"Charles Stross - Duat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

program: the Dreamtime.

The Dreamtime was designed by Superbrights, the ultimate descendants of the first human
experminents in artificial intelligence. A remarkably complex virtual space, it provided an
afterlife fit for the senses of a human or Superbright mind embedded within it. It also
provided a transport layer: protocols to allow the transmission of uploaded human and
Superbright minds between isolated stellar domains. Uploaded travellers were transmitted
as streams of data packets, then reassembled and downloaded into cloned bodies at their
destination by a mechanism known as a gatecoder.

More subtly, the Dreamtime network also offered a back-up to reality. Nanotech encoders
proliferated on every colony world, weaving themselves into the nervous systems of the
entire population. Constantly filtering a trickle of data through decentralized, cellular
transcievers, they could provide access to the stored wisdom of the ages. They also served
to relocate the active centre of identity into the Dreamtime at the moment of death, until

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Stross,%20Charles%20-%20Duat%20(ss).html (9 of 103)4-7-2007 2:25:58
2: In the Duat


the awakening of a new cloned body. The Dreamtime became the last, greatest software
engineering project -- the gateway to the stars, the repository of wisdom, and the key to
reincarnation.

Some people tried to live within the Dreamtime, treating it as a virtual space. Nobody
grew old; conditions were hospitable, a function of a universe designed for intelligent
occupation. When the density of the simulations increased with time and population
growth, the local Dreamtime -- tied to the finite capacity of the local expansion processor
-- simply ran slower and slower relative to real time. The oldest sectors of the afterlife
disappeared into apparent stasis, carrying out a spacelike colonisation of the future; those
that remained close to the Centre became posthuman, incommunicative. Meanwhile, new
expansion worlds were added to the Dreamtime constantly as the halo of probes expanded
outwards. And so the process continued, for the first few hundred years: new cybernetic
colonies gave rise to populations on new terrestrial planets, the scope of the afterlife
growing to match the new dirt-bound planetary civilizations flourishing on the rim.

Then things began to go wrong ...

Oshi opened her eyes and sat up. Anger made her snap: "Hree was right all along the line.
You are a monster."

The Boss yawned elaborately. "I'm not human, if that's what you mean. But I never
claimed to be, did I?"

"Monster." Oshi waited, half-relaxed. Never thought I would end this way. So abrupt, so
unfinished. She stared at the Boss's body's forehead. Strange how you can never tell who
the real enemy is.

"Insults will not endear you to me, Oshi." He stared down from the throne, slouching
against one armrest: "and indeed, that appelation could be applied to you, too."