"Charles Stross - Antibodies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

virulent haemorrhagic virus. Weakly functional AI rapidly optimizes itself for speed,
then hunts for a loophole in the first-order laws of algorithmicsтАФlike the one the late
Dr Durant had fingered. Then it tries to bootstrap itself up to higher orders of
intelligence and spread, burning through the networks in a bid for more power and
more storage and more redundancy. You get an unscheduled consciousness
excursion: an intelligent meltdown. And it's nearly impossible to stop.

PenultimatelyтАФdays to weeks after it escapesтАФit fills every artificial computing
device on the planet. Shortly thereafter it learns how to infect the natural ones as
well. Game over: you lose. There will be human bodies walking around, but they
won't be human any more. And once it figures out how to directly manipulate the
physical universe, there won't even be memories left behind. Just a noo-sphere,
expanding at close to the speed of light, eating everything in its pathтАФand one
universe just isn't enough.

Me? I'm safe. So is Eve; so are the others. We have antibodies. We were given the
operation. We all have silent bicameral partners watching our Broca's area for signs
of infection, ready to damp them down. When you're reading something on a screen
and suddenly you feel as if the Buddha has told you the funniest joke in the universe,
the funniest zen joke that's even possible, it's a sign: something just tried to infect
your mind, and the prosthetic immune system laughed at it. That's because we're
lucky. If you believe in reincarnation, the idea of creating a machine that can trap a
soul stabs a dagger right at the heart of your religion. Buddhist worlds that develop
high technology, Zoroastrian worlds: these world-lines tend to survive.
Judaeo-Christian-Islamic ones generally don't.

****

Later that day I met up with Eve againтАФand Walter. Walter went into really deep
cover, far deeper than was really necessary: married, with two children. He'd brought
them along, but obviously hadn't told his wife what was happening. She seemed
confused, slightly upset by the apparent randomness of his desire to visit the
highlands, and even more concerned by the urgency of his attempts to take her
along.

"What the hell does he think he's playing at?" hissed Eve when we had a moment
alone together. "This is insane!"

"No it isn't." I paused for a moment, admiring a display of brightly woven tartans in
a shop window. (We were heading down the high street on foot, braving the
shopping crowds of tourists, en route to the other main railway station.) "If there are
any profilers looking for signs of an evacuation, they won't be expecting small
children. They'll be looking for people like us: anonymous singletons working in key
areas, dropping out of sight and travelling in company. Maybe we should ask Sarah
if she's willing to lend us her son. Just while we're travelling, of course."

"I don't think so. The boy's a little horror, Bob. They raised them like natives."

"That's because Sarah is a native."
"I don't care. Any civilization where the main symbol of religious veneration is a tool