"Can we get around that with software? Or are we going to have to rewire him?"
She looked at him in the half darkness, one eyebrow perfectly arched. "My, you are ambitious, aren't you?"
"If you have any alternatives, I'd be glad to hear them. You're the expert on Bolo AIs, remember. I'm just a mud-footed grunt."
"Hardly that." She thought for a moment. The Bolo, a duralloy cliff looming above them, seemed to consider them in glacial silence. "Well, the only way to restore full operation would be to actually go in, find the primary data bus, and physically remove whatever is affecting him. That won't be easy."
"But not impossible. If the intruder got in, I'm betting it was through that hole melted in Hector's side. If the intruder got in, so can we."
"I doubt we could rip it off with our bare hands."
"There are ... other possibilities."
"Well, there is a software fix we can try in the
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meantime. It won't solve Hectors problem, but it'll make sure he knows what we're doing when the time comes."
"Good." Jaime grinned. "Frankly, I'm not sure what those codes Alita gave me cover, I don't know how intimate we can get with Hector without calling down an AP shot. I do Know that Hector's not going to take kindly to us stumbling around inside him."
"Well, at the very least maybe we'll be able to talk to him about it when the time comes." Turning away from Jaime, she looked up at the black cliff. "Bolo!" she called out. "Code sequence Alpha three-one! Initiate ongoing primary data copy to new file. Source, workmem, filename 'Rising,' access code .. . 'Graham Barstowe.' Execute!"
Somewhere in the depths of the steel mountain, relays began to close. . . .
Code sequence Alpha 3-1 is an instruction reserved for software engineers and AI technicians testing Boh psychotronic relays and main memory, a routine procedure during maintenance checks and precombat service checks to confirm proper memory management and basic psychotronic integrity. Though it is unusual to be initiating this procedure outside of a Bolo maintenance depot, and even more unusual to be working by voice rather than via direct data link, the request must be accepted.
Accordingly, I open a new file inside my working memory and name it "Rising." As data comes into working memory from main storage, I automatically copy each packet and store it in Rising. Information begins to accumulate within the/tie almost immediately. Jama Bolo, Mark XXXIII Mod HCT of the Dmochrome Brigade, and my human companions catt me Hector. I entered service on 26 June, A.E. 1477 with the 6th Mobile Starstrike Regiment, the Indomitables, on
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William H. Keith, Jr.
special deployment with the 1st Armored Assault Brigade at Cloud, Eastern Arm, 212th Sagittarian Sector. .
I recognize that File Rising will swiftly grow to unmanageable proportions unless provisions are made to recopy the data to main memory. Wording memory, after all, represents only 0001 percent of my total available storage capacity, and copying all incoming data to those stacks will soon render working memory useless.
The tactic, however, is successful, as the "I" residing within working memory watches information about myself, about my identity fading away again beneath the silent touch of the Intruder, while it remains intact in File Rising.
I remember. . . and I continue to remember. . . .
Wal Prescott sat with his back against the wall of the scrap-wood and pressboard hut and scratched with one-handed viciousness at the rash spreading across the inside of his thighs. He missed civilization. More than decent food, more than clothing, more than almost anything else except freedom itself, he missed civilization, a human condition that he was having more and more trouble recapturing in his memories . . . but one which above all else he associated with being clean.
The worst health problems in the camp, so far, were pneumonia, malnutrition, and simple overwork; routine prophylactic conditioningўantibodies administered to the population of Cloud in their drinking water back in preinvasion daysўhad so far kept such ancient scourges as typhoid and dysentery at bay. Other health problems, though, long forgotten by civilized cultures, were making a comeback in the camp with its warm, wet, filthy conditions, including lice, fleas, and half a hundred different fungal
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