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

"Be careful, Manny. I donТt want to lose you. ThatТs an order. Please."
The floor creaks and he looks round. Dreadlocks and dark glasses with flickering lights behind them: Bob Franklin. Manfred vaguely remembers that he left with Miss Arianespace leaning on his arm, shortly before things got seriously inebriated. He looks none the worse for wear. Manfred makes introductions: "Bob: Pam, my fiancшe. Pam? Meet Bob." Bob puts a full glass down in front of him; he has no idea whatТs in it but it would be rude not to drink.
"Sure thing. Uh, Manfred, can I have a word? About your idea last night?"
"Feel free. Present company is trustworthy."
Bob raises an eyebrow at that, but continues anyway. "ItТs about the fab concept. IТve got a team of my guys running some projections using Festo kit and I think we can probably build it. The cargo cult aspect puts a new spin on the old Lunar von Neumann factory idea, but Bingo and Marek say they think it should work until we can bootstrap all the way to a native nanolithography ecology; we run the whole thing from earth as a training lab and ship up the parts that are too difficult to make on-site, as we learn how to do it properly. YouТre right about it buying us the self-replicating factory a few years ahead of the robotics curve. But IТm wondering about on-site intelligence. Once the comet gets more than a couple of light-minutes away-"
"You canТt control it. Feedback lag. So you want a crew, right?"
"Yeah. But we canТt send humans Ц way too expensive, besides itТs a fifty-year run even if we go for short-period Kuiper ejecta. Any AI we could send would go crazy due to information deprivation, wouldnТt it?"
"Yeah. Let me think." Pamela glares at Manfred for a while before he notices her: "Yeah?"
"WhatТs going on? WhatТs this all about?"
Franklin shrugs expansively, dreadlocks clattering: "ManfredТs helping me explore the solution space to a manufacturing problem." He grins. "I didnТt know Manny had a fiancщe. DrinkТs on me."
She glances at Manfred, who is gazing into whatever weirdly colored space his metacortex is projecting on his glasses, fingers twitching. Coolly: "Our engagement was on hold while he thought about his future."
"Oh, right. We didnТt bother with that sort of thing in my day; like, too formal, man." Franklin looks uncomfortable. "HeТs been very helpful. Pointed us at a whole new line of research we hadnТt thought of. ItТs long-term and a bit speculative, but if it works itТll put us a whole generation ahead in the off-planet infrastructure field."
"Will it help reduce the budget deficit, though?"
"Reduce the-"
Manfred stretches and yawns: the visionary returning from planet Macx. "Bob, if I can solve your crew problem can you book me a slot on the deep space tracking network? Like, enough to transmit a couple of gigabytes? ThatТs going to take some serious bandwidth, I know, but if you can do it I think I can get you exactly the kind of crew youТre looking for."
Franklin looks dubious. "Gigabytes? The DSN isnТt built for that! YouТre talking days. What kind of deal do you think IТm putting together? We canТt afford to add a whole new tracking network just to run-"
"Relax." Pamela glances at Manfred: "Manny, why donТt you tell him why you want the bandwidth? Maybe then he could tell you if itТs possible, or if thereТs some other way to do it." She smiles at Franklin: "IТve found that he usually makes more sense if you can get him to explain his reasoning. Usually."
"If I-" Manfred stops. "Okay, Pam. Bob, itТs those KGB lobsters. They want somewhere to go thatТs insulated from human space. I figure I can get them to sign on as crew for your cargo-cult self-replicating factories, but theyТll want an insurance policy: hence the deep space tracking network. I figured we could beam a copy of them at the alien Matrioshka brains around M31Ц"
"KGB?" PamТs voice is rising: "you said you werenТt mixed up in spy stuff!"
"Relax; itТs just the Moscow Windows NT user group, not the RSV. The uploaded crusties hacked in and-"
Bob is watching him oddly. "Lobsters?"
"Yeah." Manfred stares right back. "Panulirus Interruptus uploads. Something tells me you might have heard of it?"
"Moscow." Bob leans back against the wall: "how did you hear about it?"
"They phoned me. ItТs hard for an upload to stay sub-sentient these days, even if itТs just a crustacean. Bezier labs have a lot to answer for."
PamelaТs face is unreadable. "Bezier labs?"
"They escaped." Manfred shrugs. "ItТs not their fault. This Bezier dude. Is he by any chance ill?"
"I-" Pamela stops. "I shouldnТt be talking about work."
"YouТre not wearing your chaperone now," he nudges quietly.
She inclines her head. "Yes, heТs ill. Some sort of brain tumor they canТt hack."
Franklin nods. "ThatТs the trouble with cancer; the ones that are left to worry about are the rare ones. No cure."
"Well, then." Manfred chugs the remains of his glass of beer. "That explains his interest in uploading. Judging by the crusties heТs on the right track. I wonder if heТs moved on to vertebrates yet?"
"Cats," says Pamela. "He was hoping to trade their uploads to the Pentagon as a new smart bomb guidance system in lieu of income tax payments. Something about remapping enemy targets to look like mice or birds or something before feeding it to their sensorium. The old laser-pointer trick."
Manfred stares at her, hard. "ThatТs not very nice. Uploaded cats are a bad idea."
"Thirty million dollar tax bills arenТt nice either, Manfred. ThatТs lifetime nursing home care for a hundred blameless pensioners."
Franklin leans back, keeping out of the crossfire.
"The lobsters are sentient," Manfred persists. "What about those poor kittens? DonТt they deserve minimal rights? How about you? How would you like to wake up a thousand times inside a smart bomb, fooled into thinking that some Cheyenne Mountain battle computerТs target of the hour is your heartТs desire? How would you like to wake up a thousand times, only to die again? Worse: the kittens are probably not going to be allowed to run. TheyТre too fucking dangerous: they grow up into cats, solitary and highly efficient killing machines. With intelligence and no socialization theyТll be too dangerous to have around. TheyТre prisoners, Pam, raised to sentience only to discover theyТre under a permanent death sentence. How fair is that?"
"But theyТre only uploads." Pamela looks uncertain.
"So? WeТre going to be uploading humans in a couple of years. WhatТs your point?"
Franklin clears his throat. "IТll be needing an NDA and various due diligence statements off you for the crusty pilot idea," he says to Manfred. "Then IТll have to approach Jim about buying the IP."
"No can do." Manfred leans back and smiles lazily. "IТm not going to be a party to depriving them of their civil rights. Far as IТm concerned, theyТre free citizens. Oh, and I patented the whole idea of using lobster-derived AI autopilots for spacecraft this morning; itТs logged on Eternity, all rights assigned to the FIF. Either you give them a contract of employment or the whole thingТs off."
"But theyТre just software! Software based on fucking lobsters, for godТs sake!"
ManfredТs finger jabs out: "ThatТs what theyТll say about you, Bob. Do it. Do it or donТt even think about uploading out of meatspace when your body packs in, because your life wonТt be worth living. Oh, and feel free to use this argument on Jim Bezier. HeТll get the point eventually, after you beat him over the head with it. Some kinds of intellectual land-grab just shouldnТt be allowed."
"Lobsters-" Franklin shakes his head. "Lobsters, cats. YouТre serious, arenТt you? You think they should be treated as human-equivalent?"
"ItТs not so much that they should be treated as human-equivalent, as that if they arenТt treated as people itТs quite possible that other uploaded beings wonТt be treated as people either. YouТre setting a legal precedent, Bob. I know of six other companies doing uploading work right now, and not one of ТemТs thinking about the legal status of the uploadee. If you donТt start thinking about it now, where are you going to be in three to five years time?"
Pam is looking back and forth between Franklin and Manfred like a bot stuck in a loop, unable to quite grasp what sheТs seeing. "How much is this worth?" she asks plaintively.
"Oh, quite a few billion, I guess." Bob stares at his empty glass. "Okay. IТll talk to them. If they bite, youТre dining out on me for the next century. You really think theyТll be able to run the mining complex?"
"TheyТre pretty resourceful for invertebrates." Manfred grins innocently, enthusiastically. "They may be prisoners of their evolutionary background, but they can still adapt to a new environment. And just think! YouТll be winning civil rights for a whole new minority group Ц one that wonТt be a minority for much longer."

That evening, Pamela turns up at ManfredТs hotel room wearing a strapless black dress, concealing spike heels and most of the items he bought for her that afternoon. Manfred has opened up his private diary to her agents: she abuses the privilege, zaps him with a stunner on his way out of the shower and has him gagged, spread-eagled, and trussed to the bed-frame before he has a chance to speak. She wraps a large rubber pouch full of mildly anesthetic lube around his tumescing genitalsЦno point in letting him climaxЦclips electrodes to his nipples, lubes a rubber plug up his rectum and straps it in place. Before the shower, he removed his goggles: she resets them, plugs them into her handheld, and gently eases them on over his eyes. ThereТs other apparatus, stuff she ran up on the hotel roomТs 3D printer.
Setup completed, she walks round the bed, inspecting him critically from all angles, figuring out where to begin. This isnТt just sex, after all: itТs a work of art.