Omega Point Read Online Free PDF Page B

said together.
      "Any sign of messing?" said Richards.
      "Nope," said the bear. It examined him head to foot. It relaxed, not much, but enough to let Richards breathe easier. "Alright. But I'm watching you. A Class Five, come here? What do you need a place like this for?" The bear pulled a branch from a tree and hurled it out over the plain. The branch cartwheeled through the air and was lost in the crops below.
      It turned back round and jabbed a claw at Richards.
      "Fond of pointing, aren't you?" said Richards.
      "Careful, sunshine," the bear said. "I'm taking you in to get this straightened out. Don't think I trust you. We'll see what the boss has to say about it." It drew itself up to its considerably full height, spreading its arms wide. "No funny business. It's a fair old way to Pylon City."
      "Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die."
      "Don't get funny with me, you little sod. You better behave. Will you?"
      "Do bears shit in the woods?" said Richards.
      "I told you," said the bear.
      "Yeah, I forget. That's where popes perform their ablutions. Sorry."
      "Fuck. Off ," said the bear, and squared its sloping shoulders in a way that suggested actual hurt was not far distant.
      Richards changed tack. "Perhaps we might get on better if we were formally introduced?"
      The bear sniffed disparagingly. "Right. OK. Maybe. Me, I'm Bear. Sergeant Bear."
      "There's a surprise."
      "Watch it, sunshine, you're pushing your luck. No one knows I found you. Get too cocky and I'll forget regulations altogether, got it?" He adjusted his helmet. "You can stick to 'sir'." Bear cupped his hands round his mouth. "Oi! Geoff! Geoff!" he shouted. "You can come out now, I reckon he's harmless." Bear looked at Richards suspiciously. "Mostly," he added.
      There was a rustle as of something big forcing a passage through the trees, a sound that became a crash as a battered, three-legged purple giraffe fell onto the lip of the slope and squeaked pitifully. "That's Geoff, my corporal. Come on, Geoff! Get up now."
      "Man, you're part of a crack outfit," said Richards and whistled. Bear gave him the kind of stare only bears can and waddled over to help up the corporal. Richards noticed a rattling as he moved, a noise he'd previously put down to the gravel path.
      He looked at the bear closely.
      "Beans? You've got beans in your arse?" The giraffe was a caricature in plush of the real thing. The bear's nose was scuffed plastic. Something clicked in the simulated mess of buttery tissue between his ears. "Hang on, you're toys? You, the giraffe, the dog-man?"
      Bear looked back from where he was helping the struggling Geoff to his three feet. Richards caught sight of crude stitching where the giraffe's right foreleg should have been.
      "My, aren't you the sharpest tool in the box? Course we're toys. We can't all be Class Five AIs like you, mister." Bear shook his head and pushed his friend up to his feet. "But not that doggy dude, no. He's just a screening programme, not as sophisticated as us, eh, Geoff?"
      The giraffe squeaked.
      "The cheek of it," said Bear.
      Richards understood. Virtually all playthings in the more fortunate parts of the Real had some form of embedded electronic mind. Often this was rudimentary, but some had been furnished with brains right up to strong-AI classification before the emancipation – like Valdaire's phone, Chloe, incepted as a life companion, although Valdaire had gone further than most by constantly upgrading Chloe and eventually removing her from the doll she initially inhabited. Life Companions were helpers, online and off, invisible friends, teachers, comforters and confidantes rolled into one. But when they were outgrown, and their owners lacked Valdaire's technical flair, where did they go? Here, apparently, thought Richards.
      "This place is some kind of sanctuary. You said it," said Richards. "A hidden world for abandoned toys? Now I've seen