The Core has contact with every colony world, with such interstellar barbarians as the Ousters, and with other sources the Hegemony could not imagine.” I sat stunned. “With the Ousters?” Since the war on Bressia a few years earlier, the Ousters had been the Web’s prime bogeymen. The idea of the Core…the same congregation of AIs which advises the Senate and the All Thing and which allow our entire economy, farcaster system, and technological civilization to run…the idea of the Core being in touch with the Ousters was frightening. And what the hell did Johnny mean by “other sources”? I didn’t
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