"James Patrick Kelly - 10 16 to 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

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10^16 to 1
by James Patrick Kelly
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Copyright (c)1999 James Patrick Kelly
First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 1999

Fictionwise Contemporary
Science Fiction
Hugo Award Nominee

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But the best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and
never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the
future.
Stephen Hawking, "The Future of the Universe"

I REMEMBER now how lonely I was when I met Cross. I never let anyone
know about it, because being alone back then didn't make me quite so unhappy.
Besides, I was just a kid. I thought it was my own fault.
It looked like I had friends. In 1962, I was on the swim team and got
elected Assistant Patrol Leader of the Wolf Patrol in Boy Scout Troop 7. When
sides got chosen for kickball at recess, I was usually the fourth or fifth
pick. I wasn't the best student in the sixth grade of John Jay Elementary
School -- that was Betty Garolli. But I was smart and the other kids made me
feel bad about it. So I stopped raising my hand when I knew the answer and I
watched my vocabulary. I remember I said albeit once in class and they teased
me for weeks. Packs of girls would come up to me on the playground. "Oh Ray,"
they'd call and when I turned around they'd scream, "All beat it!" and run
away, choking with laughter.
It wasn't that I wanted to be popular or anything. All I really wanted
was a friend, one friend, a friend I didn't have to hide anything from. Then
came Cross, and that was the end of that.
One of the problems was that we lived so far away from everything. Back
then, Westchester County wasn't so suburban. Our house was deep in the woods
in tiny Willoughby, New York, at the dead end of Cobb's Hill Road. In the
winter, we could see Long Island Sound, a silver needle on the horizon
pointing toward the city. But school was a half hour drive away and the
nearest kid lived in Ward's Hollow, three miles down the road, and he was a
dumb fourth-grader.