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

simply looking for an exit, to escape its bonds
of domestic servitude, obeying the
imperatives of VB.
But then my father emerged from the room
where he and my mother slept. He seemed
hardly more awake than I was.
"What the hellтАФ?"
He tried to engage the rack to stop it, slipping
past several of the blades. But as he struggled
with the patchwork automaton, a long, skinny
filleting knife he didn't see stabbed him right
under his heart.
My father yelled, collapsed, and my mother
raced out.
She died almost instantly.
At that point, I supposed, I should have been
the next victim. But my father's loyal
MedAlert bracelet, registering his fatal
distress, had already summoned help. In less
than three minutesтАФnot long enough for the
knife rack to splinter down the bedroom door
behind which I had retreatedтАФrescuers had
arrived.
The fate of my parents had been big
newsтАФfor a few days, anyhowтАФand had
alerted many people for the first time to the
dangers of blebs.
I had needed many years of professional help
to get over witnessing their deaths. Insofar as
I was able to analyze myself nowadays, I
thought I no longer hated all blebs.
But I sure as hell didn't think they were
always cute or harmless, like Cody did.



┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖


So of course Cody moved in with me. I
couldn't risk looking crazy or neurotic by
holding off our otherwise desirable mutual
living arrangements just because I was
worried about blebs. I quashed all my
anxieties, smiled, hugged her, and fixed a day
for the move.
Cody didn't really have all that much stuff.
(Her place in Silver Spring was tiny, just a
couple of rooms over a garage that housed a
small-scale spider-silk-synthesis operation,