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

For several decades Stallkamp had been charting a region around the
North
Ecliptic Pole Supercluster, 1.3 billion lightyears from Earth. Modeling
pointillistic data from a variety of exotic Oort-Cloud-based sensors
(aged
and frequently failing, but who nowadays had the initiative to replace
them?) directly onto the pattern-sensitive brains of his books, he had
made slow but steady progress, tweaking and boosting millions and
millions
of dendritic weightings. Always in front of him was the goal of having
his
results officially accepted by the cybernetic intelligences that
governed
the integrity of humanity's databases. Would they accept his proposed
name
for the shaped darkness: the "Stallkamp Void"? He could see immortality
beckoning alluringly.
Then, a few months ago, Stallkamp had learned of a rival. MB Humility
Sauvage was working in the same field, attempting to chart the
identical
 region of the cosmos! It was like finding a stranger in Brundisium's
gardens pissing vigorously onto his prize shatterpetal rose! Thus began
a
deadly race--a race Stallkamp now was sure to win, thanks to an
admittedly
chancey strategy.
Unable to restrain his gleeful sense of superiority any longer,
Stallkamp
leaned forward and intellitickled the sensitive screen of his hellobox.
Within seconds appeared the repulsive face of MB Sauvage, home in her
airy
manse called Larkrise. Stallkamp likened her aged visage in his mind to
a
dustmop-shrouded pumpkin inexpertly carved.
Without preamble, Stallkamp launched a direct strike. "You might as
well
give up your pitiful efforts, Sauvage. In a month or so, long before
you
could possibly squeeze out any mingy results, I'll have the Stallkamp
Void
completely mapped."
Undaunted, Sauvage sneered. "I know all about your outrageous
purchase--practically a theft!--of poor Vincent's books. But bluffing
won't work. You still own only some six hundred books. I own nearly
that
many myself, and I know that it would take the synergy of at least a
thousand to achieve what we're after at one swoop, instead of
incrementally."
"I beg to correct you, MB Sauvage. I now own almost twelve hundred
books."