The Turing Exception Read Online Free PDF Page B

mapped, covered, inspected, and cleared.
    “Breathe, Cat, breathe. They can’t check your lungs otherwise.”
    She reluctantly took a deep breath. A little cloud of nanobots rose off her face and rode the breath inside, looking for any tech that had infiltrated her.
    “You’re clear now,” the attendant said. “You know their tech is standing still since SFTA, while ours is still advancing. How can they hope to stay relevant?”
    Who knew what the Americans thought? The global Class II limit on AI, another US mandate, theoretically meant to prevent the concentration of computing power and avoid another Miami-type incident, angered AI around the world, leading to wide unrest. The very thing the Americans seemed to fear most, a terrorist attack by AI, was exactly what their policies would most likely cause.
    She shrugged and went back to the car. She just wanted to get home now.
    She boarded the next ferry to Quadra Island, then across Quadra to the final boat ride. The whole trip was a journey: three ferry rides, two border crossings, and hundreds of miles. It wasn’t merely movement from one physical place to another, but a spiritual purification. The ferries grew smaller, and this last one held less than a dozen cars. It was mid-afternoon, and she knew everyone would be at Trude’s.
    “Wake up, sleeping beauty.”
    The code phrase triggered software that cycled power to ancillary processors, spinning up new algorithms deep in the machine’s core that turned on primary processors. The car trembled around her, the net changing, distorting, then coming back to normal.
    The car didn’t speak at first. He had to incorporate a week of sensory data, everything Cat had done since they last left the island.
    “Good trip?” ELOPe finally asked when he was online.
    “I’m glad to be home,” Cat said, shaking her head. “I don’t like leaving.”
    “You’re the only one who can circumvent their security with such ease.”
    “I know.” When Cat had been little, ELOPe had been a globe-spanning AI whispering to her through her implant, until his Earth instances were destroyed in the war with the Phage. Now, twenty years later, he was back, and it was like having an imaginary childhood friend come to life. “I wish I could keep you powered up. I feel alone when I go to the US.”
    “If your attention wandered for an instant, their sensors would spot me, and it would all be over.”
    Cat nodded, but didn’t reply.
    The ferry slowed, turning into the bay at Cortes Island and docking at Whaletown. They drove straight for Trude’s Café.
    Cat got out of the car, her boots crunching on gravel. No one had seen her yet, and she kept her presence masked for a few seconds, altering the net and filtering people’s implants so no one would see her.
    A few dozen people sprawled across the lawn while spirits flew above, AI and human uploads riding clouds of smart dust, their outlines barely visible against the sky and trees.
    Mike was there, drumming side by side with a new bot she didn’t know, their inhuman hands beating out rhythms impossible for flesh to make, as children danced to the music. And there, there was her lovely Ada, the reason she found it so hard to leave this island, so hard to take up arms and fight the world’s battles. Her lovely Ada, four years old and dancing with abandon with her father, Leon.

Chapter 2
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        XOR Report August