"Davis, Jerry - Death's Head Reunion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davis Jerry)

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     For the first time ever, George finds his life doesn't suck. During the Calamity Awards, George wins as best editor in his medium. His earnings increase 10-fold overnight. Tremendous pressures are at work on those few who fit in the term, "middle-class," forces that are either trying to make them poor or rich. It's an inherently unstable position. Most become poor and commit suicide. Others, like George, join the ranks of the three percent that control ninety-seven percent of the money.
     Money makes money. More money makes even more money. The "rich" class, like the "poor" class, is a very stable position. While an earthquake is killing several thousand poor people on the Gold Coast, and a tidal wave is wiping out hundreds of thousands of poor people in Asia, George and Bernadette are moving into her new condo in space. The city is called "Eutopia." The designers are very proud of the name (they made it up themselves) because it's pronounced "Utopia" but it's spelled like "Europe" --- which is a very chic place, at least inside the heavily guarded walls.
     There are no heavily guarded walls in Eutopia. There are no locks on the doors in Eutopia. Many homes have no doors at all. Nobody in this place is going to steal anything from anybody, and even if they did, everyone is so rich that nobody would care. Even the servants are rich. The ones that aren't rich aren't alive --- they're mechanical.

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     For the first time ever, George finds his life doesn't suck. During the Calamity Awards, George wins as best editor in his medium. His earnings increase 10-fold overnight. Tremendous pressures are at work on those few who fit in the term, "middle-class," forces that are either trying to make them poor or rich. It's an inherently unstable position. Most become poor and commit suicide. Others, like George, join the ranks of the three percent that control ninety-seven percent of the money.
     Money makes money. More money makes even more money. The "rich" class, like the "poor" class, is a very stable position. While an earthquake is killing several thousand poor people on the Gold Coast, and a tidal wave is wiping out hundreds of thousands of poor people in Asia, George and Bernadette are moving into her new condo in space. The city is called "Eutopia." The designers are very proud of the name (they made it up themselves) because it's pronounced "Utopia" but it's spelled like "Europe" --- which is a very chic place, at least inside the heavily guarded walls.
     There are no heavily guarded walls in Eutopia. There are no locks on the doors in Eutopia. Many homes have no doors at all. Nobody in this place is going to steal anything from anybody, and even if they did, everyone is so rich that nobody would care. Even the servants are rich. The ones that aren't rich aren't alive --- they're mechanical.
     George and Bernadette are ecstatic. The trees are all real. The air is pure. The grass never needs to be mowed. There are no flies or mosquitoes. There are no cockroaches, mice, lice, gnats, rats, bats, ants, silverfish or moths. Everything is perfect. Everything, George thinks, except one thing. He still hates his reflection in the mirror.
     I can dream, he thinks. I can live.
     I can live my dream.
     Secretly, so as to surprise Bernadette, George calls and makes an appointment.
     At the offices of the local Cinematia franchise, cell samples are taken for which to fashion the new body. A holistic interactive catalog is presented, and he's encouraged to take as much time as needed to make sure he chooses the body he wants to inhabit. Not all of the DNA templates are of famous people --- there are literally thousands of handsome, anonymous models from which to choose. But George already knows. In his mind, it made perfect sense. Marilyn and John Kennedy had always belonged together. Low and behold, there was a John Kennedy template, not one of the most popular but in demand none-the-less. This one actually featured a pre-programmed Bostonian accent built-in.
     "This one," he says, speaking to the interactive catalog software.
     "You have 48 hours in which to change your mind. After that, your new body will be ready in two weeks."
     George doesn't change his mind. He also succeeds in keeping it a secret from Bernadette, so that it will be a wonderful surprise. He goes in for his second appointment two weeks and two days later, and is introduced to his new body. It stands naked and soul-less in the presentation room, ready for his inspection. He wonders briefly if Kennedy's wang had really been that big. "Perfect," he tells the Cinematia associate. "When can I move in?"
     "Right after your brain backup," she says. She's happy and wants George to be happy, as George has lots of money and she's going to get a commission. "Right this way."
     George kind of had the idea that they were going to cut his head open, scoop out his brain, and slop it into the head of his new body. It doesn't work that way. A holodata interface helmet with ten-billion triangulation pattern receptors systematically stimulates every synapse in George's brain and takes a reading. This information is stored in specially designed DNA sequence strands. Once the recording is done, an unconscious George is injected with an anti-freeze compound and his body is placed in storage at absolute zero. The DNA sequence strands are then decoded and the patterns are implanted into the bionic brain of George's new body. Then a specially trained and well-paid Catholic priest blesses the new body and asks God to transfer George's soul over. That being done, George is awakened and presented with a full-length mirror.
     His eyesight is better than ever, and he sucks in his stomach and flexes his muscles. "Look at that!" he exclaims. "Look at me!"
     He's given a complementary set of clothes and, once dressed, heads back home to surprise his woman. He finds Bernadette watching the news, wiping tears from her eyes. "Is that you?" she calls out as he comes in. "Those Siamese twin babies with the three heads just died. Isn't that sad?" She turns and looks at him, and exclaims, "Oh!"
     "Hi," George says.
     "I thought you were ... what are you doing in my house? Who are you?"
     "It's me, George! Surprise!" His built-in Bostonian accent sounds great.
     There's several long, alarming seconds of silence, and then she says, "Oh no. No. No, you didn't..." She turns away from him.
     "I ... I did it for you."
     "You didn't ... you didn't have to do anything," she says, sobbing. "I love you for you. Now you're not you, you're ... you're just another one of ... you're just like all the others."
     "But ..."
     It's no use, she's very upset. There's a lot of shattered silence between the two for the next few days, and then Bernadette gives him a surprise. He wakes up to find she's left him.
     Up in Eutopia there are windows you can look out of that view the Earth, the moon, and the vast universe of stars. George stands and stares out at the stars, feeling as empty as the vacuum outside the window. Down on Earth, the Chinese government is being accused of dropping neutron bombs on its own villages. The piles of bodies are as high as small hills. "We can't feed them," their government tells the startled world. "What's worse, a long painful death of starvation, or a sudden, sterile release?"
     George mopes for a week. His only conversations are with his agent who is negotiating new projects for George to work on. George is so rich now he gets to pick and choose, and in fact doesn't ever have to work at all. He does it for enjoyment, now, but there's nothing enjoyable about it. It all seems empty and meaningless. The color seems to have drained from his life. Food no longer tastes good, paintings he used to like now all seem ugly, and music either grates on his nerves or causes him to burst into tears.
     "George," his agent tells him, "go to a doctor. They have ways of treating depression."
     Depression? George never thought to give what he was feeling a name. Depression seemed too shallow and two-dimensional a word for what he was going through. Total-rending-heart-break seemed a closer description of the experience.
     Nope, the doctor tells him. It's depression. It's a very specific type of depression, one for which there is a very specific type of cure. George balks at the price, but what the hell, he can afford it. On Earth, a plague is killing tens-of-thousands of poor people in Western Australia, and there's a cure for that, too, but those who are sick and dying don't have any money to pay for it. However, George has the $120,000.00 to pay for the single bottle of pills that will cause him to fall out of love with Bernadette. Four pills a day for four days, and it will be all over.
     Four days later, just as the doctor had promised, it's over. George feels fine again, and is ready to go back to work. The trouble is, on the fifth day Bernadette comes back. "I'm so sorry," she tells him. "I feel so stupid. I was so grateful to you for loving me for what I am inside, and I was loving you for what you are inside, I failed to realize it's still you inside that new body, and I still love you for you." She smiles at him.
     George studies her like a bug he's found crawling on the carpet. She's a total stranger to him, now. She looks just like any other shallow Cinematia body clone bitch. But his new body's libido kicks in, and he takes her into his arms and kisses her, and they go into the bedroom and have meaningless sex. Afterwards, Bernadette discovers the empty pill bottle in the bathroom. She confronts him with it, sounding angry but actually feeling shock and loss. "You took these?"
     "What was I supposed to do?" he asks. "You left me."
     "You don't love me anymore?"
     "No, I don't."
     She stares at him in disbelief, her face warping into an expression of deep pain. Crying out, she makes a long, wailing sobbing sound, like a sad emergency siren, until her lungs run out of air and she's left with silent, vacuum-filled, body-shaking tears. Wow, George thinks. Wow, she's really hurting. I must have felt like that.
     He seems to remember feeling like that, several days ago --- several days that seem like several months ago. Feeling oddly responsible and bad, in a detached sort of way, he runs out to the doctor and gets another bottle of the pills. When he returns home, he finds Bernadette face down in bed, her face in a pillow, and she's still crying. "Here," he says. "Here, I got these for you."
     She looks at the pill bottle like he's offering her a big hairy spider. "I don't want your god damned pills!" she yells at him.
     He cringes. The poor girl has snot all over her face. He tries to point this out to her, but she doesn't seem to care, and buries her head back into the pillow. George places the bottle of pills on the night stand next to her and says, "You take these. I'll be back in five days, and we'll talk. We'll see what we can work out." She ignores him, still crying. George turns and leaves.
     He spends four days on Earth, talking about new projects in Hollywood, and goes out a few times with a pretty woman who's body was not a famous clone but was probably a clone none the less. They engage in meaningless sex, and while she's sleeping he studies her beautiful curves, her flawless skin, and wonders if nature actually produces anything so perfect anymore. Oddly, it makes him think about Bernadette, about how broken up she was when he'd left. He is touched that she actually cared about him so deeply. He wonders, Did she take the pills?
     The next day, only hours before a riot destroys the Los Angeles Space Port, George takes a launch back up to Eutopia to meet with Bernadette. They're sharing a condo, but it actually belongs to her. He's got to make some sort of living arrangements, or buy it from her, or something. She's home when he gets there, sitting in front of the holovision and watching the news. "You made it," she says. "I was worried that you got caught in the riot."
     "They were getting pretty ugly while we were waiting for take off," George tells her. "They moved the launch up, thank God."
     Bernadette points toward the images. "Look at all the fires," She says, shaking her head. "Oh, by the way, thank you for the pills."
     "You took them?"
     "Yes. Thank you. I feel much, much better now."
     "You're not angry or anything?"
     "Angry?" She shrugs. "I was in a lot of hurt, but the pills made it better. Thank you for the pills."
     "You're welcome."
     "You had been in a lot of hurt, too, and that's why you took the pills."
     "Yes."
     "So, then, we're even."
     "Yes." He takes a few steps toward her, getting a closer look. She doesn't seem like such a stranger anymore. "I want to thank you for being so in love with me."
     "You know, I wanted to tell you the same thing. We really were in love with each other, weren't we?"
     "Yeah, we were. What happened?"
     "Emotions aren't perfect. Everything about us is perfect, except for our emotions. It's like a flaw in the brain."
     "It's nice that we can control them, now," George says.
     "Yes, isn't it?"
     They stand and stare at each other, then both break into spontaneous smiles. "It's like a new start, like we're starting over again."
     "You really want to?"
     "Yes, I do." He takes her hands. It's a familiar feeling, but the emotions are mixed with haunting, distant memories of feelings. Like memories from a past life, like actual John Kennedy memories released from the DNA that gave George a hint of how the man really felt about Marilyn Monroe. "I wonder..." he says. "I wonder if there's a pill we can take to fall back in love again."
     "There's no real need for such a pill," she tells him. "It happens all by itself, don't you think?"
     "Yes," he says. "Yes, maybe it does."