devices even on ordinary Met citizens.
[Calm down,] he thought back in a side channel whisper. [We’ve discussed this. How bad it might get, especially for free converts. It’s going to get that bad, Danis.]
[Kelly, how do you know that?]
[The same way I knew to short all the stocks.]
[That doesn’t explain anything.]
[I know. It’s hard to explain. Maybe it’s an aspect thing.]
[Oh, come on. Don’t you , of all people, give me that bigoted bullshit. If I’m taking our children to Pluto . . . or wherever you’ve got in mind, you’d better start explaining.]
“And if I can’t?” Kelly said aloud.
[If you can’t, then I’ll trust you,] Danis finally replied. [The same way you trust me for an accurate analysis. But trust is not the same thing as understanding.]
Kelly sighed. [How can I explain something that I don’t completely get myself?] He had intended the thought to be personal, but its intensity leapt the boundary of his personal consciousness, and Danis heard him. Or maybe she just figured out what I was going to say, Kelly thought.
[If that is the case, then maybe you need to give this trip a little more thought.]
[There isn’t time. You saw the time stocks and futures. It’s an objective and measurable shift. So you measure it. All I know is that I’ve got to get my family the hell away from the Met.]
[All right, then,] Danis replied. [All right. I’ll book us passage on a ship departing from the Leroy Port on the Diaphany. When do we leave?]
[Today.]
[Today? Kelly, are you sure?]
[Things will get bad. Count on it, Danis.]
Kelly reached a transport door and sent a message through the grist for a personal coach. Although Kelly prided himself on normally using public transportation, he thought he would need the isolation of the coach to settle his thoughts.
[Well, we’re all packed,] Danis said. [Your coach is here.]
The transport door irised open like a big heart valve, and Kelly stepped through into the round softness of his coach. His grist informed the coach of his personal biology, and the coach adjusted its air and temperature accordingly.
Two
Danis Graytor sat back in her favorite worn leather armchair and shook herself a smoke. She breathed in deeply and the Dunhill crackled lowly as the tobacco caught and smoldered. She slid a fine ceramic ashtray across the lacquered top of her side table and listened to the pleasant grate of porcelain on mahogany. After another long drag, she ashed the cigarette and considered the pleasing gray of the tobacco remains against the pure white of the ashtray’s bowl. All of this would soon be only a memory. There was no way she could download her office study into Kelly’s pocketbook and still have room for the essential things her family must take with them on their upcoming journey. Without Danis to maintain it, the office study would soon be written over in the virtuality, erased.
She made a quick check on Kelly and found that he was still in the coach on his way home. The children would arrive soon.
Danis ran back over her checklist, more for comfort’s sake than in the expectation that she’d forgotten anything. She never forgot anything. But bugs could creep into even the best algorithm’s program, and Danis never took data for granted. That was the very reason that Kelly had hired her on as an assistant in the first place. The love had come later.
My home is dissolving, Danis thought. Right before my eyes, it is flowing away into the general grist.
There was, of course, no real here , here, but a particular location in the reality that sustained the virtuality had a certain something. To Danis, it manifested as a smell, a feeling of safety and familiarity somewhere deep inside. She was entirely software, of course, and an algorithm could operate in any medium capable of sustaining its complexity.
But this is home, Danis thought. This chair, this golden glow from the roof lighting, this odor of cigarettes and account books.
[Calm down,] he thought back in a side channel whisper. [We’ve discussed this. How bad it might get, especially for free converts. It’s going to get that bad, Danis.]
[Kelly, how do you know that?]
[The same way I knew to short all the stocks.]
[That doesn’t explain anything.]
[I know. It’s hard to explain. Maybe it’s an aspect thing.]
[Oh, come on. Don’t you , of all people, give me that bigoted bullshit. If I’m taking our children to Pluto . . . or wherever you’ve got in mind, you’d better start explaining.]
“And if I can’t?” Kelly said aloud.
[If you can’t, then I’ll trust you,] Danis finally replied. [The same way you trust me for an accurate analysis. But trust is not the same thing as understanding.]
Kelly sighed. [How can I explain something that I don’t completely get myself?] He had intended the thought to be personal, but its intensity leapt the boundary of his personal consciousness, and Danis heard him. Or maybe she just figured out what I was going to say, Kelly thought.
[If that is the case, then maybe you need to give this trip a little more thought.]
[There isn’t time. You saw the time stocks and futures. It’s an objective and measurable shift. So you measure it. All I know is that I’ve got to get my family the hell away from the Met.]
[All right, then,] Danis replied. [All right. I’ll book us passage on a ship departing from the Leroy Port on the Diaphany. When do we leave?]
[Today.]
[Today? Kelly, are you sure?]
[Things will get bad. Count on it, Danis.]
Kelly reached a transport door and sent a message through the grist for a personal coach. Although Kelly prided himself on normally using public transportation, he thought he would need the isolation of the coach to settle his thoughts.
[Well, we’re all packed,] Danis said. [Your coach is here.]
The transport door irised open like a big heart valve, and Kelly stepped through into the round softness of his coach. His grist informed the coach of his personal biology, and the coach adjusted its air and temperature accordingly.
Two
Danis Graytor sat back in her favorite worn leather armchair and shook herself a smoke. She breathed in deeply and the Dunhill crackled lowly as the tobacco caught and smoldered. She slid a fine ceramic ashtray across the lacquered top of her side table and listened to the pleasant grate of porcelain on mahogany. After another long drag, she ashed the cigarette and considered the pleasing gray of the tobacco remains against the pure white of the ashtray’s bowl. All of this would soon be only a memory. There was no way she could download her office study into Kelly’s pocketbook and still have room for the essential things her family must take with them on their upcoming journey. Without Danis to maintain it, the office study would soon be written over in the virtuality, erased.
She made a quick check on Kelly and found that he was still in the coach on his way home. The children would arrive soon.
Danis ran back over her checklist, more for comfort’s sake than in the expectation that she’d forgotten anything. She never forgot anything. But bugs could creep into even the best algorithm’s program, and Danis never took data for granted. That was the very reason that Kelly had hired her on as an assistant in the first place. The love had come later.
My home is dissolving, Danis thought. Right before my eyes, it is flowing away into the general grist.
There was, of course, no real here , here, but a particular location in the reality that sustained the virtuality had a certain something. To Danis, it manifested as a smell, a feeling of safety and familiarity somewhere deep inside. She was entirely software, of course, and an algorithm could operate in any medium capable of sustaining its complexity.
But this is home, Danis thought. This chair, this golden glow from the roof lighting, this odor of cigarettes and account books.
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