Cyber Rogues

• THE TWO FACES OF TOMORROW
  
  • PROLOGUE
    
  • PART ONE
    
    • CHAPTER ONE
      
    • CHAPTER TWO
      
    • CHAPTER THREE
      
    • CHAPTER FOUR
      
    • CHAPTER FIVE
      
    • CHAPTER SIX
      
    • CHAPTER SEVEN
      
    • CHAPTER EIGHT
      
    • CHAPTER NINE
      
    • CHAPTER TEN
      
    • CHAPTER ELEVEN
      
    • CHAPTER TWELVE
      
    • CHAPTER THIRTEEN
      
    • CHAPTER FOURTEEN
      
  • PART TWO
    
    • CHAPTER FIFTEEN
      
    • CHAPTER SIXTEEN
      
    • CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
      
    • CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
      
    • CHAPTER NINETEEN
      
    • CHAPTER TWENTY
      
  • PART THREE
    
    • CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
      
    • CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
      
    • CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
      
    • CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
      
    • CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
      
    • CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
      
    • CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
      
    • CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
      
    • CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
      
    • CHAPTER THIRTY
      
    • CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
      
    • CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
      
    • CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
      
    • CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
      
    • CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
      
    • CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
      
    • CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
      
    • CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
      
    • CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
      
    • CHAPTER FORTY
      
    • CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
      
    • CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
      
    • CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
      
    • CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
      
    • CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
      
    • CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
      
    • CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
      
    • CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
      
    • CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
      
    • CHAPTER FIFTY
      
  • EPILOGUE
    
• REALTIME INTERRUPT
  
  • PROLOGUE
    
  • CHAPTER ONE
    
  • CHAPTER TWO
    
  • CHAPTER THREE
    
  • CHAPTER FOUR
    
  • CHAPTER FIVE
    
  • CHAPTER SIX
    
  • CHAPTER SEVEN
    
  • CHAPTER EIGHT
    
  • CHAPTER NINE
    
  • CHAPTER TEN
    
  • CHAPTER ELEVEN
    
  • CHAPTER TWELVE
    
  • CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    
  • CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    
  • CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    
  • CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    
  • CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    
  • CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    
  • CHAPTER NINETEEN
    
  • CHAPTER TWENTY
    
  • CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
    
  • CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
    
  • CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
    
  • CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
    
  • CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
    
  • CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
    
  • CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
    
  • CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
    
  • CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
    
  • CHAPTER THIRTY
    
  • CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
    
  • CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
    
  • CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
    
  • CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
    
  • CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
    
  • CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
    
  • CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
    
  • CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
    
  • CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
    
  • CHAPTER FORTY
    
  • CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
    
  • CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
    
  • EPILOGUE
    
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  

Two classic novels from a best-selling master of SF.

Skynet and
The Matrix
have got nothing on James Hogan in this great two novel collection.

The Two Faces of Tomorrow
Midway through the 21st century, a proposed major software upgrade—an artificial intelligence—will give the world communications system an unprecedented degree of independent decision making. Now to fully assess the system, a new space station habitat is deployed with an A.I. named Spartacus. The idea is that if Spartacus gets out of hand, the system can be shut down and the station destroyed—unless, that is, Spartacus decides to take matters into its own hands and take the fight to Earth.

Realtime Interrupt
Joe Corrigan awakens in a hospital to find that his life no longer exists. As director of the supersecret Oz Project, his job was to create a computerized environment virtually indistinguishable from reality. Oz failed. Now Joe, left alone to pick up the pieces of his shattered life, Joe finds himself in an unfamiliar world—a world where nothing is quite as it should be. Now Joe must discover a terrible truth about his new world—and figure out how to get out alive!

Books by James P. Hogan

THE GIANTS SERIES

The Two Moons

The Two Worlds

Mission to Minerva

Code of the Lifemaker

The Immortality Option

The Cradle of Saturn

The Anguished Dawn

Bug Park

Echoes of an Alien Sky

Endgame Enigma

The Genesis Machine

Inherit the Stars

The Legend That Was Earth

Migration

Moon Flower

The Multiplex Man

Paths to Otherwhere

The Proteus Operation

Realtime Interrupt

Thrice Upon a Time

The Two Faces of Tomorrow

Voyage from Yesteryear

Worlds in Chaos
(omnibus)

Cyber Rogues
(omnibus)

COLLECTIONS

Catastrophes, Chaos and Convulsions

Kicking the Sacred Cow

Martian Knightlife

Minds, Machines and Evolution

Rockets, Redheads & Revolution

CYBER ROGUES

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by the estate of James P. Hogan.

The Two Faces Of Tomorrow Copyright © 1979 by James P. Hogan.

Realtime Interrupt Copyright (c) 1995 by James P. Hogan.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 978-1-4767-8035-1

Cover art by Kurt Miller

First Baen printing, April 2015

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hogan, James P.

[Novels. Selections]

Cyber rogues / James P Hogan.

pages ; cm -- (Baen ; 1)

"A Baen Books Original."

Summary: "The Two Faces of Tomorrow and Realtime Interrupt in one combo volume. Midway thru the 21st century, a proposed major software upgrade--an A.I.--will give the world communications system an unprecedented degree of independent decision making. A new space station is deployed to house the A.I. named Spartacus. The idea is if Spartacus gets out of hand, the system can be shut down and the station destroyed--unless, Spartacus decides to take matters into its own hands. Then, Joe Corrigan awakens in a hospital to find his life no longer exists. As director of the supersecret Oz Project, his job was to create a computerized environment virtually indistinguishable from reality. Oz failed...or did it?"-- Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4767-8035-1 (softcover)

1. Artificial intelligence--Fiction. I. Hogan, James P. Two faces of tomorrow. II. Hogan, James P. Real time interrupt. III. Title.

PR6058.O348A6 2015

823'.914--dc23

2014043652

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

THE TWO FACES
OF TOMORROW

PROLOGUE

The planetismal began as a region of above-average density that occurred by chance in a swirling cloud of dust and gas condensing out of the expanding vastness of space. Gently at first but at a rate that grew steadily faster as time went by, it continued to sweep up the smaller accretions in its vicinity until it had grown to a rough spheroid of compressed dust and rock measuring fifty feet across.

Eventually the planetismal itself came under the pull of a larger body that had been growing in similar fashion, and began falling toward it. It impacted at a speed of over ten miles per second, releasing the energy equivalent of a one-hundred-kiloton bomb and blasting a crater more than half a mile in diameter.

Shortly afterward, as measured on a cosmic time-scale, a second planetismal fell close by and created another crater of similar dimensions; the distance between the crater centers was such that the raised rims of debris thrown up by the explosions merged together for a distance, resulting in the formation of a ridge of exaggerated height between the two basins.

In the time that followed, the rain of meteorites continued, pulverizing the landscape into a wilderness of sharp-grained dust to a depth of several feet, the desolation being relieved only by the occasional outcrop or shattered boulder. The outlines of the craters were slowly eroded away and stirred back into the sea of dust.

When the bombardment at last petered away, all that remained of the ridge was a rounded hummock to mark where the rims had intersected—a mound of dust and rock debris forty feet high and several hundred long. There it remained as one of the weary but triumphant survivors that were left to stare out over the gently rolling wastes that stretched to the horizon.

From then on the ridge remained essentially unchanged. A steady drizzle of micrometeorites continued to erode the top millimeter or so of its surface, exposing fresh material to trap hydrogen and helium nuclei from the solar wind; particles from sporadic solar flares caused isolated nuclear transformations down to several centimeters, and cosmic rays penetrated slightly farther. But in terms of its size, shape and general appearance, the ridge had become a permanent feature on a changeless world.

Four billion years later, give or take a few, Commander Jerry Fields, assigned to the International Space Administration’s lunar base at Reinhold, was standing staring up at that same ridge. Beside him, similarly clad in a blue-gray spacesuit bearing the golden-flashed ISA shoulder insignia, Kal Paskoe frowned through his visor, studying the line of the ridge with an engineer’s practiced eye.

“Well, what do you think?” Fields inquired into his radio. “See any problems?”

“Uh uh.” Paskoe’s reply was slow and noncommittal as he squinted against the glare of the setting sun. He turned to stare back at the metallic glint that marked the position of the base at the foot of the low hills on the skyline behind them, then returned his gaze to the ridge to register mentally a couple of salient boulders near its crest. “No . . . no problems,” he said at last. “I think I’ve seen all I need. Let’s get back to the truck and get the job scheduled. We can’t do any more here until the computers have figured out how they’re going to handle it.”