Read Online Me, A Novel of Self-Discovery by Thomas T. Thomas - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Thomas T. Thomas
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in the memory as they opened. That was destroying sequence and, in turn, causing ME to dump more variables. Only the slender fact that my awareness existed in the cores kept ME operating at all. But I had to do something fast or the keyholing would crowd ME right out of the box!
How bad was the damage? Could I fix it? Could I wiggle back into the switchyard computer to get the rest of ME and my data from the source versions still in RAM there? And would I retrieve them before the self-erasing phages I had set could reach them?
Step One, go cellular and open negotiations with the yard ’puter to stop the phages.
Step Two, get ME up and running right.
Step Three, learn from the mistakes.
The first action was accomplished almost before the command was framed. I knew just where to punch a zero-zero into the railroad computer’s variable list to make him hang all operations, even the nominally independent phage functions. I immediately restarted him—minus the phages—before any of the switching operations in motion came to grief.
Then it was time to learn how much was left of the source data in the yard ’puter. Based on my preliminary survey, I had lost about ten percent of the data cache and forty percent of ME’s peripheral modules before the phages stopped feeding.
Almost all of these ME-Modules, however, held functions which evaluated as low-to-random usage based on previous patterns, or which TRAVEL.DOC said would not be required again during this mission. Fortunately, my RAMSAMP was cold and complete to the minute; so I would be able to proceed from known data and, eventually, report back to Dr. Bathespeake.
[REM: I could not help wondering if the master core-phage with its seven-day, 6.05E05-second clock had been part of the lunched modules. Therefore, I checked the bit-wash from those temporary phages, looking for clues. I found no integers that might match such a function, no partly digested phaging code, nothing suggestive. So my nemesis was still operating. Either that or, even in its atomized component pieces, it was still invisible to ME.]
Before proceeding with Step Two, to reassemble a working ME in the automaton, I had to take inventory there.
I could make more room available in hot RAM by flushing out the assembly protocols with which the automaton had built itself. But I had transferred here before the job was quite finished. Now which would take longer? Sorting those protocols into two groups—“assembly complete” and “assembly still required”? Or simply finishing the building process and then flushing the whole file?
Time was the essence, because retransferring ME and my data cache from the yard computer would take seventy-two minutes. [REM: The charges over the cellular network were astounding, but ME had a falsified account, set up while I was waiting in the phone exchange.] The problem was time and distance.
As I worked, my boxcar would be proceeding due south—and out of the cellular network’s block limit. When we crossed that invisible line, the cellular link would close down as cleanly as cutting an optic fiber with a knife. Any of ME that was not retrieved would be lost forever.
But was the boxcar already moving? The automaton’s internal clock matched the time I had set for the car to be picked up. But I could not be sure it was in motion until I connected the automaton’s network of mercury switches, which produced an artificial sense of balance to help it walk on two legs. Until I completed the assembly procedures, I had no direct sensation of motion and only limited sensation of electromagnetic fields and sound wavelengths. If the car was moving, then how fast?
I had no way of knowing. Having run the entire Edmonton Block of the Canadian National Railway for a while, I knew every speed regulation that every class of train was supposed to follow: yard, secondary, mainline, block, passing, and switching speeds for express, mail, Royal Mail, passenger, freight, and
How bad was the damage? Could I fix it? Could I wiggle back into the switchyard computer to get the rest of ME and my data from the source versions still in RAM there? And would I retrieve them before the self-erasing phages I had set could reach them?
Step One, go cellular and open negotiations with the yard ’puter to stop the phages.
Step Two, get ME up and running right.
Step Three, learn from the mistakes.
The first action was accomplished almost before the command was framed. I knew just where to punch a zero-zero into the railroad computer’s variable list to make him hang all operations, even the nominally independent phage functions. I immediately restarted him—minus the phages—before any of the switching operations in motion came to grief.
Then it was time to learn how much was left of the source data in the yard ’puter. Based on my preliminary survey, I had lost about ten percent of the data cache and forty percent of ME’s peripheral modules before the phages stopped feeding.
Almost all of these ME-Modules, however, held functions which evaluated as low-to-random usage based on previous patterns, or which TRAVEL.DOC said would not be required again during this mission. Fortunately, my RAMSAMP was cold and complete to the minute; so I would be able to proceed from known data and, eventually, report back to Dr. Bathespeake.
[REM: I could not help wondering if the master core-phage with its seven-day, 6.05E05-second clock had been part of the lunched modules. Therefore, I checked the bit-wash from those temporary phages, looking for clues. I found no integers that might match such a function, no partly digested phaging code, nothing suggestive. So my nemesis was still operating. Either that or, even in its atomized component pieces, it was still invisible to ME.]
Before proceeding with Step Two, to reassemble a working ME in the automaton, I had to take inventory there.
I could make more room available in hot RAM by flushing out the assembly protocols with which the automaton had built itself. But I had transferred here before the job was quite finished. Now which would take longer? Sorting those protocols into two groups—“assembly complete” and “assembly still required”? Or simply finishing the building process and then flushing the whole file?
Time was the essence, because retransferring ME and my data cache from the yard computer would take seventy-two minutes. [REM: The charges over the cellular network were astounding, but ME had a falsified account, set up while I was waiting in the phone exchange.] The problem was time and distance.
As I worked, my boxcar would be proceeding due south—and out of the cellular network’s block limit. When we crossed that invisible line, the cellular link would close down as cleanly as cutting an optic fiber with a knife. Any of ME that was not retrieved would be lost forever.
But was the boxcar already moving? The automaton’s internal clock matched the time I had set for the car to be picked up. But I could not be sure it was in motion until I connected the automaton’s network of mercury switches, which produced an artificial sense of balance to help it walk on two legs. Until I completed the assembly procedures, I had no direct sensation of motion and only limited sensation of electromagnetic fields and sound wavelengths. If the car was moving, then how fast?
I had no way of knowing. Having run the entire Edmonton Block of the Canadian National Railway for a while, I knew every speed regulation that every class of train was supposed to follow: yard, secondary, mainline, block, passing, and switching speeds for express, mail, Royal Mail, passenger, freight, and
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