A Good Old-Fashioned Future by Bruce Sterling Read Free Book Online Page B

alive, then? They don’t evolve? They’re not Type III a-life?”
    “I evolved the algorithm for their behavior in my simulations, but the devices themselves are basically sterile robots with my best algorithms hard-coded in,” Tug geeked fluently. “They’re jellyfish androids that run my code. Not androids, coelenteroids.”
    “It’s probably just as well if they don’t reproduce,” said Edna primly. “How big can you make them?”
    “Well, not much bigger than a basketball at present. The lasers I’m currently using to sinter them are of limited capacity.” Tug neglected to mention that he had the lasers out on unauthorized loan from San Jose State University, thanks to a good friend in lab support at the School of Engineering. “In principle, a jellyfish could be quite large.”
    “So they’re currently too small to live inside,” said Edna thoughtfully.
    Revel smiled. “ ‘Live inside,’ huh? You’re really something special, Edna.”
    “That’s what they pay me for,” she said crisply. She glanced at the screen of Tug’s workstation, with its rich background color drifting from sky-blue to sea-green, and with a vigorous pack of sea nettles pumping their wayforward. “What genetic operators are you using to evolve your algorithms?”
    “Standard Holland stuff. Proportional reproduction, crossover, mutation, and inversion.”
    “The Chicago a-life group came up with a new schemata-sensitive operator last week,” said Edna. “Preliminary tests are showing a 40 percent speed-up for searching intractable sample spaces.”
    “Terrific! That would really be useful for me,” said Tug. “I need that genetic operator.”
    Edna scribbled a file location and the electronic address of a downloading site on Tug’s business card and gave it back to him. Then she glanced at a dainty wrist-watch inside her left wrist. “Revel’s uncle paid for a full hour plus travel. You two want to spring for a retainer, or do I go?”
    “Uh, thanks a lot, but I don’t think we can swing a retainer,” Revel said modestly.
    Edna nodded slowly, then touched one finger to her pointed chin. “I just thought of an angle for using your jellyfish in hotel swimming-pools. If your jellyfish don’t sting, you could play with them like beach balls, they’d filtrate the water, and they could shed off little polyps to look for cracks. I just hate the hotel pools in California. They’re surrounded by anorexic bleached blondes drinking margaritas made of chemicals with forty letters in their names. Should we talk some more?”
    “If you don’t like your pool, maybe you could take a nice dip in one of Tug’s tanks,” Revel said, with a glance at his own watch.
    “Bad idea, Revel,” Tug said hastily. “You get a good jolt from those natural sea nettles and it’ll stop your heart.”
    “Do you have a license for those venomous creatures?” Edna asked coolly.
    Tug tugged his forelock in mock contrition. “Well, Ms. Sydney, amateur coelenteratology’s kind of a poorly policed field.”
    Edna stood up briskly, and hefted her nylon bag. “We’re out of time, so here’s the bottom line,” she said. “This is one of the looniest schemes I’ve ever seen. But I’m going to phone Revel’s uncle with the go-ahead as soon as I get back into Illinois airspace. Risk-taking weirdos like you two are what makes this industry great, and the Pullen family can well afford to back you. I’m rooting for you boys. And if you ever need any cut-rate Kazakh programmers, send me e-mail.”
    “Thanks, Edna,” Revel said.
    “Yes,” said Tug. “Thank you for all the good ideas.” He saw her to the door.
    “She didn’t really sound very encouraging,” Tug said after she left. “And her ideas were ugly, compared to ours. Fill my jellyfish with lye? Put them in septic tanks and in cow arteries? Fill them with poison to sting families on vacation?” He flung back his head and began camping back and forth across the room