"Paul Di Filippo - And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

Why didn't manufacturers simply revert to
producing dumb appliances and other
products, to frustrate VB? Going backward
was simply impossible. The entire economy,
from immense factories right down to
individual point-of-sales kiosks, was
predicated on intelligent products that could
practically sell themselves. And every office
and every household aside from the very
poorest relied on the extensive networking
among possessions.
So everyone had learned to live with the
occasional bleb, just as earlier generations
had learned to tolerate operating system
crashes in their clunky PCs.
But during the first years of the Volition Bug,
people were not so aware of the problem.
Oftentimes no one took precautions to
prevent blebs until it was too late.
That was how my parents had died.
 ┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖


I was six years old and soundly asleep when I
was awakend by a weird kind of scraping and
clattering noise outside my room. Still only
half-aware, I stumbled to my bedroom door
and cracked it open.
My parents had recently made a couple of
new purchases. One item was a free-standing
rack that resembled an antique hat-tree,
balanced on four stubby feet. The rack was a
recharging station for intelligent clothing.
But now, in the nightlight-illuminated,
shadowy hallway, the rack was bare of
garments, having shucked them off on its way
to pick up its new accoutrements: a complete
set of self-sharpening kitchen knives. The
knives adhered to the rack at random
intervals along its length. They waggled
nervously, like insect feelers, as the rack
stumped along.
I stood paralyzed at the sight of this
apparition. All I could think of was the old
Disney musical I had streamed last month,
with its walking brooms. Without exhibiting
any aggressive action, the knife rack moved
past me, its small feet humping it along. In
retrospect, I don't think the bleb was
murderous by nature. I think now it was