Read Online Worlds in Collision by Judith Reeves-Stevens - Free Book Online

Chief Technician Romaine. Hope to talk to you soon.” The speaker clicked.
    â€œThat’s it?” Nensi asked no one in particular. He was still in awe over the strength of the presence he had felt from Pathfinder Six.
    The speaker clicked again.
    â€œNensi: this installation requests you submit proposals for the orderly scheduling of primary access for the prize nominees by eight hundred hours next cycle.” Pathfinder Eight was back.
    â€œCertainly. I’ll get on it right away,” Nensi said, then grimaced, prepared for the inevitable correction that would follow, reminding him that he had not been asked to get on the proposal. But the Pathfinder offered no correction. Either it understood colloquialisms or had grown tired of correcting humans. Either situation was an improvement as far as Nensi was concerned.
    â€œNensi: you are out of Transition. Datawell: you are locked.” The speaker clicked once more and was silent. Romaine and Nensi stood to leave.
    â€œWill you be coming back with us, Garold?” Nensi asked. But Romaine took her friend’s arm and led him out of the interface booth without waiting for Garold to reply.
    â€œIt’s almost as if the people on the interface team are acolytes and the Pathfinders are their gods,” Romaine said softly as they walked back to the chamber entrance.
    â€œAnd God just told Garold to obey the infidels,” Nensi said. He looked back at the booth. Garold hadn’t moved. “Will he be all right?” he asked.
    â€œI hope so,” Romaine answered. “He is one of the more human ones. Some of the older ones won’t even speak anymore. They have voice generators permanently wired to their input leads and…” She shook her head as the security field shut down to allow them back into the service tunnel that led to the transfer room.
    â€œAnyway,” she continued after a few moments, “it looks as if you’ll only have to worry about the prize ceremonies for the next few days and I still have a job.”
    â€œYou don’t find it odd that the Pathfinders supported me over the interface team?” Nensi asked as they walked down the tunnel. Behind them, the chamber’s security field buzzed back to life.
    â€œI don’t think anybody understands the Pathfinders,” Romaine said, “what their motivations are, why they do the things they do.” She laughed. “Which is the main reason why they don’t have a single direct connection to any of the systems or equipment in Memory Prime. I think maybe that frustrates them, not being able to get out and around by themselves.”
    â€œThey agreed to the conditions of employment here,” Nensi pointed out. “I read their contracts once. Strangest legal documents I ever saw. I mean, it’s not as if they could sign their copies or anything. But it was all spelled out: no downlink with the associates, no access to anything except the interface team. If we really don’t understand them, then I suppose it is safer to funnel all their requests through human intermediaries rather than letting them have full run of the place and deciding to see what might happen if the associates opened all the airlocks at once for the sake of an experiment.”
    â€œI’ve heard those old horror stories, too,” Romaine said with a serious expression. “But that was centuries ago, almost, when they were still called artificial intelligencers or whatever.” Nensi and Romaine had come to the end of the tunnel and both held their hands up to the scan panels so the security system could ascertain that the people who were leaving the chamber were the same ones who had entered. After a moment’s analysis on the part of the unaware computer system that controlled the mechanical operations of Prime, the security door opened.
    As Nensi walked over to a transporter target cell on the floor of the transfer chamber, he said,