Metal Fatigue Read Online Free PDF Page B

way they interact involved similar principles. It was the sum of the interactions between the parts — the syncritical path, as they called it — that Morrow's pet scientists set out to measure."
    "Like brainwaves?"
    "No, although there is a relation. Electrical and magnetic activity of the individual parts could be measured, and their relation to the whole could be approximated. Apparently."
    "So..." Barney prompted. "They copied the parts?"
    "They copied the chaotic way Keith's parts behaved — the functions governing their behaviour, at least — onto an enormous neural net, an electrical analog of a human brain. This was much easier than building a virtual model of his entire brain, neuron for neuron. Even though they often didn't know what the individual parts did, they in effect made a copy of his consciousness in the process. As long as the parts were there, with their strange attractors and their links to each other, the whole thing worked. And is still working today."
    "But what about his memory?" Barney broke in. "That's not a process, is it?"
    "Some memories were, mainly the ones that related to sensory perception. Those that didn't were supplemented by notes he made before he died. Otherwise, he's exactly the same as he ever was — except that he's potentially immortal, and far better off than he ever was. Or so he says."
    Barney shook her head. "I think I'm going to have to take your word for it."
    "Don't. Look it up one day. I may not have it right myself, or Keith might've been bullshitting me." Roads half-smiled. "But whatever they did, I'm betting not many people tried it. It was an expensive and revolutionary experiment, and only someone rich and desperate would have tried it. Keith may be the first and last of his kind, anywhere in the world — a unique relic from the old days."
    Barney understood what Roads was saying there, at least, but didn't think that was a good enough reason to let a known criminal remain free. Relics had proved to be highly dangerous before.
    Although she was too young by twenty years to remember the Dissolution, Kennedy's schooling system had made certain she knew the reasons why it had occurred. In individual conflicts, the reasons for going to war had been territorial, but overall the cause was people: eight billion of them by 2040, and only a minority satisfied with their lot.
    A burgeoning population may have caused the War, but it was a new minority that contributed to the severity of the Dissolution. Although the nuclear phase of the War had lasted only a few days, it set a dangerous precedent of mass-murder that overshadowed less visible and more efficient means of killing. One of the greatest threats was to be found on the ground, where soldiers armed with the latest mechanical and biological weapons created havoc on the battlefields.
    Berserkers — the most ruthless caste of the many biomodified combat soldiers created by the US Army — killed at random for decades after the War. Just one could decimate a small city in a matter of weeks. They were unstoppable, implacable and utterly unwilling to negotiate. Their motives were hard to fathom; although some were genuinely insane, it appeared that others had been given explicit orders to kill civilians — which they did with all their genetically-honed combat skills. This parting gesture from the military lingered for forty years until the last known survivor was hunted down and killed in Kennedy.
    The United States might have pulled itself together after the War, had it not been for the berserkers and other creatures like them. That was the lesson Barney had learned — both in high school and from her father's death — and the reasoning behind the city's Humanity Laws: biomodification had resulted in the suffering of millions, and would no longer be tolerated at any level of a sane society.
    It was no wonder, then, that Keith Morrow made her nervous. He was obviously different from the berserkers, but that didn't