Infinite Archive (The Midsolar Murders, Band 3) - Softcover

Buch 3 von 3: The Midsolar Murders

Lafferty, Mur

 
9780593098158: Infinite Archive (The Midsolar Murders, Band 3)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593098153 ISBN 13: 9780593098158
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

Amateur sleuth Mallory Viridian has just about got her bearings aboard the space station she calls home, but now the physical embodiment of the Internet is on its way, and it's bringing murder with it.

Mallory Viridian has had a quiet few months. Even with the increased influx of humans visiting Station Eternity, she hasn’t seen so much as a bar brawl. Used to people dying left and right around her, the lack of murders to solve has left her unexpectedly…bored.

But humanity's favorite way to waste time is on its way to her sector of the galaxy. The Alexandria, a giant data ship that contains the entire Internet from Earth, docks outside of Eternity and offers access to the world wide web to anyone on board who's interested.

Which is exactly when another killer decides to strike. When Mallory finds her book agent dead, she knows she has to work fast to find the murderer. What with alien influencers, a lonely living comprehensive Internet, and a deadly crime to solve, Mallory has her work cut out for her . . . .

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mur Lafferty is an author, podcaster, and editor. She has been nominated for many awards, and even won a few. She lives in Durham, NC with her family.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

0.18 Percent Is Still
a Lot of Murder

The worst thing about being part of an alien hivemind was you had to act like thousands of insect feet crawling over your body-including your face, neck, ears-and possibly trying to burrow into your collar was just fine.

The best part about being part of an alien hivemind? The jury was still out on that one.

Mallory sat motionless on her bed, eyes closed, reminding herself this was Just Fine. Even among the buzz of thousands of wings. Even with antennae probing and investigating every hormone she secreted. Even with a deadly allergy to Earth-dwelling insects of the Vespidae family.

She breathed slowly. Don't think about that allergy thing.

Meditating was challenging for most people, but trying to meditate in the midst of a swarm of blue wasplike aliens was a new level. Most of the members of the Sundry were as long as her thumb, their stingers and venom sacs visible. She tried to go deeper into the meditation and ignore the dainty feet crawling over her eyelids and the delicate antennae probing her nostrils and ear canals.

Feel the station, the hivemind said.

She extended her awareness past her own discomfort and fear. It was hard to fight against decades of fear responses, but she was part of the hivemind, and the Sundry took care of their own.

All at once she was in her room; she was in the large hive in the park; she was crawling along a display case in the new deli; she was inspecting a ventilation shaft; she was on the wall of the shuttle bay (and spied a familiar shuttle, which almost made her remember something but not quite); she was part of a mindless swarm that gave processing power to the living space station that was Eternity. She could almost touch the sentient mind of the station, she was so close. She could feel it on the outskirts of the Sundry processing power. She felt she could reach out-

A crash threw her out of her meditation with a gasp. This caused all the Sundry crawling on her to take wing and move as one to hover above the chair next to her bed.

"What have you gotten into now?" she groaned, rubbing her face, ears, and neck to get rid of the lingering crawling sensation. She shuddered and slid off the edge of her bed.

"Mobius!" she shouted. "What happened?"

There was no answer, not that she expected one. She stepped into the living room/kitchen area of her small apartment and looked for whatever broke.

A stoneware bowl-stoneware! how did he do that?-lay in two pieces on the floor, with green goo splattered around it.

The perpetrator was flying in circles close to the ceiling, chirping quietly to himself. He sounded pleased. Had he meant to break the bowl? Or was he just happy he had summoned her? Or was he a masochist who wanted to break her concentration?

She'd heard complaints about toddlers and pets, how they get destructive if they don't get enough attention. "But that's your food bowl, man," she said sadly, and bent to clean it up.

Mobius was a baby still, a sentient spaceship who would one day be large enough to be a full-sized shuttle capable of life support, but for now, he was a baseball-sized flying destructoid.

"Get down here," she said, holding her hand out.

The tiny ship chirped defiantly and flew into the bedroom.

"No you don't!" Mallory said, running after him. He had flown into her closet and was thrashing around.

She flipped the light on and peeked inside. She had a minimal wardrobe still, not having brought a lot of clothes to space with her, but she had a few shirts and jackets hung up. One suit. Shoes and boots lay on the floor haphazardly; she had lined her shoes up neatly the last time she had been in here.

A sneaker lay upside down, muffled chirping coming from underneath it. It leaped into the air, then fell again.

"Are you stuck?" she asked, amusement and fondness for the little ship finally replacing frustration. She remembered her old boss at the animal shelter, who told her kittens and puppies were so cute because it was their only defense.

She lifted the shoe and scooped Mobius into her hand. He was a golden orb with a green sheen, and was starting to develop lines indicating a hatch and small bumps-where wings might grow? engines? She had no idea.

"What am I going to do with you? Do you want more food?"

He chirped happily, then flew straight at her forehead. She had a moment to say, "No, wait-" before everything went dark.

Did Mobius knock me unconscious?

Mallory couldn't open her eyes, but she was far from knocked out. The buzzing of the Sundry on the station echoed loudly, and her connection with them felt stronger. Easy.

Am I dead?

The buzzing became words she could understand. Not at all. We took the moment of your dazed situation to try to connect again. This is much preferable. We recommend this in the future.

Beaning myself with a steel ball? That won't be sustainable.

Regrettable. Was that amusement from the swarm coloring that word? This newer hivemind was much different than the one that got wiped out a few months ago. They felt less stodgy, more flexible, and easier to talk to. They were still alien as hell, though.

The swarm picked up on her thought. Sundry colonies that become processing power for ships and stations don't have a lot of agency themselves. The entity forms its own personality. But when we built the current hivemind, it was done in a new way, so we and the station may act in new ways.

You're not going to override the station, are you? Mallory asked. 'Cause we already dealt with that, and it's not fun.

No. That's not in our nature. The voice sounded a tad offended that Mallory would think that Sundry would stoop to the antics of their subspecies, the Cuckoos, which had overtaken the station after murdering the hivemind.

"I know, I get it, sort of, I just don't get it, you know?" Mallory said, then realized she had spoken aloud. She opened her eyes and sat up rubbing her head.

"You little jerk," she said, wincing as she touched the bump. She sighed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She really needed a haircut.

Mobius had wormed his way into her hoodie's pocket, making her feel like a kangaroo. He liked to sleep there. "I'll deal with you later," she muttered.

The swarm crawled over her chair still, as if waiting. Their conversation wasn't over. "If Sundry swarms have personalities, like you do, then why doesn't the station's personality come from their swarms?"

"Where do human personalities come from?" the swarm buzzed audibly.

"I don't know that either," Mallory said. "The brain, I guess, which is the closest we have to a hivemind. But no hive."

A chime sounded from her front door. She got off the floor and yelled for the living room door to open.

A tall bald Black man, wearing glasses and a gray army shirt, walked in, his eyebrow cocked.

"You okay, Mal?" he asked. He pointed to her forehead.

"The bangs don't cover it?" Mallory asked, pushing more hair into her eyes, and then reflexively pushing it back. She sighed. "So what's up?"

He crossed his arms. "You forgot again, didn't you?"

Forgot? Oh, no. She thought hard. Two days ago Xan had said their Gneiss friends Stephanie and Ferdinand were coming aboard the station to visit and they should meet at Ferdinand's bar to catch up. That, she realized, was going to happen tonight. She whipped her head around to her bedside table, but Mobius had knocked her alarm clock off it. "Oh, God, what time is it?"

"It's midnight," Xan said evenly. "They're gone. You missed everything."

"Dammit!" Mallory fell back onto her bed, rubbing her forehead absently. "Why didn't anyone call me?"

Xan pointed to the comm terminal on the wall, where a tiny...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593098153
ISBN 13 
9780593098158
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
353
Kontakt zum Hersteller
ACE
https://www.penguin.com/

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