"Alex Irvine - Shambhala" - читать интересную книгу автора (Irvine Alexander C)

questions in about ninety seconds--causes, widespread collapse of energy infrastructure and reluctance
of bandwidth outsources to continue to be bandwidth outsources; remedies, dramatic downscaling
including elimination of native personae and all spaces except the immediate environs of Shambhala--but
if the meeting lasts less than three hours he'll devote his life to God.

The consensus around the table is that things are actually pretty good, power troubles notwithstanding
and regional wars notwithstanding and general uncertainty regarding the viability of post-industrial
civilization notwithstanding. No one has any interest in welcoming a flood of evacuees from the Virt, in
addition to which the technological obstacles are formidable. Trouble is, the question of whether Squirts
are human has been tied up in the courts for five years now, and simply pulling the plug on the whole thing
would cause intolerable legal exposure (although a voice from Finance pipes up that settling claims might
be roughly equivalent in cost to the bandwidth upgrades proposed by the Nerds-in-excelsis; he is
ordered to work the numbers again and report back). There is talk of building brains from pre-Squirt
records, but it is objected that this will result in the loss of whatever personality changes occurred during
a given subject's time in the Virt, and that loss is considered undesirable. There is talk of isolating a
personality in a corner of the Virt, trapping it if you will, which has unsavory connotations but would only
cause short-term trauma in the interest of long-term viability should a transfer--a rebodification--be
successful.

Discussion ensues. The Virt, it is decided, will survive the current troubles. At least sort of. People with
loved ones who have done the Squirt, however, are getting agitated, and since the cost of the Squirt is
orders of magnitude higher than the annual income of the average citizen of planet Earth, this agitation is
prominent and must be addressed. A proposal is advanced: Might it be useful in a public-relations sense
to provide an outlet for the discontent that will doubtless accompany the current disruptions? Perhaps in
the form of a lottery...?

Dissenters argue that those uploaded signed contracts acknowledging the irreversible nature of the
transfer. This dissent is acknowledged, but there is the delicate matter of the Kuntz operation. Gag orders
signed on the original settlements five years before contain out clauses that might be activated if a reverse
Squirt were to be performed. The opinion of Legal will be sought. Marketing pipes up: Given the
circumstances, wouldn't it be better to bend the letter of the agreements, out clauses or no out clauses, if
public perceptions can thereby be massaged in the desired fashion? Then if they have to pull the
plug--Finance, you're running those numbers again, right?--they can spin the lottery as a dramatic rescue.

This argument carries the day. Now the problem is that to do what they're thinking about doing, they
need Alvin Kuntz. No one in the room relishes the prospect of working with him again, not after the way
he almost took them all down before.

Mike Chancey sits silently through the proceedings. He's not surprised, except by the idea of the lottery,
which is so profoundly stupid that only a vice-president of marketing could have conceived of it.
somewhere in the virt
Some kind of signal has gone out. Virtizens leave what they are doing and start walking, flowing in
puzzled tributaries that empty into a few broad rivers of personae exiting Shambhala. They go in different
directions, but with the appearance of purpose, as if they are being separated. It is raining tree frogs
whose tiny bodies splash into fist-sized pixels when they hit the ground. Music is playing everywhere, and
great curving snakes of lightning ripple through the mountains. Various parts of Shambhala appear not to
exist. They're like blind spots; Shannon feels like she's seeing something there but can't focus on it and
when she tries the old trick of looking just next to the place, it doesn't work because she doesn't really
have eyeballs. But wait, it should work because she's supposed to feel like she has eyeballs, isn't she?
She's way past unease now, well on the way to panic, but it's an anaesthetized kind of panic, yowling