Ignorance Is Strength by John Joseph Adams & Hugh Howey & Christie Yant

Author:John Joseph Adams & Hugh Howey & Christie Yant [Adams, John Joseph & Howey, Hugh & Yant, Christie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1796549592
Amazon: B07ND42882
Publisher: Broad Reach Publishing + Adamant Press
Published: 2020-06-28T23:00:00+00:00

THE TEMPLATE UPLINK cut off as he walked out of Harmless’s office.

Once again, it caught him off-guard. He had been warned that flux would cut off uplinks, that this was one of the inconveniences of living on a moon never meant to be lived upon. But the warning couldn’t have prepared him for the amputation of a resource he’d had since adolescence.

Probably no one at the company would feel it so keenly.

He wanted to get away from this place. Leave the unsettling AI and Harmless’s threats. Go to a place where weft flux, and flux storms, were distant theoretical concerns. Go to a place where the very sky didn’t seem to shimmer when he looked at it.

Without the template, it occurred to him... he could.

The capi he had here was his, according to local custom, if not system law. No one on Islaka would object if he traded it all back for credit, and stepped onto the next diver.

His template, without the uplink, didn’t have the granularity to notice that it should punish him for the thought.

He could just leave. Escape the storm, and escape the people who wanted to use him. For the company’s potential profit, or for whatever Harmless aimed.

But then he’d have to walk back into the company and explain just why he’d come home without being invited back. Tell them either that the template they had given him wasn’t enough to keep him from spooking at some data he couldn’t actually understand, or tell them that he believed he’d made contact with an AI cloud and chosen to toss that contact away. And he wouldn’t do either.

They’d saved him once, when he’d looked for someone, anyone, to take a gamble on him. It was his choice, whether or not that gamble paid off.

He found Harmless’s bodyguard – or enforcer, or messenger, or whoever she was -- at the end of the hall. “I want to go back to the interface rig,” he said. “Latchko’s.”

She nodded, said “Follow, then,” and led him there, and left him there.

In the room, though, the rig showed that it was offline. The weft flux interfered with the uplink to the clouds, just as it interfered with the uplink to the Tabera networks, apparently.

He sighed, and headed out.

Islaka wasn’t geared toward tourists, but it did have facilities for Tabera mainworlders. The planet provided most of the mining expertise, and most of the educated labor. The weft ports which provided power to the colony needed Taberan maintenance, and the limited hydroponics bays did, as well. Mainworlders came to calibrate the mining rigs and inspect the exotics for transport.

He negotiated access to a guest room, and found that the mention of the Old Man’s name found him free berth here, as well. And another dishing of scorn. Settling onto a long couch-bed, he asked What is it with him? by habit. The template, of course, said only No network connectivity. Answer unavailable, and Uli threw himself back into a recline.

Ten minutes later, and he was bored out of his mind.

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