"Tales Of The Bounty Hunters (Kevin Anderson)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Kevin J)

STAR WARS
TALES OF THE BOUNTY HUNTERS
Edited by Kevin J. Anderson

Scan/OCR - Demilich ([email protected])

Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88
by Kevin J. Anderson


I

Internal chronometer activated. BEGIN.
Electricity flooded through circuits, a power surge
racing through a billion neural pathways. Sensors awak-
ened, producing a flood of data -- and with it came
questions.
Who am I?
His internal programming finished the tedious two-
second-long initialization procedures and poured out
an answer. He was IG-88, a droid, a sophisticated
droid -- an assassin droid.
Where am I?
A microsecond later, images from his exterior sen-
sors snapped into focus. IG-88 had no sense of smell,
and no eyes and ears as humans understood them, but
his optical and auditory sensors were far more efficient,
able to absorb data in a broader range than any living
being. He froze a static image of his surroundings and
studied it, collating more answers.
He had awakened in some sort of large laboratory
complex, white and metal, sterile, and -- according to
his temperature sensors -- colder than humans gener-
ally preferred. IG-88 noted mechanical components
strewn on silvery tables: gears and pulleys, durasteel
struts, servomotors, an array of delicate microchips fro-
zen into a slab of transparent protective gelatin. Struck
motionless in a pinpoint of time as his extremely fast
neural processors digested the details, IG-88 counted
fifteen scientists/engineers/technicians working in the
laboratory. With infrared scan he observed their body
heat as bright silhouettes in the coldness of his birth-
place.
Interesting, he thought.
Then IG-88 detected something that focused his en-
tire attention. Four other assassin droids, apparently
identical to his own bodily configuration -- a bulky
structural skeleton, armored arms and legs, a torso
plated with blaster-proof armor shielding, a cylindrical
head that was rounded on top and studded with sensor