"Stephen Kenson - Technobabel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kenson Stephen)

but it resists blows harder than mine every day and my fist only bounces off
with a dull thud.
I want to just curl up in a ball on the sidewalk and start

crying when a swarthy man comes running out the door of the shop. He has rough
skin and tusks coming out of his mouth, like Weizack's dead partner Riley back
at the charnel house, except he's a bit shorter and his skin is darker. I
realize that neither his looks nor Riley's surprise me the way the ghoul's
did. They seem almost normal to me. I stand there staring at him through
blurry eyes for what seems like a very long time before I realize he's yelling
at me.
"Fraggin' chiphead! I said what the frag are you doin' to my fraggin' window,
drekwit! Have you burned out too much of your fraggin' brain? You deaf?" He
hefts a dull silver club with a black rubber handle, and I back away a step
from him.
"Maybe you'll listen to this, you worthless piece of drek," he says as he
lifts the club, from whose tip bright blue sparks leap and crackle.
I suddenly become very angry at being threatened by this ... thing. What the
frag does he know? I'm having a very bad day and I'm in no mood to be
threatened by some street scum kawaruhito. I pull Weizack's gun from the
waistband of my jeans and level it at the club-wielding shop owner. His jaw
drops a bit and I can see in his eyes that he expects to die. I saw the same
look from Riley the split-second before I shot him.
I stare at the ork over the barrel of the gun for what seems like a very long
time, thinking about how Riley's face disappeared in a spray of red as his
body fell to the floor. The ork starts to slowly back away from me and my
hands begin to shake a bit.
"Buzz," I hiss out in a low tone, and the ork suddenly bolts back into the
store yelling something that I can't hear. I turn and run away from the shop,
bolting across the street. Cars screech on their brakes and honk their horns
at me as I run past, still holding the pistol, tears of frustration and anger
blurring my vision. One of the drivers yells something at me, an offer of help
or a curse or something else I don't know. I don't hear him. I just keep
running, wanting to get away from there and down through darkened streets and
alleys, far from the lights and sounds of the strip.

I don't know how long I run for or where I'm going, I just need to get away,
to run away from the terrible feeling of emptiness inside me. Away from the
looming black holes in my mind and all the questions that cluster around them.
My name, what the frag is my name? Someone told me, but I just can't remember.
My head feels so full I can't find anything in it. Too cluttered, too many
things going on at once. I just need to sort it all out, make sense of the
jumble of thoughts.
I stop running in an alley somewhere and huddle against the cold brick wall as
a wave of exhaustion sweeps over me. I shiver in the growing chill of the
night air and grip the pistol tighter as I wrap my arms around my knees and
lay my head back against the wall to look up at the cold, gray sky lit by the
distant lights of the city. The tears streaming down my cheeks make the
reflections of the city lights into multicolored blurs against the darkness. I
can almost imagine for a moment that I'm in that perfect, safe world I saw on