"Cory Doctorow - Andas Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dodd Christina)

> You're a nasty person, Anda,

Lucy typed.

> I'm a Fahrenheit!!!!!!!!!!

she typed back.

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The brigands on the road were punters, but the cottage that was their target was guarded by an altogether
more sophisticated sort. They were spotted by sentries long before they got within sight of the cottage,
and they saw the warning spell travel up from the sentries' hilltop like a puff of smoke, speeding away
toward the cottage. Anda raced up the hill while Lucy covered her with her bow, but that didn't stop the
sentries from subjecting Anda to a hail of flaming spears from their fortified position. Anda set up her
standard dodge-and-weave pattern, assuming that the sentries were non-player characters -- who wanted
to pay to sit around in gamespace watching a boring road all day? -- and to her surprise, the spears
followed her. She took one in the chest and only some fast work with her shield and all her healing
scrolls saved her. As it was, her constitution was knocked down by half and she had to retreat back down
the hillside.

"Get down," Lucy said in her headset. "I'm gonna use the BFG."

Every game had one -- the Big Friendly Gun, the generic term for the baddest-arse weapon in the world.
Lucy had rented this one from the Clan armory for a small fortune in gold and Anda had laughed and
called her paranoid, but now Anda helped Lucy set it up and thanked the gamegods for her foresight. It
was a huge, demented flaming crossbow that fired five-metre bolts that exploded on impact. It was a
beast to arm and a beast to aim, but they had a nice, dug-in position of their own at the bottom of the hill
and it was there that they got the BFG set up, deployed, armed and ranged.

"Fire!" Lucy called, and the game did this amazing and cool animation that it rewarded you with
whenever you loosed a bolt from the BFG, making the gamelight dim towards the sizzling bolt as
though it were sucking the illumination out of the world as it arced up the hillside, trailing a comet-tail
of sparks. The game played them a groan of dismay from their enemies, and then the bolt hit home with
a crash that made her point-of-view vibrate like an earthquake. The roar in her headphones was
deafening, and behind it she could hear Lucy on the voice-chat, cheering it on.

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"Nuke 'em till they glow and shoot 'em in the dark! Yee-haw!" Lucy called, and Anda laughed and
pounded her fist on the desk. Gobbets of former enemy sailed over the treeline dramatically, dripping
hyper-red blood and ichor.

In her bedroom, Anda caressed the controller-pad and her avatar punched the air and did a little rugby
victory dance that the All-Blacks had released as a limited edition promo after they won the World Cup.

Now they had to move fast, for their enemies at the cottage would be alerted to their presence and