"Ringo, John - Council Wars 2 - Emerald Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

Inside the hemispherical protection field, the asteroid impact was noted as only
a simple thump. At the thump, Sheida Ghorbani opened up a view-screen, as she
did at least once a day, and looked at the lake of boiling lava that surrounded
her home. The whole valley around her home was a mass of red and black liquid
rock, fuming and spitting plumes of yellowish sulfur-laden steam. As always she
called to mind the lofty Douglas firs, winding paths and crystalline mountain
stream that had once been. Back in the days before the Fall.
The human race had brought itself so far. Rising through the mists of history.
Surviving wars and famines. Until they had finally come to a technological point
where so much was available, war, and even government, had been all but
forgotten. The AI entity called Mother, which had started as a security protocol
for the nearly mythical "internet" had morphed over the years until it was She
who was the final arbiter of need. Mother, with her Argus eye and processors
ranging from extradimensional quantum field systems to the honeycomb of bees,
knew all and could see all. Beyond who was naughty and who was nice, it was She
who saw the sparrow fall.
But the dangers of such an entity were known long before it was possible to
create one. And Mother's creator, knowing the danger that She represented, She
who was the first true AI, had established human controls upon her. Thirteen
"Key-holders," each with a physical pass item, who could "tweak" Her protocols
and, in extreme cases, open up her kernel and reprogram Her. The latter,
however, required complete unanimity.
The Keys had first been held by major corporate heads and by governments in the
early days of Her youth. But over the years some of them had fallen into a
shadowy underworld. As Her power grew, more and more capabilities and decisions
were loaded upon Her shoulders until in the last millennia She had become the
defacto world government. She was controlled, primarily, by the overt "Council"
of thirteen Key-holders. They were the human link in the chain and mostly
ensured that Her protocols were tweaked and maintained while She did the grunt
work of managing distribution of goods and services. The last human-controlled
world government had dissolved nearly two hundred years ago from sheer lack of
utility.
The reason for the lack of utility was simple; with no want there was limited
conflict and crime. Replication, teleportation, nannites and genetic engineering
had created a world where any human could live as they desired. A house on a
mountaintop was easily created and the mountaintop could be anywhere in the
world, since with teleportation going elsewhere was a matter of wishing. Body
modification had taken wide forms, with humans Changing themselves into mer,
unicorns, dolphins and a host of other shapes. All conflict, and crime, comes
down to a breach of written or unwritten contracts. It was Mother that ensured
that contracts, by and large, were not breached. In the rare case in which they
were, the individual involved was hunted down by an efficient, if small, police
force and "adjusted," in extreme cases by a memory wipe and replacement to
create a nice, docile, well-adjusted human.
But there had been problems with unlimited wealth and ease. Over the years both
human birthrates and scientific progress had fallen by the wayside. World
population had peaked at twelve billion in the latter twenty-first century and
then had started a long, slow, decline until the population, pre-Fall, had been
a mere billion or so individuals, mostly residing in widely scattered homes and
small hamlets. With limitless recreational activities, and birth, thank God,