"Allen Steele - Agape Among The Robots" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

of the screen to review my interview with Samson. Keith was seated in his chair on the other
side of him; he glanced in my direction, then quickly looked away. I noticed the cordless phone
near his left elbow; that explained how Phil had gotten down here so quickly. Keith, you prick;
youтАЩre always ready to crack jokes behind the bossтАЩs back, but whenever you get a chance to
suck up to him . . .

"Why didnтАЩt you let Keith shut down Samson?" Phil asked quietly, still gazing at the screen. At
least he wasnтАЩt stammering this time.

"I wanted to make sure we didnтАЩt lose anything from SamsonтАЩs memory." I stepped aside to let
Donna slide past me, but she remained behind me, standing in the open door of the darkened
booth. "This was the second time today Samson has attacked someone, and I wanted to find out
why."

Phil shook his head. "Sorry, Jerry, but thatтАЩs an unacceptable risk. If thereтАЩs something critically
wrong with his conditioning protocols, we canтАЩt let him stay active after an accident." He turned
to Keith. "Download everything from his buffer and give them to me, then erase his memory of
this test."

"Hey, whoa, wait a minute! I just spent two hours in there with him! You canтАЩt just erase
everything because. . . !"

That ticked him off. Phil slapped the desk as he rose to face me. "D-d-d-donтАЩt t-t-tell me wh-whu-


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whu-what I ca-ca-ca-ca . . ."

"Damn straight I can!" I snarled back. "ThatтАЩs my conditioning routine youтАЩre screwing with here,
Phil, and this is the second time today youтАЩve told Keith to wipe the memory buffer!" I jabbed a
finger at the motionless robot on the other side of the window. "And in case you didnтАЩt notice,
that frigginтАЩ thing just said he loves me! Now thereтАЩs got to be a reason for that!"

Phil stared at me in astonishment, and I canтАЩt say I wasnтАЩt rather amazed myself. In the four
years that we had worked together, we had seldom raised our voices to one another. We
werenтАЩt great friends, but even after the stress of the last six months, it was hard for the two of
us to get really mad at each other. Unlike, of course, his stormy relationship with Darth
Veder . . .

And it was then, deep within my brain, that a couple of synapses sparked in a way those two
particular synapses had never fired before. Phil and Kathy . . .

Okay, time out for a little soap opera. True Geek Romance, or perhaps Computer Wonks In
Love. Either way, here it is:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . . okay, so it was about twelve years ago, just across
the Charles River on the MIT campus . . . there were two post-grads working in the Artificial
Intelligence Lab, both studying advanced AI as applied to robotics. A nice couple of kids in their