![]() I know this puts you in a bind because you’re not being given a choice. We all know it, just as we know the pickup order is likely a whim or a mistake, and your boss would rather be eaten by rats than admit that he ever made a mistake. “I want you to listen to me for a minute, Norris,” said Aunt Sallie in a voice that would turn burning logs into icicles. That was above what he inherited as the second son of a dynastic family of procurers. A dealer of antiquities, rarities, and art for the most discerning clientele, he’d made his first billion by age twenty-three. He could find anything for anyone, and then get them to pay more than the market would bear to possess it. But Ari, despite deep character flaws, was brilliant. If he had not been very good at what he did for the family business, no doubt they would have shipped him off to some remote spot and then erased it off the map. More goat than bull, with unsavory appetites that he could never quite assuage, but who had enough money to keep trying - and to handle any resulting legal or financial consequences. That was entirely in keeping with what Valen remembered of Ari. It squatted on a kind of peninsula that thrust so aggressively into the sea that from the air it looked very much like the Kostas family was making a “fuck you” statement to anyone who could afford to see it. Lot of actual human beings I can name would never even consider that kind of selflessness. As acts of heroism go, it was really pretty goddamn touching. No, Calpurnia went the other way and committed suicide rather than end the world. That self-awareness did not lead to a Skynet scenario, which is why we don’t have robot Arnold Schwarzeneggers stomping around shooting plasma rifles. Calpurnia was designed to be self-learning, but Bain had built it too well, because Calpurnia became self-aware in the bargain. So, a little altruism and a whole lot of bugfuck insanity. She wanted to kill off the vast multitudes of poor who she considered to be a drain on the global system but she also wanted to kill off any one percenters who controlled companies that polluted and exploited the planet. Meaning Bain and her crew were trying to bring about a controlled end of the world as we know it. Calpurnia’s original program was to oversee a curated technological singularity. Bug - the über-geek head of the DMS computer sciences division - rebuilt the software after obtaining it from Zephyr Bain, the woman who’d designed it. Freakishly intuitive, with natural conversational modes, various combat modes, and all sorts of other extras I barely understand. It was the most sophisticated computer intelligence software in existence by something like an order of magnitude. The AI system that ran it was something new for us. Perhaps I’d have even vanished into a camp, except for the fact that my father’s family had just enough pull to get me into a state school.” Do you know that it has no actual meaning? I heard a joke once that it was something they made up in some ministry office, and saddled me with it because no one else would have the name and everyone who mattered would instantly know who I am and the shame I carry. My own surname, Sokolov, was changed to the absurd one I have now. I was forbidden to even mention my uncle’s name. Siberia, I suppose, though why they should be punished is beyond me. I was shipped back to Russia and my cousins, my mother’s sisters, went into the system and I never heard from them again. A scapegoat was needed, and they picked Uncle Abram because he was from Ukraine, not from Russia. Oh, I know what you’ll say - that some people have lobbied pretty heavily to say that it was operator error, but in the reports that mattered, they said the plant was not designed to safety standards, in effect, and incorporated unsafe features and that inadequate safety analysis was performed. They said that it was a structural fault, or a poor geological report. “They blamed him, of course,” said Valen. Deep Silence pits Joe Ledger against terrorists with bleeding-edge science weapons, an international conspiracy, ancient technologies from Atlantis and Lemuria, and an escalating threat that could crack open the entire Earth.
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