"Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon The Deep (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vinge Vernor)

The archive informed the automation. Data structures were built, recipes followed.
A local network was built, faster than anything on Straum, but surely safe. Nodes
were added, modified by other recipes. The archive was a friendly place, with
hierarchies of translation keys that led them along. Straum itself would be famous
for this.

Six months passed. A year.




The omniscient view. Not self-aware really. Self-awareness is much over-rated.
Most automation works far better as a part of a whole, and even if human-
powerful, it does not need to self-know.

But the local net at the High Lab had transcended -- almost without the humans
realizing. The processes that circulated through its nodes were complex, beyond
anything that could live on the computers the humans had brought. Those feeble
devices were now simply front ends to the devices the recipes suggested. The
processes had the potential for self-awareness ... and occasionally the need.

"We should not be."

"Talking like this?"

file:///F|/rah/Vernor%20Vinge/Vinge,%20Vernor%20-%20A%20Fire%20Upon%20the%20Deep.htm (2 of 632) [2/22/03 2:06:50 AM]
 A Fire Upon the Deep



"Talking at all."

The link between them was a thread, barely more than the narrowness that
connects one human to another. But it was one way to escape the overness of the
local net, and it forced separate consciousness upon them. They drifted from node
to node, looked out from cameras mounted on the landing field. An armed frigate
and a empty container vessel were all that sat there. It had been six months since
resupply. A safety precaution early suggested by the archive, a ruse to enable the
Trap. Flitting, flitting. We are wildlife that must not be noticed by the overness, by
the Power that soon will be. On some nodes they shrank to smallness and almost
remembered humanity, became echoes....

"Poor humans; they will all die."

"Poor us; we will not."

"I think they suspect. Sjana and Arne anyway." Once upon a time we were copies
of those two. Once upon a time just weeks ago when the archaeologists started the
ego-level programs.