"James P. Hogan - Giants 4 - Entoverse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

society that grew under the Thurien guidance became a protective incubator
cocooning them until the grave. Smothered by largesse to the point where
nothing they did or didn't do could make any difference that mattered to their
lives, they abandoned control of their affairs to impenetrable layers of
nameless administrators and their computers, and either sank into lethargy or
escaped, into empty social rituals of acting out roles that no longer
signified anything, or into delusion.
Under the collective name JEVEX -- the processing and networking
totality serving the system of Jevlenese-controlled worlds -- the computers
ran the factories and farms, mining and processing, manufacturing,
distribution, transportation, and communications, along with all the
monitoring to keep track of what was going on. JEVEX kept the records, stocked
the warehouses, scheduled the repairs; it directed the robots that built the
plants, serviced the machines, delivered the groceries, and hauled the trash.
And it created the dreams into which the people escaped from a system that
didn't require them to be people anymore.
And that, the Thurien and Terran leaders had concluded after the three-
day Pseudowar that ended the self-proclaimed Jevlenese Federation, had been
the problem. JEVEX had been modeled on the larger and more powerful Thurien
complex, VISAR, which, while equipping JEVEX admirably for catering to
Ganymean temperaments and needs, had done nothing to satisfy the very human
compulsions to seek challenge and to compete.
So, the thinking had gone, the key to remedying the situation would be
to switch off all but JEVEX's essential services for a time. By compelling the
Jevlenese to take charge of their own affairs -- and at the same time leaving
them less opportunity for making mischief -- they would stimulate them into
learning to become human again. And the Ganymeans from the Shapieron had
agreed gamely to oversee and administer the rehabilitation program with its
period of probationary decomputerization.
Garuth was only now beginning to realize what they had taken on.
He sat with Shilohin, a female Ganymean who had been the mission's chief
scientist, in his office in the Planetary Administration Center on Jevlen, the
former headquarters of the local Jevlenese government at a city called Shiban.
Before them an image floated, seemingly hanging in midair in the room. It was
being transmitted from Barusi, another city situated several thousand miles
away on the coast of one of Jevlen's southern continents, with three towers of
its central composition rising more than a mile into the pale green sky. But
the scene that Garuth and Shilohin were watching was set against a background
of drabness, the buildings shabby and most of the machines idle. A lot of the
populace had moved into shanty camps thrown up around the city's outskirts,
where the simpler routines of living that they had been obliged to revert to
were more easily organized -- even an act like collecting and preparing food
could turn out to be unexpectedly complicated when removed from the context of
what had been a totally automatic, self-adapting environment.
The view, taken from the Civic Center housing the Ganymean prefect and
his staff responsible for the Barusi district, looked down over the tiered
expanse of Sammet Square. A procession of Jevlenese numbering several thousand
was spilling in from an avenue leading east out of the city, adding to a
comparable number who had been gathering there through the afternoon.
Virtually all of them had contrived to be wearing something of purple, and the