Scratch Monkey, page 239 by Charles Stross
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tuition of the Superbrights. Lev Bronstein had been in the grave for over fourteen hundred years. An interesting historical curio, prophet of a religion that exploded from birth to death in less than two centuries: someone had seen fit to resurrect his memories for this ship. Like the sister-craft, the Kennedy and the Thatcher and the Hitler ... the entire fleet was named after the charismatic dictators of an historical era. Had they ever dreamed of their heirs overrunning the galaxy, taking the stars by storm? Oshi blinked and concentrated on the ship- status readings.
"-- anomaly in flow-rate through coolant circuit three indicative of probable pump fail-urrre ..." the voice of the autopilot suddenly slurred, like a mechanical transcription device running down.
"Service interrupt: systems coming up. Sentience will be resumed shortly.
Incoming message: hello Oshi."
"You again." Oshi glared at the face in the display tank, relieved that it wasn't a major systems failure.
"Me." The disembodied head nodded. "Had some trouble with synchronicity; we're living at a fluctuating timebase in here. There's only a thousand of us drawing unlimited process time allocation, but the rest of Pascal is a real meat farm. It was never intended to hold a billion evacuees. Seriously thrashing, halfway to hyperslow time already. We're waiting for your status, Oshi."
"Oh, that." Oshi rubbed her brow wearily. "The status ..." all of a sudden a flicker of fire returned to her eyes. "Looks good. Downloads are proceeding: if the tapeworm doesn't learn to sing in time, well ... I've got a little treat in store for it when we leave. What's new at your end?" She watched the display alertly.
Boris looked away from her with disembodied eyes. "We think it's turning critical. We're not sure yet, but we figure we know where the Ultrabright ship's come from. System about fifty light years core-ward. Anyway there's a bit of inference ... we figure it's getting ready to listen for something. That's w