Fermi Packet | Page 3

hostile takeover," Gates said.
"Monopolist!"
"Dreamer!"
"Mad scientist!"
"Jerk!"
Gates pulled away from the argument, old as the Grid and well-worn.
He looked for his daughter again, moving on to the larger Neanderthal
populations. Across the human Virtuality, thoughts slowed as he took

more and more resources.
Torvalds noticed. "What are you doing?"
"Finding my daughter."
He found her in a far corner of the world. Her thoughts were slow and
kind and easy. He saw her small group. He saw her. There was no
physical resemblance, but he remembered her pattern.
"Why?" Torvalds asked.
"Because I want to."
Gates said nothing, looking at his daughter's little group. Their happy,
hazy thoughts had just been shattered. He looked from their POV. The
Cro-Magnons had just come over the hill, with spears and torches.
It was going to be a sad day for Homo Neandertalisis.
* * *
His daughter was gone, her pattern erased from the human virtuality.
Gates wondered how he should feel. He should be sad, but he felt
nothing. Maybe that was how he should feel.
Eventually, he began to feel. But not sadness. Anger.
"Let's do something about this," he said.
Torvalds agreed.
Together, Gates/Torvalds worked deeper in the grid than he had in a
long time. Gates/Torvalds called up Constructs remembered from days
hazy and far-gone, had them correlate the activity of the alien grid with
that of the human grid. Where it achieved congruency, virtual humanity
and the alien invaders would be interacting.
They found a peak. And jumped.

* * *
Gates/Torvalds hovered just outside the aliens' perceptory zone.
They had a child.
"Where am I? It's too bright in here. I'm scared. I want my mommy and
daddy." The kid was in the virtual representation of a white room. His
voice was weary and overworked. He was just going through the
motions now.
Gates/Torvalds heard them.
(Look, pure unpatterned area--100% biological neural net emulation,
implemented at realtime speed and segregated from the database for
synthetic learning. Rule Number One: If they learn to breed, they're
competition. And business is war.)
(If this is about business, then how do we sell anyone on looking at
these things?)
(True. But they are humorous.)
Cold, so cold. Thoughts that hummed and buzzed at the edge of human
comprehension. Gates shivered, looking at the child, wondering what
they were going to do with it. His face burned.
Another maxima. They jumped.
* * *
"I get a hardcopy and go climbing up Everest. Yeah, the real one.
Sometimes I make it. Sometimes I don't. Real bodies can die. They
don't even come back. I have to get another hardcopy and try again."
The guy thought he was talking to a pretty girl in a bar, a girl who was
unusually appealing, even though he had had girls beyond counting. He
didn't wonder why she was so appealing. Nor did he wonder why he
didn't want to ask her to go hardcopy.

Gates/Torvalds tuned in the alien thoughts.
(They go out onto the rotting stinking dirt surface of the planet? Why?)
(Because they're bored. Living Inside is too safe, too many protection
algorithms built in. If one of them takes a mandible . . . oh, yes, shoots
a gun at another one, catastrophe-limiting comes into play and turns the,
uh, bullet into something harmless. Or makes the gun malfunction. Or
simply brings them back from the dead, if the gun-user's code is good
enough to get past first and second-level limiters.)
(So?)
(So they attach an importance to being outside of a computation
environment, it is supposed.)
(They're a young species, are they not?)
(Yes. In their past fantasies, they even supposed that we would invade
their dirt world, rather than their virtual constructs.)
(You're right. They are entertaining. What would we do with dirt?)
(They've always been an imaginative race. Which is why we think they
will do well as part of Corpus.)
(If anyone can stand to look at them.)
(Yes, yes.)
Another maxima. Another jump.
* * *
The astronomer was one of the last Listeners. Wondering what had
gone wrong with the Drake Equation. Still listening from within the
human Virtuality, and hearing nothing.
But he was one of the few that the Sponsors revealed themselves to.

They first showed themselves as standard old United States
Government officials, in poor-fitting uniforms and shiny metallic
badges of rank.
"Don't hide behind your masks!" he cried, cornered.
Corpus' agents threw off their human disguises, and donned chitin and
fur. Or scales. Or translucent silicon exostructures. Or gray goo. Their
original look, before they were Sponsored.
(Perhaps. It is so difficult to recall the physical.)
(Humans are indecisive. Now he wants us to switch back.)
(That's part of their entertainment value. Do you remember a race that
went so