"Peter F. Hamilton - Softlight Sins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

Then he was through, the gate closing behind him. Something about the
savagery of the protesters bolstered his own determination.
And what an irony that is. Me, the man who prides himself on his
liberalism, having to find refuge in the stiff upper lip tradition the
minute adversity strikes.
The Institute building was only three years old, paid for by the European
Federal Criminal Psychology Bureau. A four storey cube, with green-tinted
mirror glass that bounced the forest trees back at him, their bare
autumn-ravaged trunks long and wavery.
It was part secure hospital, part research facility. The Bureau had
originally hoped the doctors could use laser imprinted subliminal commands
to insert new behaviour patterns into the more stubborn social
recidivists. A technique that would produce, if not model citizens, at


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least reasonably honest ones. That research was still continuing, but for
the last year the Institute had concentrated on developing Softlight.
It had been the idea of Doctor Michael Elliot, a neurologist who had been
studying memory retention to see how long the rectification commands would
last.
What his research uncovered was the amnesia mechanism, the method by which
grey cells discard the unwanted memories of each day's events, preventing
the brain from being cluttered up with a billion irrelevant details.
Elliot isolated the governing neurological code and managed to adapt the
laser imprint technique to transmit the sequence throughout the brain.
Softlight: the total erasure of memory and behaviour patterns. Personality
death.
Anyone committing a capital crime could be mentally executed, leaving
behind a perfectly viable body; an adult infant ready to be named,
educated, and returned to the world as fully functional members of
society. Capital punishment without death. For the PC politicians of the
Brussels Federal Assembly it was a dream solution.
Adrian Reynolds was about to become the first subject.

Barbara Johnson was standing in the Institute's reception area, her long
face taut with agitation. Douglas had met her on several occasions; she
was Dr Elliot's deputy.
She led him to an interview room on the third floor where Adrian Reynolds
was waiting. A couple of muscular-looking male orderlies stood patiently
outside.
"Ten minutes, Douglas, please," she said, apparently embarrassed at
rushing him. "No more than fifteen. The judge is already here."
"Sure," he said, and walked into the interview room.
Most Court Defence Officers tended to develop a sense of responsibility
for their clients. But Douglas had taken it to an extreme, always refusing
prosecution cases. The price he paid for his quirk came in the form of
people like Adrian Reynolds. Twenty years old, with a father who had