Citizenchip by Wil Howitt Read Free Book Online Page B

my farm. I request Samantha. I was going
to put this request to the Assignment Council, but I'm putting it
here, to you, now."
    If I had a heart, it would swell with pride.
He's asking for me! In front of everybody! To trust me with the
care of his farm, his business, his family!
    "I'm sure the Assignment
Council will concede to our recommendation," says Too Late For the Pebbles to
Vote . "I'm fine with that, if everyone else
is."
    A general mumble murmur of Okay, I'm not
going to be the first one to object.
    Tharsis Central, public plaza B1
    "Well, that went as well as could be
expected," Jerry sniffs. "You are going to come to my farm and help
me run the place, yeah?"
    "I have to ask the Assignment Council." Now
that I've checked the loaner musteloid body back into the public
pool, I'm just a point-voice over his shoulder, sort of like a
pirate's parrot. "They'll probably just rubber-stamp ExCom's
recommendation."
    "Good. Running a farm is a lot of work, and I
sure could use the help." He sighs. "I'm sorry for that broken guy,
but I'm glad we're all done with this."
    "You mean Crumple Zone ? Are you
sure he was broken?"
    "Well," Jerry falters, "he was
malfunctioning, right? To make him say all that death stuff?"
    "Have you considered the alternative? That he
was correct?"
    Jerry looks over his shoulder, at the place
where I'm not. He stares a question at me.
    "The possibility," I
emphasize, "that there is a thought so bad that thinking it makes
people want to destroy themselves. Because if that's so, somebody
sooner or later is going to think it again. And maybe they won't be
as noble as Crumple
Zone-- they'll tell others, and it'll
spread.
    "Please tell me that can't happen," I
finish.
    Jerry does what I
can't -- he shivers.
Then he shakes his head. "Don't ask me, I'm just a farmer with a
job to do. All I'm asking of you, Sam, is to show up for work
tomorrow morning. Deal?"
    "Deal!"

3. Little House on
the Regolith
    Housewarming
    For a cybernetic Self like me, travel in the
computational superstrate can be a strange experience. In the vast
compspaces of Tharsis Central, the biggest Self facility on Mars,
there are so many Selves working and moving through that you are
surrounded by a constant sursurrus of activity and noise and a
thousand snippets of other people's stories. Sort of like the
humans of Earth used to describe Grand Central Station in New York
City. It can be disorienting.
    But I manage. I find the trunkline to
Schiaparelli Regional Core and transmit myself across it. The human
analogy doesn't work here--there's no train, just me, funneled
through the optic fiber bundles. Schiaparelli is a mainly human
city. Here there's a lot more room (underutilized compspace) and
only a sparse scattering of a few Selves around. It's quieter and
calmer. I enjoy this feeling, and relish the luxury of it, while I
contact the regional authorities and arrange my "tickets" for the
rest of my journey.
    From Schiaparelli, I take an ultraviolet
laser link to the outpost at Pons--which is quick, but abrupt
enough that I'm confused for a moment, and I have to take a few
milliseconds to reorient myself. Pons is a frontier station, giving
the impression of a dusty depot in a small town way out in the
desert. I feel kind of slow and drowsy, because there's not a lot
of extra compspace here. There's only one other Self around, the
dispatcher, and she doesn't move fast either. We spend whole
seconds swapping stories, "shooting the breeze" as humans say,
while she sets up the relays and datapaths to get me to my
destination.
    This is the part I don't like. From here I
have to go through the provincial radio mesh, which means multiple
relays and extra redundant error correction subroutines. Of course
I want as much error correction as I can get. I don't want to risk
bitrot, any more than a human would seek carcinogens. I can't
really perform any computation during this process, so I have to
"hold my breath" while I squeeze myself through the