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.He knew, intellectually, that it was all a result of softwaresynchronization, but the imagery forced on him came with an odd emotional jolt.He changed and,changing, cried out with a commingling of wonder and fear.Head, arms, legs, torso.Gone.Like that.It was a mechanical-seeming thing, and swift.A succession of ticks, the beating of a clock, andSealock the man was gone.Another such succession and Sealock the what thingwas there in hisplace.Cephalosome and tail-sheath.Eight machinelike arms with two-fingered hands; eight matchinganchorelles for pseudoautotrophic feeding.Retractile anophagomotor apparatus, for eating, eliminating,and propulsion.Here.Like this.He remembered.We called ourselves a small, unbroken bubble of pheromonic oil.The message itcontained meant, "That which has accepted a seed."The being he had become had no discernible sensory apparatuses instead, it had a hypertrophiedsense of "touch," a subtle response to pressure waves and chemical changes in the surrounding methane.This, combined with a data-processing kinesthetic sense, was all it needed.The externally generated image-form which now occupied him did not come with very much in theway of memory, notyet, but he knew it would arrive, one piece at a time, as he developed the necessarycomplexity.Stop time.The world-lines unreversed and he was still Brendan Sea-lock, yet still changed.The Seedees were allaround him now; he could sense them far away.Some flew through the sea, propelled on their jets likehard squid.Others clambered about the still ways on stalky legs.Still more were swept along by thestanding waves of the great, endless transport matrix.They went about their tasks, filling the World Shipin uncounted trillions.Now, in the everlasting memory of Centrum, Mother Ocean lived. Sealock blew himself steadily along, knowing he must go to the central sphere, and looked at thepressure waves that brought him a bright window on this new reality.The matrix machine awaited himand still he saw.When the messenger cell met him, he was hanging in delighted awe below a self-orienting photovoltaicgenerator, which would turn to suck up the light of passing suns, hanging in happy contemplation of itscrystalline complexity.It was Machine, in its most quintessential form.He boarded the messenger cell.His anchorelles plugged in, there was a current flow, then he soaredsinging above the world.At NYU.Brendan Sealock studied.A man, growing up, may be accused of all sorts of infelicities.The variousrites of passage that most societies induce are intended to demonstrate to the adult-candidate that a greatchange of estate is coming over him.They say, "You may now do whatever you please.You must nowbe prepared to suffer the consequences of your own actions." He was generally regarded as mean, petty,and vicious, with a mind centered on the concept of self.They all thought him dangerous and deranged, a"thug." A few people even looked on him as a little bit stupid, but no one ever called him lazy.He worked.Though the colleges of the twenty-first century had given up the folly of a "liberal"education, recognizing itas an impediment to the technologists and a detriment to the artists, they insistedthat a student learn a great deal about his own specialty.Gone were the days when a student could limpalong learning "just enough." During the periodic examinations, if you couldn't handle any aspect of a task,you were sent back to study until you could.Though the tests he had taken revealed a phenomenal raw potential and a fair amount of preparation,the Deseret educational system being nothing if not effective, Brendan had to start at a lower level thanhe'd expected.It angered him, at first, but he soon came to see the sense behind it.They made him studyphysics in a developmental-analytical fashion and gave him a quick grounding in historical electronics,then plunged into the twinned evolutions of Quantum Transformational Dynamics and Comnet theory.They said, "These are the things that you have to learn in order to earn our certification.If you want tolearn anything else while you're here, fine.It's up to you.If you don't, well, most prospective employersdon't care."In the classroom.The professor said, "We used to start with the basics, but we don't anymore.If you're interested, it's inthe library.If you've studied all the various calculi, you're all set; if you haven't, don't worry.Boabanalysis rests on a somewhat different underpinning from the rest of math.In the trade, we like to call itasshole calculus." He grinned as he drew them into the Tradition."There are no instruments to guide youthrough this jungle, boys and girls.It's strictly seat-of-the-pants navigation." Cara giggled and theprofessor's grin widened."Whatever," he said."Anyway, put on your circlets."The poster-cluttered wall behind him vanished, displaced by a smooth, blackboard-like image."Itgoes like this: Newton and Einstein went wrong in some very curious ways.Mr.Boab finally got it figuredout about thirty-five years ago.The unified force field still exists it just has nothing to act upon, so it's alittle hard to work with."He waved a hand at the wall and fiery letters began to appear [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]