"Asaro, Catherine - Echea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asaro Catherine)

then severed the connection.

That night, I dreamed. It was an odd dream
because it felt like a virtual reality
vid, complete with emotions and all the
five senses. But it had the distance of VR
tooЦthat strange sense that the experience
was not mine.

I dreamed I was on a dirty, dusty street.
The air was thin and dry. I had never felt
air like this. It tasted recycled, and it
seemed to suck the moisture from my skin.
It wasnТt hot, but it wasnТt cold either.
I wore a ripped shirt and ragged pants,
and my shoes were boots made of a light
material I had never felt before. Walking
was easy and precarious at the same time.
I felt lighter than ever, as if with one
wrong gesture I would float.

My body moved easily in this strange
atmosphere, as if it were used to it. I
had felt something like it before: when my
husband and I had gone to the Museum of
Science and Technology in Chicago on our
honeymoon. We explored the Moon exhibit,
and felt firsthand what it was like to be
in a colony environment.

Only that had been clean.

This wasnТt.

The buildings were white plastic, covered
with a filmy grit and pockmarked with time
and use. The dirt on the ground seemed to
get on everything, but I knew, as well as
I knew how to walk in this imperfect
gravity, that there wasnТt enough money to
pave the roads.

The light above was artificial, built into
the dome itself. If I looked up, I could
see the dome and the light, and if I
squinted, I could see beyond to the
darkness that was the unprotected
atmosphere. It made me feel as if I were
in a lighted glass porch on a starless
night. Open, and vulnerable, and