Semper Human by Ian Douglas Page B

Galaxy, in toward the Core, is going to be an amazing, beautiful sight for ten thousand years or more afterward. ”
    â€œMaybe I should go back into cybe-hibe,” Garroway said. “Wake me when the show starts.”
    â€œWe’ll go you one better,” Socrates told him. “The Lords of the Associative, or one important facet of them, at any rate, want you and your Marines to go in there.”
    â€œSay what?” He looked into that blue-white hell. The simulation carried no sensation of temperature, but he could swear his face felt hot as he looked into that searing blaze of light.
    â€œWe had assumed that the Xul presence at the Galactic Core had been burned out by the Core Detonation over a thousand years ago,” Socrates told him.
    â€œSeems like a reasonable assumption,” Garroway said. “Do you mean to tell me they survived in that?”
    â€œWe’re attempting to verify that now. We’ve deployed AI probes to investigate. As you can imagine, the environment poses certain … difficulties.”
    The view of the luminous rose of light expanded, the viewpoint rushing in toward the inner Core. The sheer magnificent beauty of the scene was overwhelming, and Garroway had to remind himself that the environment must be as hostile, in terms of radiation and temperature, as the surface of a star.
    â€œIt is,” Socrates told him. “Keep in mind, though, that we have encountered no fewer than twenty distinct species of intelligent life dwelling either in the photospheres or within the cores of their stars. Life evolves, develops, and adapts everywhere, when given the chance.”
    â€œSocrates,” Garroway said aloud, “did you just read my mind?”
    There was a slight hesitation. “I did, General. Excuse me, please.”
    â€œGeneral Garroway hasn’t been exposed to the concept of full access yet,” Schilling told the AI.
    â€œSo I understand now. It won’t happen again, General. At least, not until you authorize it.”
    â€œFull access?”
    â€œHigh-end AIs, like Socrates, have what we refer to as full access to human mentation. They can pretty much pick up and track anything you’re thinking, without interfacing through your implant.”
    â€œI see. Why?”
    â€œSocial control, of course. And universal data access for the Disimplanted.”
    The way she said the words “social control” felt so natural, so completely matter-of-fact that Garroway wasn’t certain he’d heard her correctly at first. This, he reflected, might be the biggest gap between his own time and culture and this one that he’d yet encountered.
    Humankind had been working with direct man-machine neural interfaces for the major part of the species’ technic history—nineteen hundred years at least—and with various forms of artificial intelligence for longer than that. Implant technology had begun as crude molecular arrays of 2K protein processor nodes that facilitated direct downloads of data from primitive computer nets. Eventually, those early implants had evolved into nanochelated structures of complex design,organic-machine hybrids residing within the brain and running an enormous variety of software that usually included a resident personal AI. These personal secretaries or “essistants” could so perfectly mimic their fully organic host that it was possible to hold a conversation with one on any topic and be unaware that you were speaking with a machine—the final evocation of the ancient proposal known as the Turing Test.
    Such essistants were considered vital in modern communications and interface technologies, and more and more interactions with machines, from accessing research data banks or piloting spacecraft to growing furniture or opening doors or turning on a room’s illumination system, required an implant.
    Which left people without implants, the Disimplanteds, or