"Tom Easton - Silicon Karma" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

rebooted you right away."

"So who killed me?"

The host shrugged. "It wasn't a real pop-up. I can check what all my
subroutines are doing, and none of them were in the neighborhood."

"Another resident, then. In disguise." Albert made a face and wished,
not for the first time, that the virtual world did not make disguise so
easy. Where everything was data, a wish and a suitable subroutine were
all one needed to reprogram appearance or to materialize a gun. Or a cup
of coffee. He sipped at the mug that now occupied his hand. "I wish you
could do these jobs yourself. It would be easier." He made a face. "And
safer."

"You know why I can't. The company wrote it into my software. No spying.
No eavesdropping, except accidentally, and even then, even if I learn
about a crime, I can't use the knowledge. The idea is to protect your
privacy and keep me from becoming a tyrant."
"And I'm your loophole."

The computer's persona chuckled. "I've got to have a cop, they said.
It's a cumbersome requirement, but I can't do a thing until you catch
whatever thieves and rapists and whatnots show up within me."

Albert was silent while he wondered whether murder was truly a crime in
the virtual world. Indeed, he thought, it couldn't be. Since the victim
could be promptly rebooted, the deed hardly existed except as theft. The
victim necessarily lost all memory of events since the last B-cup.
Finally, he said, "So we both want to know who shot me." Then he added,
"I'd like to know why too."

"You must have annoyed someone."

He looked disgusted. Of course he had annoyed someone. "But my last
B-cup was three days ago. I haven't got the faintest ..."

"You were working for me."

"I know that much." It had been over a week since Ada had appeared in
his apartment to say she needed his help. The currency of the virtual
world was the raw material of computerized imagination. Every resident
had the same basic ration of memory and processing capacity, just enough
to let them restore their youth and imagine the necessary paraphernalia
of daily life. If they wanted more--larger quarters, private worlds,
elaborate self-transformations--they had to earn more memory and
processing capacity, or "data energy." Most just called it money. To
earn what they needed to fuel their imaginations, some pretended to be
artificially intelligent software for an outside world that preferred to
have no overt contact with the ghosts in the Coleridge machine. Some