Charles Stross - Singularity Sky

A menu appeared. Vassily prodded at it blindly. Option one said sears foundation design catalog, whatever that meant. Below it, free hardware foundation gnu couturier 15.6; then dior historical catalog.

He scratched his head. No secret code books, no hidden weapons, no spy cameras. Just incomprehensible analytical engine instructions! He thumped the plinth in frustration.

A deep humming filled the room. He jumped backward, knocking over the chair. A slot opened in the top of the hatbox. A demented clicking rattled from it and something spat out. Something red that landed on his head — a wisp of lace with two leg holes. Scandalous . With a grinding clank, the hatbox extruded in short order a shimmering tulle ball gown, a pair of spike-heeled ankle boots, and a pair of coarse-woven blue shorts. All the clothing was hot to the touch and smelled faintly of chemicals.

“Stop it,” he hissed. “Stop it!” In reply, the trunk ejected a stream of stockings, a pair of trousers, and a corset that threatened any wearer with abdominal injury. He thumped at the control panel in frustration and, thankfully, the trunk stopped manufacturing clothing. He looked at it dizzily. Why bring a trunk of clothing if you can bring a trunk that can manufacture any item of clothing you want to wear ? he realized. Then the trunk made an ominous graunching sound and he stared at it in ontological horror. It’s a cornucopia ! One of the forbidden, mythological chimeras of history, the machine that had brought degradation and unemployment and economic downsizing to his ancestors before they fled the singularity to settle and help create the New Republic.

The cornucopia grunted and hummed. Thoroughly spooked, Vassily looked to the door. If Rachel was on her way back—

The hatbox opened. Something black and shiny peeped forth. Antennae hummed and scanned the room; articulated claws latched onto the side of the box and levered.

Vassily took one look at the monster and cracked. He left the door swinging ajar behind him in his helpless flight down the corridor, disheveled and wild-eyed, wearing an inside-out opera glove on one hand.

Behind him, the freshly manufactured spybot finished surveying the insertion zone. Primitive programs meshed in its microprocessor brain: no operational overrides were present, so it established a default exploration strategy and prepared to reconnoiter. It grabbed the nearest non-fixed item of camouflage and, stretching it protectively over its crablike carapace, headed for the ventilation shaft. Even as it finished removing the grille, the hatbox clanked again: the second small robospy was born just in time to see the yellow gown disappearing into the air-conditioning duct. And then the luggage clanked again, preparing to hatch yet another …

By the time Rachel returned, her trunk was half-empty— and almost all her ready-made clothing had escaped.

“You come with me,” Sister Seventh told Burya. ”See situation. Explain why is bad, and understand.“ Wind whispered through the open window, carrying grey clouds across the city, as Novy Petrograd burned in an inferno of forbidden technology. Houses crumbled and grew anew, extrusions pushing up like mushrooms from the strange soil of men’s dreams. Trees of silver rose from the goldsmith’s district, their harsh, planar surfaces tracking the cumulus-shrouded sun. The hairless alien wobbled forward onto the balcony and pointed her tusks at the fairground on the other side of town: “This is not the Festival’s doing!”

Helplessly, Burya followed her out onto the rooftop above the Duke’s ballroom. A cloacal smell plugged his nostrils, the distant olfactory echo of the corpses swinging from the lampposts in the courtyard.

Politovsky had disappeared, but his men had not gone quietly, and the mutinous troops, frenzied and outraged, had committed atrocities against the officers and their families. The ensuing reprisals had been harsh but necessary—

Javelins of light streaked across the cloudscape overhead. Seconds later, the rumble of their passage split the cold evening air. Thunder rattled and echoed from the remaining windows of the town.

“Festival does not understand humans,” Sister Seventh commented calmly. “Motivation of fleshbody intelligences bereft of real-time awareness not simulatable. Festival therefore assumes altruist aesthetic. I ask: Is this a work of art?”

Burya Rubenstein stared at the city bleakly. “No.” The admission came hard. “We hoped for better. But the people need leadership and a strong hand; without it they run riot—” Sister Seventh made a strange snuffling noise. Presently he realized that she was laughing at him.

“Riot! Freedom! End of constraint! Silly humans. Silly not-organized humans, not smell own place among people, need to sniff piss in corner of burrow, kill instead. Make military music. Much marching and killing by numbers. Is comedy, no?”

“We will control it ourselves,” Burya insisted trenchantly. “This chaos, this is not our destiny. We stand on the threshold of Utopia! The people, once educated, will behave rationally. Ignorance, filth, and a dozen generations of repression are what you see here — this is the outcome of a failed experiment, not human destiny!”

“Then why you not a sculptor, cut new flesh from old?” Sister Seventh approached him. Her snuffling cabbage breath reminded him of a pet guinea pig his parents had bought him when he was six. (When he was seven there had been a famine, and into the cook pot she went.) “Why not you build new minds for your people?”

“We’ll fix it,” Burya emphasized. Three more emerald-colored diamonds shot overhead: they zipped in helices around one another, then turned and swerved out across the river like sentient shooting stars.

When in doubt, change the subject : “How did your people get here?”

“We Critics. Festival has many mindspaces spare. Brought us along, like the Fringe and other lurkers in dark. Festival must travel and learn. We travel and change. Find what is broken and Criticize, help broken things fix selves. Achieve harmonious dark and warm-fed hiveness.” Something tall and shadowy slid across the courtyard behind Burya. He turned, hurriedly, to see two many-jointed legs, chicken-footed, capped by a thatch of wild darkness. The legs knelt, lowering the body until an opening hung opposite the balcony, as dark and uninviting as a skull’s hollow nasal cavity.

“Come, ride with me.” Sister of Stratagems the Seventh stood behind Burya, between him and his office.

It was not an offer but an instruction. “Will learn you much!”

“I–I—” Burya stopped protesting. He raised a hand to his throat, found the leather thong he wore around it, and yanked on the end of it. “Guards!”

Sister Seventh rolled forward, as ponderous and irresistible as an earthquake; she swept him backward into the walking hut, making that odd snuffling noise again. A furious hissing and quacking broke out behind her, followed by erratic gunfire as the first of the guard geese shot their way through the study door. Rubenstein landed on the floor with two hundred kilos of mole rat on top of him, holding him down; the floor lurched then rose like an elevator, dropped, and accelerated in a passable imitation of the fairground ride at a winter festival. He choked, trying to breathe, but before he could suffocate Sister Seventh picked herself up and sat back on what appeared to be a nest of dried twigs. She grinned at him horribly, baring her tusks, then pulled out a large root vegetable and began to gnaw on it.

“Where are you taking me? I demand to be put down—”

“Plotsk,” said the Critic. “To learn how to understand. Want a carrot?” They came for Martin as he lay sleeping. The door of his cabin burst open and two burly ratings entered; the light came on. ”What’s up?“ Martin asked fuzzily.