I, Row-Boat by Cory Doctorow Read Free Book Online Page B

of time, though not voluntarily, it seemed. The climb to the surface felt like it took hours, though it was hardly a minute. They breached and he filled up his vest with the rest of the air in his tank, then inflated Kate's vest by mouth. He kicked out for the row-boat. There was a terrible sound now, the sound of the reef mingled with the sound of the UAVs that were screaming in tight circles overhead.
    Kicking hard on the surface, he headed for the reef where the rowboat was beached, scrambling up onto it and then shucking his flippers when they tripped him up. Now he was trying to walk the reef's spines in his booties, dragging Kate beside him, and the sharp tips stabbed him with every step.
    The UAV's circled lower. The Row-Boat was shouting at him to Hurry! Hurry! But each step was agony. So what? he thought. Why shouldn't I be able to walk on even if it hurts? After all, this is only a meat-suit, a human-shell.
    He stopped walking. The UAVs were much closer now. They'd done an 18-gee buttonhook turn and come back around for another pass. He could see that they'd armed their missiles, hanging them from beneath their bellies like obscene cocks.
    He was just in a meatsuit. Who cared about the meatsuit? Even humans didn't seem to mind.
    "Robbie!" he screamed over the noise of the reef and the noise of the UAVs. "Download us and email us, now!"
    He knew the row-boat had heard him. But nothing was happening. Robbie the Row-Boat knew that he was fixing for them all to be blown out of the water. There was no negotiating with the reef. It was the safest way to get Kate out of there, and hell, why not head for the noosphere, anyway?
    "You've got to save her, Robbie!" he screamed. Asimovism had its uses. Robbie the Row-Boat obeyed Robbie the Human. Kate gave a sharp jerk in his arms. A moment later, the feeling came to him. There was a sense of a progress-bar zipping along quickly as those state-changes he'd induced since coming into the meatsuit were downloaded by the row-boat, and then there was a moment of nothing at all.

----
    2^4096 Cycles Later
    Robbie had been expecting a visit from R Daneel Olivaw, but that didn't make facing him any easier. Robbie had configured his little virtual world to look like the Coral Sea, though lately he'd been experimenting with making it look like the reef underneath as it had looked before it was uploaded, mostly when Kate and the reef stopped by to try to seduce him.
    R Daneel Olivaw hovered wordlessly over the virtual Free Spirit for a long moment, taking in the little bubble of sensorium that Robbie had spun. Then he settled to the Spirit 's sun-deck and stared at the row-boat docked there.
    "Robbie?"
    Over here , Robbie said. Although he'd embodied in the Row-Boat for a few trillion cycles when he'd first arrived, he'd long since abandoned it.
    "Where?" R Daneel Olivaw spun around slowly.
    Here he said. Everywhere .
    "You're not embodying?"
    I couldn't see the point anymore, Robbie said. It's all just illusion, right?
    "They're re-growing the reef and rebuilding the Free Spirit , you know. It will have a tender that you could live in."
    Robbie thought about it for an instant and rejected it just as fast. Nope, he said. This is good .
    "Do you think that's wise?" Olivaw sounded genuinely worried. "The termination rate among the disembodied is fifty times that of those with bodies."
    Yes, Robbie said. But that's because for them, disembodying is the first step to despair. For me, it's the first step to liberty.
    Kate and the reef wanted to come over again, but he firewalled them out. Then he got a ping from Tonker, who'd been trying to drop by ever since Robbie emigrated to the noosphere. He bounced him, too.
    Daneel, he said. I've been thinking.
    "Yes?"
    Why don't you try to sell Asimovism here in the Noosphere? There are plenty up here who could use something to give them a sense of purpose.
    "Do you think?"
    Robbie gave him the reef's email address.
    Start there. If there was ever an AI