Stargods by Ian Douglas (best summer books TXT) 📕

Rage boiled up within. It was possible, just possible, that Walker or the anti-AI forces had found a way to switch off allAIs. There was that billionaire he’d been going up-E to visit, Anton Michaels. If they’d turned her off . . .

But, no. That made no sense at all. They couldn’t have turned off all of the AIs on the planet, because to do so would havebrought down civilization. That had always been the principle argument not to take the AIs off-line . . . the fact that doingso would take modern civilization off-line as well.

Marta, he realized through his anger, had switched herself off . . . a robotic suicide.

Why? Why?

But the answer was painfully obvious. She’d switched herself off when she’d heard he was dead. . . .

But he wasn’t dead!

Or was he? Things were happening too fast. Thoughts, impressions, sensations were coming so fast now, a bewildering kaleidoscopeof data, that he was having trouble taking them all in.

Seeking peace to collect his thoughts, he let his mental vision rise from Earth’s surface, reaching out into space, movingtoward a region he knew well, but the change shocked him. Chaos somehow had engulfed a large part of the Synchorbital bases,scattering fragments everywhere. More, the Quito Space Elevator was wrecked, a great, twisted tangle of slack cable danglingbelow the scattered debris still in geosynchronous orbit. The shock was palpable as he studied the ruin. What the hell hadhappened?

Okay—he remembered being in the elevator, remembered the fall. He remembered the shock, the growing heat. . . .

But something had happened at the cable’s anchor point on Mt. Cayambe, not out at synchorbit.

He explored further . . .

. . . and found planetoids in Earth orbit, eight of them slightly above synchorbit. He could sense that they were powered,that they were equipped with sensors and with weapons. He couldn’t tell what species occupied them, but it was clear thatthis was an attack or an invasion of some sort. He tried penetrating the largest planetoid’s crust, and bounced—the Godstreamdid not extend inside the alien craft. He would need to find another way.

Konstantin. Konstantin would be able to tell him what had happened, both to the Synchorbital and to him.

Finding even a mind as powerful as Konstantin’s in this thunderous avalanche of information was the equivalent of findinga particular molecule of water in the ocean. He needed to attract the super-AI’s attention. Focusing his thoughts, he sentout a ping, putting all the power into the signal he could. He reached out . . .

“Mr. President!”

Konstantin was there. His presence swept over and through Koenig like an incoming ocean wave. He was here, all around him, and Koenig could feelthe AI’s thoughts, as calm and steady as ever, mixed in with what might have been powerful emotion.

It felt as though Konstantin was very glad to see him, a reunion of old, old friends.

And perhaps that was true. For a long time, Koenig had wondered if machines, the smartest ones, anyway, really felt emotion or were simply acting as if they did.

Then he’d purchased Marta, and over the next few months had become convinced that, in fact, they did. So convinced of thatfact had he been that he’d uploaded her manumission to the authorities, making her a free agent. Owning a personal computerwas one thing. Owning a thinking, feeling, sapient and sentient being was quite something else.

Damn it, his Marta had killed herself, and his best guess was that she’d done so out of grief. If that wasn’t an expression of emotion—of human emotion—he didn’t know what was.

The thoughts flooded through his mind in an instant. “Hello, Konstantin,” he replied. “I think . . . I think I’ve been away . . .”

“Indeed, Mr. President. We all presumed you’d been killed.”

In Koenig’s mind, he could see Konstantin—or his characteristic digital presentation of himself, that of an elderly Russian schoolteacher, white-hairedand balding, with a goatee and with an archaic pince-nez perched on his nose. Behind him were bookshelves, piled high withbooks with Russian titles.

“That may well be true. How long have I been . . . gone?”

“Two days, Mr. President,” the image told him. He adjusted his pince-nez. “You were attempting to link in on the Net whenyour elevator failed. I was in communication with you at the time, you may remember.”

“I remember. There was some . . . some radio interference.”

“Indeed. Your re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere generated a shell of hot plasma around your pod, interrupting all communications.The early astronauts of three centuries ago discovered the same thing. I had just re-established contact with you when yourpod exploded. At that moment I attempted to link directly with your in-head hardware to allow you to upload into my computationalmatrix, but it did not appear to have worked.”

“Upload me? Like the Baondyeddi?”

“Precisely. A great many humans, you will recall, have already uploaded themselves, their minds, into the Godstream, and morehave been ascending every day. Evidently, you have done the same, though I was unaware of the fact at the time.”

It made sense, he supposed. Koenig was in fact immersed within what might have been described as the experience of a god, though shock and dissociation had left him weak, confused, and adrift in strangeness.

“So how did you lose me?”

“Mr. President, the Godstream is extremely large, a kind of ocean consisting of many trillions of bits of information. Youappeared to have died despite my efforts to upload your personality intact. When you vanished, when your body disintegrated,I assumed that you had died. I checked to see if you had, in fact, uploaded successfully, but I could not find any trace ofyou. I am sorry.”

The super-AI sounded genuinely contrite, as though it had been caught in the most horrible and enormous of calculational errors.

Two days. For most of that time, he’d been unconscious . . . or the noncorporeal equivalent of that state. Where had he been?

“It’s okay, Konstantin. I may not have been there to find. I’m not sure where I was—I’ve only been gradually finding myself.I’ve been wandering around in a state of something like amnesia, but the memories have been coming back.”

“Are you recovered now?”

Koenig laughed, then wondered that he could have such a visceral response. “Getting there, Konstantin. I almost