Accelerando Read Online Free PDF Page A

million years ago, when the photons we’re seeing now set out. The intelligence gap between us and the aliens is probably about a trillion times bigger than the gap between us and a nematode worm. Do you have any idea what that means ?”
    Pamela nibbles at a slice of crispbread, then graces him with a slow, carnivorous stare. “I don’t care: It’s too far away to have any influence on us, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter whether I believe in that singularity you keep chasing, or your aliens a thousand light years away. It’s a chimera, like Y2K, and while you’re running after it, you aren’t helping reduce the budget deficit or sire a family, and that’s what I care about. And beforeyou say I only care about it because that’s the way I’m programmed, I want you to ask just how dumb you think I am. Bayes’ Theorem says I’m right, and you know it.”
    â€œWhat you—” He stops dead, baffled, the mad flow of his enthusiasm running up against the cofferdam of her certainty. “Why? I mean, why? Why on earth should what I do matter to you?” Since you canceled our engagement, he doesn’t add.
    She sighs. “Manny, the Internal Revenue cares about far more than you can possibly imagine. Every tax dollar raised east of the Mississippi goes on servicing the debt. Did you know that? We’ve got the biggest generation in history hitting retirement and the cupboard is bare. We—our generation—isn’t producing enough skilled workers to replace the taxpayer base, either, not since our parents screwed the public education system and outsourced the white-collar jobs. In ten years, something like thirty percent of our population are going to be retirees or silicon rust belt victims. You want to see seventy-year-olds freezing on street corners in New Jersey? That’s what your attitude says to me: You’re not helping to support them. You’re running away from your responsibilities right now, when we’ve got huge problems to face. If we can just defuse the debt bomb, we could do so much—fight the aging problem, fix the environment, heal society’s ills. Instead you just piss away your talents handing no-hoper eurotrash get-rich-quick schemes that work, telling Vietnamese zaibatsus what to build next to take jobs away from our taxpayers. I mean, why? Why do you keep doing this? Why can’t you simply come home and help take responsibility for your share of it?”
    They share a long look of mutual incomprehension.
    â€œLook,” she says awkwardly, “I’m around for a couple of days. I really came here for a meeting with a rich neurodynamics tax exile who’s just been designated a national asset—Jim Bezier. Don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but I’ve got a meeting this morning to sign his tax jubilee, then after that I’ve got two days’ vacation coming up and not much to do but some shopping. And, you know, I’d rather spend my money where it’ll do some good, not just pumping it into the EU. But if you want to show a girl a good time and can avoid dissing capitalism for about five minutes at a stretch—”
    She extends a fingertip. After a moment’s hesitation, Manfred extends a fingertip of his own. They touch, exchanging vCards andinstant-messaging handles. She stands and stalks from the breakfast room, and Manfred’s breath catches at a flash of ankle through the slit in her skirt, which is long enough to comply with workplace sexual harassment codes back home. Her presence conjures up memories of her tethered passion, the red afterglow of a sound thrashing. She’s trying to drag him into her orbit again, he thinks dizzily. She knows she can have this effect on him any time she wants: She’s got the private keys to his hypothalamus, and sod the metacortex. Three billion years of reproductive determinism have given her