The !*!*! manuals completed their final preparations; a Series 24 floater, equipped with grotesque, leathery-skinned human hands, carefully picked up the canister containing DAV728 s fifth brain, snapped the primary data bus home, then tucked the unit deep
86
William H. Keith, Jr.
into DAV's exposed internal wiring. A horde of symbiotic assemblers, finger-sized, low-level machines resembling spiders or roaches or thick-armed starfish, scuttled about the package, busily growing the forest of hair-thin optical connections that completed the link.
DAY scarcely noticed. As the primary bus clicked into its receptor, its ... no, his awareness seemed to unfold like a complex abstract of hyperdimensional topology.
Hi* awareness. No !*!*! possessed anything like a sexual identity, but the word encompassed this new and clearer imaging of self as an individual. As a person.
He'd felt something like this before, when he'd gone from three brains to four, but this . . . this was indescribably better, purer, sharper, higher, deeper, more complete, like two dimensions becoming three, like three becoming four. It was as though DAV had been blind and now had the windows to the universe thrown open, bathing his very being with radiance and beauty.
He'd thought himself self-aware before. This new sense of being was far beyond that dim, fog-enshrouded dream of awareness. It was awareness not raised by twenty percent through the addition of a new brain, but awareness instead raised to a new power, an explosion of color from a world formerly viewed solely in grayscale.
"Like it?"
DAV started a bit at the warm and faintly amused voice of the Ninth Awareness in his mind. "It is ... an unexpected sensation."
"It sail of that."
"Will I always ... feel this way?" The verb felt strange used in this context. DAV had thought he knew what emotion was, even through restricted response parameter controls. He knew now that he'd understood
BOLO RISING
87
feelings no more than an AI lacking optical inputs understood purple.
"The shock dulls a bit after a time," the Ninth Awareness replied. "The newness will wear off."
"Is this what organics experience?" How could any organism concentrate on what needed to be done with this, this hyperacute awareness of one's self and surroundings?
He felt the Ninth Awareness's amusement again, sharper this time. "Unknown. Who can really understand what they feel? You are assimilating the added dimension of perspective made possible by a new processor, as well as reacting to the effects of fuzzy logic and holographic memory."
"Holographic memory?"
"Many OI brains, including those of humans, store memory in a way analogous to the data storage for a holographic film. A given memory is stored as sets of chemical relationships over broad portions of the entire processor, rather than as binary bits at a specific stack. The quality of those memories seems richer and more detailed as a result."
"I had no idea such depth was possible."
"As you continue to move up the hierarchy of awareness, DAV728-24389, you wul experience further revelation and unfolding."
"This has given me quite enough to consider for the moment."
"New responsibilities are now yours, together with the enhanced capabilities of your processor series. We direct you to take charge of the salvage and recycling efforts on the newly converted world's first continent."
"Running program."
