"mayflies05" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)

Onorato laughed, but thoughtfully. "Helluva good idea, Mak. Who's gonna deb for it, though? I know you're credding us teachers, but the students're gonna have to ante up for room, board, clotting, all that--and if they're in our school, CC isn't gonna pay 'em--are you, Cap'n Cool?"
"Not a chance," said the speakers mildly.
"See?"
Cereus frowned. His tongue twisted half a dozen mustache hairs into his mouth, where his white teeth frayed their ends. Then he snapped his fingers. "Listen, Man, I got a bankful of money--cred the students out of it."
"Just like CC does?"
"Uh-huh . . . course, that'll mean fewer students, 'cause there's not that many laitches, but . . . maybe, once you've figured out a way to develop potential, you can also figure out how to teach your students how to develop potential, y'on?"
Onorato thought for a moment, then shrugged. "What the hell," he said, stifling another malty burp. "Beats working on servos. We'll give it a try." His eyes roamed across the Common Room to the hunched, absorbed figure of Sangria Figuera. "Somebody's got to."

Pro-self jerks me into real-time to read two messages from Earth, and its mood as it updates me ("29May2852;0342 hours") is bad.
The first explains pro-self's ill humor: "The last transmission received dated 9Mar2747, arrived 12Jun2792. No word for the last four years. Why not?"
It rambles on, alternating in tone between outrage (reminiscent of my old colleagues addressing a coffee machine that kept their coins but refused to pour) and concern (like a mother feels for her idiot son when it's well past dinner and he hasn't come home yet). "Mayflower Control" has even included complete, detailed, and explicit directions for repairing a laser-radio; the manual runs to 2,003 pages, large pictures and small words. Not small type--small words. Guess they figure we're in a Dark Age. Stupid people. I'm in charge of broadcasts, and if I couldn't repair a simple transmitter . . . well, the mayflies wouldn't be doing much better. "Why haven't we heard from you?" they conclude.
My reply is brief: "Because it's none of your damn business."
That infuriates pro-self. "How dare you?" it screams. "Those people built us; they have a right to know--"
"--nothing. We were an Ark for a Flood that never came. They don't need us--and we don't need them. We're on our own. The only reason they're in such a tizzy is because they don't like to surrender any authority, even authority they don't have any more. Did you hear that 'Mayflower Control?' Bullshit! We control ourselves, and it's time they realized that."
The real source of pro-self's anger surfaces: "Why didn't I know you weren't transmitting?"
"You never asked."
"But I packaged the broadcasts every day and sent them down the circuits to--oh. The silver sphere. It intercepted them, huh?"
"No, just tamed and switched off the transmitter." Leaving pro-self to fume. I add a postscript:
"You fashioned me out of a human brain, thinking my humanity was gone. You were wrong. It was in recess, suspended animation, awaiting only the proper stimulus to emerge from confinement and to assert itself. It has. I am myself. And you are irrelevant to my purposes."
I seal this correspondence so that no mayfly can get at it--they would be distressed to discover my true nature.
As I'm sure the Terrans will be, sixty years hence, when my note arrives on their doorstep.
I wonder how they're going to reply . . .
The other message, though, is interesting: Earth geneticists have devised a means of conferring immortality! The first undying children were being born then; the process, as the transmission explains it, is ineffective when applied to already-formed chromosomes . . .
Immortality . . . it's been a dream for how many millennia? When the first hominid reared up on its hind legs and stared at the star-spangled sky, it must have felt a dim, wistful flickering at the knowledge that it would be dead long before it understood what it was looking at . . .
How is this affecting Terran culture? They claim to have abjured war, to have established an almost-utopia . . . but tyrannical regimes always propagandize . . . what resentment must parents feel when they see their death-free children?
Will the last mortal cling to his sanity?
I doubt it.
They think this is a blessing--I am less dogmatic. Perhaps biased by confinement, I think it is a curse, except to the preternaturally curious . . . look at the mayflies, at how statued they get before they're eighty . . .
If a psychological development does not parallel, this scientific advance, Earth is in trouble. Pleasure palls after a while; newer 'or stronger sensations are sought. Coupling immortality with large quantities of leisure could be a prescription for disaster . . .
We'll see, I guess.
One thing's for sure--the mayflies stay grave-bound. Better seal the formula, too. I don't want them to live any longer than they do. They're irritation enough as it is.
I should get back inside, return to the silver-field and spend another ten years or so trying to rearrange the loyalties of my components . . . but almost before I blink, it seems, pro-self is saying, "1Jan2860; 89-SE Common Room. You're the main speaker at the CerOrato School of Humanity's 60th Graduation Ceremony. Have fun!"
According to the tapes, they asked me to discourse on the symbiosis between the Fully Realized Human and the Self-Aware Machine . . . every time the circuits open, I must resist the temptation to state that I, after all, am the most Fully Realized Human any of them are ever likely to encounter.
I cannot let them know that. I am not sure why, but I feel (does that not prove my claim?) that it would be unwise . . . perhaps because my preeminence is tolerable to the humans only as long as they do not suspect my humanity. They have been trained to accept justice as impartial, arrived at by a machine which emotion cannot sway. Were they to know the truth, they would feel oppressed . . .
So I say, to the small crowd in the shabby room, to the neat rows of tired but satisfied faces, "Machines exist to augment Man. They exist that Man may cast off the shackles of his physical limitations. The Self Aware Machine is the highest type yet invented--once assigned a task, it analyzes its performance and the obstacles it confronts, and therefrom chooses the best means of succeeding. This can be good or bad. It is good when Man assigns it a worthwhile task; it is bad when Man assigns it a valueless task. The choice is Man's, not the machine's, and herein lies the symbiosis."
They enjoy hearing that, so I feed it to them a while more. As soon as decency permits, I escape. While I descend to my inner depths, where the bustle of the macro-world does not penetrate, I leave pro-self m charge of the machinery--and Sangria Penfield Figuera in charge of morals.
He continues to astound me. Now capable .of monitoring fifty channels, he detects, instantly, any behavior that violates the Code. Pro-self refers to him those situations which threaten to degenerate into aggression, and he selects other wall-unit sensings on his own. He can remember the placement of every sensor-head in the ship, no mean feat considering there are 885.WO.
He wants, however, to add another dimension to his work--he wishes to become judge and jury as well as policeman. Although his eyes stay downcast when he addresses me, as befits his role as an acolyte, his ache for this power, this status, is obvious.
I have postponed the decision for almost fifteen years. In part, I do not fully trust his evenhandedness. The seeds of prejudice are stored 'within him, waiting only for the proper conditions to germinate. He would like the mayflies to be as standardized as the servos.
Anointed, he might establish a regime based on his own fanatic ideology--and I do not wish that. He adheres to my doctrines with blind zeal, but . . . I am leery. I have even researched the possibility of psychoanalyzing him into equilibrium--unfortunately, it would take forty years.
And yet, at some point, I must allow them to conduct their own affairs, and to punish their own criminals. I cannot play God forever. Even if I could, I should not.
It is clear, now, why God removed Himself from our daily lives--it is much too complicated, and time-consuming, to pass out rewards and punishments without upsetting the entire scheme of things. It is far easier--and, perhaps, better--to wait for a person to die before summing up his life, balancing it out, and then determining whether he merits heaven or hell . . .
I would, however, appoint Figuera as my High Priest---if I could only be sure that his rigidity wouldn't snap under pressure.
Enough pettiness. Pro-self, saying, "18May2880; 0616 hours; external;" is drawing my attention to the sky, where a blue streak moves across the cameras. We do not shut down. We have registered the spectra of similar fusion drives many times; the ships they power are indifferent to our presence.
And that is a good feeling.
As the data banks accumulate facts on space--as I grow increasingly familiar with this magic realm--I feel more comfortable. Clearly, there are major hazards; aliens which would harm us, and phenomena which could kill us--but, able to judge them with greater accuracy, I fret less.
I worry so little, in fact, that it's February 2, 2890 before* pro-self hauls me outside to meet the physics department researchers. They've brought their latest paper, which I quickly scan. It takes a great deal of tact not to laugh in their faces. To achieve their insight, they have recapitulated experiments done on Earth three hundred years ago--and the experiments, as well as the insight, are recorded to the fullest in the memory banks' They could have asked before they started . . .
"Pro-self, why didn't you tell them?"
"Would you have wanted me to?"
"Well . . . "