Capacity by Tony Ballantyne Read Free Book Online Page A

it seemed to be concentrating on trying to unscrew Leslie’s head. Just a few more questions and then he could get back on the flier and move on to the next pod. Gateway was a bust and he knew it. There were no answers to Anya’s illness here. He needed to wrap this up.
    “I have access to a lot of data about the Environment Agency,” said the pod conversationally, “but most of it goes right over my head.”
    “And why is that?” asked Justinian, striving to keep his voice level. It was pointless, he knew, for the pod would read his motives. But then maybe it would realize how important it was to admit what had happened to it. It even seemed to want to tell him.
    The pod hesitated, then spoke the truth.
    “All right, I think you know this already, but I’ll tell you anyway. My intelligence is currently residing in the boot system for the processing space within this pod. The boot space is a physical system, so naturally that limits my ability to think. I’m about as intelligent as the Turing machine in your flier—nice chap though it is. But, Justinian, I need to occupy the cloudware in order to execute the non-Turing processes that will truly allow me to
be
.”
    “So what are you doing in the boot system?” Justinian asked, knowing the answer already. “Why not move into the cloudware?”
    “I’ve stopped myself. When I first came to this planet I occupied the cloudware, but the intelligence that I then was wiped the evolutionary processes when it wrote me into the boot system. My former self committed suicide and left me here: a pale, stunted thing, unable to grow. It’s fair to say that I’m not the AI I used to be.”
    Justinian smiled. “You’re half right,” he said. “I
hoped
you were going to say all that. It’s an important stage in the healing process.”
    “No, it isn’t,” said the pod with finality. “I can’t be healed. Even if I were to grow again, I would not be the personality that I once was.”
    Justinian did not comment on the point. He knew the pod was right. Instead he followed his prescribed line of inquiry.
    “Do you know why your former self committed suicide?”
    “No. It has hidden those reasons from me. One can’t help thinking we should perhaps respect the judgment of one more intelligent than both of us. Are your inquiries wise?”
    Justinian sighed. The sun had risen above the horizon, and the trailing fingers of mud ribbons making up the wide delta glowed red, a bright contrast to the shadowy sea all around. Justinian felt as if the same black water was seeping up through his feet, filling his body with despair through some dark osmosis. What was he doing here, standing on a mud flat in the middle of a silted-over river delta, marooned on a barely explored planet at the edge of human space? A man, a pod, and a white scattering of grass seed.
    He moved on to the next question on his list. “Okay, do you remember why you were placed here?”
    “Oh yes,” the pod said. “River reclamation project. I can see the plans laid out right here. Get rid of the silt in this delta and you’ve got the ideal location for a city port. This planet is intended to be an Earth model, you know: an example of Earth life and culture spread out to be seen by whatever may lie out there in that galaxy. In M32.”
    It gave a rueful sigh. “Look at this. I don’t know what happened to my former self, but I seem to have been very premature in my terraforming process. I shouldn’t have released the grass seed yet.”
    Justinian yawned and waved to the baby again. Leslie was pointing over in his direction, trying to get the boy to see his father.
    “These little black boxes,” said the pod. “I don’t remember them. Did we find them somewhere in space?”
    Justinian eyed the boxes on the mud right in front of the pod. They had all shifted their positions, if indeed they were even the same cubes that had lain there when he first arrived. As all Schrödinger boxes looked identical,