Machinehood - Hardcover

Divya, S.B.

 
9781982148065: Machinehood
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1982148063 ISBN 13: 9781982148065
Verlag: Gallery / Saga Press, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

From the Hugo Award nominee S.B. Divya, Zero Dark Thirty meets The Social Network in this science fiction thriller about artificial intelligence, sentience, and labor rights in a near future dominated by the gig economy.

Welga Ramirez, executive bodyguard and ex-special forces, is about to retire early when her client is killed in front of her. It’s 2095 and people don’t usually die from violence. Humanity is entirely dependent on pills that not only help them stay alive, but allow them to compete with artificial intelligence in an increasingly competitive gig economy. Daily doses protect against designer diseases, flow enhances focus, zips and buffs enhance physical strength and speed, and juvers speed the healing process.

All that changes when Welga’s client is killed by The Machinehood, a new and mysterious terrorist group that has simultaneously attacked several major pill funders. The Machinehood operatives seem to be part human, part machine, something the world has never seen. They issue an ultimatum: stop all pill production in one week.

Global panic ensues as pill production slows and many become ill. Thousands destroy their bots in fear of a strong AI takeover. But the US government believes the Machinehood is a cover for an old enemy. One that Welga is uniquely qualified to fight.

Welga, determined to take down the Machinehood, is pulled back into intelligence work by the government that betrayed her. But who are the Machinehood and what do they really want?

A thrilling and thought-provoking novel that asks: if we won’t see machines as human, will we instead see humans as machines?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

S.B. Divya is a lover of science, math, fiction, and the Oxford comma. She enjoys subverting expectations and breaking stereotypes whenever she can. Divya is the Hugo and Nebula Award–nominated author of Runtime and coeditor of Escape Pod, with Mur Lafferty. Her short stories have been published at various magazines including Analog, Uncanny, and Tor. She is the author of the short collection, Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse and Other Situations, and debut novel, Machinehood. Divya holds degrees in computational neuroscience and signal processing, and she worked for twenty years as an electrical engineer before becoming an author. Find out more about her at SBDivya.com or on Twitter as @DivyasTweets.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1: Welga Chapter 1 WELGA
30. All forms of intelligence have the right to exist without persecution or slavery.

31. No form of intelligence may own another.

32. If the local governance does not act in accordance with these rights, it is the right of an intelligence to act by any means necessary to secure them.

—The Machinehood Manifesto, March 20, 2095

Welga stared at coffee the color of mud and contemplated the irony of the word smart. Near the end of her daily morning run, she always stopped for a cup of joe or espresso or qahwah, depending on the part of the world—which happened to be Chennai, India, on this particular day.

“I asked for it black,” she said.

The boxy aluminum vendor-bot replied from its speaker, “Yes. This is black coffee.”

A microdrone flew close to her face. She swatted it away. Her own swarm of tiny cameras stayed at a polite distance above her head. “It has milk in it.”

“Yes, very little milk. This is black coffee.”

She repressed the urge to kick the machine. What kind of idiot had designed this bot’s coffee-making ability? Welga glanced up at the microcameras and said, “It’s my thirty-fifth birthday, and I can’t get a decent cup of coffee from this piece of shit.”

Her fan base wasn’t celebrity-size, and most of them lived on the other side of the world, but someone could be watching. Maybe they’d recommend a better vendor for tomorrow’s coffee. Swarms had been present in public spaces since her childhood, and she mostly ignored them as a part of life, but she wouldn’t mind a little extra attention on her birthday. Between that and the day’s high-profile client, her tip jar ought to do well.

A voice called out from across the street, “Madam, come to my stall. I’ll serve you correctly.”

Welga turned. A gray-haired person stood behind a folding table and beckoned with their right hand, plastic bangles reflecting the cloud-diluted sun. Metal pots sat atop basic burners around them. Plastic sheets wrapped the stall on three sides, and a fourth provided a sagging roof.

After two auto-trucks and a trike crammed with too many people drove by, Welga crossed the road. The vendor handed her a static cup filled with liquid as black as their pupils.

Welga took an appreciative sip.

“That bot has a Zimro WAI. It’s not meant to serve foreigners.” They pronounced the acronym for weak artificial intelligence like why, the way most of the world did. Many of the people back home said way, demonstrating the ongoing American disregard for everyone else.

“How can you tell I’m not Indian?” Welga asked. The mix of Russian and Mexican in her parentage usually made it hard for people to guess her origins.

The vendor tapped their temple with their middle finger. “I have a real brain. I pay attention.” They lifted their chin toward the competition across the street. “That bot sees your brown skin and dark hair and thinks you’re from Chennai. I see your nose and cheek shape. No gold jewelry, no pottu”—they gestured to their brow—“so you must be foreign. Bots. WAIs.” They made a spitting sound. “They work faster, but human is smarter.”

Welga hid a smile behind her cup. Some jobs still belonged exclusively to people, but much of the world’s workforce did little more than babysit bots while they did the real work. Artificial intelligences had dominated the labor force for decades. They had their limitations, though, like interpreting the meaning of black coffee.

“What are you cooking?” she asked the vendor.

“Vegetable sambar, tomato rasam, basmati rice… but it’s not ready. Come back in one hour, and I will give you delicious food.”

“Good cooking takes time,” Welga agreed. She drained the rest of the coffee and returned the cup. “How much?”

“No charge.” The vendor smiled, revealing teeth stained red from chewing betel nut. “Wish you a happy birthday.”

Welga laughed. “You do pay attention. I like that.” She pressed her hands together the Indian way. “Thank you.”

As she jogged toward the congested main road, she subvocalized to her personal WAI-based agent. “Por Qué, tip that vendor with double the average local cost for a cup of coffee. And add them to my list of possible slow-fast-food contributors.”

A second later, her agent replied, “Transaction complete.”

It sounded as if she stood beside Welga. In reality, the audio came from microscopic implants in Welga’s ear. The first version of Por Qué had run on a palm-size device that Welga got when she was seventeen years old. At the time, the name she gave her agent had provided some juvenile giggles. Still did sometimes, though not today.

Welga’s mood turned sour as she finished her early-morning run back to the hotel. Sweat and dust covered her body—not a bad one at her age. She could still pass the MARSOC entrance physical—she knew because she did the workout at least once a week. And yet her contract with Platinum Shield Services ended in three months. They wouldn’t renew. They cared as much or more about youth and looks as fitness, and thirty-five qualified as middle-aged by their accounting. She could take a desk job like her boss, Ahmed Hassan, and organize the field teams, but sitting around in an office had never been her style.

Instead, she’d been squirreling away money for the previous five years. Platinum paid well, and they provided that rarity of modern life: steady employment. It saved her from having to hustle for gigs like her father and brother. Her public tip jar stayed full, too, thanks to the high-profile nature of shield work. Her plan for Life, Part Two, was to take her passion for cooking and turn it into a business. She dreamed of funding a group of chefs who designed recipes intended to take time. Modern kitchens cooked fast for the owner’s convenience, but the best food took hours to develop complex, rich flavors—like her personal favorite, mango molé. Her chefs would improve their ability to compete with kitchens by speeding up their motions and stamina with pills. She would change the world by revolutionizing the way people cooked and ate. Or she would lose everything and have to start over. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened.

Gray clouds hung over the towering hives of humanity on either side of the street—flats, as they called apartments in this part of the world, though the skyscrapers were anything but. The hotel, in contrast, had a classic colonial style. White columns and marble stairs led into the lobby. Welga sighed as the cool, climate-controlled interior surrounded her. The turf floor gave her steps an extra spring. Jasmine and other flowers she couldn’t name trailed from hanging pots, their scents forming a heady perfume.

Her room sat on the fifth floor and looked over a sprawling network of swimming pools. A kitchen unit lined one wall, opposite the bed. Her team’s client, Briella Jackson, one of the biggest pill funders in the world, could handle the expense. If only Welga weren’t training her replacement, this would have been a fun, easy assignment. Instead, Platinum had stuck her with...

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Verlag
Gallery / Saga Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1982148063
ISBN 13 
9781982148065
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
416
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchpark GmbH
gpsr@buchpark.de

Krügerweg 1
Trebbin
Brandenburg
14959
Deutschland

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