"James Patrick Kelly - The Propagation Of Light In A Vacuum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

inertial frame of the observer. Einstein warned that c is the ultimate
limit within spacetime. Exceed it and you pass out of the universe of
logic. Causality loops around you like a boa; the math is beyond me. Of
course, logic and causality are hardwired into our brains. It makes for
some awkward moments.
I was a hero when I began this grand voyage of discovery. Like Columbus.
In his time, the world was flat. People believed that if you sailed too
far in any one direction, you would fall off the planet. My imaginary wife
informs me that we have sailed off the edge of reality. Perhaps that
explains our predicament.
(Predicament? Opportunity. Nobody has ever had a chance to invent
themselves like this.)
The problem was that the theoretical framework supporting
faster-than-light travel stopped at c. No one really knew what was beyond
the absolute. Oh, there was extensive testing before any humans were put
at risk. The robots, unburdened by imagination, functioned exactly as
expected. The design team accelerated an entire menagerie: spiders and
rats and pigs and chimps. They all came back; the ones that weren't
immediately dissected lived long and uneventful lives. So I suppose
there's hope.
(What he hasn't told you yet is that it wasn't just him. He's embarrassed,
but it's not his fault. There were fifty-one people on this ship. Crew and
colonists. His real wife was one of them. Her name was Varina.)
I remember once Varina made a joke about it. She said that science ended
at c. The other side was fiction. It's not so funny anymore.
I don't know what happened to the others. All I can say is that when the
ship warped, I blacked out. I have my theories. Perhaps there was a
malfunction. I could be dead and this is hell. Maybe the others had
reasons for stranding me here -- maybe they had no choice. When I woke up
there was no one else but her and she's imaginary.
I have no idea how to save myself, or, indeed, if I even need saving. My
grasp of the technology that surrounds me is uncertain at best. Do any of
you understand the dynamics of a particle with a mass of 1019 GeV? You
see, most of us were specialists. Aside from the crew, there were
programmers, biologists, engineers, doctors, geologists, builders. Only
the least important jobs went to people with multiple skills. I'm down on
the organization chart as Nutrition Stylist, but I'm also in a box labeled
Mission Artist. Corporations pledged money, schoolchildren sold candles
and the arts lobby worked very hard to create a place for me on the
roster. Of course, it didn't hurt my cause to be married to a civil
engineer. My speciality has always been dabbling. I've spent a lot of time
in front of image processors. It says on my resume that I throw pots but I
haven't spun a wheel for years and who knows if there'll be clay where I'm
going. I write my own songs for the voice synthesizer and can even pluck a
few chords on the guitar. I do some folk dancing and tell stories and can
juggle four balls at once. And now I style food. After I got into the
starship program they sent me on a world tour of cooking schools.
Budapest, Delhi, Paris -- more dabbling. You know, I used to hate to cook;
now dinner is all that matters. What's the point to doing art when you
have no audience?