"Greg Egan - The Planck Drive" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

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Gisela had never heard of Athena, but ninety minutes per
person sounded ominous. Everything meaningful about
an individual citizen could be packed into less than an
exabyte, and sent as a gamma-ray burst a few
milliseconds long. If you wanted to simulate an entire
flesher bodyтАУcell by cell, redundant viscera and allтАУthat
was a harmless enough eccentricity, but lugging the
microscopic details of your "very own" small intestine
ninety-seven light-years was just being precious.


file:///G|/rah/Greg%20Egan/Egan,%20Greg%20-%20The%20Planck%20Dive.htm (3 of 36) [2/2/2004 2:01:04 AM]
Asimov's - The Planck Dive


"What do you know about Athena? In brief."

"It was founded in 2312, with a charter expressing the
goal of тАШregaining the lost flesher virtues.тАЩ In public fora,
its citizens have shown little interest in exopolitan
realityтАУother than flesher history and artformsтАУbut they
do participate in some contemporary interpolis cultural
activities."

"So why have these two come here?" Gisela laughed. "If
theyтАЩre refugees from boredom, surely they could have
sought asylum a little closer to home?"

The mayor took her literally. "They havenтАЩt adopted
Cartan citizenship; theyтАЩve entered the polis with only
visitor privileges. In their transmission preamble they
stated that their purpose in coming was to witness the
Planck Dive."

"WitnessтАУnot take part in?"

"ThatтАЩs what they said."

They could have witnessed as much from home as any
non-participant here in Cartan. The Dive team had been
broadcasting everythingтАУstudies, schematics, simulations,
technical arguments, metaphysical debatesтАУfrom the
moment the idea had coalesced out of little more than
jokes and thought experiments, a few years after theyтАЩd
gone into orbit around the black hole. But at least Gisela
now knew why the mayor had picked on her; sheтАЩd
volunteered to respond to any requests for information
about the Dive that couldnтАЩt be answered automatically