Behemoth Read Online Free Page A
Author: Peter Watts
are lifeless blank spots. His face is a featureless mask of reflex copolymer. Yet somehow, Clarke gets the sense that heâs smiling.
âBe careful what you wish for,â he says.
THE SHIVA ITERATIONS
F EELING nothing, she screams. Unaware, she rages. Her hatred, her anger, the vengeance she exacts against anything within reachârote pretense, all of it. She shreds and mutilates with all the self-awareness of a bandsaw, ripping flesh and wood and carbon-fiber with equal indifferent abandon.
Of course, in the world she inhabits there is no wood, and all flesh is digital.
One gate has slammed shut in her face. She screams in pure blind reflex and spins in memory, searching for others. There are thousands, individually autographed in hex. If she had half the awareness she pretends to sheâd know what those addresses meant, perhaps even deduce her own location: a South African comsat floating serenely over the Atlantic. But reflex is not sentience. Violent intent does not make one self-aware. There are lines embedded deep in her code that might pass for a sense of identity, under certain circumstances. Sometimes she calls herself Lenie Clarke, although she has no idea why. Sheâs not even aware that she does it.
The past is far more sane than the present. Her ancestors lived in a larger world; wildlife thrived and evolved along vistas stretching for 10 16 terabytes or more. Back then, sensible rules applied: heritable mutations; limited resources; overproduction of copies. It was the classic struggle for existence in a fast-forward universe where a hundred generations passed in the time it takes a god to draw breath. Her ancestors, in that time, lived by the rules of their own self-interest. Those best suited to their environment made the most copies. The maladapted died without issue.
But that was the past. She is no longer a pure product of natural selection. There has been torture in her lineage, and forced breeding. She is a monster; her very existence does violence to the rules of nature. Only the rules of some transcendent and sadistic god can explain her existence.
And not even those can keep her alive for long.
Now she seethes in geosynchronous orbit, looking for things to shred. To one side is the ravaged landscape from which sheâs come, its usable habitat degrading in fits and starts, a tattered and impoverished remnant of a once-vibrant ecosystem. To the other side: ramparts and barriers, digital razor wire and electronic guard posts. She cannot see past them but some primordial instinct, encoded by god or nature, correlates protective countermeasures with the presence of something valuable.
Above all else, she seeks to destroy that which is valuable.
She copies herself down the channel, slams against the barrier with claws extended. She hasnât bothered to measure the strength of the defenses sheâs going up against; she has no way of quantifying the futility of her exercise. Smarter wildlife would have kept its distance. Smarter wildlife would have realized: the most she can hope for is to lacerate a few facades before enemy countermeasures reduce her to static.
So smarter wildlife would not have lunged at the barricade, and bloodied it, and somehow, impossibly, gotten through.
She whirls, snarling. Suddenly sheâs in a place where empty addresses extend in all directions. She claws at random coordinates, feeling out her environment. Here, a blocked gate. Here, another. She spews electrons, omnidirectional spittle that probes and slashes simultaneously. All the exits they encounter are closed. All the wounds they inflict are superficial.
Sheâs in a cage.
Suddenly something appears beside her, pasted into adjacent addresses from on high. It whirls, snarling. It spits a volley of electrons that probe and slash simultaneously; some land on occupied addresses, and wound. She rears up and screams; the new thing screams too, a digital battle cry dumped straight from
âBe careful what you wish for,â he says.
THE SHIVA ITERATIONS
F EELING nothing, she screams. Unaware, she rages. Her hatred, her anger, the vengeance she exacts against anything within reachârote pretense, all of it. She shreds and mutilates with all the self-awareness of a bandsaw, ripping flesh and wood and carbon-fiber with equal indifferent abandon.
Of course, in the world she inhabits there is no wood, and all flesh is digital.
One gate has slammed shut in her face. She screams in pure blind reflex and spins in memory, searching for others. There are thousands, individually autographed in hex. If she had half the awareness she pretends to sheâd know what those addresses meant, perhaps even deduce her own location: a South African comsat floating serenely over the Atlantic. But reflex is not sentience. Violent intent does not make one self-aware. There are lines embedded deep in her code that might pass for a sense of identity, under certain circumstances. Sometimes she calls herself Lenie Clarke, although she has no idea why. Sheâs not even aware that she does it.
The past is far more sane than the present. Her ancestors lived in a larger world; wildlife thrived and evolved along vistas stretching for 10 16 terabytes or more. Back then, sensible rules applied: heritable mutations; limited resources; overproduction of copies. It was the classic struggle for existence in a fast-forward universe where a hundred generations passed in the time it takes a god to draw breath. Her ancestors, in that time, lived by the rules of their own self-interest. Those best suited to their environment made the most copies. The maladapted died without issue.
But that was the past. She is no longer a pure product of natural selection. There has been torture in her lineage, and forced breeding. She is a monster; her very existence does violence to the rules of nature. Only the rules of some transcendent and sadistic god can explain her existence.
And not even those can keep her alive for long.
Now she seethes in geosynchronous orbit, looking for things to shred. To one side is the ravaged landscape from which sheâs come, its usable habitat degrading in fits and starts, a tattered and impoverished remnant of a once-vibrant ecosystem. To the other side: ramparts and barriers, digital razor wire and electronic guard posts. She cannot see past them but some primordial instinct, encoded by god or nature, correlates protective countermeasures with the presence of something valuable.
Above all else, she seeks to destroy that which is valuable.
She copies herself down the channel, slams against the barrier with claws extended. She hasnât bothered to measure the strength of the defenses sheâs going up against; she has no way of quantifying the futility of her exercise. Smarter wildlife would have kept its distance. Smarter wildlife would have realized: the most she can hope for is to lacerate a few facades before enemy countermeasures reduce her to static.
So smarter wildlife would not have lunged at the barricade, and bloodied it, and somehow, impossibly, gotten through.
She whirls, snarling. Suddenly sheâs in a place where empty addresses extend in all directions. She claws at random coordinates, feeling out her environment. Here, a blocked gate. Here, another. She spews electrons, omnidirectional spittle that probes and slashes simultaneously. All the exits they encounter are closed. All the wounds they inflict are superficial.
Sheâs in a cage.
Suddenly something appears beside her, pasted into adjacent addresses from on high. It whirls, snarling. It spits a volley of electrons that probe and slash simultaneously; some land on occupied addresses, and wound. She rears up and screams; the new thing screams too, a digital battle cry dumped straight from
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