"Paul Di Filippo - The Reluctant Book" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

radiated pleasure. These hundreds of blank books--further modified
according to his special scheme--would certainly go all the way toward
bringing his pet project to its long-sought conclusion. Then wouldn't
the
smugly ridiculous MB Sauvage get a nasty shock!
Stallkamp left behind his visions of triumph, and took the book
offline.
"Close your covers."
The command brought the book back to self-awareness and nervous
apprehension of its surroundings. Stallkamp released it from the
restraints, and ordered it back to its carrel. The book departed,
somewhat
shakily. Likewise, Stallkamp swiftly made his way through the deserted
corridors of the bookbarn and back into the kitchen of Rueulroald.
There
he found the Holbrook sisters awaiting him.
"Was everything satisfactory?" inquired Marlys eagerly.
"Absolutely. I performed a random wipe without a hitch. The books will
serve my purposes well. I'll have the trundels come round in the
morning.
Factota will stasis-box the library and take the whole collection away.
Upon receipt, I'll deliver your payment. Oh yes, there'll be a small
deduction though."
Taffy asked, "What for?"
"The library has just been diminished by a single book. It seems one of
the volumes became foxed beyond repair when I handled it."

A complacent satisfaction and discurious inertia reigned over Earth.
Mankind had, for the most part, simply lost the desire or perhaps even
the
 capability for old-fashioned creative ventures. Millennia of scientific
and esthetic discoveries--held safely in instant-access databases and
inexhaustibly compiled and cross-referenced by cybernetic
intelligences--answered all common questions and practical inquiries,
served the majority of entertainment requests, and insured that the
weight
of knowledge would generally crush all initiative. Yet a few eccentric
scholars still sought to explore those tattered pockets of art and
science
that might yet bear a few linty grains of undiscovered knowledge in
their
seams.
The living books were their instruments for searching, engines of
knowledge creation.
Into the capacious neurons of a blank book could be loaded an entire
text,
many, many units of semiotic import. But simple holding of a text meant
nothing, was a task better left to other, more stable media. The innate
talent of the books lay in the ingenious ways their unpredictable,
parallel-processing wetware could permute the initial semiotic units.