"Greg Egan - Reasons To Be Cheerful" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

Reasons To Be Cheerful
Greg Egan
A DF Books NERDs Release

Copyright ┬й1999 by Greg Egan

First published in Interzone #118, April 1997

Thanks to Caroline Oakley, Anthony Cheetham, John Douglas, Peter Robinson, Kate Messenger, Philip
Patterson, Tony Gardner, Russ Galen, David Pringle, Lee Montgomerie, Gardner Dozois, Sheila
Williams, and Bill Congreve.

1

In September 2004, not long after my twelfth birthday, I entered a state of almost constant happiness. It
never occurred to me to ask why. Though school included the usual quota of tedious lessons, I was doing
well enough academically to be able to escape into daydreams whenever it suited me. At home, I was
free to read books and web pages about molecular biology and particle physics, quaternions and galactic
evolution, and to write my own Byzantine computer games and convoluted abstract animations. And
though I was a skinny, uncoordinated child, and every elaborate, pointless organized sport left me
comatose with boredom, I was comfortable enough with my body on my own terms. Whenever I
ranтАФand I ran everywhereтАФit felt good.

I had food, shelter, safety, loving parents, encouragement, stimulation. Why shouldn't I have been happy?
And though I can't have entirely forgotten how oppressive and monotonous classwork and schoolyard
politics could be, or how easily my usual bouts of enthusiasm were derailed by the most trivial problems,
when things were actually going well for me I wasn't in the habit of counting down the days until it all
turned sour. Happiness always brought with it the belief that it would last, and though I must have seen
this optimistic forecast disproved a thousand times before, I wasn't old and cynical enough to be
surprised when it finally showed signs of coming true.

When I started vomiting repeatedly, Dr Ash, our GP, gave me a course of antibiotics and a week off
school. I doubt it was a great shock to my parents when this unscheduled holiday seemed to cheer me up
rather more than any mere bacterium could bring me down, and if they were puzzled that I didn't even
bother feigning misery, it would have been redundant for me to moan constantly about my aching
stomach when I was throwing up authentically three or four times a day.

The antibiotics made no difference. I began losing my balance, stumbling when I walked. Back in Dr
Ash's surgery, I squinted at the eye chart. She sent me to a neurologist at Westmead Hospital, who
ordered an immediate MRI scan. Later the same day, I was admitted as an in-patient. My parents
learned the diagnosis straight away, but it took me three more days to make them spit out the whole
truth.

I had a tumor, a medulloblastoma, blocking one of the fluid-filled ventricles in my brain, raising the
pressure in my skull. Medulloblastomas were potentially fatal, though with surgery followed by aggressive
radiation treatment and chemotherapy, two out of three patients diagnosed at this stage lived five more
years.
I pictured myself on a railway bridge riddled with rotten sleepers, with no choice but to keep moving,
trusting my weight to each suspect plank in turn. I understood the danger ahead, very clearly ... and yet I
felt no real panic, no real fear. The closest thing to terror I could summon up was an almost exhilarating