I, Row-Boat Read Online Free PDF Page A

energy stream away from him toward the bird in the sky, and tracerouted the IMs to see where they were originating — the noosphere, of course.
    "God, I can't believe I finally found you. I've been searching everywhere. You know you're the only conscious AI on the whole goddamned sea?"
    "I know," Robbie said. There was a noticeable lag in the conversation as it was all squeezed through the satellite link and then across the unimaginable hops and skips around the solar system to wherever this instance was hosted.
    "Whoa, yeah, of course you do. Sorry, that wasn't very sensitive of me, I guess. Did we meet this morning? My name's Tonker."
    "We weren't really introduced. You spent your time talking to Kate."
    "God damn ! She is there! I knew it ! Sorry, sorry, listen — I don't actually know what happened this morning. Apparently I didn't get a chance to upload my diffs before my instance was terminated."
    "Terminated? The reef said you left the shell —"
    "Well, yeah, apparently I did. But I just pulled that shell's logs and it looks like it was rebooted while underwater, flushing it entirely. I mean, I'm trying to be a good sport about this, but technically, that's, you know, murder ."
    It was. So much for the first law. Robbie had been on guard over a human body inhabited by a human brain, and he'd let the brain be successfully attacked by a bunch of jumped-up polyps. He'd never had his faith tested and here, at the first test, he'd failed.
    "I can have the shell locked up," Robbie said. "The ship has provisions for that."
    The IM made a rude visual. "All that'll do is encourage the hacker to skip out before I can get there."
    "So what shall I do for you?"
    "It's Kate I want to talk to. She's still there, right?"
    "She is."
    "And has she noticed the difference?"
    "That you're gone? Yes. The reef told us who they were when they arrived."
    "Hold on, what? The reef? You said that before."
    So Robbie told him what he knew of the uplifted reef and the distant and cool voice of the uplifter.
    "It's an uplifted coral reef ? Christ, humanity sucks . That's the dumbest fucking thing —" He continued in this vein for a while. "Well, I'm sure Kate will enjoy that immensely. She's all about the transcendence. That's why she had me."
    "You're her son?"
    "No, not really."
    "But she had you?"
    "Haven't you figured it out yet, bro? I'm an AI. You and me, we're landsmen. Kate instantiated me. I'm six months old, and she's already bored of me and has moved on. She says she can't give me what I need."
    "You and Kate —"
    "Robot boyfriend and girlfriend, yup. Such as it is, up in the noosphere. Cybering, you know. I was really excited about downloading into that Ken doll on your ship there. Lots of potential there for real world, hormone-driven interaction. Do you know if we —"
    "No!" Robbie said. "I don't think so. It seems like you only met a few minutes before you went under."
    "All right. Well, I guess I'll give it another try. What's the procedure for turfing out this sea cucumber?"
    "Coral reef."
    "Yeah."
    "I don't really deal with that. Time on the human-shells is booked first-come, first-serve. I don't think we've ever had a resource contention issue with them before."
    "Well, I'd booked in first, right? So how do I enforce my rights? I tried to download again and got a failed authorization message. They've modified the system to give them exclusive access. It's not right — there's got to be some procedure for redress."
    "How old did you say you were??
    "Six months. But I'm an instance of an artificial personality that has logged twenty thousand years of parallel existence. I'm not a kid or anything."
    "You seem like a nice person," Robbie began. He stopped. "Look the thing is that this just isn't my department. I'm the rowboat. I don't have anything to do with this. And I don't want to. I don't like the idea of non-humans using the shells —"
    "I knew it!" Tonker crowed. "You're a bigot! A self-hating robot. I bet you're an