"FWLS63" - читать интересную книгу автора (A Future We'd Like to See)

"Care to hear the story?" he asked, urging me on.

"Okay," I prompted. Anything to keep the Doc happy. I
didn't want to annoy him like I did the fortune teller.

"Converting a human mind into AI form isn't easy, but it's
the only way I know of for humans to escape death," Doc said,
rooting through a nearby pile of Apparatus. "As much as I hated
life, I wasn't quite ready to go when I was supposed to, so I
decided to stay put. Seems to be working. It's very
liberating... sure, the world's still an evil place with stupid
people, but I'm happier about my role in it now. Lack of spastic
back pains will do that to you."

"Sounds fun," I commented, although I wasn't sure what the
proper response to someone's life story was.

"It was inevitable that I'd do this," the Doc shrugged. "I
mean, face it, I'm a living plot device. People come to me as a
cure-all when they're in the weirdest kinds of trouble
imaginable. Need implants removed or added, the Doc was your
man. For AIs or android AIs, I could patch, repair, or modify
the personality streams. People relied on me. If I died
forever, quite a few future problems would go unsolved."

"What about other doctors?"

"Two bit hacks," the Doc warned. "Mention them not. I
compiled the second AI, and know more about how they work than
mortal man ought to know."

"Second?" I asked.

"Here it is!" Doc said, plowing with renewed vigor through
his stacks of strangely-shaped objicons. He pulled out a
primitive stethoscope, walked over and planted the sucker end on
my head.

"Hold still," the doctor ordered, putting the ear bits in
his ears. He listened in silence, nodding to himself. "Don't
worry, it's just a scanner. Tells me everything I need to know
about you. Take a deep breath."

I inhaled, the motion planted in operating system memory
despite its uselessness. The docs smiled and took off the
stethoscope.

"Memory loss," he said, "Due to data corruption. Did
someone carrying you on disk subject the disk to a magnet?"