"Michael Swanwick - The Very Pulse Of The Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

"What does what sound like?"
"Io is a sulfur-rich, iron-cored moon in a circular orbit around Jupiter.
What does this. Sound like? Tidal forces from Jupiter and Ganymede pull
and squeeze Io sufficiently to melt Tartarus, its sub-surface sulfur ocean.
Tartarus vents its excess energy with sulfur and sulfur dioxide volcanoes.
What does. This sound like? Io's metallic core generates a magnetic field
that punches a hole in Jupiter's magnetosphere, and also creates a
high-energy ion flux tube connecting its own poles with the north and
south poles of Jupiter. What. Does this sound like? Io sweeps up and
absorbs all the electrons in the million-volt range. Its volcanoes pump out
sulfur dioxide; its magnetic field breaks down a percentage of that into
sulfur and oxygen ions; and these ions are pumped into the hole punched
in the magnetosphere, creating a rotating field commonly called the Io
torus. What does this sound like? Torus. Flux tube. Magnetosphere.
Volcanoes. Sulfur ions. Molten ocean. Tidal heating. Circular orbit. What
does this sound like?"
Against her will, Martha had found herself first listening, then
intrigued, and finally involved. It was like a riddle or a word-puzzle. There
was a right answer to the question. Burton or Hols would have gotten it
immediately. Martha had to think it through.
There was the faint hum of the radio's carrier beam. A patient, waiting
noise.
At last, she cautiously said, "It sounds like a machine."
"Yes. Yes. Yes. Machine. Yes. Am machine. Am machine. Am machine.
Yes. Yes. Machine. Yes."
"Wait. You're saying that Io is a machine? That you're a machine? That
you're Io?"
"Sulfur is triboelectric. Sledge picks up charges. Burton's brain is intact.
Language is data. Radio is medium. Am machine."
"I don't believe you."

Trudge, drag, trudge, drag. The world doesn't stop for strangeness. Just
because she'd gone loopy enough to think that Io was alive and a machine
and talking to her, didn't mean that Martha could stop walking. She had
promises to keep, and miles to go before she slept. And speaking of sleep,
it was time for another fast refresherтАФ just a quarter-hitтАФof speed. Wow.
Let's go!
As she walked, she continued to carry on a dialogue with her
hallucination or delusion or whatever it was. It was too boring otherwise.
Boring, and a tiny bit terrifying. So she asked, "If you're a machine, then
what is your function? Why were you made?''
"To know you. To love you. And to serve you." Martha blinked. Then,
remembering Burton's long reminiscences on her Catholic girlhood, she
laughed. That was a paraphrase of the answer to the first question in the
old Baltimore Catechism: Why did God make man? "If I keep on listening
to you, I'm going to come down with delusions of grandeur."
"You are. Creator. Of machine."
"Not me."
She walked on without saying anything for a time. Then, because the
silence was beginning to get to her again, "When was it I supposedly