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

my belated emotions, and left it at that.

Six weeks after I was admitted, all my scans were clear, and my blood, CSF and lymphatic fluid were
free of the signature proteins of metastasizing cells. But there was still a risk that a few resistant tumor
cells remained, so they gave me a short, sharp course of entirely different drugs, no longer linked to the
herpes infection. I had a testicular biopsy firstтАФunder local anesthetic, more embarrassing than
painfulтАФand a sample of bone marrow taken from my hip, so my potential for sperm production and my
supply of new blood cells could both be restored if the drugs wiped them out at the source. I lost hair
and stomach lining, temporarily, and I vomited more often, and far more wretchedly, than when I'd first
been diagnosed. But when I started to emit self-pitying noises, one of the nurses steelily explained that
children half my age put up with the same treatment for months.

These conventional drugs alone could never have cured me, but as a mopping-up operation they greatly
diminished the chance of a relapse. I discovered a beautiful word: apoptosisтАФcellular suicide,
programmed deathтАФand repeated it to myself, over and over. I ended up almost relishing the nausea and
fatigue; the more miserable I felt, the easier it was to imagine the fate of the tumor cells, membranes
popping and shriveling like balloons as the drugs commanded them to take their own lives. Die in pain,
zombie scum! Maybe I'd write a game about it, or even a whole series, culminating in the spectacular
Chemotherapy III: Battle for the Brain. I'd be rich and famous, I could pay back my parents, and life
would be as perfect in reality as the tumor had merely made it seem to be.

****

I was discharged early in December, free of any trace of disease. My parents were wary and jubilant in
turn, as if slowly casting off the fear that any premature optimism would be punished. The side-effects of
the chemotherapy were gone; my hair was growing back, except for a tiny bald patch where the shunt
had been, and I had no trouble keeping down food. There was no point returning to school now, two
weeks before the year's end, so my summer holidays began immediately. The whole class sent me a
tacky, insincere, teacher-orchestrated get-well email, but my friends visited me at home, only slightly
embarrassed and intimidated, to welcome me back from the brink of death.

So why did I feel so bad? Why did the sight of the clear blue sky through the window when I opened
my eyes every morningтАФwith the freedom to sleep-in as long as I chose, with my father or mother home
all day treating me like royalty, but keeping their distance and letting me sit unnagged at the computer
screen for sixteen hours if I wantedтАФwhy did that first glimpse of daylight make me want to bury my face
in the pillow, clench my teeth and whisper: тАЬI should have died. I should have died.тАЭ?

Nothing gave me the slightest pleasure. NothingтАФnot my favorite netzines or web sites, not the njari
music I'd once reveled in, not the richest, the sweetest, the saltiest junk food that was mine now for the
asking. I couldn't bring myself to read a whole page of any book, I couldn't write ten lines of code. I
couldn't look my real-world friends in the eye, or face the thought of going online.

Everything I did, everything I imagined, was tainted with an overwhelming sense of dread and shame. The
only image I could summon up for comparison was from a documentary about Auschwitz that I'd seen at
school. It had opened with a long tracking shot, a newsreel camera advancing relentlessly toward the
gates of the camp, and I'd watched that scene with my spirits sinking, already knowing full well what had
happened inside. I wasn't delusional; I didn't believe for a moment that there was some source of
unspeakable evil lurking behind every bright surface around me. But when I woke and saw the sky, I felt
the kind of sick foreboding that would only have made sense if I'd been staring at the gates of Auschwitz.