"Cory Doctorow - Liberation Spectrum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dodd Christina)

Liberation spectrum

By Cory Doctorow

The tiny multinational lumbered across the Niagara Falls border in its tour
bus, Lee-Daniel at the wheel, sipping iced mocha from the flexible straw
threaded through the eyelets on his jacket. All the way since the Akwesahsne
debacle, he'd been steadily consuming the lethal blend of bittersweet
chocolate and espresso and reciting mnemonic sleep-dep chants. But after
twenty straight hours he was in deadly danger of falling straight to sleep and
head-onning the bus into a Jersey barrier. Or a bullet train. Or a minivan.

On U.S. soil, he pulled the bus over at a temporary roadhouse and set the
handbrake. He eased off the driver's perch, chafing his narrow ass to get the
blood flowing, and gave forth a drawn-out "gaaaah" as pins and needles stabbed
his sweat- marinated muscles. He heard the multinational rousing itself behind
him. First, the major investors in the front row. Then the rest of the board
of directors in the row behind them. Then four rows of middle managers and
finally the great mass of frontline workers, techs, customer service reps,
troubleshooters, antennamen, switchwomen, chicken pluckers and left-handed
bottle stretchers.

Lee-Daniel flipped the windows to transparent and let the sun shine in,
provoking groans from the corporation. MacDiarmid, the angel investor who'd
been in since the multinational had been able to fit in a sedan, threw a
strong arm around Lee-Daniel's shoulders. "You OK?" he said. The tone had
phony solicitousness. MacDiarmid had been a stand-up guy through half a dozen
disasters, from hostile takeover attempts to roadblocks to high-speed engine
failure, and Lee-Daniel knew a fake when he heard it.

"I'm fixing to lay down and die," Lee-Daniel said, stretching theatrically,
his pipe-cleaner arms straining.

"I'm street-legal in New York," Mac said. "How about I drive the bus for the
next couple shifts?" His black hair was showing grey now, but his eyebrows
were still fierce and black, his eyes still sharp in their nest of
whiskey-cured crow's-feet.

"No!" Lee-Daniel said. He never ceded the wheel -- it was his damned company
and he'd drive the damned bus. Lee-Daniel saw the shareholder confidence
eroding before his eyes.

"Just for a while, OK? Not permanent, just for a day or two, just long enough
for you to get over the sleep deficit and regrow some stomach lining."

It was hard being the CEO of a mobile multinational. The shareholder oversight
was murder. "Come on, Mac," he said. "I can drive the bus. One thing I can
always do, I can drive the fucking bus."

MacDiarmid looked closely at him, then smiled and gave him a burly man-hug