[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Slowly, the air grewheavier.Slowly, the burden in his mind grew heavier.There were things he did to keep despair and grief at bay.All he had to do,he told himself, was think about it later.Let him get down the tower first.Let him get to Talaimannar in Ceylon.Harrier Sophotech must have hadsomething in mind when he named that city; Phaethon had that as his goal, ashis hope.He saw no further.Flying, one long kick after another, down the first hundred flights of stairs,he had exhaustively inventoried the macro-commands and routines loaded intohis personal thought-space, the vast mental hierarchy of (now useless)controls in his armor, the amount and composition of the nanomachinery in hisblack cloak and skin garment.Then he busied himself by arranging a priority list for his cloak and innergarment, which he expected could shelter, feed, water, and nurse him.He wentthrough a system check on the armor.When he was done with that, because hehad nothing else to do, he did it again.Then a third time.There came a time when he had to skip; a push of the toe was enough to sendhim down the next flight of stairs.Each landing slapped his feet moreheavily.Then there came a timewhen he had to walk.He walked, he marched.Then he trudged.Then he plodded.The weight seemed always to grow more.Each time he thought that he wasfinally far enough down the tower length to suffer the normal Earth gravity,the next hour or so of descent seemed only to make it all heavier.For some of the flights of stairs, he rested his legs, letting the leg motorsdo all the work, folding his legs in lotus position on the open belly plate ofthe armor's midriff.But once his priority list was done, and he calculatedthe drain on his suit energy, he realized that the batteries could not berecharged indefinitely, and perhaps should be conserved.But conserved for how long? No one was ever going to sell him a gram ofPage 185 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlantimatter again.Perhaps he could build a simple solar converter out of thenanomaterial in his cloak.But was this cost-effective? He had only a limitedamount of nonrecyclable cloak material.Clearly he had to use it for somethings and not others, such as the production of food and water for himself.He told himself not to think about the future.Get to Ta-laimannar in Ceylon.That was the goal.He shut off his leg motors, folded his cape, and walked down the stairs usinghis legs.Down more stairs he trod.And then more, and more.The last hour before he slept, he began accumulating carbon out of the airaround him into his cloak.The weight began to slow him, but he spent some ofhis power to increase the action of his leg motors to tolerate the extraburden.He stopped to rest on a landing, consulted the thousands of ecologicalprograms he had loaded in his thoughtspace, and built a place to sleep out ofthe nanomaterial of his cloak.His little encampment spread across the landing and up several steps.He hadaccumulated enough carbon, nitrogen, and water vapor out of the air to combinecomplex amino acids in a life-filter canister he grew from his cloak.He car-peted the landing with soft moss on which he could rest, and his vaporcanister, converted to a condenser, and placed at the top stair, was able toput out a little streamlet of water.This trickled down the mossy stairs, andfell into his helmet.Inside the helmet he had his nanomachines construct anuclear recycler to break up the water, store the hydrogen, and release thefresh oxygen back into the atmosphere.The mildly higher partial pressure ofoxygen refreshed him without leading to drunkenness.He decided that it would not be too wasteful of his limited material toconstruct a few simple microorganisms, which he introduced into the streambed,and which he programmed to a symbiotic interrelationship with the moss of thestair.Nanomachines gathered nitrogen from the air and herded it together intofloating spores; inside the spores, other machines rearranged the materialsinto simple nutrients to keep the moss green and healthy during the night, andto convert the moss into sugars and carbohydrates, starches and vitamins, sothat Phaethon could have a bland, if nourishing, meal in the morning.Wastesfrom the groin piece of his armor he buried and filtered in a mound of mosswhich he then dotted with perfumed flowers; and the recycling spores gatheredhere like flies, to draw out elements to feed the moss.There was no sunlighthere, of course.The energy for his little ecosystem came from his armor, forhe had adjusted the outer plates to radiate in the infrared, and draped thewhole affair in a ther-mophilic fungus organism like pale seaweed, tophotosynthe-size heat energy and start the simple food chain.The control hierarchies within the armor, designed to run the complexinterconnected machine-and-organic ecologies of a starship, would have hadmore than enough capacity to track and control this tiny plot of moss tensteps across; but Phaethon did not have a responder, or a radio set, or apoint-to-point system that a child could buy for a pfennig from a thoughtshop, and so there was no way for any command to reach from the suit-mind tothe microorganisms.Phaethon had to content himself with a crude,old-fashioned binary chemical tag system, loading each cell with littleviruses todisintegrate them if they passed outside of the area, or a time, or thebehavior, defined by his preset chemical cues.He folded himself in spun silk polymer sheets, and sat on other sheetsinflated with air to form a pillow beneath.He propped the armor up, so it satfacing him, and the warmth from the glowing red breastplate and vambraces waslike a camp stove.But he could not sleep, not a proper sleep.There were times when he wassemiconscious; he did some of that hallucinating dawn-age men called dreaming.In one hallucination, he saw a bride (or perhaps it was a bird of fire) stillmoving feebly, lowered in a coffin into the waiting earth, and dirt wasshoveled onto her casket, while little scraping noises and soft cries for helpPage 186 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlrose up from inside.In another hallucination, he saw a mansion built upon acloud, floating away, ever farther away, forever, now out of reach, burnt toblack and smoking rubble.In a third hallucination, he saw a black sun lookingdown upon an airless world coated with blood and black debris.Phaethon jerked his head upright.His face was pale with sweat; his heartthundered in his chest.The headless armor, burning red, and draped withseaweed like a drowned ghost from some children's sea tale sat facing him.Allwas silent.There was something wrong with his dreaming.There were supposed to be no nightmares in the Golden Oecumene.Phaethon's natural sleep cycle could not correctly integrate his variousartificial modes and levels of consciousness with the natural sections of hisneurology.Little corrections and integrations were needed.Always before, hehad had Rhad-amanthus to do this task.He had a similar system on board thePhoenix Exultant.Without such a system, his subconscious mind would begin toact much like a dawn-age man's or a primitivist's, with self-sustaining mentalactions neither checked, nor overruled, nor brought to light for inspection.His mind could run away from him now, showing him weird scenes as he slept.Always before he had been alert and lucid as he had slept [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl centka.pev.pl
.Slowly, the air grewheavier.Slowly, the burden in his mind grew heavier.There were things he did to keep despair and grief at bay.All he had to do,he told himself, was think about it later.Let him get down the tower first.Let him get to Talaimannar in Ceylon.Harrier Sophotech must have hadsomething in mind when he named that city; Phaethon had that as his goal, ashis hope.He saw no further.Flying, one long kick after another, down the first hundred flights of stairs,he had exhaustively inventoried the macro-commands and routines loaded intohis personal thought-space, the vast mental hierarchy of (now useless)controls in his armor, the amount and composition of the nanomachinery in hisblack cloak and skin garment.Then he busied himself by arranging a priority list for his cloak and innergarment, which he expected could shelter, feed, water, and nurse him.He wentthrough a system check on the armor.When he was done with that, because hehad nothing else to do, he did it again.Then a third time.There came a time when he had to skip; a push of the toe was enough to sendhim down the next flight of stairs.Each landing slapped his feet moreheavily.Then there came a timewhen he had to walk.He walked, he marched.Then he trudged.Then he plodded.The weight seemed always to grow more.Each time he thought that he wasfinally far enough down the tower length to suffer the normal Earth gravity,the next hour or so of descent seemed only to make it all heavier.For some of the flights of stairs, he rested his legs, letting the leg motorsdo all the work, folding his legs in lotus position on the open belly plate ofthe armor's midriff.But once his priority list was done, and he calculatedthe drain on his suit energy, he realized that the batteries could not berecharged indefinitely, and perhaps should be conserved.But conserved for how long? No one was ever going to sell him a gram ofPage 185 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlantimatter again.Perhaps he could build a simple solar converter out of thenanomaterial in his cloak.But was this cost-effective? He had only a limitedamount of nonrecyclable cloak material.Clearly he had to use it for somethings and not others, such as the production of food and water for himself.He told himself not to think about the future.Get to Ta-laimannar in Ceylon.That was the goal.He shut off his leg motors, folded his cape, and walked down the stairs usinghis legs.Down more stairs he trod.And then more, and more.The last hour before he slept, he began accumulating carbon out of the airaround him into his cloak.The weight began to slow him, but he spent some ofhis power to increase the action of his leg motors to tolerate the extraburden.He stopped to rest on a landing, consulted the thousands of ecologicalprograms he had loaded in his thoughtspace, and built a place to sleep out ofthe nanomaterial of his cloak.His little encampment spread across the landing and up several steps.He hadaccumulated enough carbon, nitrogen, and water vapor out of the air to combinecomplex amino acids in a life-filter canister he grew from his cloak.He car-peted the landing with soft moss on which he could rest, and his vaporcanister, converted to a condenser, and placed at the top stair, was able toput out a little streamlet of water.This trickled down the mossy stairs, andfell into his helmet.Inside the helmet he had his nanomachines construct anuclear recycler to break up the water, store the hydrogen, and release thefresh oxygen back into the atmosphere.The mildly higher partial pressure ofoxygen refreshed him without leading to drunkenness.He decided that it would not be too wasteful of his limited material toconstruct a few simple microorganisms, which he introduced into the streambed,and which he programmed to a symbiotic interrelationship with the moss of thestair.Nanomachines gathered nitrogen from the air and herded it together intofloating spores; inside the spores, other machines rearranged the materialsinto simple nutrients to keep the moss green and healthy during the night, andto convert the moss into sugars and carbohydrates, starches and vitamins, sothat Phaethon could have a bland, if nourishing, meal in the morning.Wastesfrom the groin piece of his armor he buried and filtered in a mound of mosswhich he then dotted with perfumed flowers; and the recycling spores gatheredhere like flies, to draw out elements to feed the moss.There was no sunlighthere, of course.The energy for his little ecosystem came from his armor, forhe had adjusted the outer plates to radiate in the infrared, and draped thewhole affair in a ther-mophilic fungus organism like pale seaweed, tophotosynthe-size heat energy and start the simple food chain.The control hierarchies within the armor, designed to run the complexinterconnected machine-and-organic ecologies of a starship, would have hadmore than enough capacity to track and control this tiny plot of moss tensteps across; but Phaethon did not have a responder, or a radio set, or apoint-to-point system that a child could buy for a pfennig from a thoughtshop, and so there was no way for any command to reach from the suit-mind tothe microorganisms.Phaethon had to content himself with a crude,old-fashioned binary chemical tag system, loading each cell with littleviruses todisintegrate them if they passed outside of the area, or a time, or thebehavior, defined by his preset chemical cues.He folded himself in spun silk polymer sheets, and sat on other sheetsinflated with air to form a pillow beneath.He propped the armor up, so it satfacing him, and the warmth from the glowing red breastplate and vambraces waslike a camp stove.But he could not sleep, not a proper sleep.There were times when he wassemiconscious; he did some of that hallucinating dawn-age men called dreaming.In one hallucination, he saw a bride (or perhaps it was a bird of fire) stillmoving feebly, lowered in a coffin into the waiting earth, and dirt wasshoveled onto her casket, while little scraping noises and soft cries for helpPage 186 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlrose up from inside.In another hallucination, he saw a mansion built upon acloud, floating away, ever farther away, forever, now out of reach, burnt toblack and smoking rubble.In a third hallucination, he saw a black sun lookingdown upon an airless world coated with blood and black debris.Phaethon jerked his head upright.His face was pale with sweat; his heartthundered in his chest.The headless armor, burning red, and draped withseaweed like a drowned ghost from some children's sea tale sat facing him.Allwas silent.There was something wrong with his dreaming.There were supposed to be no nightmares in the Golden Oecumene.Phaethon's natural sleep cycle could not correctly integrate his variousartificial modes and levels of consciousness with the natural sections of hisneurology.Little corrections and integrations were needed.Always before, hehad had Rhad-amanthus to do this task.He had a similar system on board thePhoenix Exultant.Without such a system, his subconscious mind would begin toact much like a dawn-age man's or a primitivist's, with self-sustaining mentalactions neither checked, nor overruled, nor brought to light for inspection.His mind could run away from him now, showing him weird scenes as he slept.Always before he had been alert and lucid as he had slept [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]