"Burstein, Michael A - Heisenberg's Magazine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burstein Michael A)

"Good idea. I saw a few pay phones on the corner. Let's go."
We got to the corner, and there were no payphones. Stan scratched his head,
puzzled. Then he laughed.
"This is familiar," he said.
"Restaurants and phones disappearing is familiar?" I asked, incredulously.
"Well, the disappearing part, I mean. Because of the move, a lot of stuff seems
to have been misplaced. Boxes of issues that I thought were in one place turn
out to be somewhere else. Even the papers I put on my desk this morning
vanished."
"That doesn't sound good," I said, thinking of my contracts and checks.
"Oh, it does have its good points. All the slush manuscripts from unknown
writers disappeared, as well as all the Asimov's Hugos." He grinned.
"Maybe it's a quantum phenomenon," I suggested. "Heisenberg's Uncertainty
Principle, and all that. Perhaps there's a wave of uncertainty passing through
the magazines, even as we speak, making changes left and right."
"Hm," Stan said, a gleam in his eye. "You might want to make a 'Probability
Zero' out of that."
I was stunned; I had just been making a joke. "You want another recursive story
about Analog?" I asked. "Well, if you're willing to publish it, I'm willing to
write it." Then a thought struck me. "Hey, it'll give me a chance to work Sharah
into a story. She's been bugging me to do so, ever since she realized that Ian
and Scott were in the last one."
He nodded. "You'd better not mention that in print, though, or a lot of people
will bug you to put them into stories. Especially Tony Lewis; he loves to keep
track of recursive science fiction stories, and would probably ask to be
mentioned in one. In the meantime, let's head back to the offices, before they
disappear entirely." We laughed.
Stan had taken only one step when I spotted a pay phone on our corner. "Stan!
Look!"
He did, and frowned. "I would have sworn this wasn't here a moment ago," he
said, as I called Information and found the restaurant. The address they gave
was for the abandoned storefront, and when we got there, it was no longer the
abandoned storefront, but the restaurant Argentine Pavillion.
We didn't question it; maybe there was a wave of uncertainty passing through our
lives at the moment. After all, the fate of the digests had seemed uncertain for
quite some time; these were probably residual quantum effects we were
experiencing.
We entered the restaurant and sat down to order lunch. Stan began raving about
my stories, and all the ideas he had for my career. He finished by saying,
"Michael, as long as I am editor of Analog, your stories will always have a
market. We're going to make you a star!"
I blushed and looked down at the table. I still felt a little uncertain about
the suddenness of all my success. But I also felt grateful that Stan Schmidt had
shown such faith in me as a writer.
Then I looked up. "Stan? Stan!" I shouted, but he had already disappeared.
END
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