"FWLS36" - читать интересную книгу автора (A Future We'd Like to See)

The whole trip took about four days. Four long days
travelling by commercial shuttle. I HATED space travel.

Why was I doing this? I hadn't even gotten into VOSNet
until this summer, when my professors demanded I start turning in
VOS compatible programs. I don't even like virtual reality...
it's just as disorienting as space travel... but it was either my
grades going down the can or seasickness.

So I'm browsing around the Information Superhighway, take a
wrong turn, and find this thing. Before I can do anything about
it, ice slams up and I have to run. Now I'm bugged and lord
knows who or WHAT is probably following me...

It hasn't been a good week.

I can't wait under they burn that thing and get this whole
mess over with.

*

"Knock knock!" said the door. It opened shortly after.

"You Random?" Gosub asked.

"Are you Gosub?"

"Can't you tell?" he asked, letting me in.

"Well, yeah, but usually it's not that way..."

"What way?"

"I haven't met anybody that doesn't change their VOSNet
appearance to something else... but you're the same."

"Old schoolers. Go figure."

"Come again?" I asked, confused.

Gosub let out a long sigh, ragged breath letting on how much
older than he looked. He brushed some magazines off a chair, and
slumped down in it. "Random, you don't know much about the net.
Be happy about that. It's become a hellish little place since
first showing up a few years back. Used to be only a few
business and schools on the net, people gettin' shit DONE... now
everybody and their DOG is on the Net. You get a lot of lamers."

"What IS a lamer, anyway?"