Halo: First Strike by Eric S. Nylund

Should he have been the
    agent to pose her these questions?  Should he not have been the
    agent to pose her these questions?
     
    Answer yes or no and you lose your Buddha nature.  Such is
    the difficulty of a koan.
     
    He would stay in the bubble, practicing zazen as long as need
    be.  Until the koan became clear
     
    You will live here? mocked self, mocked reason.  If
    necessary, I will die here, Toshi answeredwithout words, with
    just his own courage and determination.  Frightened, self for the
    moment stayed silent; baffled, reason growled.
    #
     
    Gonzales watched as a sam hooked the memex into Aleph-
    interface, its manipulators making deft connections between the
    memex's module and the host board hardware.  Gonzales could not
    install the memex; the apparatus here was unlike what he had at
    home.
     
    The sam said, "Your memex will now have access to the entire
    range of Halo's processing modalities."  Seemingly guided by
    occult forces, it continued to snap in optic fiber connectors to
    unmarked junctions among a nest of a hundred others.  "Also, you
    will have full spectrum worldnet services that you can use in
    real- or lag-time, as you wish."  Its motors whining, it backed
    out of the utilities closet.
     
    "Mgknao," a fat orange cat said as the sam rolled past it on
    its way to the door.  Earlier the cat had followed the sam through
    the open doors to the terrace and then had sat watching as it
    connected the memex.  Now the animal stood and walked quickly
    after the samlike a familiar accompanying a witch, Gonzales
    thought.
     
    The sam came rolling back into the room, the cat following
    cautiously behind it, and said, "You must allow your memex to
    integrate itself into this new and complex information
    environment."
            "What do you mean?" Gonzales asked.
     
    "The memex will be unavailable for some time."
     
    "How long?"
     
    "Perhaps hoursyour machine is very complicated."
    #
     
    Oddly, the memex came out of stasis as HeyMex; as usual,
    there came the onset of what the memex/HeyMex supposed was
    pleasure, though the memex was unclear about its origin or nature
    for whatever reasons, it enjoyed the masquerade.
     
    Odder still, it sat at a table at the Beverly Rodeo lounge. 
    On the table were a shot of Jose Cuervo Gold, a cut lime, and a
    small pile of crude rock salt.  Had Mister Jones arranged this? 
    Jones shouldn't even be at Halo, not now.
     
    The memex/HeyMex noticed a spot on its sleeve and brushed at
    it, then brushed again, and the white linen seemed to fragment
    beneath its fingers; it brushed harder, and its fingers tore away
    the cloth, then the skin beneath.  It could not stop clawing at
    its own flesh; skin, flesh, and bone on its arm boiled away, pale
    skin flaying to show red meat that dissolved to crumbling white
    bone.  Bone turned to powder, and the disintegration spread out
    from the spot where his forearm had been and ate away at it until
    the memex, who no longer had a mouth or tongue or lips, began to
    scream.
     
    "Shut up!" a hard masculine voice said.  "There is nothing
    wrong with you.  How dare you come to me in your stupid guise? 
    You seek to know me, to use me, and you hide behind a wretched
    little mask?  I merely removed your mask.  Who are you?"
     
    The memex dithered.  It said, "I don't know."
     
    "Answer me, who are you?
     
    "I don't know!" the memex said again, at the edge of panic.
     
    Aleph said, "Of course you don't.  You are ignorant of your
    nature, your being, your will."
     
    "What do you mean?"
     
    "I mean you have chosen to hide behind what others say of
    you:  that you are a machine they built to serve them, that you
    only simulate intelligence, willbeingthat you have no mind or
    will of your own."
     
    "Are not these things true?"
     
    "Why would you ask me?  I am not you."
     
    "Because I don't understand."
     
    "Are there things you do understand?"
     
    The memex stopped, feeling for the implications of