"Greg Egan - The Vat (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

He stands for a while, waiting to see what he will do. Part of him - a small,
vestigial subsystem with no interest whatsoever in brain physiology, the
philosophy of consciousness, or even obsessive love - pleads fervently to be
allowed to put down the knife and flee, but Harold pays it about as much
attention as the soundtrack of a child's cartoon overheard playing on a
neighbour's TV. He stands, and he waits.
Harold doesn't mourn for the brief lives he helps create; he knows they die
long before the most primitive thoughts or feelings have a chance to arise, and
he can't believe there's a machine up in heaven, churning out a white-robed
feather-winged soul for each of these tiny clusters of cells.
Rather, he rejoices. Because The Vat says something about human life - human
life of every age - that had to be said, and although today he is alone in
heeding this message, he knows that in time the insights he's gained will be the
common heritage of all humanity.
Harold retraces his steps. He returns the knife to its place in the kitchen. He
leaves by the bathroom window, and closes it behind him.
He wanted to kill her, he muses, more than he'd ever wanted anything before. He
wanted, very badly, to be free. But something in his genome, or something in his
past, declared that it wasn't to be. Or perhaps the quantum dice simply happened
to fall in her favour. This time.
He walks home slowly, his face uplifted to the photons flooding down from the
stars, and he counts them one by one.




Originally appeared pp. 13-18, Eidolon 3,December 1990.
Copyright ┬й 1990 Greg Egan. All rights reserved.




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