"David Brin - A Stage of Memory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

before...
He closed his eyes as a cool numbness spread up his arm and across his chest.
His scalp tingled.
Derek could feel the here and now start to slip away. He tried to concentrate,
determined not to let this trip get away from him!
Envision a small frame house on Sycamore Street, he told himself, in Albany,
New York...
Sycamore Street, so long ago... Mother would be cooking a Sunday supper,
Father is reading the paper, and my old room is a clutter of plastic airplane models,
touching the air with a faintly heady scent of glue.
The numbness spread down his jaw and spine, and he willed himself back
through the files of his cortex, back to Sycamore Street, back to being twelve years
old again... back to where a familiar female voice was about to call out...


"Supper's ready!"
It had worked! The new dose had worked! Those were exactly the words he had
willed his mother...
"Come on, Lothario! Get your ass out here. I've whipped together a simple,
nutritious meal for you. You've got ten minutes to eat and still get to the theater on
time!"
The alto voice carried a quaver of emotion, barely suppressed. Derek realized
with a sinking feeling that it was not his mother, after all.
His eyes opened. The drug had worked. The dingy little fleabag room had been
replaced by much richer surroundings. But here were no plastic model airplanes.
Rather, drifting glass and metal mobiles reflected opal gleams from two garish
lavalamps. A row of plaques and statuettes glittered in a mahogany ego-shrine across
from the bed. Underneath he felt the warm vibrations of an expensive automassage
oil-bed.
Derek felt that strange/familiar pressure as his midbrain surged forward to take
over. From now on he would be only an observer, unable even to make his eyes
blink while the triggered memories replayed perfectly, vividly, out of his control.
Derek felt a silent, internal cry of despair.
This is where I left off last time! I didn't want to come back here. This is too
close to the present. I wanted to go hack to when I was twelve!
He heard footsteps approach. The door slid swiftly along its rails to bang as it hit
the stops. A bright trapezoid of light spilled from the hallway, eclipsed by a slender
shadow.
"Well, Derek? Are you going to shave that famous puss and get dressed for the
show? Or shall I call Peter and tell him to get your understudy ready again?"
Even the injected form of the damned drug is sequential! I knew it. The
thrice-damned stuff takes me forward, one step at a time. I have no choice but to
start off each trip reliving where the last one ended!
"Derek?" the figure in the doorway demanded.
"I'll be out in a frigging minute," his midbrain answered--controlling his
voice--making it happen exactly as it had three years ago. The playback was
adamant, unchangeable.
"Shit!" he growled. "A guy can't even enjoy a little grass in peace, in his own
goddamn apartment." He had to fight the cannabis languor to pull himself up onto
one elbow, squinting at the brightness from the hall.