"Kathleen Ann Goonan - Nanotech 02- Mississippi Blues" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

But the Information Wars, which raged worldwide, put an end to
this brief magnificence.
Entire cities could be easily sabotaged, and nanotechnologists
were put to work in top-secret laboratories and think tanks to find
defenses. Some of these defenses turned out to be lethal. Airborne
plagues could kill quickly, or change the neuronal patterns of the
plagued to fill them with any thoughts the creator of the plague
might desire. Plagues of thoughtтАФviruslike, airborne informational
nanтАФreleased during the Information Wars were so compelling
that those unwilling to be drawn into the strangeness could only
isolate themselves and hope for favorable winds.
And when a series of long-predicted earthquakes shattered the
northeast at the height of the Information Wars, a new phase
began.
The Third Wave changed everything irrevocably, isolating the
Flower Cities and turning North America into an unstable collection
of independent, individual human frontiers. Cumulative tampering
with ancient genetic programs governing aspects of human function
and behavior, including the ability to survive famine resulted in a
precipitous worldwide drop in population. Yet at the same time, for
those so privileged, the old dream of human immortality took on a
terrible reality.
тАЬTerribleтАЭ was not a word most people would associate with
immortality. But in Cincinnati, immortality had been terrible
indeed.
The library trembled again, for over a minute. This time Verity
could not ignore it.
As she sat up, the cocoon unfurled, freeing her. She tipped herself
over the low clear edge and sat on the floor, trying to reorient
herself after her suffusion in history. She realized, as she stared out
the huge window at the Art Deco building across the street, that
she had no idea if the history fed her by the library was reliable.
Verity stood slowly, battling dizziness. The clear, viscous fluid
beneath the cocoon, held within a hard transparent oval, through
which information flowed from the library and was transmitted to
the cocoon, moved in a single slow wave which stilled quickly. She
braced herself against another tremor, which lasted only a second,
then stretched and began to pace the vast, smooth floor of the
library, where there were no books, only cocoons. Anxious to leave,
she felt that she was still not done with the library. How long did
she have?
She had recently initiated drastic changes within the heart of
Cincinnati, though she still wasnтАЩt sure how they would play out, or
how long it would take to reset the deep, complex programs
governing all aspects of the City, including the very shape of the
buildings. The City trembled, literally, on the verge of a conversion
тАФa nanotech surge that would sweep through the matter of
Seam-enclosed Cincinnati and reconfigure everything, even the
mental state and the very bodies of the inhabitants. The conversion
would essentially rebootтАФ reprogram тАФthe City. Information would