"Joan D. Vinge - Fireship" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vinge Joan D)

above my upturned face. I blinked as more sleet splattered down
onto my helmet and the noise from my suit speakers increased a
hundredfold, punctuated by shouts of uninhibited joy. Lightning
danced, out across the copper-colored plain; feeble thunder shook
open the clouds. The freezing rain came down, burnishing the land,
washing away the sins and sorrows of everyone here, including
Ethan Ring. For a brief space out of time this day became
everything IтАЩd wanted it to be; I was sharing the rain and all the
bittersweet memories IтАЩd been guaranteed with the woman of my
dreamsтАж my memoriesтАФ
I refocused on the conversation going on all around me, about me:
The woman of my dreams, oblivious to the rain and my feelings,
was busy telling her friends about my life of crime, as proof of my
usefulness to them. They werenтАЩt using their suit speakers now; I
hoped that since she was unmoved by the occasion, she had at least
chosen this noisy celebration for security reasons. I began to
mentally fill in holes in the narrative, not having much else to do
until they decided whether to saddle me or shoot me.
The official story, which they all believed, was that one Michael
Yarrow, government guinea pig, was a thief and a saboteur. That
he had temporarily brought down the entire U.S. computer defense
networkтАФ commonly known as Big BrotherтАФand stolen an
incredibly expensive, incredibly advanced piece of experimental
equipment. And it was all true.
But there were extenuating circumstances. Michael Yarrow had
been an undereducated, insignificant lab assistant at a government
research center; and he had volunteered to have a socket surgically
implanted in his spine so that some of his superiors could plug a
computer into his nervous system and see what happened. Not just
any computer, but the ETHANAC 500, one of the fastest computers
ever made; one which used some of the most sophisticated software
ever written, and which had been programmed for the express
purpose of penetrating and disrupting other computer systems. A
super computer, designed to be linked to a superior human mind,
for reasons the government wasnтАЩt talking about. But as it turned
out, the system itself was so sophisticated that it had a potential
mind of its ownтАФa manifestation of the programmersтАЩ skill that far
surpassed their own expectations. And one they hadnтАЩt really
counted on.
Because they had never intended, when they tried the hookup
first on Yarrow, to make that union permanent. TheyтАЩd merely
wanted to be sure the hookup wouldnтАЩt give their real agent fits, or
a lobotomy, or an unintentional 500-volt shock. TheyтАЩd wanted a
test subject that no one would miss, one who had never done
anything worth mentioning, either good or badтАФqualifications that
Yarrow had in spades. He had absolutely nothing to lose, and was
even flattered by all the attention.
And so the fateful moment had arrived at last, when theyтАЩd
pushed the plug into his spine, and man met machine for the first
time. ETHANAC had suddenly become aware of all the things he