"Nancy Kress - Nano Comes to Clifford Falls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

"What is it?"

"I don't know. But it tastes good. The food nano can't make like, you know, real meats or anything, but it
does pretty good delivering things that look and taste like fruits and veggies and bread, and this stuff is
the protein."

I picked up one of the round things and nibbled. It did taste good, sort of like cold spicy chicken. But
something in me recoiled anyway. Maybe it was the texture, sort of bland and mushy. I palmed the rest
of the ball. "Mmmmmmmmm."

"Told you so," Emma said triumphantly, like the round balls were things she'd baked herself. "Oh, here's
Kitty."

Kitty Svenson hauled herself up the steps. Fat and acne-covered and dirt poor, she was the sweetest girl
in town, and every time I saw her my heart ached. She liked Tom DeCarno, who lived down the street
from me and was the starting quarterback on the football team at the consolidated high school in
Remington. He'd notice Kitty on the day that Hell got a hockey franchise.

It was obvious what Emma in her sexy new dress and Tom in his bathrobe were going to be doing, so I
dragged the protesting Will and we went home. I saw things I hadn't noticed on the way to Em's: a new
playhouse in the backyard of the big house on the corner. Fresh chain-link fence around the Alghren
place. The Connors' pick-up in their driveway, which meant that Eddie hadn't gone to work at the
factory, either. Across the street, a woman I thought I didn't know, dressed up like a city girl in a ruffled
suit and high heels, until I realized it was Sue Merkelson, the pharmacist's wife.

At home I took the kids into the backyard and weeded the tomatoes, which were nearly strangled with
ten days' worth of weeds. Jack used to do at least some of the weeding. But that was before, and this
was now, and I kept at it until the job was done.
****
By late August the factory in Minneonta had closed. Most of the men in town who didn't farm were out
of work, but nobody seemed to mind much. The Crow Bar was full all the time, groups playing cards and
laughing at TV. I saw them spilling out onto the street the one time I went to the supermarket to buy
Pampers and milk.

Emma told me on the phone that Mayor Johnson, Barry Anderson, and Anderson's deputy had the
nanomachines on a regular schedule. Every morning people lined up to pick up whatever their food
order'd been from the previous day, enough food for all that day's meals plus a little over to store.
Another machine made whatever clothes you picked out of a catalogue, in whatever size matched after
you gave in your measurements. It made blankets and curtains and tablecloths, too, anything out of cloth.
The last two machines, including the big one, turned out everything else, picked from a different
catalogue, turn by turn.

The county's corn, ready to harvest, sat in the fields. Nobody wanted to buy it, and except for the farm
owners, nobody hired on to harvest it.

Nearly every family in town drove a new car, from six different models that our nanos were programmed
to make. There was a lot of red and gold vehicles in our streets.

"I want a playhouse, Mommy," Will whined. "Caddie Alghren gots a new playhouse! I want one, too!"