Accelerando

SYNOPSIS

Part 1: Slow Takeoff

Lobsters

Manfred espera encontrarse con alguien que va a hacer muy rico. Manfred recibe una encomienda, es un teléfono móvil desechable, recibe una llamada de “KGB dot RU” que quiere contratarlo para cierto trabajo que Manfred no está en condiciones de realizar. Se da un vistazo al contexto de Mandred, su historia, vida, trabajos, cosas que ha hecho o en las que ha participado, y asuntos personales. Al llegar a su suite de hotel Manfred se dirige caminando directo a la fiesta a la que asistirá, en el camino asimila noticias actuales, bienvenido al siglo 21; llega a la fiesta, se sienta en una mesa a acompañar a otro, pide cerveza, después se unen otros, están en la fiesta, hablan, de negocios, Manfred repentinamente da su visión de la ruta de los cerebros Matrioshka con materia convertida en computronio. En su habitación Manfred toma un baño, descansa, duerme, e inconcientemente habla, un mascullo, balbuceo, murmullo. Manfred despierta, al desayunar lo acompaña su ex, dialogan, discuten, ella dice que va a estar por los alrededores unos días, Manfred piensa en ella y el efecto producido.

Después del desayuno y de haber hablado con su ex, Manfred desliza los lentes y reflexionando acerca del universo recibe mensajería instantánea de Moscow Windows NT User Group operado por Panulirus interruptus, o una red neuronal evolucionada originalmente de vectores de estados de sistema nervioso de langostas que asimiló el sistema experto en el marco de investigación de tecnología de uploading y que ahora hackeó el website de Moscow Windows NT User Group, pidiéndole que le ayude a defectuar, Manfred reflexiona y tiene intención de ayudarlas, pero qué puede hacer? Más tarde Manfred se reencuentra en De Wildemann’s con Pamela y luego Bob Franklin, conversan, Bob le plantea su inquietud de idea de negocio, Manfred se la resuelve dándole una posible solución que tiene que ver con trabajar con las langostas, el plan crustáceo/langosti. En la noche Pamela acude a la habitación de Manfred y tienen una escena sado-masoquista de control, poder, dominación, placer y arte, ella le ofrece las dos posibilidades: firmar la licencia de matrimonio, o sus abogados estarán en contacto.

Troubadour

Tourist

Part 2: Point of Inflection

Halo

Router

Nightfall

Part 3: Singularity

Curator

Elector

Survivor

QUOTES

He’s infected with the dynamic optimism of another time zone, another city. #AccelerandoQuotes

Manfred’s whole life is lived on the bleeding edge of strangeness, fifteen minutes into everyone else’s future, and he’s normally in complete control – but at times like this he gets a frisson of fear, a sense that he might just have missed the correct turn on reality’s approach road. #AccelerandoQuotes

Roughly a third of his inventions are legal, a third are illegal, and the remainder are legal but will become illegal as soon as the legislatosaurus wakes up, smells the coffee, and panics. #AccelerandoQuotes

He does this for free, gratis. In return, he has virtual immunity from the tyranny of cash; money is a symptom of poverty, after all, and Manfred never has to pay for anything. #AccelerandoQuotes

“I thought I was thirty seconds ahead of the curve,” Manfred says ruefully. #AccelerandoQuotes

Manfred winces. #AccelerandoQuotes

“Mars is just dumb mass at the bottom of a gravity well; there isn’t even a biosphere there. #AccelerandoQuotes

“NASA are idiots. They want to send canned primates to Mars!” Manfred swallows a mouthful of beer, aggressively plonks his glass on the table: “Mars is just dumb mass at the bottom of a gravity well; there isn’t even a biosphere there. They should be working on uploading and solving the nanoassembly conformational problem instead. Then we could turn all the available dumb matter into computronium and use it for processing our thoughts. Long-term, it’s the only way to go. The solar system is a dead loss right now – dumb all over! Just measure the MIPS per milligram. If it isn’t thinking, it isn’t working. We need to start with the low-mass bodies, reconfigure them for our own use. Dismantle the moon! Dismantle Mars! Build masses of free-flying nanocomputing processor nodes exchanging data via laser link, each layer running off the waste heat of the next one in. Matrioshka brains, Russian doll Dyson spheres the size of solar systems. Teach dumb matter to do the Turing boogie!” #AccelerandoQuotes

She frowns, pained. #AccelerandoQuotes

Don’t flatter yourself. #AccelerandoQuotes

Manfred bites his tongue to stifle his first response, then refills his coffee cup and takes another mouthful. His heart does a flip-flop: She’s challenging him again, always trying to own him. “I work for the betterment of everybody, not just some narrowly defined national interest, Pam. It’s the agalmic future. You’re still locked into a pre-singularity economic model that thinks in terms of scarcity. Resource allocation isn’t a problem anymore – it’s going to be over within a decade. The cosmos is flat in all directions, and we can borrow as much bandwidth as we need from the first universal bank of entropy! They even found signs of smart matter – MACHOs, big brown dwarfs in the galactic halo, leaking radiation in the long infrared – suspiciously high entropy leakage. The latest figures say something like seventy percent of the baryonic mass of the M31 galaxy was in computronium, two-point-nine million years ago, when the photons we’re seeing now set out. The intelligence gap between us and the aliens is a probably about a trillion times bigger than the gap between us and a nematode worm. Do you have any idea what that means?” #AccelerandoQuotes

He slips his glasses on, takes the universe off hold, and tells it to take him for a long walk while he catches up on the latest on the tensor-mode gravitational waves in the cosmic background radiation (which, it is theorized, may be waste heat generated by irreversible computational processes back during the inflationary epoch; the present-day universe being merely the data left behind by a really huge calculation). And then there’s the weirdness beyond M31: According to the more conservative cosmologists, an alien superpower – maybe a collective of Kardashev Type Three galaxy-spanning civilizations – is running a timing channel attack on the computational ultrastructure of space-time itself, trying to break through to whatever’s underneath. The tofu-Alzheimer’s link can wait. #AccelerandoQuotes

Manfred scratches his head. #AccelerandoQuotes

Manfred winces. #AccelerandoQuotes

Manfred stretches and yawns #AccelerandoQuotes

She smiles a Mona Lisa smile, at once affectionate and challenging. #AccelerandoQuotes

She frowns, pained. #AccelerandoQuotes

She snorts. #AccelerandoQuotes

Setup completed, she walks round the bed, inspecting him critically from all angles, figuring out where to begin. This isn’t just sex, after all: It’s a work of art. #AccelerandoQuotes

“Meat and mind, Manny. Meat, and mind. You’re not interested in meat, are you? Just mind. #AccelerandoQuotes

She waves a hand dismissively. #AccelerandoQuotes

TERMS

lap. the flat area between the waist and knees of a seated person. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/lap #AccelerandoTerm regazo.

spook. a ghost. a spy. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/spook #AccelerandoTerm espectro, espía.

grifters. defrauder. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/grifters #AccelerandoTerm timadores.

brooding. showing deep unhappiness of thought. think deeply about something that makes one unhappy. (of a bird) sit on (eggs) to hatch them. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/brooding #AccelerandoTerm empollando, empollar, encobar, elucubrar.

racketeering. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/racketeering #AccelerandoTerm crimen organizado.

racketeer. a person who engages in dishonest and fraudulent business dealings. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/racketeer #AccelerandoTerm chantajista, estafador, timador.

scrounger. a person who borrows from or lives off others. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/scrounger #AccelerandoTerm gorrón, sablista.

sablear. Sacar dinero a alguien dándole sablazos, esto es, con petición hábil o insistente y sin intención de devolverlo. http://dle.rae.es/?id=WtdxvSI #AccelerandoTérmino

sablazo. Golpe dado con un sable. Herida hecha con un sable. Acto de sacar dinero a alguien pidiéndoselo, por lo general, con habilidad o insistencia y sin intención de devolverlo. http://dle.rae.es/?id=WtWS5k7 #AccelerandoTérmino

twitching. give or cause to give a short, sudden jerking or convulsive movement. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/twitching #AccelerandoTerm espasmos, crisparse, crispar, moverse nerviosamente, retorcer, mover nerviosamente, tirar bruscamente, tirar ligeramente.

twitch. a short, sudden jerking or convulsive movement. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/twitch #AccelerandoTerm contracción nerviosa, tic, sacudida, tirón, movimiento.

Bedridden. confined to bed by sickness or old age. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/Bedridden #AccelerandoTerm postrado en cama.

Troubadour. a French medieval lyric poet composing and singing in Provençal in the 11th to 13th centuries, especially on the theme of courtly love. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/Troubadour #AccelerandoTerm trovador.

feral. (especially of an animal) in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/feral #AccelerandoTerm salvaje.

angst. a feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition or the state of the world in general. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/angst #AccelerandoTerm angustia, ansiedad.

gloating. contemplate or dwell on one’s own success or another’s misfortune with smugness or malignant pleasure. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/gloating #AccelerandoTerm regodeo, relamerse.

riddance. the action of getting rid of a troublesome or unwanted person or thing. https://translate.google.com/#en/es/riddance #AccelerandoTerm libramiento.

Good riddance. ¡Vete con viento fresco!

REFERENCES