Read Online Upgraded by Peter Watts, Greg Egan, Ken Liu, Robert Reed, Elizabeth Bear, Madeline Ashby, E. Lily Yu - Free Book Online
Tags: Science-Fiction, Short Stories, Short-Story, cyberpunk, Anthology, cyborg, novelette, Clarkesworld
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kilometers. That meant it was moving at one-third the sacred speed of light, and what’s more, that eye wasn’t too stupid or too dead to ignore what would surely happen next.
Slashing its way through the galaxy, the Great Ship refused to be slowed and only grudgingly allowed itself to maneuver. Space was a cool vacuum mixed with quite a lot more than vacuum. Gas and dust waited in the darkness. There were also lumps of stone and iron, and little comets and giant comets, and countless sunless worlds, most of them dead but the living worlds still numbering in the millions. The captains had methodically laid out the safest profitable course. But to hold that course meant firing the giant engines, and even a tiny course correction meant a long burn many years ago. There were always obstacles that couldn’t be avoided. Collisions were inevitable, and every impact had to be absorbed. The hull was deep pure hyperfiber, able to endure horrific abuse, but no machine, not even this machine, would survive forever. Without smart help, the hull would eventually erode away, and the soft body beneath would shatter, and how could anyone measure such a loss?
Fortunes were lashed to this wonder.
Monetary fortunes, and the egos of captains and crew, plus the rich long lives of passengers numbering in the hundreds of billions.
The Great Ship had no choice but plunge onwards. That’s why the captains ordered gigantic mechanical eyes built on the bow, mapping every hazard; and that’s why an arsenal of lasers and shaped nukes and other superior weapons had been pressed into an endless, unwinnable war. Comets and lost moons had to be found early and properly shattered. Then the rubble was chiseled to dust and the dust was boiled into gases that quickly mixed with the native interstellar fog. Brilliant, brilliantly stubborn engineers had devised elaborate means to harvest what was useful from the fog. Each tiny fragment of matter was given an EM charge, enough charge to obey magnetic fluxes, and what was valuable and what had no particular value was gathered up in these electric nets, gently guided into traps and fuel tanks.
But not every inbound object could be stopped. Every war had lost battles. Sometimes an asteroid would slip past. Jolting impacts proved spectacular, without doubt. But casualties were few, bearable and few, the damage limited to the hull. Specialists quickly patched every hole. And because any successful voyage can become more successful, the captains deep beneath the hull made plans, acting on some very old questions:
“What if something we happen to want happens to be ahead of us?
“What if we spot a small, enticing treasure?
“What are our options to save that treasure, and what are the costs, and how do we pay those costs, and what lives do we risk?”
For two trillion seconds, the Great Ship had been plunging through the populated heart of the Way of Milk.
That day, one muscular pulse of microwave light was sent ahead, as a scout.
And what returned was a tiny bright echo.
Something peculiar was lurking out there.
AIs aimed city-sized mirrors, and they aimed their curiosity. An otherwise ordinary lump of iron and frost was found spinning around its long axis. No broadcasts rose from the asteroid’s surface or from its interior. There were no heat signatures, no warnings of slumbering, helpless life. The asteroid had an old face, eroded to rubble save for the largest crater—a deep hole riding that narrow equator. The echo came from a slender gray shape tucked at the crater’s bottom. The oddity was gray and otherwise too faint to resolve, and the crater soon turned out of view. But more telescopes were brought to bear, watching the little world spinning, and eventually the crater and its slight mystery swept back into view.
Diagnostic lasers pounded their target with blunt, calibrated fury.
Woven diamond and its various alloys would have boiled along the edges, creating a angry mist of carbon.
Slashing its way through the galaxy, the Great Ship refused to be slowed and only grudgingly allowed itself to maneuver. Space was a cool vacuum mixed with quite a lot more than vacuum. Gas and dust waited in the darkness. There were also lumps of stone and iron, and little comets and giant comets, and countless sunless worlds, most of them dead but the living worlds still numbering in the millions. The captains had methodically laid out the safest profitable course. But to hold that course meant firing the giant engines, and even a tiny course correction meant a long burn many years ago. There were always obstacles that couldn’t be avoided. Collisions were inevitable, and every impact had to be absorbed. The hull was deep pure hyperfiber, able to endure horrific abuse, but no machine, not even this machine, would survive forever. Without smart help, the hull would eventually erode away, and the soft body beneath would shatter, and how could anyone measure such a loss?
Fortunes were lashed to this wonder.
Monetary fortunes, and the egos of captains and crew, plus the rich long lives of passengers numbering in the hundreds of billions.
The Great Ship had no choice but plunge onwards. That’s why the captains ordered gigantic mechanical eyes built on the bow, mapping every hazard; and that’s why an arsenal of lasers and shaped nukes and other superior weapons had been pressed into an endless, unwinnable war. Comets and lost moons had to be found early and properly shattered. Then the rubble was chiseled to dust and the dust was boiled into gases that quickly mixed with the native interstellar fog. Brilliant, brilliantly stubborn engineers had devised elaborate means to harvest what was useful from the fog. Each tiny fragment of matter was given an EM charge, enough charge to obey magnetic fluxes, and what was valuable and what had no particular value was gathered up in these electric nets, gently guided into traps and fuel tanks.
But not every inbound object could be stopped. Every war had lost battles. Sometimes an asteroid would slip past. Jolting impacts proved spectacular, without doubt. But casualties were few, bearable and few, the damage limited to the hull. Specialists quickly patched every hole. And because any successful voyage can become more successful, the captains deep beneath the hull made plans, acting on some very old questions:
“What if something we happen to want happens to be ahead of us?
“What if we spot a small, enticing treasure?
“What are our options to save that treasure, and what are the costs, and how do we pay those costs, and what lives do we risk?”
For two trillion seconds, the Great Ship had been plunging through the populated heart of the Way of Milk.
That day, one muscular pulse of microwave light was sent ahead, as a scout.
And what returned was a tiny bright echo.
Something peculiar was lurking out there.
AIs aimed city-sized mirrors, and they aimed their curiosity. An otherwise ordinary lump of iron and frost was found spinning around its long axis. No broadcasts rose from the asteroid’s surface or from its interior. There were no heat signatures, no warnings of slumbering, helpless life. The asteroid had an old face, eroded to rubble save for the largest crater—a deep hole riding that narrow equator. The echo came from a slender gray shape tucked at the crater’s bottom. The oddity was gray and otherwise too faint to resolve, and the crater soon turned out of view. But more telescopes were brought to bear, watching the little world spinning, and eventually the crater and its slight mystery swept back into view.
Diagnostic lasers pounded their target with blunt, calibrated fury.
Woven diamond and its various alloys would have boiled along the edges, creating a angry mist of carbon.
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