Sea of Glass by Barry B. Longyear

Author:Barry B. Longyear [Longyear, Barry B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Enchanteds
Published: 2011-07-11T04:00:00+00:00

Engle uses the quote to support his case that Cummings is the essence of the mad scientist pushing around his human pawns in Machiavellian glee. Rather than credit Cummings with having a goal for the betterment of anything, Engle seems to think that the scientist is addicted to the pushing around itself. Perhaps the author is only projecting what he would do if such power were placed in his hands.

I look again at the treetops. Whatever the moral issues, the wiring is there. When the war comes, strengths, weaknesses, experience, courage, capabilities, tactics, weather, time, terrain, equipment—everything possible will move through the computer like lightning. And from the computer will come orders that will throw every Compact strength against every Otherworld weakness.

Everybody is wired.

Everybody but me.

MAC knows I exist, but doesn’t know where I am or anything else about me. My personality profile is in the machine, but Thomas Windom is a phantom. His number doesn’t apply to anyone. I am Thomas Mills.

There are labor force and population totals that can’t possibly match exactly with the citizenship totals. Perhaps the computer decided that a certain number slipping through its electronic fingers would have no adverse effects on its ultimate goals. Perhaps I am just too insignificant to bother with.

The screams and laughs of Gaff and Dice grabassing among the trees confirm my thoughts. Their fines and sentences had been determined by MAC III. Perhaps even their crime. How would their crime serve the computer’s goals?

Because of the values the pair had acquired through a computer dictated education, they go out of their way to be unappealing, unsympathetic, rejectable. Perhaps in rejecting them a portion of the population places just that much more distance between themselves and the pair’s anti-Compact sentiments.

Perhaps the computer led the pair along their particular path to make certain that their stockbroker father was at less than peak form at a crucial moment. A hasty, thoughtless decision causing a sufficient scandal in a major brokerage house at the right moment would have highly predictable ripples throughout the Compact economy, affecting—

Or perhaps MAC III’s conception of the quality of life doesn’t include obscenities painted on government buildings, and it figures that a fine and a summer of hard labor will adjust Gaff’s and Dice’s circumstances. Whatever it is, it’s consistent with what Gaff calls the Big Plan.

Everyone is wired.

I think again about the personality profile test I took at Outcasters. Whatever it was that caused the computer to refuse me my citizenship must have been contained in the profile. What had been revealed?

MAC knows a lot about me. More than I know about myself.

I hear Eva blowing her whistle, signaling the end of the lunch break. I get to my feet, place the book into my hip pocket, and begin walking past the roach wagon to secure my electric knife. There are other things to think about. Summer will end and I must find a place to hole up for the winter.

There is a town I found forty kilometers north of the service base camp in Bloodroot.

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