"Aldiss, Brian - Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldiss Brian W)

Take your mind off my wife, you bastard, thought Swinton, still
smiling.

He rose to make his speech amid applause.

After a couple of jokes, he said, "Today marks a real
breakthrough for the company. It is now almost ten years since we
put our first synthetic life-forms on the world market. You all
know what a success they have been, particularly the miniature
dinosaurs. But none of them had intelligence.

"It seems like a paradox that in this day and age we can create
life but not intelligence. Our first selling line, the Crosswell
Tape, sells best of all, and is the most stupid of all." Everyone
laughed.

"Though three-quarters of the overcrowded world are starving, we
are lucky here to have more than enough, thanks to population
control. Obesity's our problem, not malnutrition. I guess there's
nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell working for
him in the small intestine, a perfectly safe parasite tape-worm
that enables its host to eat up to fifty percent more food and
still keep his or her figure. Right?" General nods of agreement.

"Our miniature dinosaurs are almost equally stupid. Today, we
launch an intelligent synthetic life-form -- a full-size
serving-man.

"Not only does he have intelligence, he has a controlled amount
of intelligence. We believe people would be afraid of a being
with a human brain. Our serving-man has a small computer in his
cranium.

"There have been mechanicals on the market with mini-computers
for brains -- plastic things without life, super-toys -- but we
have at last found a way to link computer circuitry with
synthetic flesh."

*

David sat by the long window of his nursery, wrestling with paper
and pencil. Finally, he stopped writing and began to roll the
pencil up and down the slope of the desk-lid.

"Teddy!" he said.

Teddy lay on the bed against the wall, under a book with moving
pictures and a giant plastic soldier. The speech-pattern of his
master's voice activated him and he sat up.