"Brin, David - Uplift 5 - Infinity's Shore" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

you, the rings who take up diverse roles in this shared body, a pudgy cone nearly as tall as a hoon, as heavy as a blue qheuen, and slow across the ground like an aged g'Kek with a cracked axle.

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you, the rings who vote each day whether to renew our coalition.

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From you rings i/we now request a ruling. Shall we carry on this fiction? This "Asx"?

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Unitary beings-the humans, urs, and other dear partners in exile-stubbornly use that term, Asx, to signify this loosely affiliated pile of fatty toruses, as if we/iаtruly had a fixed name, not a mere label of convenience.

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Of course unitary beings are all quite mad. We traeki long ago resigned ourselves to living in a universe filled with egotism.

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What we could not resign ourselves to-and the reason for our exile here on Jijo-was the prospect of becoming the most egotistical of all.

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Once, our/my stack of bloated tubes played the role of a modest village pharmacist, serving others with our humble secretions, near the sea bogs of Far Wet Sanctuary. Then others began paying us/me homage, calling us "Asx," chief sage of the Traeki Sept and member of the Guiding Council of the Six.

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Now we stand in a blasted wasteland that was formerly a pleasant festival glade. Our sensor rings and neural tendrils recoil from sights and sounds they cannot bear to perceive. And so we are left virtually blind, our component toruses buffeted by the harsh fields of two nearby starships, as vast as mountains.

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Even now, awareness of those starships fades away. ...

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We are left in blackness.

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" аааа" аааа"

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What has just happened!

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Be calm, my rings. This sort of thing has transpired before. Too great a shock can jar a traeki stack out of alignment, causing gaps in short-term memory. But there is another, surer way to find out what has happened. Neural memory is a flimsy thing. How much better off we are, counting on the slow/reliable wax.