"James Patrick Kelly - Big Guy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

couldn't see anything but the red light of the clock over the sink.23:17:41, 23:17:42, 23:17:43 ,
seconds of his hard-earned free time dripped like blood into silence and the night. The air seemed to clot
with nothingness. He swallowed. The workseat's armrests felt sticky against his wrists. It was like the
time he tried to sleep without pills.

тАЬInfoline!тАЭ His voice cracked. тАЬSportsworld! Jabberwock!тАЭ On the ceiling, the Captain-Mayor was
downplaying the ship's most recent suicide. To his left, the center fielder for the Kansas City Royals
loped under a high fly. He flipped his sunglasses and raised his mitt. The woman being interviewed on his
right was wearing nothing but a swarm of bees. The busy waiting world gleamed through the walls,
reassuring him that he wasn't really alone.
Staples made the catch and headed for the dugout without breaking stride. Two to nothing Caballeros,
top of the fourth. Murph shivered and pushed his anxiety away. No time for itтАФCat might be waiting
already. He wiped the Captain-Mayor to order a cajun potato squeeze, then called up his heroes on the
back wall.

Murph's heroware collection went back eleven years. When he first could afford to link, he had settled
for cheap generics. He had a Samson with a cock as thick as a cucumber, a Sir Knight with three add-on
armor modules and a vampire that could change into a bat or a wolf. Later, as he discovered more
sophisticated haunts, he had splurged on the limited edition Dragon and ahomo habilis . Mirrorman, a
custom job, had cost him six month's savings.

Eventually he'd realized it was all kidsтАЩ stuff. High fashion in heroware catered mostly to drones who
didn't like being who they were. They were afraid they were too ugly, too boring, too ethnic to attract
beautiful, exciting peopleтАФand they were right. So they hid in anonymous virtual bodies and played
games that kept them from finding out anything important about one another. Fighting games, drug games,
sex games.

Once upon a time Murph had been one of them, a miserable slab of fat. He had nothing he was proud
of. So he had worked harder than anyone he knew. Now he was a champion and he had Cat. He
pointed to the last icon in his collection. Big Guy filled the back wall.

Murph, Cat and their familiars in Way Out had stopped wasting their free time playing games. Their
heroware shredded the mask of virtual fashion, by hinting who they mightactually be. Cat, for example,
claimed she showed furry because she refused to shave her legs or wax her upper lip. Her eyes made it
plain that none of her people had come to America on the Mayflower. Shortly after he'd found Cat and
Way Out, Murph had commissioned Big Guy. Himself, swollen to three times his real weight, a lavish,
dripping feast of flesh. Big Guy had a six chins, breasts ripe as any marilyn on the Bliss Market, a gut like
a bass drum. Had he waddled into one of Bumpus's usual haunts, the drones would have laughed. Or
worse, they would have ignored him. Locked him right off their screens as if he didn't exist. In Way Out,
no one ever got locked off. People talked before they fucked. Sometimes they even told each other their
real names. Invited each other home.

Murph eyed Big Guy, who looked back at him. тАЬStrip.тАЭ Big Guy was immediately naked. He still had no
nipples. Cat had to have seenтАФhis shirt had come completely unsealed last time. Erasing parts was in
Way Out тАШs seduction protocol, a final step in the dance to intimacy. Could be she hadn't said anything
because he had only hinted at what he wanted. Less would say more.

тАЬSelect.тАЭ Murph extended his hand toward Big Guy's groin. On the screen, Big Guy reached for him.
The cock was the only thing that wasn't outsized. It was Murph's own: wrinkled, circumcised, the color
of Cat's lips. He flattened his hand to the screen. тАЬDelete.тАЭ Where it had been, there was now static.