Permutation City by Greg Egan Read Free Book Online

different depths. Theoretical models suggest that a sufficient number of rigs, under elaborate computer control, could be used to influence large-scale weather patterns, "nudging" them toward the least harmful of a number of finely balanced possible outcomes.
     
    Eight different rig prototypes have been tested in the open ocean, but before engineers select one design for mass production, an extensive feasibility study will be conducted. Over a three-year period, any potentially threatening typhoon will be analyzed by a computer model of the highest possible resolution, and the effects of various numbers and types of the as yet nonexistent rigs will be included in the model. If these simulations demonstrate that intervention could have yielded significant savings in life and property, ASEAN's ministerial council will have to decide whether or not to spend the estimated sixty billion dollars required to make the system a reality. Other nations are observing the experiment with interest.
     
     
    Maria leaned back from the screen, impressed. A computer model of the highest possible resolution. And they'd meant it, literally. They'd bought up all the number-crunching power on offer -- paying a small fortune, but only a fraction of what it would have cost to buy the same hardware outright.
     
    Nudging typhoons! Not yet, not in reality . . . but who could begrudge Operation Butterfly their brief monopoly, for such a grand experiment? Maria felt a vicarious thrill at the sheer scale of the endeavor -- and then a mixture of guilt and resentment at being a mere bystander. She had no qualifications in atmospheric or oceanic physics, no PhD in chaos theory -- but in a project of that size, there must have been a few hundred jobs offered to mere programmers. When the tenders had gone out over the network, she'd probably been busy on some shitty contract to improve the tactile qualities of beach sand for visitors to the Virtual Gold Coast -- either that, or tinkering with the genome of A. lamberti, trying to become the first person in the world to bludgeon a simulated bacterium into exhibiting natural selection.
     
    It wasn't clear how long Operation Butterfly would spend monitoring each typhoon -- but she could forget about returning to the Autoverse for the day.
     
    Reluctantly, she logged off the news system -- fighting the temptation to sit and wait for the first reports of the typhoon in question, or the response of other supercomputer users to the great processing buy-out -- and began reviewing her plans for a new intruder surveillance package.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    2
     
    (Remit not paucity)
     
    NOVEMBER 2050
     
     
     
    "What I'm asking for is two million ecus. What I'm offering you is immortality."
     
    Thomas Riemann's office was compact but uncluttered, smartly furnished without being ostentatious. The single large window offered a sweeping view of Frankfurt -- looking north across the river, as if from Sachsenhausen, toward the three jet-black towers of the Siemens/Deutsche Bank Center -- which Thomas believed was as honest as any conceivable alternative. Half the offices in Frankfurt itself looked out over recorded tropical rainforests, stunning desert gorges, Antarctic ice shelves -- or wholly synthetic landscapes: rural-idyllic, futuristic, interplanetary, or simply surreal. With the freedom to choose whatever he liked, he'd selected this familiar sight from his corporeal days; sentimental, perhaps, but at least it wasn't ludicrously inappropriate.
     
    Thomas turned away from the window, and regarded his visitor with good-natured skepticism. He replied in English; the office software could have translated for him -- and would have chosen the very same words and syntax, having been cloned from his own language centers -- but Thomas still preferred to use the version "residing inside" his own "skull."
     
    "Two million? What's the scheme? Let me guess. Under your skillful management, my capital will