Rapture of the Nerds (38 page)

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?”

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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