"Tony Daniel - Metaplanetary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniel Tony)

Standing over all creation a doubt-ridden priest took a piss.

He shook himself, looked between his feet at the stars, then tabbed his pants closed. He flushed the toilet
and centrifugal force took care of the rest.

Father Andre Sud walked back to his table in the Westway Diner. He padded over the living fire of the
plenum, the abyssтАФall of itтАФand hardly noticed. Even though this place was special tohim , it was really
just another caf├й with a see-through floorтАФa window as thin as paper and as hard as diamond. Dime a
dozen as they used to say a thousand years ago. The luciferan sign at the entrance saidFREE
DELIVERY in Basis. The sign under it saidOPEN 24 HRS . This sign was unlit. The place will close,
eventually.

The priest sat down and stirred his black tea. He read the sign, backward, and wondered if the words he
spoke when he spoke sounded anything like English used to. Hard to tell with the grist patch in his head.

Everybody understands one another on a general level these days, Andre Sud thought. Approximately
more or less they know what you mean.

There was a dull, greasy gleam to the napkin holder. The saltshaker was half-full. The laminate surface of
the table was worn through where the plates usually sat. The particle board underneath was soggy. There
was free-floating grist that sparkled like mica within the wood: used-to-be-cleaning-grist, entirely shorn
from the restaurantтАЩs controlling algorithm and nothing to do but shine. Like the enlightened pilgrim of the
Greentree Way was supposed to do, Andre thought. Become shorn and brilliant.

And what will you have with that hamburger?

Grist. Nada y grist. Grist y nada.

I am going through a depression, Andre reminded himself. I am even considering leaving the priesthood.

AndreтАЩs convert portion spoke through AndreтАЩs pellicleтАФthe microscopic, algorithmic part of him that
was spread through his body and spread out in the general vicinity. The convert spoke as if from a long
way off.

[This happens every winter. And lately with the insomnia. Cut it out with the nada y nada. EverythingтАЩs
physical, donтАЩt you know.]

[Except foryou, ] Andre thought back.

He usually imagined the convert that inhabited his pellicle as a little cloud of algebra symbols that followed
him around like mosquitoes. In truth it was normally invisible, of course. For most people, the tripartite
division of the human personality intoaspect, convert, andpellicle was a completely unconscious affair.
People did not тАЬtalkтАЭ to their convert portion as Andre was able to do any more than the conceptual part
of a single brain would talk to the logical part on a conscious level. But Andre had trained himself to
notice the partitions in his mentality. It was one of the things a Greentree shaman learned in seminary: the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were inside as well as тАЬup there.тАЭ The biology begat the mentality, and the
two communicated by means of the grist pellicle, the technological equivalent of тАЬthe Holy Ghost.тАЭ This
division of personhood was always expressed both psychologically, technologically, and spiritually. To
understand oneself, one must understand the multiplicity, as well as the unity, of his personality.