"Greg Egan - Steve Fever" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

Steve Fever
Countless tiny machines hijack the living, borrowing their hands, eyes, and ears, as the machines strive to
resurrect just one man.

By Greg Egan
A few weeks after his 14th birthday, with the soybean harvest fast approaching, Lincoln began having
vivid dreams of leaving the farm and heading for the city. Night after night, he pictured himself gathering
supplies, trudging down to the highway, and hitching his way to Atlanta. There were problems with the
way things got done in the dream, though, and each night in his sleep he struggled to resolve them. The
larder would be locked, of course, so he dreamed up a side plot about collecting a stash of suitable tools
for breaking in. There were sensors all along the farm's perimeter, so he dreamed about different ways of
avoiding or disabling them.
Even when he had a scenario that seemed to make sense, daylight revealed further flaws. The grille that
blocked the covered part of the irrigation ditch that ran beneath the fence was too strong to be snipped
away with bolt cutters, and the welding torch had a biometric lock.

When the harvest began, Lincoln contrived to get a large stone caught in the combine, and then
volunteered to repair the damage. With his father looking on, he did a meticulous job, and when he
received the expected praise he replied with what he hoped was a dignified mixture of pride and
bemusement, "I'm not a kid anymore. I can handle the torch."

"Yeah." His father seemed embarrassed for a moment. Then he squatted down, put the torch into
supervisor mode, and added Lincoln's touch to the authorized list.

Lincoln waited for a moonless night. The dream kept repeating itself, thrashing impatiently against his
skull, desperate to be made real.

When the night arrived and he left his room, barefoot in the darkness, he felt he was finally enacting some
long-rehearsed performance--less a play than an elaborate dance that had seeped into every muscle in
his body. First he carried his boots to the back door and left them by the step. Then he took his
backpack to the larder, the borrowed tools in different pockets so they wouldn't clank against each
other. The larder door's hinges were attached on the inside, but he'd marked their positions with penknife
scratches in the varnish and practiced finding the scratches by touch. His mother had secured the food
store years before, after a midnight raid by Lincoln and his younger brother, Sam, but it was still just a
larder, not a jewel safe, and the awl bit through the wood easily enough, finally exposing the tip of one of
the screws that held the hinges in place. The pliers he tried first couldn't grip the screw tightly enough to
get it turning, but Lincoln had dreamed of an alternative. With the awl, he cleared away a little more
wood, then jammed a small hexagonal nut onto the screw's thread and used a T-handled socket wrench
to turn them together. The screw couldn't move far, but this was enough to loosen it. He removed the nut
and used the pliers. With a few firm taps from a hammer, delivered via the socket wrench, the screw
broke free of the wood.

He repeated the procedure five more times, freeing the hinges completely, and then strained against the
door, keeping a firm grip on the handle, until the tongue of the lock slipped from its groove.

The larder was pitch black, but he didn't risk using his flashlight; he found what he wanted by memory
and touch, filling the backpack with enough provisions for a week. After that? He'd never wondered, in
the dream. Maybe he'd find new friends in Atlanta who'd help him. The idea struck a chord, as if it were
a truth he was remembering, not a hopeful speculation.