Negociaciones Comerciales
IV. LOGROS OBTENIDOS POR EL MINAGRI
4.1 En Mejoramiento de la Gestión
everything just felt right when connected this way. The connection was more personal and intimate, bonding her mind inside the machine completely until it was her body. She became the van.
The previous bullet holes were well-patched, but she could still feel them like small scabs. The urge to scratch at them was terrible, but there were other issues she had to explore first. Turning her drive train, she felt the flop in her right ankle and knew that it wouldn’t hold her weight. The tire was flat, but she could feel the small grind in her ankle that indicated a minor bend in the rim as well. Small enough that you couldn’t have seen it with the naked eye, but a rigger’s awareness was something else entire- ly. More troubling was the phlegm in her lungs and the stress in her heart. The engine damage was more wide- spread than she’d first realized, hardly fatal but enough that she’d be short of breath, unable to reach top speed, keep a good pace, or pull a large load. Her team needed to know that, when things got hot, they could count on her to get them out of there like she did three nights ago. But as it stood now, there was no way she could. If she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t run. There was a feeling like flush to her cheeks as she realized that she’d thought of Charlie as her true self again, an impossible response as she didn’t currently have cheeks, and she idly won- dered if she’d turned on the van’s heaters in response. She ran a few more diagnostics, wiggling her fingers and toes, blinking and opening her eyes wide, wriggling her nose to make sure the windshield wipers would work, making mental notes about what needed to be fixed and what was fine.
In time, she realized that she was procrastinating. She’d noted all the damage but hadn’t returned to her
suals at once, low-end sonar giving her an approximate location of everything within ten meters, atmospheric sensors bathing her in numerous scents and an aware- ness that, of course, it would soon be raining in Seattle. She knew her normal five senses were blind, deaf, and dumb compared to this, the sensor arrays showing her what the world was actually like in a way that she could never experience normally. She allowed herself to sim- ply lie there, floating in space, a gentle pressure against her torso where the van’s frame was supported by the lift, just enjoying the sensors … until a rough series of coughs jolted her with pain.
Right. Engine damage.
With a resigned pang of disappointment, she slid back out of the van and into her natural form, groggi- ly disconnecting the cord from her spine. As she did, she felt the familiar pins and needles in her legs as her neural pathways reconnected and blood began flowing properly. She stood on wobbly legs before setting her console to one side. She shivered a bit, vulnerable flesh thinking the room was cooler than her metal skin had, then glanced around at how much darker the room was without the van’s eyes.
She held up her left hand, retracting the fist inside the arm cuff of her forearm, then extending a ratchet from the aperture. “All right, Aleksi, let’s get that tire off. We’re going to need to get that rim straightened out af- terwards.”
“Affirmative, mistress. Unit designate Aleksi is al- ways ready to serve.”
On her workbench, a small bag of soy tacos contin- ued to cool, forgotten as it dangled from the loose grip of her old arm. Just another casualty of a rigger’s life.
>
So, why are we letting Clockwork do this again?>
Slamm-0!>
We’re not “letting” him, we asked him.>
Glitch>
After Rigger X told us no. Full disclosure.>
Bull>
What was it he said again? “Who cares about toys and glorified vacuum cleaners?”>
Glitch>
I get that, but … Clockwork? Come on.>
Slamm-0!>
I know that you two have history, Fred, but remember, FastJack recruited him for a reason, same as the rest of us. You at least owe it a look-over for that if nothing else.>
Bull>
… Frag. All right, put it up.>
Slamm-0!>
Already on it.>
GlitchDRONING ON
AND ON AND ON
AND ON AND …
POSTED BY: CLOCKWORK
It never ceases to amaze me, how few people really get drones. I mean, they’re everywhere, right? It should be a no-brainer, but no, they’re too common now. They’re like AR spam or pollution, the background noise of life that everyone looks over, through, or past. I’m here to tell you that you shouldn’t, and further to show you what you’re missing. But first, it’s a tradition around here to talk about the distant past, and I’m not one to skip steps. As such …
IGNITION
The history of civilization is filled with machines, from the Simple Machines of Archimedes in antiquity to the Five Mechanisms of Heron of Alexandria near the year 1, to Leonardo da Vinci’s Renaissance inventions, to the electric masterpieces of today—each one given purpose simply by existing, serving humanity by definition. While the first machines were simple things of wood and rope, as time marched on, we adapted them to new materi- als, new applications, but always as a force multiplier. If one man couldn’t lift a rock by himself, he could use a
pulley to do the work of five, making every action more efficient. If it took a man a week to travel a distance, we could put wheels under him and have a horse pull him in half the time. Later, we replaced the horse with an engine and got even faster. Faster, stronger, better—we made machines work for us.
The first time drones were weaponized is debatable. Old Chinese stories of clockwork soldiers and magical automatons of Europe should be disregarded in the name of science, leaving us the first verified use in 1849 when, on August 22, the Austrians released firebombs via balloon into Venice, lighting the way for the future with fire. Balloons, manned this time, were further devel- oped over the next few decades, leading to aerial obser- vation and reconnaissance more than bombing work, as the strength of eyes-in-the-sky became realized. Over the next few decades, an unwillingness to sacrifice pi- lots combined with a need for more aircraft resulted in a race for drones, either remote-operated, or self-guided, weapons that could get the job done bloodlessly.
>
Bloodless for one side, that is. As bloody as possible for the other!>
Aufheben>
So dismissive of the magic of the past. Do you think it has never bubbled up before?>
Man-of-Many-NamesThe dawn of the space race brought even more work into the field as robots—a word invented by a Czech named Karel Capec and not a Japanese word for “servant,” as so many people seem to think—became a cultural fasci- nation. Elektro shocked the world at the 1939 World’s Fair by speaking, smoking, and moving about, while Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet and Rosie the Robot from
The Jetsons captured the minds of youths who would bring
about the robot revolution half a century later. General Mo- tors’ Unimate showed that robots could accomplish tasks too dangerous for humans, a task they did so well at that whole factories were soon given over to automation.