Ilse's designed span exceeded one hundred centuries. And though her brain was iron and germanium doped with arsenic, and her heart was a tiny cloud of hydrogen plasma, Ilse was one of Earth's creatures...
Ilse's earliest memory was a fragment, amounting to no less than fifteen seconds. Someone, perhaps inadvertently, brought her to consciousness as she sat atop her S-5N booster.
From Long Shot, by Vernor Vinge.
Published by Conde Nast Publications in 1972
Artwork was created in Artbreeder