"Alexander Jablokov - Fragments Of A Painted Eggshell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jablokov Alexander)

reached that age?

"Oh, Mom, I know it's stupid and doesn't make any sense but...I don't know what it is. I look back and
feel like I didn't have a childhood. Isn't that silly? You did the best for me and all but somehow it all sifted
away...." Looking at her mother with those clear blue eyes she'd gotten from Mark, Rue started to cry.
"Oh no, oh no, never mind, I'll...oh, damn." She ran from the kitchen, still wearing her long coat buttoned
as if she had never actually come into the house.

Paula continued to make dinner, even though it was clear Rue would not be eating it. She only
half-watched the kitchen computer demonstrate the proper wrist technique for mixing her hollandaise and
give her suggestions on resisting curdling. It noted that her burner was a little too hot, and reduced it for
her. It also told her the pH was high. She thought about arguing with it, then added another squirt of
lemon juice.

Rue had had a childhood. She just hadn't spent much of it with her mother. Paula remembered Rue lying
on a couch. She was about five. The storms of the breakup were raging all around her, but she didn't see
them. She stared off into space, seeing the entertainment channel pushed directly into her optic nerve.
They'd selected quality programming for her, the last thing they managed to agree on. By age ten she had
seen more than any adult in any previous era could possibly have experienced. With direct-experience
feedback she'd probed beneath the seas and gone to the planets. Rue had run with dinosaurs and
climbed the staircase of the DNA double helix.

This whole situation had already occurred in embryo. As she ladled the finished sauce over a piece of
broiled mahi mahi, Paula felt like she was experiencing it again, only this time finally understanding it.

She had taken Rue on a picnic. It was a rare event, Paula had been working hard keeping her company
from going under, but she had managed to get the hired wallboarders and tapers all set up, so that she
was free for the afternoon. She and Rue drove out to a small town out in the woods and set their
tablecloth up on the grass of a mown field, near a puddle left from recent rains. Waterstriders skittered
nervously across the surface.

Paula caught a trembling of light on an unmown stalk of grass.

"Look, Rue! It's a Tiger Swallowtail." The incredibly large black-striped yellow butterfly calmly moved its
wings as if displaying itself. "Rue...."

But Rue was off playing with her imaginary playmate. Not a playmate she'd thought up herself, Paula
thought uncomfortably, but one generated by the communication system into which she was linked. Paula
had let her choose the parameters herself for her tenth birthday. The system expert assistant had helped
Rue through the selection menus, guiding her according to the programming tastes revealed over the
previous five years, all of which it had on record. Demoizle, a clever, fuzzy blue bunny, was the perfect
playmate for Rue. Unctuously polite to Paula, Demoizle drove her crazy.

"Rue...Demoizle. This butterfly is really quite something. You should both see it." Didn't her program
selection have a lot of nature shows? Paula remembered selecting that. But that was mostly orcas eating
sea lions and weird worms that lived in deep- sea volcanoes. Nothing so dull as a real butterfly doing
nothing more interesting than resting. A slight breeze tossed the grass, but the Tiger Swallowtail clung in
its place, as if taunting her.

"Hey, Rue!" Demoizle called, hopping across the tall grass. "I think it's time for a...Sookie!" It rolled an