"Rudy Rucker - Chu and the Nants" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

"Quakka means ten-to-the-forty-eight," said Ond. "That many bytes of storage and the ability to carry
out that many primitive instructions per second. Quite a gain on the human brain, eh? We limp along with
exaflop exabyte ware, exa meaning a mere ten-to-the-eighteenth. How smart could the nant sphere be?
Imagine if a person had each of their individual brain-neurons replaced by a whole entire brain. And now
imagine that someone covered Earth's surface with superbrain people like that: copies slotted in
shoulder-to-shoulder, back-to-belly, and piled a mile high. Imagine all those brains in all those bodies
working together to make--something like a human cubed."

"People aren't stupid enough already? President Doakes is supporting this--why?"

"He wanted to do it before the Chinese. And his advisers imagine the nants will be under American
control. They're viewing the nant-sphere as a strategic military planning tool. That's why they could
short-circuit all the environmental review processes." Ond gave a wry chuckle and shook his head. "But
it's not going to work out like those idiots expect. A human-cubed nant-sphere would obey Joe Doakes?
Please."

"And they're grinding Mars into dust?" wailed Nektar. "You helped make this happen?"

"Nant," said Chu, crawling around the floor, shoving his face right up to each of the little screens,
adjusting their positions as he moved around. "Nant sphere," he said to a screen. "Quakkaflop
computer." He was excited about the number-talk and the video hardware. Getting all the electronic
devices arranged parallel or at right angles to each other made him happy as a clam.

"It won't be very dark at night anymore, with sunlight bouncing back off the nants," said Ond. "That's not
real well-known yet. The whole sky will look about as bright as the moon. It'll take some getting used to.
But Doakes's advisers like it. We'll save energy, and the economy can run right around the clock. And,
get this, Olliburton, the vice-president's old company, they're planning to sell ads."

"Lies and propaganda in the sky? Just at night, or in the daytime, too?"

"Oh, they'll show up fine in the daytime," said Ond. "As long as it's not cloudy. Think about how easily
you can see a crescent moon in the morning sky. We'll see biiig freakin' pictures all the time." He refilled
his glass. "You drink some, too, Nektar. Let's get sloshed."

"You're ashamed, aren't you?"

"A little," said Ond with a crooked smile. "I think we may have over-geeked this one. And underthought
it. It was just too cool a hack to pass up. But now that we've actually done it--"

"Changing the sky is horrible," said Nektar. "And won't it make global warming even worse? No more
Florida Keys? Goodbye Micronesia?"

"We--we don't think so," said Ond. "And even if there is an effect, President Doakes's advisers feel the
nant computer will help us get better control of things like the climate. A quakkaflop quakkabyte
computer can easily simulate Earth's surface down to the atomic level, and bold new strategies can be
evolved. But, again, that's assuming the nant swarm is willing to do what we ask it to. We can't actually
imagine what kinds of nant-swarm minds will emerge. It's formally impossible. I kept telling the bosses,
but they wouldn't listen."

It took two years for the nants to munch through all of Mars, and the ever-distractible human news-cycle