Scratch Monkey
by Charles Stross
Oshi Adjani works for Bosa, does a strange job, provokes a revolution here, confronts a mass murderer there. Its field of activity is the Milky Way galaxy, and Boss is Super bright, one of the man-made super-intelligent artificial intelligences that see this galaxy as their property. Thoroughly trained, his body is filled with nanotechnology that expands his senses and allows him to communicate with ubiquitous Dreamtime coders. Sometimes that's enough. Now, Superbraits are facing mysterious ultrabraits, artificial intelligence as far beyond Superbraits as Superbraites that go beyond ordinary people. The Superbraites are fighting with them for the inevitable fight for control of the galaxy and DReamtime. Oshi was involved in this great conflict. He was sent to a human colony, where the Boss was predicted to be on the way to an ultra-bright eclipse. But the colony is in chaos, the Superbraith are crazy, and even Bosa doesn't care if Oshie lives or dies, because he's just a scratch monkey. For more information, visit Charles Stross's website.
