Read Online The Best of Galaxy’s Edge 2013-2014 by Larry Niven, Nancy Kress, Mercedes Lackey, Ken Liu, Brad R. Torgersen, C. L. Moore, Tina Gower - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Larry Niven, Nancy Kress, Mercedes Lackey, Ken Liu, Brad R. Torgersen, C. L. Moore, Tina Gower
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full of nasty little beasts.” He smiled enthusiastically, gave his sword one more pass with the polishing spell, and sheathed it. Grinning, he hoisted his backpack of diagnostic spells and the like.
Oscar gave him a disgusted look. “Don’t enjoy it too much, and be careful . Something weirder than usual is going on out there.”
Marcus carefully moved to the hatch. “You get a call, let me know where, Oscar, and don’t hesitate to use that emergency abort utility I wrote for us. The red button: take it out, flip off the safety cover, press ABORT .”
Oscar shook his head. “ No , not that. You said yourself you weren’t sure it would work. No telling what would happen to our real bodies. You said that.”
Marcus shrugged. “Last resort, guy. Just don’t get killed. That would mess up your real body even more. At least take some of those routines I built from the data in the Shaolin temple’s computer.”
Oscar shook his head despondently. “Haven’t got the energy to use them, Marcus.”
Worrying about his friend, Marcus flowed into the USB port that led to the shop’s dinky server. A hand reached out to help him get to his feet. It was Beep, the USB driver.
“Thanks, Beep.”
Beep .
“You have a good day, too, buddy.”
The server itself was an old quad-core clunker he’d gotten off eBay for $50, for which Bill still owed him. But it had some memory, the latest version of Ubuntu, and gave him space to write and develop his spells and scripts. He always had been good at coding.
One-handed, Marcus air-typed up a large virtual screen with webcam, then smiled at his image. A mixture of Conan the Barbarian and King Arthur’s Merlin the Magician—he could swing a sword or wave a wand with the best of them. Blond, blue-eyed, well-developed muscles—not a bit like his concave-chested, bespectacled, short, geeky body recumbent out there in the backroom.
A real chick magnet! Unfortunately, all the women who might be impressed were out there in the real world. He waved the screen away and headed for the cable modem port—no fast fiber optic or wireless connection for this cheap shop. Uploading was a pain. Slow!
He nodded to bits of software he passed; in this computer he knew them all and they trusted him. A bunch of little memory monkeys ran by carrying bits of this and bytes of that to here and there, ones and zeros flashing in their beady little eyes. “Hi, Marcus, hi Marcus,” they chanted.
Passing the power supply, he patted one of the cables. Sparks playfully tickled his fingers. As a small boy he’d been fascinated with electricity and quickly made friends with it. That friendship often paid off in his current job. Whoa! Current job? He laughed.
Squeezing into the cable modem, he slowly climbed to the nearest intersection with one of Chicago’s fiber optic backbones. This was the problem using just a regular cable connection. Fast download, yes, but slow upload. Servers needed a way to push data out quickly as well as pull it in.
Marcus broke out of the slow upload—like swimming through molasses—and stepped out on the crowded platform. All sorts of things shuffled around, waiting on the next train of data packets—email messages, SQL commands off to visit some database and retrieve info, lots of web URL queries, always rushing about to keep their human surfers sated.
He sensed the attack even before the monstrous Python script reared its ugly head over the railing at the back of the platform. He dived and rolled as a blast of red-hot electrons struck the spot where he had been.
He laid a more spell on it and didn’t see anything to worry him in its code, so no use being nice. Marcus air-typed rm dragon . His erase code killed the process, wiped the Python file, and the fearsome towering head and body poofed into nothingness. At least he hoped it had. Erasing computer files was not always permanent. He was okay, but the attack had left behind a good deal of destruction. Its deadly
Oscar gave him a disgusted look. “Don’t enjoy it too much, and be careful . Something weirder than usual is going on out there.”
Marcus carefully moved to the hatch. “You get a call, let me know where, Oscar, and don’t hesitate to use that emergency abort utility I wrote for us. The red button: take it out, flip off the safety cover, press ABORT .”
Oscar shook his head. “ No , not that. You said yourself you weren’t sure it would work. No telling what would happen to our real bodies. You said that.”
Marcus shrugged. “Last resort, guy. Just don’t get killed. That would mess up your real body even more. At least take some of those routines I built from the data in the Shaolin temple’s computer.”
Oscar shook his head despondently. “Haven’t got the energy to use them, Marcus.”
Worrying about his friend, Marcus flowed into the USB port that led to the shop’s dinky server. A hand reached out to help him get to his feet. It was Beep, the USB driver.
“Thanks, Beep.”
Beep .
“You have a good day, too, buddy.”
The server itself was an old quad-core clunker he’d gotten off eBay for $50, for which Bill still owed him. But it had some memory, the latest version of Ubuntu, and gave him space to write and develop his spells and scripts. He always had been good at coding.
One-handed, Marcus air-typed up a large virtual screen with webcam, then smiled at his image. A mixture of Conan the Barbarian and King Arthur’s Merlin the Magician—he could swing a sword or wave a wand with the best of them. Blond, blue-eyed, well-developed muscles—not a bit like his concave-chested, bespectacled, short, geeky body recumbent out there in the backroom.
A real chick magnet! Unfortunately, all the women who might be impressed were out there in the real world. He waved the screen away and headed for the cable modem port—no fast fiber optic or wireless connection for this cheap shop. Uploading was a pain. Slow!
He nodded to bits of software he passed; in this computer he knew them all and they trusted him. A bunch of little memory monkeys ran by carrying bits of this and bytes of that to here and there, ones and zeros flashing in their beady little eyes. “Hi, Marcus, hi Marcus,” they chanted.
Passing the power supply, he patted one of the cables. Sparks playfully tickled his fingers. As a small boy he’d been fascinated with electricity and quickly made friends with it. That friendship often paid off in his current job. Whoa! Current job? He laughed.
Squeezing into the cable modem, he slowly climbed to the nearest intersection with one of Chicago’s fiber optic backbones. This was the problem using just a regular cable connection. Fast download, yes, but slow upload. Servers needed a way to push data out quickly as well as pull it in.
Marcus broke out of the slow upload—like swimming through molasses—and stepped out on the crowded platform. All sorts of things shuffled around, waiting on the next train of data packets—email messages, SQL commands off to visit some database and retrieve info, lots of web URL queries, always rushing about to keep their human surfers sated.
He sensed the attack even before the monstrous Python script reared its ugly head over the railing at the back of the platform. He dived and rolled as a blast of red-hot electrons struck the spot where he had been.
He laid a more spell on it and didn’t see anything to worry him in its code, so no use being nice. Marcus air-typed rm dragon . His erase code killed the process, wiped the Python file, and the fearsome towering head and body poofed into nothingness. At least he hoped it had. Erasing computer files was not always permanent. He was okay, but the attack had left behind a good deal of destruction. Its deadly
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