Sunset of the Gods

Sunset of the Gods Read Online Free PDF

Book: Sunset of the Gods Read Online Free PDF
Author: Steve White
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, adventure, Space Opera
Commander,” said Mondrago. “We don’t have inner atomic clocks. Isn’t it going to be kind of startling when, to our eyes, the universe suddenly disappears without warning and is replaced by what we can see from the displacer stage?” From their expressions, it was clear that Landry and Chantal found the prospect unsettling to say the least.
    Jason’s eyes met Rutherford’s. This could no longer be put off.
    “It won’t be without warning,” said Jason. “I’ll give you advance notice—not only to preserve your mental equilibrium, but also to make sure we vanish in private, so as not to alarm the locals.”
    “But how can you predict when the moment is going to be?” Mondrago persisted, in the tones of a man who was more than half sure he already knew the answer, at least in its broad essentials.
    “My ability to do so relates to what I said before about recordings of the aliens we encountered in the Bronze Age Aegean. The fact of the matter is that I have an actual, neurally interfaced computer implant. Among other things—and this is almost the least of its functions—it provides me with a countdown to the time all our TRDs activate. It also has a recorder feature, spliced directly onto my optic and auditory nerves: whenever I activate that feature by mental command, it records everything I see or hear on media that can be accessed after I return to the present.”
    He studied their faces. Mondrago was taking it with equanimity—he had doubtless heard Service rumors about this sort of thing. The other two bore the excruciatingly embarrassed look of people who were too polite to reveal the prejudice they felt.
    One of the human race’s keys to survival is that human beings almost never carry any idea to its ultimate logical conclusion. There are, of course, exceptions: the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge come to mind. So it had been with the Transhuman movement, which, in the two or three generations it had ruled Earth before being swept away in fire and blood, had sought to exploit to the fullest the possibilities inherent in late-twenty-first-century cybertech and genetic engineering, splintering humanity into specialized castes serving an elite of supermen. The human psyche had never recovered from that abuse. The result had been the Human Integrity Act, which by now enjoyed the kind of quasi-sacred status the people of the old United States of America had accorded their Constitution. Any tampering with the human genome was forbidden. So was anything that blended human brains and nervous systems with computers. So was any application of nanotechnology that made nonlife difficult to distinguish from life. All of this had been seared into the human soul by the Transhumanists and their experiments upon themselves; legislation was almost superfluous.
    “It has other useful—in fact, indispensable—features,” Jason continued before the abhorrence could crystallize. “It gives me access to a great deal of information. For one thing, it can project directly onto my optic nerve a map of our surrounding area. We’ll never be lost. And the recorder function is especially necessary in an era like the one we’re going to, when paper and other such conveniences don’t exist. Remember, what you bring back to the present, like what you take into the past, is limited to what you can carry—which, like the clothes you’re wearing, is effectively part of the same ‘object’ as your body, as far as temporal energy potential is concerned.” He saw that he had scored a point with the academics.
    “So,” Rutherford said briskly, “you can see why the Authority was able to make a case for the kind of limited exemption from the Human Integrity Act enjoyed by certain law enforcement agencies. And now, let us proceed to have the TRDs implanted—a very brief, practically painless procedure.” He ushered Landry and Chantal out of the room. Jason was about to follow when Mondrago caught his eye.
    “Question,
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