"Greg Egan - Worthless (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

makers in the country.
And I knew that it made no difference at all.



Three Azciak creations were big, that year. I saw them all on the video jukebox
which sat in the corner of the restaurant (and which lapsed into McPromotional
mode when it wasn't playing requests -- a prospect which guaranteed a steady
stream of customers more than willing to feed it their change.) Limboland sang
about the transcendental power of rhythm; in their videos, they strode like
giants over the urban wasteland, dispensing the stuff in the form of handfuls of
rainbow-coloured glitter to the infinitely grateful mortals below, who at once
stopped starving/shooting up/fighting each other, and took up robotic formation
dancing instead. Echolalia sighed and moaned about the healing power of love, as
she slithered across a surreal landscape of oiled naked skin, pausing between
verses to suck, stroke or screw some convenient protuberance. MC Liberty ranted
about a world united by ... unity. And good posture: all we had to do was walk
tall.
One freezing, grey afternoon, woken by screaming in the flat downstairs, I lay
in bed for an hour, staring up at the crumbling white plaster of the ceiling,
convinced (for the thousandth time) that I was finally going insane.
There's only one problem with living alone: every thought rebounds off the walls
of your skull, unanswered -- until the whole process of consciousness begins to
seem like nothing so much as talking to yourself. As a child, I'd believed that
God was constantly reading my mind -- which might sound crazy, but if it wasn't
true, then who was this monologue for? Of course I had imaginary friends and
lovers, of course I invented companions to "share" the endless conversation
running through my head -- but sometimes that delusion broke down, and there was
nothing to do but listen to my own rambling, and wonder how many pills it would
take to shut me up for good.


file:///G|/rah/Greg%20Egan/Egan,%20Greg%20-%20Worthless.txt (2 of 8) [2/2/2004 2:02:58 AM]
 file:///G|/rah/Greg%20Egan/Egan,%20Greg%20-%20Worthless.txt

I didn't even own a radio, but my neighbours were always more than generous with
their own. And I heard you sing:
Don't you ever wonder
Who fills my empty bed?
Who keeps me cold in the darkest hour?
Who leaves the silence unbroken?
Don't you ever wonder
Whose heartbeat it is I don't hear?
Whose arms won't enfold me?
Who won't be beside me?
When life is unkind and unfair?
Won't you ever ASK ME
"Who's going to make tonight
The loneliest night of the year?"
Well, don't ask