the rustling clouds, waving her arms like windmills, while her irigotchi – Autumn Glory and Flea Circus, the latter apparently superimposed on the former – raced around the swirling leaves like Disney puppies, all the while twittering out the poetry of the previous century’s advertising jingles.
At the foot of a crumbling skyscraper, Bartek met Dagenskyoll.
“Does this piece of junk of yours pick up ultrasound?”
“Don’t worry. The little one won’t hear anything. You’re drowning everything out with your roaring fist.”
“She won’t hear anything, and she wouldn’t understand anyway, but the irigotchi are more and more tightly linked with the Matternet. Cho has ears everywhere.”
“Now you’re the one who’s paranoid.”
“Just wait,” said Bartek, before he really did switch to ultrasound, “till I give you the reasons for my paranoia.”
“They can’t screw us more than they’ve already screwed us,” rumbled Dagenskyoll, emoting a fuck-off at the Bully Boys, the Dwarves, and the whole of Project Genesis.
“So what then? Are you going to just lie down and wait for the deluge?”
“Ha! Right now they’re drawing up the orbital planes at Big Castle. See, you gotta put up some new satellites, rebuild the global communications network, and then trade on the monopoly.”
“I can just see it now. Suddenly they whip an army of space engineers out of their sleeve. How many transformers were rocket fuel experts in Paradise? You’ve got to be kidding. No, no, I’ve got something else in mind.”
“What?”
“If you could just concoct some new life in the oceans after all.”
“How?”
“With your Chos, Jarlinkas, and Lagiras.”
Dagenskyoll emoted a big blank.
“Go on, go on.”
“You know what they did to me?”
“They slowed you down Ural style for the whole war. You already blubbered into my cables about it.”
“There’s more. They have my backups,” said Bartek, emoting a bitterness that seethed like the acid of alien blood. “They covered their asses, so they wouldn’t be stuck without a hardware handyman. If I want to leave, they’ll just start me up here on the backup server. Then they’ll check whether the double wants to leave too, and so on with different conditions each time until one of my selves eventually ends up deciding to stick around for good, genuinely content to be subserviently shoveling shit for Cho.”
Dagenskyoll froze in the middle of Bartek’s tirade.
“You want to come over to us…” That was all he heard.
Bartek heaved a ten-meter sigh with his nozzle. Alicia and the irigotchi chased his sigh to a crossway of paths.
“I told you: I won’t do you any good. I’m a hardware janitor. I don’t know anything about life two zero. Or about life one zero, for that matter. I know about machines.”
“So?”
“I’m a hardware janitor. I have all the keys and skeleton keys. I’m the one who cleans out the motherboards for them and scrubs the optical memory. Rory could hack into the neurosoft, but I’m down in the basement server rooms, pulling out memory drives and setting up RAIDs.”
“You’re talking about physical theft.”
“You better believe it! I don’t need to break the security software or play the IT expert – which I’m not – to twist out some screws and unplug a few Thunderbolts. Then the GOATs of the Royal Alliance will surely plow through it on their own computers in Japan via the method of brute force and you’ll open your own Chos and Carters and Jarlinkas – the whole Project Genesis team.”
“They voted against us, and you think they’d suddenly want to work for us over there?”
“Think about it. You’ll do exactly what Rory did to checkmate me. You’ll keep starting up Cho over and over, again and again, until one of the versions decides for itself that it wants to repeat the creation of the world with you. I’d even be willing to bet on its motivations: Humph, I’m not that Cho, I’m a
At the foot of a crumbling skyscraper, Bartek met Dagenskyoll.
“Does this piece of junk of yours pick up ultrasound?”
“Don’t worry. The little one won’t hear anything. You’re drowning everything out with your roaring fist.”
“She won’t hear anything, and she wouldn’t understand anyway, but the irigotchi are more and more tightly linked with the Matternet. Cho has ears everywhere.”
“Now you’re the one who’s paranoid.”
“Just wait,” said Bartek, before he really did switch to ultrasound, “till I give you the reasons for my paranoia.”
“They can’t screw us more than they’ve already screwed us,” rumbled Dagenskyoll, emoting a fuck-off at the Bully Boys, the Dwarves, and the whole of Project Genesis.
“So what then? Are you going to just lie down and wait for the deluge?”
“Ha! Right now they’re drawing up the orbital planes at Big Castle. See, you gotta put up some new satellites, rebuild the global communications network, and then trade on the monopoly.”
“I can just see it now. Suddenly they whip an army of space engineers out of their sleeve. How many transformers were rocket fuel experts in Paradise? You’ve got to be kidding. No, no, I’ve got something else in mind.”
“What?”
“If you could just concoct some new life in the oceans after all.”
“How?”
“With your Chos, Jarlinkas, and Lagiras.”
Dagenskyoll emoted a big blank.
“Go on, go on.”
“You know what they did to me?”
“They slowed you down Ural style for the whole war. You already blubbered into my cables about it.”
“There’s more. They have my backups,” said Bartek, emoting a bitterness that seethed like the acid of alien blood. “They covered their asses, so they wouldn’t be stuck without a hardware handyman. If I want to leave, they’ll just start me up here on the backup server. Then they’ll check whether the double wants to leave too, and so on with different conditions each time until one of my selves eventually ends up deciding to stick around for good, genuinely content to be subserviently shoveling shit for Cho.”
Dagenskyoll froze in the middle of Bartek’s tirade.
“You want to come over to us…” That was all he heard.
Bartek heaved a ten-meter sigh with his nozzle. Alicia and the irigotchi chased his sigh to a crossway of paths.
“I told you: I won’t do you any good. I’m a hardware janitor. I don’t know anything about life two zero. Or about life one zero, for that matter. I know about machines.”
“So?”
“I’m a hardware janitor. I have all the keys and skeleton keys. I’m the one who cleans out the motherboards for them and scrubs the optical memory. Rory could hack into the neurosoft, but I’m down in the basement server rooms, pulling out memory drives and setting up RAIDs.”
“You’re talking about physical theft.”
“You better believe it! I don’t need to break the security software or play the IT expert – which I’m not – to twist out some screws and unplug a few Thunderbolts. Then the GOATs of the Royal Alliance will surely plow through it on their own computers in Japan via the method of brute force and you’ll open your own Chos and Carters and Jarlinkas – the whole Project Genesis team.”
“They voted against us, and you think they’d suddenly want to work for us over there?”
“Think about it. You’ll do exactly what Rory did to checkmate me. You’ll keep starting up Cho over and over, again and again, until one of the versions decides for itself that it wants to repeat the creation of the world with you. I’d even be willing to bet on its motivations: Humph, I’m not that Cho, I’m a
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