Read Online Weird Space 2: Satan's Reach by Eric Brown - Free Book Online Page B

exclaimed.
    “Port Morris,” he said, “on the world of Tarrasay. I’ve made this place my base for the past two years.”
    He indicated the co-pilot’s sling, and she eased herself into its embrace. “And you live here with your co-pilot?”
    Harper smiled to himself. “You could say that, yes.”
    “I would like to meet her, to thank her for our timely rescue.”
    He nodded. “Very well,” he said. “ Judi , meet Zeela Antarivo. Zeela, I’m pleased to introduce you to Judi .”
    Judi said, “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Zeela Antarivo.”
    Zeela looked around, her pretty features pulled into an expression of perplexity. She glanced at Harper. “Is she hiding ?” she whispered.
    He laughed. “‘She’ is not quite the right word to describe Judi ,” he said.
    Zeela’s frown deepened. “Then is she... alien ?”
    “ Judi ,” Harper said, “please tell Zeela who you are.”
    “I am a Mark III smartware logic cortex with an integrated self-awareness paradigm,” Judi said.
    Zeela shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
    Harper explained. “ Judi is an artificial intelligence, housed in the starship’s computer nexus system.”
    “So... so she doesn’t possess a body?”
    “Of course not. Or rather, perhaps, the ship is her body.”
    Zeela shivered. “Oh, but that must be terrible! To be locked inside one’s head! To not have a physical body... It sounds like my worst nightmare!”
    Harper smiled. “Why not ask Judi how she feels about it?”
    Zeela looked around, as if attempting to find a focus for her attention while addressing the ship. “ Judi ,” she said tentatively, “what is it like to be... to not have a body, to be just... brain ?”
    “To answer that question,” Judi replied, “I would first have to have experienced what it was like to possess a body, so that I could make a comparison. All I can say is that I find my existence infinitely rewarding.”
    “But... but don’t you get just a little bored, merely running the ship day after day?”
    Judi trilled a very human laugh. “But that accounts for a tiny fraction of what I do, Zeela! For the most part I study the many philosophies, human and alien, that have accrued across space over the millennia, and in my spare time I access and integrate the various happenings in the Expansion and the Reach.”
    “Den is very lucky to have you,” Zeela said.
    “I owe my existence to Den,” Judi said. “When he... acquired me, I had no logic cortex. Indeed I could hardly be said to be self-aware. I was like a small animal, no more. But over the years Den has added to my smartware cortex, allowed me to grow, to flourish.”
    Harper said, “I’ve tried make Judi the very best I could afford.” He did not add that the reason for this was due, in large part, to self-interest.
    “Anyway,” Zeela said, “I’d like to thank you for saving our lives. If not for your timely arrival, Den and I would now be dead, or dying.”
    “It was a simple matter,” the ship said, “and the correction of a terrible injustice.”
    Judi banked, sailing in slowly over the bay. Buildings passed below, tiny as seen from this altitude. Harper made out citizens in the streets, and cars beetling back and forth along the coast road.
    The ship approached the headland and came in to land on an emerald greensward overlooking the sea.
    Zeela had been silent for a time as she stared through the viewscreen, and now she said, “How old are you, Den?”
    “Thirty, by standard reckoning. That would be...” He calculated, “in Ajantan years, almost sixty. And you’re almost eighteen, standard.”
    She looked surprised, then said, “Ah, you read that in my mind, yes?”
    He smiled, then pushed himself from the sling and ordered Judi to open the hatch of hold number one and prepare the ground-effect vehicle.
    “Have you ever been married?” Zeela asked.
    “Only to my work...” He clapped his hands. “Now, we have things to do.