"Jason Gould - The Seven Wonders Of The Modern World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Jason)

My work originated in Gdansk, where a colleague and I were researching the
rare, undocumented phenomenon known only as shrinking skeleton. I won't
bore you with the details, but essentially the disorder dictates that a
human skeleton will appear to contract over very short periods of time,
culminating with eventual death. To further our understanding of the
condition we were injecting subjects with a form of synthetic calcium -
and several other drugs that I'm not at liberty to disclose - and thence
preparing a series of X-rays. It was a basic experiment.
The alien object first appeared lodged in the sternum of a forty-two
year-old female. We believed it originally to be a fault on the equipment.
But a similar shape was then found in the kidney of a twenty-year-old
male. We replaced the equipment, and introduced a new batch of drugs, but
the abnormality persisted. We removed the drugs, and it vanished.
The objects were scattered at random points around the body, often in the
torso or pelvic region, occasionally the head, but never, we noted, in a
limb. It took the form of a thin, curled shrimp; a spiral as if a thumb
had been pressed against the organ. If we asked the subject personal
questions during the examination it appeared to throb. If the subject was
moved to tears it would curl into a ball, and only gradually uncurl itself
as the grief subsided.
We transported our laboratory to the United States and acquired fresh
subjects, all in perfect health. They, too, displayed identical traits
when treated with the same combination of calcium and x-factor. It begged
an in-depth investigation and after much persuasion we won a modest
research grant.
The first shrimp we extracted was taken from the bowel of a
thirty-nine-year-old white female. It had attached itself with massive
strength to the wall of her large intestine, and with her permission we
operated and successfully removed the growth. For a moment after the
operation it appeared to retain life, but then it hardened into something
not dissimilar to a fossil. Once the subject had recovered she began to
display signs of what we eventually labelled diluted emotion. She seldom,
if ever, grew angry, and when dropped into a typically frustrating,
excitable or depressing situation she was utterly unaffected.
By the end of the year we hope to have perfected a device that can be
produced quickly and cheaply anywhere in the world. Simply by visiting a
hospital or clinic, citizens will be able to have such a device sewn into
the skin of a forearm or calf; from there it will seek out and destroy the
shrimp, passing the dead tissue out through natural waste.
History, my honourable colleagues, is about to change for the better. The
history our children's children will make will be unmarred by the
pettiness of the heart, by conflict, jealousy, love, lust. Our children's
children will gaze through glass in museums at small, shrimp-like fossils;
and not shudder, and not be glad, because those things will be past.

Five: Midas Pits Ltd
Nominated by: Mrs. Ursula Copeland of New York City
Mrs. Copeland's Winning Phrase: "Money talks in a dead language. Only a
few are blessed with its tongue, but everyone wants to join in the
conversation."