"Pat Cadigan - The Final Remake Of Little Latin Larry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cadigan Pat)

But no, I won't try to wiggle out on that one. Even if there is so much
truth to it that most people were there once. Whether they were there or
not.
I don't expect you to understand me. I'm a visionary. No, just kidding,
just shaking your leg, as (I think) they used to say.
All right, back to it, now. The Larry people came to me. I don't care what
they told everyone later about my chasing them over hill and dale, or chip
and dale, or nook and cranny. The Realm of the Senses Theatre kept me busy
enough that I didn't have to chase anyone. People were always beating down
the door with sense-memories. My staff at that time was a mad thing named
Ola, about three and a half feet tall -- achondroplasia -- who usually
kept most of her brain in her sidekick, and vice versa. Half the time, you
never knew exactly which was which. It wasn't really any kind of
intentional thing, or a statement or anything. Ola just went that way. A
happy accident. Happy for Ola. So she mated with a machine, so what. I may
be retro, but I'm not that retro; I certainly wasn't then.
Ola put off a lot of people for a variety of reasons -- she was doing the
jobs of several people and so depriving them of jobs, cyborgs were against
Nature or the Bible, or she wasn't enough of a cyborg to claim the title
(which she didn't in the first place), or she was too spooky, too
feminine, not feminine enough, not spooky enough, for god's sake. People,
my god; people. Nature gave them tongues, technology gave them
loudspeakers, and they all believe that because they can use both,
whatever they say is important.
I suppose that was why I started Realm of the Senses Theatre. The
watchwords of the time were "custom," "customizable," "individual," and
"interactive." Heavy on the "interactive." What the hell did that mean,
anyway, "interactive"? I used to rant about this to Ola and her sidekick
all the time. Who the hell thought up "interactive," I'd say; your goddam
shoes are "interactive," every item of clothing you put on is
"interactive," your car is "interactive," what is the big goddamn reverb
on "interactive," goddamn life is "interactive" --
And Ola would say, Oh, they don't want to interact, Gracie, they want to
kibbitz. Everybody's got to have a little say in how it goes. Do it in
blue; I want it in velvet; it would be perfect if it was about twice as
long and half as high. You know.
So that was what Realm of the Senses Theatre did. It gave people a say in
their own entertainment. You could have it in blue, in velvet, half as
high and twice as long, so to speak, and if you didn't like it, it was
your own lookout. But old retro Gracie -- yes, even then I had a retro
streak a mile wide -- old retro Gracie used to think about staging some
kind of event that people couldn't interfere with, couldn't amp up or
down, or customize in any way -- an event that you'd just have to
experience as it was, on its own terms, not yours. And then see what
happened to you afterward. So I started thinking about something called
High Sky Theatre. I was calling it that because I was thinking the event
would be like the sky -- you could see it, even get right up in the middle
of it, but you couldn't change it, it rained on you or it didn't and you
had to adjust yourself, not it.
And then, synchronicity, I guess. I was just toying with a few designs for