"Cory Doctorow - I robot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dodd Christina)

"Hello, Detective. I have found R Peed Robbert. The Peed unit has been badly damaged by some kind of
electromagnetic pulse. I will bring him to the nearest station-house for forensic analysis now."

"Wait!" Arturo said, trying to understand what he'd been told. The Peed units were so efficient тАФ by the
time they'd given you the sitrep, they'd already responded to the situation in perfect police procedure, but
the problem was they worked so fast you couldn't even think about what they were doing, couldn't
formulate any kind of hypothesis. Electromagnetic pulse? The Peed units were hardened against
snooping, sniffing, pulsing, sideband and brute-force attacks. You'd have to hit one with a bolt of
lightning to kill it.

"Wait there," Arturo said. "Do not leave the scene. Await my presence. Do not modify the scene or
allow anyone else to do so. Acknowledge."

"It is my тАФ"

But this time, it wasn't Arturo switching off the phone, it was the robot. Had the robot just hung up on
him? He redialed it. No answer.

He reached under his dash and flipped the first and second alert switches and the car leapt forward. He'd
have to fill out some serious paperwork to justify a two-switch override on the Parkway, but two robots
was more than a coincidence.

Besides, a little paperwork was nothing compared to the fireworks ahead when he phoned up Ada to ask
her what she was doing out of school.

He hit her speed-dial and fumed while the phone rang three times. Then it cut into voicemail.

He tried a pen-trace, but Ada hadn't made any calls since her ExcuseClub call that morning. He texted
the phreak squad to see if they could get a fix on her location from the bug in her phone, but it was either
powered down or out of range. He put a watch on it тАФ any location data it transmitted when it got back

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to civilization would be logged.

It was possible that she was just in the mall. It was a big place тАФ some of the cavernous stores were so
well-shielded with radio-noisy animated displays that they gonked any phones brought inside them. She
could be with her girlfriends, trying on brassieres and having a real bonding moment.

But there was no naturally occurring phenomenon associated with the mall that nailed R Peeds with
bolts of lightning.

He approached the R Peeds cautiously, using his copper's override to make the dumb little positronic
brain in the emergency exit nearest their last known position open up for him without tipping off the
building's central brain.

He crept along a service corridor, heading for a door that exited into the mall. He put one hand on the
doorknob and the other on his badge, took a deep breath and stepped out.