"Burroughs, William S. - Immortality" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs William S)

another requires months of sifting and checking computerized plans and
alternate routes to avoid the possibility of an accident. His idiotic
cowardice knows no bounds. There he sits, looking like a Chimu vase with
a thick layer of smooth purple scar tissue. Encased as he is in this
armor, his movements are slow and hydraulic. It takes him ten minutes to
sit down. This layer gets thicker and thicker right down to the bone-the
doctors have to operate with power tools. So we leave Mr. Rich Parts and
the picturesque parts people their monument, a mountain of scar tissue.

As L. Ron Hubbard, founder of scientology, said: "The rightest right a
man could be would be to live infinitely wrong." I wrote "wrong" for
"long" and the slip is significant- for the menas by which immortality
is realized in science fiction, which will soon be science fact, are
indeed infinitely wrong, the wrongest wrong a man can be, vampiric or
worse.

Improved transplant techniques open the question whether the ego itself
could be transplanted from one body to another, and the further question
as to exactly where this entity resides. Here is Mr. Hart, a
trillionaire dedicated to his personal immortality. Where is this thing
called Mr. Hart? Precisely where, in the human nervous system, does this
ugly death-sucking, death- dealing, death-fearing thing reside? Science
gives only a tentative answer: the "ego" seems to be located in the
midbrain at the top of the head. "Well," he thinks, "couldn't we just
scoop it out of a healthy youth, throw his in the garbage where it
belongs, and slide in MEEEEEEEE?" So he starts looking for a brain
surgeon, a "scrambled egg" man, and he wants the best. When it comes to
a short-order job old Doc Zeit is tops. He can switch eggs in an alley.

Mr. Hart embodies the competitive, acquisitive, success-minded spirit
that formulated American capitalism. The logical extension of this ugly
spirit is criminal. Success is its own justification. He who succees
deserves to succeed; he is RIGHT. The operation is a success. The
doctors have discreetly withdrawn. When a man wakes up in a beautiful
new bod, he can flip out. It wouldn't pay to be a witness. Mr. Hart
stands up and stretches luxuriously in his new body. He runs his hands
over the lean young muscle where his potbelly used to be. All that
remains of the donor is a blob of gray matter in a dish. Mr. Hart puts
his hands on his hips and leans over the blob.

"And how wrong can you be? DEAD."

He spits on it and he spits ugly.

The final convulsions of a universe based on quantitative factors, like
money, junk, and time, would seem to be at hand. The time approaches
when no amount of money will buy anything and time itself will run out.

This is a parable of vampirism gone berserk. But all vampiric blueprints
for immortality are wrong not only from the ethical standpoint. They are