"Frank Herbert - Destination Void 2 The Jesus Incident" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

"Who's there?"

Silence and the impenetrable darkness answered.

Flattery felt alone and now there was a painful chill around his flesh, a signal
that skin sensation was returning to normal.

One of the crew had warned them before they had thrown the switch to ignite the
artificial consciousness. Flattery could not recall who had voiced the warning
but he remembered it.

"There must be a threshold of consciousness beyond which a conscious being takes
on attributes of God."

Whoever said it had seen a truth.

Who is bringing me out of hyb and why?

"Somebody's there! Who is it?"

Speaking still hurt his throat and his mind was not working properly -- that icy
core of untouchable memories.

"Come on! Who's there?"

He knew somebody was there. He could feel the familiar presence of. . .

Ship!

"Okay, Ship. I'm awake."

"So you assume."

That chiding voice could never sound human. It was too impossibly controlled.
Every slightest nuance, every inflection, every modulated resonance conveyed a
perfection which put it beyond the reach of humans. But that voice told him he
once more was a pawn of Ship. He was a small cog in the workings of this
Infinite Power which he had helped to release upon an unsuspecting universe.
This realization filled him with remembered terrors and an immediate awesome
fear of the agonies which Ship might visit upon him for his failures. He was
tormented by visions of Hell . . .

I failed. . . I failed . . . I failed . . .




St. Augustine asked the right question: "Does freedom come from chance or
choice?" And you must remember that quantum mechanics guarantees chance.