There is a strange feeling of congestion in his head; then a moment later a sense of release sweeps over him. He flexes his fingers: they tingle slightly, as if released from the confinement of invisible felt mittens. And everything comes crystal clear again.
Ade groans. Huw bends down and grabs his right hand. “Think you can stand?” he asks.
“C’n try ...” Huw heaves, and Ade slowly slides up the wall until he’s in an approximation of verticality. “Thnksss. Ack—thanks. Yer a card, mate.”
“Think nothing of it.” There is something up with his fingers. Huw flexes them in front of his face. What if that rootkit was hiding in wherever I keep my muscle memory? he wonders.
“That Doc, didn’t know he was, was in town—”
“Leave it,” Huw tells him firmly. “Look, just stop apologizing. If you want to be useful, help Bonnie sort out that overgrown kid there.” He nods at Sam. “Me, I’ve got more important things to deal with.”
With that, Huw heads back to the pottery out back, to find out if the magic has returned to his fingertips.
And as it turns out, it has.
The golem knocking at Huw’s door is the same model his mum wore, that fateful day, but there’s any number of them about now, quick and dirty embodiments for anyone from the cloud with a yen to indulge some fleshy pleasures for an hour or three. Huw spies it from the sitting room window, peeking out the corner of the curtains, and decides to wait it out.
It keeps knocking.
And knocking.
Soon, the whole house is shaking.
“Get that, will you?” Bonnie says. She’s waist-deep in some kind of erotipolymer stuff she’s downloaded from one of Adrian’s sex-ninjas, has been all week, and isn’t showing any signs of tiring of it. But the thudding is getting to her.
Huw grits his teeth and ignores her too.
Thud. Thud. thud. There’s a splintery sound from the lintel of the front door, not a full-blown tearing away, but a sound that tells you the hinges are reconsidering their relationship with the doorframe.
“Get it, for shit’s sake!”
Huw closes his eyes. He stomps to the door.
“Go away,” he says, and closes it again.
Except that the golem has inserted its foot in the door, and the door bounces back and hits him in the nose, and he takes a step backwards, clutching at it, and moans. “Please, go away.” Maybe politeness will work.
“Greetings, Jones, Huw,” it says in a neutral voice. It’s a goddamned NPC. Ambulatory spam. He’s just working up a head of really righteous steam when it says, “I have been dispatched by the office of interstellar harmony of the Galactic Authority to execute a survey of your species’ recent assimilation experience. We realize you are a busy organism, and this will take only a moment of your time. Your participation will help us shape our future species trials, and give our own staffers valuable feedback. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.”
And Huw starts to laugh. Laugh like a drain, laugh like a monkey trapped in a bariatric chamber filled with nitrous oxide, laugh like a man in the grips of a joke that encompasses the whole cosmos.
“All right, then,” he says, “let’s do it. Want a cup of tea?”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Cory Doctorow is the New York Times bestselling author of Little Brother, Pirate Cinema and For the Win. He's a technology journalist and columnist for such publications as The Guardian, Publishers Weekly and Locus, and is co-owner/co-editor of the popular website Boing Boing. He's a fellow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and co-founded the UK-based Open Rights Group. In 2012, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University. Born in Canada, he now lives in London, England with his wife Alice, who runs a 3D printed toy company called MakieLab; and his daughter Poesy, who is learning to pick locks.
Charles Stross, 47, is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. The author of six Hugo-nominated novels and winner of the 2005 and 2010 Hugo awards for best novella ("The Concrete Jungle" and "Palimpsest"), Stross's works have been translated into over twelve languages.
Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped-catastrophes in the past, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stake-out) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing he tried to change employer just as the bubble burst). Along the way he collected degrees in Pharmacy and Computer Science, making him the world's first officially qualified cyberpunk writer (just as cyberpunk curled up and died).
He's currently working on a series of near-future novels about the social impact of information networks on games, crime, and politics, including "Halting State" and "Rule 34".In 2013 he will be Creative in Residence at the UK-wide Centre for Creativity, Regulation, Enterprise and Technology, researching the business models and regulation of industries such as music, film, TV, computer games and publishing.
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