Accelerando by Charles Stross Page A

everybody ’s reputation—everybody, that is, who has a publicly traded reputation—is up a bit. It’s as if the distributed Internet reputation servers are feeling bullish about integrity. Maybe there’s a global honesty bubble forming.
    Manfred frowns, then snaps his fingers. The suitcase rolls toward him. “Who do you belong to?” he asks.
    â€œManfred Macx,” it replies, slightly bashfully.
    â€œNo, before me.”
    â€œI don’t understand that question.”
    He sighs. “Open up.”
    Latches whir and retract: The hard-shell lid rises toward him, and he looks inside to confirm the contents.
    The suitcase is full of noise.

    Welcome to the early twenty-first century, human.
    It’s night in Milton Keynes, sunrise in Hong Kong. Moore’s Law rolls inexorably on, dragging humanity toward the uncertain future. The planets of the solar system have a combined mass of approximately 2×10 27 kilograms. Around the world, laboring women produce forty-five thousand babies a day, representing 10 23 MIPS of processing power. Also around the world, fab lines casually churn out thirty million microprocessors a day, representing 10 23 MIPS. In another ten months, most of the MIPSbeing added to the solar system will be machine-hosted for the first time. About ten years after that, the solar system’s installed processing power will nudge the critical 1 MIPS per gram threshold—one million instructions per second per gram of matter. After that, singularity—a vanishing point beyond which extrapolating progress becomes meaningless. The time remaining before the intelligence spike is down to single-digit years . . .

    Aineko curls on the pillow beside Manfred’s head, purring softly as his owner dreams uneasily. The night outside is dark: Vehicles operate on autopilot, running lights dipped to let the Milky Way shine down upon the sleeping city. Their quiet, fuel-cell-powered engines do not trouble Manfred’s sleep. The robot cat keeps sleepless watch, alert for intruders, but there are none, save the whispering ghosts of Manfred’s metacortex, feeding his dreams with their state vectors.
    The metacortex—a distributed cloud of software agents that surrounds him in netspace, borrowing CPU cycles from convenient processors (such as his robot pet)—is as much a part of Manfred as the society of mind that occupies his skull; his thoughts migrate into it, spawning new agents to research new experiences, and at night, they return to roost and share their knowledge.
    While Manfred sleeps, he dreams of an alchemical marriage. She waits for him at the altar in a strapless black gown, the surgical instruments gleaming in her gloved hands. “This won’t hurt a bit,” she explains as she adjusts the straps. “I only want your genome—the extended phenotype can wait until . . . later.” Bloodred lips, licked: a kiss of steel, then she presents the income tax bill.
    There’s nothing accidental about this dream. As he experiences it, microelectrodes in his hypothalamus trigger sensitive neurons. Revulsion and shame flood him at the sight of her face, the sense of his vulnerability. Manfred’s metacortex, in order to facilitate his divorce, is trying to decondition his strange love. It has been working on him for weeks, but still he craves her whiplash touch, the humiliation of his wife’s control, the sense of helpless rage at her unpayable taxes, demanded with interest.
    Aineko watches him from the pillow, purring continuously. Retractable claws knead the bedding, first one paw, then the next. Ainekois full of ancient feline wisdom that Pamela installed back when mistress and master were exchanging data and bodily fluids rather than legal documents. Aineko is more cat than robot, these days, thanks in part to her hobbyist’s interest in feline neuroanatomy. Aineko knows that Manfred is experiencing nameless