"Harlan Ellison - Alone Against Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

over-hand like an animal, till he was on a girdered ledge, twenty feet above us.
тАЬOh, Ted, Nimdok, please, help him, get him down before-тАЭ She cut off. Tears began to stand in
her eyes. She moved her hands aimlessly.
It was too late. None of us wanted to be near him, when whatever was going to happen, happened.
And besides, we all saw through her concern. When AM had altered Benny, during his mad period, it was
not merely his face he had made like a giant ape. He was big in the privates, she loved that! She serviced
us, as a matter of course, but she loved it from him. Oh Ellen, pedestal Ellen, pristine pure Ellen, oh Ellen
the clean! Scum filth.
Gorrister slapped her. She slumped down, staring up at poor loonie Benny, and she cried. It was
her big defense, crying. We had gotten used to it seventy-five years ago. Gorrister kicked her in the side.
Then the sound began. It was light, that sound. Half sound and half light, something that began to
glow from BennyтАЩs eyes, and pulse with growing loudness, dim sonorities that grew more gigantic and
brighter as the light/sound increased in tempo. It must have been painful, and the pain must have been
increasing with the boldness of the light, the rising volume of the sound, for Benny began to mewl like a
wounded animal. At first softly, when the light was dim and the sound was muted, then louder as his
shoulders hunched together, his back humped, as though he were trying to get away from it. His hands
folded across his chest like a chipmunkтАЩs. His head tilted to the side. The sad little monkey-face pinched in
anguish. Then he began to howl, as the sound coming from his eyes grew louder. Louder and louder. I
slapped the sides of my head with my hands, but I couldnтАЩt shut it out, it cut through easily. The pain
shivered through my flesh like tinfoil on a tooth.
And Benny was suddenly pulled erect. On the girder he stood up, jerked to his feet like a puppet.
The light was now pulsing out of his eyes in two great round beams. The sound crawled up and up some
incomprehensible scale, and then he fell forward, straight down, and hit the plate steel floor with a crash.
He lay there jerking spastically as the light flowed around and around him and the sound spiraled up out of
normal range.
Then the light beat its way back inside his head, the sound spiraled down, and he was left lying
there, crying piteously.
His eyes were two soft, moist pools of pus-like jelly. AM had blinded him. Gorrister and Nimdok
and myself...we turned away. But not before we caught the look of relief on EllenтАЩs warm, concerned face.




Sea-green light suffused the cavern where we made camp. AM provided punk and we burned it,
sitting huddled around the wan and pathetic fire, telling stories to keep Benny from crying in his permanent
night.
тАЬWhat does AM mean?тАЭ
Gorrister answered him. We had done this sequence a thousand times before, and it was familiar to
Benny. тАЬ At first it meant Allied Mastercomputer, and then it meant Adaptive Manipulator, and later on it
developed sentience and linked itself up and they called it an Aggressive Menace; but by then it was too
late; and finally it called itself AM, emerging intelligence, and what it meant was I am...cogito ergo sum...I
think, therefore I am.тАЭ
Benny drooled a little, and snickered.
тАЬThere was the Chinese AM and the Russian AM and the Yankee AM and-тАЭ He stopped. Benny
was beating on the floorplates with a large, hard fist. He was not happy. Gorrister had not started at the
beginning.
Gorrister began again. тАЬThe Cold War started and became World War Three and just kept going. It
became a big war, a very complex war, so they needed the computers to handle it. They sank the first shafts
and began building AM. There was the Chinese AM and the Russian AM and the Yankee AM and
everything was fine until they had honeycombed the entire planet, adding on this element and that element.