"FWLS63" - читать интересную книгу автора (A Future We'd Like to See)

"Information, then!" Canter suggested. "Come on, with the
facts locked in your head, you and I could really wipe the mat
with those other news and documentation peddlers."

"NO!" I exclaimed. "No. I don't do that anymore. I don't
like spewing out facts at someone's whim."

"Your loss," Canter said. "You really want to see a doctor,
you need me. I can show you where the Port is. Good luck
finding it on your own, it's carefully hidden."

"Come on, man! Have some sympathy," I begged. "What have I
ever done to you to give me a bad turn?"

"The question is not what you have done, but what you
haven't, which is pay me," Canter said. "I take no offense to
what you do, what little there is, but if I'm going to help you,
then you need to help me."

I winced at the word. "Oh, alright. I'll never be able to
face myself in a mirror objicon again, but if it needs to be done
it needs to be done. Make it painless. What do you want to
know?"

*

"Right there," Canter said, pointing to the port labelled
UBERUBERUBERUBERUBER.

"I thought it was carefully hidden," I asked, examining the
insanely easy to spot port.

"Not really," Canter replied. "Hey, so I told a little
white lie. I got some profit out of it. Toodles!"

Canter BAMFed back home.

I felt lower than dirt. I went and sang the song of
information to that two-bit con artist for a full hour, against
my will, just for THIS? I hated it and myself for doing it. I
vowed never, ever again to use my brain as an exchange medium. I
shook off the feelings of dread and claustrophobia that surged up
with the concept of selling my mind out, trying to ignore what I
had just done. I never wanted to feel like that again.

The thing in the sector was a basic 'port program, designed
to get objicons here to there. Not humans... for some reason,
the ports denied them access, just raw data. Humans told me that
ports were designed to carry information and program processes,
not 'connections'.