Cat Karina

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When everything else had run down, we will still have the legends of Old Earth.

There is a giant computer which straddles the world. It has its roots deep in the Fifty-second Millennium; that so‑distant past when Man discovered electricity. It walked through history hand‑in-hand with Man; it saw the building of the first Domes, it survived the reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field, it watched the Age of Resurgence, it fought Man’s wars for him and even, in the Domes, lived his life for him. It became so powerful that it was able to observe practically everything that happened on Earth and, from this, project what was going to happen in the future — or the If along, as it is more correctly called. Now, in these Dying Years, the computer is still there, still observing, thinking and predicting, in countless solar-powered centers all over Earth.

It is called the Rainbow.

I am called Alan-Blue‑Cloud. In a way I am the Rainbow’s interpreter. I am one of the few remaining beings who is able to operate a terminal, and I use this ability to draw true stories out of the computer; stories of True Humans and Specialists, of aliens and Bale Wolves and the sad neotenites known cruelly as Blubbers.

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