"Paul Di Filippo - Stink Lines" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

PAUL DI FILIPPOSTINK LINESGYRO GEARLOOSE LOVED Ginger Barks. Had that deeply
simple sentence possessed nofurther clause or codicil, no qualifier or
amplification, all would have beenwell. Love, courtship, marriage, babies,
grandparenthood, senescence,life-support, heavily monitored institutionalized
death, and the survivors leftarguing about what to do with the chipped china:
the old, old human progressionwould have flowed like hydrogen through the fuel
cell of a new 2025 Wuhan Panda.No headaches, no heartaches, no troublesNo
story.So:Gyro Gearloose loved Ginger Barks -- but she did not love him.And
that essential lack of reciprocal affection was why Gyro decided to
reinventtheir world in her honor.The day on which Gyro Gearloose upended the
unsuspecting world in the name ofunrequited love began like any other. Gyro's
bed catapulted his lanky naked forminto the soft embrace of the auto-valet's
capture net. Via an overhead cranesystem, that talented apparatus deposited
him fully dressed at the kitchentable. The multi-appendaged, radar-eyed
oil-drumon-a-unicycle that served as hischef and butler brought him breakfast:
two dodo eggs with a side of mammothhash. This repast Gyro consumed rather
heedlessly, while having theold-fashioned newspaper read aloud to him by
another mechanical servant shapedlike a large bespectacled green bookworm.
Then, after getting his teeth brushed,Gyro rode his unique firecracker-powered
vehicle to his office at Happy DuckResearch.Inside his quiet sanctum, Gyro's
desk quickly ventured to attract his attention."Mr. Gearloose, you have over
one hundred messages awaiting your input. In orderof importance, they --""Not
now," commanded Gyro, and the desk fell silent. Gyro tossed himself in
alovesick fashion onto a couch. Reaching over and behind his head to
anend-table, he grabbed a framed photo and brought it before his forlorn gaze.
Theportrait depicted a smiling woman whose delicate features summed perfection
inthe eye of this beholder. Of an age with Gyro, dark-haired and lithe,
thistemptress was none other than Ginger Barks. Shaking the frame like an
antiqueEtch-a-Sketch to realign the picture's intelligent molecules, Gyro was
rewardedwith the image of a child, plainly an earlier version of Ginger. This
was thewaif Gyro had first fallen in love with at age five, at a time before
he hadeven borne his current name ....No one in the real world today is ever
named Gyro Gearloose from the moment ofbirth. For one thing a majority of the
ancient Gearlooses went extinct duringthe Age of Reason, victims of
ill-conceived phlogistonical and ethericexperiments that tended to end in
fatal explosions. Those scions remainingchanged their surnames shortly
thereafter in order to overcome a certain ditzyimage. For another thing, no
parents -- not even gadget-besotted engineers --would name their child "Gyro"
in the multicultural early-twenty-first-centuryUSA, out of fear of having him
mistaken for a Greek sandwich. No, the onlyuniverse from which one may choose
to adopt the Gearloose name remains a famouscomicbook one. Which is precisely
where our own Gyro Gearloose found hisalternate apellation. Or rather, had it
thrust upon him.Little Gary Harmon was five years old in the portentous year
of 2001. Andwhatever that year might have meant for the rest of Earth's
multifariouspopulation, for Gary it signaled massive upheavals. For 2001 was
the year duringwhich Gary's mother abandoned the ineffectual and distant
Warren Harmon for loveof another woman, and, consolidating her custody of
Gary, moved to Duckburg.The town of Duckburg had until very recently been
known as Los Gatos,California, an upscale hamlet on the edge of Silicon
Valley. But late in theyear 2000, Los Gatos was purchased outright by the