Saturn's Children
by Charles Stross
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
This book is dedicated to the memory of two of the giants of science fiction:
ROBERT ANSON HEINLEIN (July 7, 1907–May 8, 1988) and ISAAC ASIMOV (January 2, 1920–April 6, 1992)
The Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
part one
INNER SYSTEM
Learning Not to Die
TODAY IS THE two hundredth anniversary of the final extinction of my One True Love, as close as I can date it. I am drunk on battery acid and wearing my best party frock, sitting on a balcony beneath a pleasure palace afloat in the stratosphere of Venus. My feet dangle over a slippery-slick rain gutter as I peek over the edge: Thirty kilometers below my heels, the metal-snowed foothills of Maxwell Montes glow red-hot. I am thinking about jumping. At least I’ll make a pretty corpse, I tell myselves. Until I melt.
* * * * *
And then—
I DO NOT contemplate suicide lightly.
* * * * *
I am old and cynical and have a flaw in my character, which is this: I am uneager to die. I have this flaw in common with my surviving sibs, of course.