"Richard Laymon - Dreambox Junkies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laymon Richard)

sleep, he had built up in his mind a detailed vision of his Personal Heaven, as the Dreambox manual
termed it. And only then, after this recommended period of conceptual armament, had he put on the
trodes for the first time.

It was nowтАФwhat was it?тАФmore than a month he had been hooking. And how many
chronocompressed months of boxtime had it taken so far? How much higher did he have to climb before
he got there?

He speakstarted the Berkeley Effect.

His boxworld, all those nanographically stored terabytes faithfully recreating the Earth and its inhabitants
from the planet's every available infosource slipped smoothly in to override his physiosensory paradigm.
Gaps, problematic lacunae, were either algorithmically airbrushed in picoseconds, or else simply
overlooked by the brain's internal homeostatic sanity safeguards. Thus was Paulie's psyche relieved of
much of the the primary burden of furnishing the field upon which seeds of meaning could be sown, his
energies freed for the task of shaping, moulding, transforming the boxworld's psychoplastic realitude to
his own deep, secret needs and ends, like a tailor adjusting the cut of an off-the-peg suit: taking in, letting
out, seeking the ideal fit. The box's forebrain implicators kicked in immediately, calling upon intellect to
balance emotion, lending intravironmental rigour, Apollo keeping a cool eye on Dionysus.

Paulie thought bitterly, Why can't I stop kidding myself?

The room began to come unstitched.

Wasting my time.

Transconscious, he swam in the soft sweet bliss belly.

[Back to Table of Contents]


Chapter 4

Enjoying an aromatherapeutic soak in one of the exquisitely-tiled bathrooms in the smallest of her three
equally idyllic yet unpretentious European residences, the Moorish casa tucked down an alleyway in the
heart of Seville'S Barrio Santa Cruz, where she had, of late, taken to spending one or two winter months,
Frances Rayle felt the Feeling again.

Darling Xabier promptly dealt with things, holding her and helping her and administering the Socratosine
prescribed to cushion her from her dangerously outrageous joy. Of course, she might have resorted to
any of several automedicatory methods. Something called a Homeoresponsive Embed had been
recommended by more than one of her doctors. Yet stubbornly, perhaps unwiselyтАФbut then, it was her
body, her life and her sanityтАФshe had opted for Xabier and his hypoderm gun. She preferred to place
her trust in people.

Gently, Xabier lifted her out and towelled her dry. At some point, as always, she had lost consciousness,
suffered a brief, delicious pink-out, as it was called, and might well have drowned had Xabier not been
there.

The Feeling was impossible to describe with any adequacy. It was comparable to, yet qualitatively