At least the

Victorian English are mostly just open-minded lechers, when you get

past their social reserve. And they like new technology.”

 

Rita nods. Woman-hating et cetera … The echoes of patriarchy are

still with them today, it seems, and not just in the form of

resimulated