"Ringo, John - Council Wars 1 - There Will Be Dragons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

There Will be DragonsThere Will Be Dragons by John Ringo



PROLOGUE

In the forest, a sparrow died.
The passing of the sparrow was registered and noted. The death of the female
sparrow had been anticipated sometime in the next four days based upon
increasing wear on her heart. The sparrow was old, had laid many eggs and had
raised a higher than average percentage to successful fledgelinghood. The
sparrow had contributed to the survival of her species and had passed on her
genes. If she had pride, she would be proud.
On the other hand, the individual was not from a species that was listed as rare
or endangered so it required no notification of any human.
So Mother, who had never paused in Her myriad duties, logged it and moved on.
There were so many other things to do. Ensure that the energy generation did not
significantly affect the weather. Draw off excess energy for core or mantle
dumping. Prepare a massive energy surge for the planet/moon glance strike,
scheduled in 237 years, that would start Wolf 359's second planet on its way to
being a tectonically active body. Just finding places to store the energy was
getting difficult and She contemplated a secondary magnetic draw system around
Jupiter as a possibility. An asteroid had encountered a series of low
probability gravitic intercepts and was now on a course that would bring it
dangerously close to the Earth, defined as within three diameters of the orbit
of the Moon. She directed a probe to push it to a more favorable axis thus
ensuring that 1235 years from now an asteroid the size of an elephant would not
cause a noticeable explosion in the ocean the humans had once called "Pacific."
Weather control. Tectonic control. Holding off a too long delayed mini ice-age.
Tracking the progress of "origination" terraforming, the process of returning
the world to as much of a prehuman condition as possible. And then, of course,
there were the humans, who were getting squirrelly again.
The entity called Mother by the humans that created Her estimated that there was
a 99.9999915% chance (more or less) that the humans were about to have the level
of disagreement characteristic of the variable term "war." It had been a very
long time; they were overdue. Like a forest fire that is delayed, the
conflagration would be far worse than one in a more regular schedule. She would
have preferred one about five hundred years ago. But the humans never asked
about these things, seeing them as something to interrupt a schedule, not be
included in it.
Given the current societal conditions and probable outcome of such a war, the
extinction of the human race as currently defined had a likelihood of 17.347%.
This variable was harder to quantify; humans were so very hard to wipe out. The
extinction of all other sentient intelligences except Herself was of only a
slightly lower likelihood. She had not bothered to make the other AI's or the
elves apprised of the situation; that, too, was not Her job.
To the extent that She felt emotions at all, She liked humans. They were not
only Her creators, but were so delightfully random, even to one who could read
their very thoughts. They so often planned one thing and then did something
quite different. Such variability in routine was refreshing.