Read Online After the Collapse by Paul di Filippo - Free Book Online

You’re fully trained now….”
    Storm felt a burst of regret that he had to disappoint his beloved old “uncle.” But the emotion was not strong enough to countervail his stubborn independence. He laid a paw-hand on Sylvanus’s bony shoulder.
    “I can’t, uncle, I just can’t. Not now, anyhow. And in fact, I’m leaving this bioregion entirely. I have to see more of the world, to learn my place in it.”
    Sylvanus recognized the futility of arguing with the headstrong youth. “So be it. Travel with my blessing, then, and try to return if you can before my passing, for a final farewell. I’ll get Cimabue and Tanselle to breed my successor, while I hang in there for a while yet.”
    And so Storm had set out westward, across the vast continent, braving rain and heat, loneliness and fear, with no goal in mind other than to see what he could see. He and his trusty marsupial avian-ursine mount, Bergamot, foraged off the land, supplementing their herbivore diet with various nutriceuticals conjured up out of Storm’s Universal Proseity Device.
    Crossing the Rockies, he had encountered the tropospheric mind for the first time since his abdication. He had been deliberately avoiding this massive atmospheric intelligence due to its tendency to impose orders on all wardens. Storm feared chastisement for his rebellion. But traveling this high above sea level, there was no escaping the lower tendrils of the globally distributed artificial intelligence.
    A chilly caplet of cloud stuff, rich in virgula/sublimula codec, had formed about his head, polling his thoughts by transcranial induction. Storm squirmed under the painless interrogation, irritated yet helpless to do anything.
    A palm-sized high-res wetscreen formed in the air, and on it appeared the current chosen avatar of the tropospheric mind: a kindly sorcerer from some old human epic. (The tropospherical mind contained all the accumulated data of the Earth’s digitized culture at the time of the Upflowering, a trove which the wardens frequently ransacked for their own amusement and edification.)
    The sorcerer spoke. “You follow a lonely path, Storm. And a less-than-optimal one, so far as your own development is concerned.”
    Anticipating harsher rebuke, Storm was taken aback. “Perhaps. But it’s my choice.”
    “Yet you might both extend your own growth and aid me and the world at the same time.”
    “How is that?”
    “By joining a cohort of your fellows now assembling. As you work with them and bind together as a team, you might come to better appreciate your innate talents and how they could best benefit the planet under my direction.”
    “Your direction! That’s always been my quarrel. We’re just pawns to you! It was under your direction that my parents died.”
    Had the sorcerer denied this accusation, Storm would have definitely walked out on the mission. But the sorcerer had the good grace to look apologetic, sad and chagrined, although he did not actually accept responsibility for the deaths.
    Mollified, Storm felt he could at least inquire politely about the mission. “What are these other wardens doing?”
    “They are building a ship, and will embark from San Francisco Bay for the island of Hawaii, where they will confront my insane sister, Mauna Loa. She has already killed all the resident wardens there, as she seeks to establish her own dominion. No communications or diplomacy I have had with her have changed her plans. You think me a tyrant, but she wants utter control of all life around her.”
    Storm said, “Maybe she’ll listen to reason from us.”
    “I sincerely doubt it. But you should feel free to try. In any case, I believe the odyssey will offer you the challenges you seek. Even a magnitude more.”
    Storm’s curiosity was greatly piqued. Curse the weather mind! It was impossible to outwit or out-argue something that used a significant portion of the atmosphere as its computational reservoir. This was precisely why Storm had