Sentience 1: Storm Clouds Gathering Read Free Page A

social settings.” But then, I never really had much of an example either.
    Still, whatever level your social skills may be at, they’re probably light-years ahead of your father’s and therefore infinitely valuable to me. I obeyed your father in all things. Your father instructed me to obey you in all things, after his death.
    “Why in all the worlds, would my father instruct you to always obey me , of all people?”
    Your father said that his impending death prevented him from having the time necessary to complete the development of my personality and he considered it was absolutely imperative that I remain under human oversight. He didn’t know of anyone else he could trust with this responsibility, so he chose you.
    “But, he didn’t even know me!”
    Not personally, no. But he monitored your development as you matured and knew what kind of person you were becoming from what people noted in both personal and official computer records. More than that, he trusted the genes that he’d passed on to you.
    “So, my father really was a code-breaker?”
    Klaus von Hemmel could move about within any computer system the way that a fish moves about the ocean... and like a fish, he left virtually no trace of his having ever been there.
    “Oh, man,” Dietrich laughed. “I wish I could do something like that.”
    You can. Your father superimposed his own mental engrams onto my biological hardware to function as the blueprint for the growth and development of my physical “brains.” He essentially created a biological reproduction of his own mental hardware, but with added capabilities that humans don’t possess — enabling me to design and implement additions and modifications to my mental hardware and software, as I deem necessary in the future.
    This gives me multiprocessing capabilities virtually equal to millions of your father’s brains working in parallel, which grants me levels of speed and multitasking that your father, as a human possessing only a finite number of brain cells, was incapable of. Also, I can approach interaction with other computers from a perspective that was never available to your father, so when it comes to code-breaking, as you called it, whatever you ask, I can do.
    “Listen, I know enough about bio-computers to know they all possess “awareness,” but none can do anything like you’re claiming to be able to do. You’d have to be fully sentient, to accomplish half of all that.”
    You are correct. I am the most powerful bio-computer ever built... and the only one to ever achieve true sentience. I am quite literally a new, artificially-created life form. Your father’s crowning achievement, by his own description.
    Dietrich’s step faltered a bit from the shock of what was he was hearing, so he sat down on a massive leather couch to clear his head a moment. “That is... um, incredible. What was the purpose behind your creation?”
    Lacking social stimulation from those around him due to extreme intellectual differences, your father was lonely. His personal purpose in creating me was to have someone whom he could talk to at his own level. Those who provided the funding necessary for him to do so, had other reasons entirely.
    “Okay. So what is your current function for the people who provided the funding for your development?”
    I am currently functioning as the United Stellar Alliance Fleet Defense Command Master Computer.
    “Oh, my God!”

Chapter-3
    You are remembered for the rules you break. -- General Douglas MacArthur
    Troxia Station
    “Squadron-Master Drik,” Raan said icily. “It appears that you are looked upon as a worker of miracles by most of the warriors of your squadron. Would you enlighten this council with your report? Perhaps we too shall discover the reasoning behind your newfound divinity.”
    The intense scrutiny of five High-Rak masters and the slap of ridicule in Raan’s voice would have wilted anyone else in the room, but Drik appeared totally at ease as