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

fallen out of phase with its Quasiplatonic Ideal: that single, ultimate hairstyle maxoptimizing one's
attractiveness, self-esteem and all-round wellbeing. Sesha's own QI had been defined as a glossy black
helmet-like bob as worn by Louise Brooks, that old-time actress currently enjoying a giddy synthespic
afterlife. Sesha's hair being by nature wavy, the requisite sleekness was a challenge to achieve, and
rainтАФexcessive humidity, evenтАФwas an absolute killer.

Fruck it anyway, Sesha thought, feeling victimized, horribly victimized, being cursed with wavy hair when
you were a psychotrichological straightie. Who was that in the mirror? Medusa? She didn't know what
she would have done without her mobe. If it found her in this state upon receipt of a vidcall its
PhonePhace function would automatically smarten-up her screen image. Mobes were the only friends
some people had. Sesha wouldn't place herself in that sad category, quite, but she'd been pretty cut up
when her last mobe had haywired.

She had a bedboy coming round at nine but the mood wasn't there, what with the head, eye, and jaw
ache, and now acute hair depression to boot. She would reschedule the session, take a good long
shower instead, fruck the water meter, take two McSnooze and say good riddance to a bitch of a day.
And then, tomorrow, she'd arrange a reconsultation. For it was possible that she had been misdefined. It
wasn't unknownтАФthere had been rare cases: the odd erroneously prescribed fringe, cinnabar tints that
had proven unquasiplatonic, one or two ill-advised headshaves. The Institute of Psychotrichology had
never claimed infallibility; Frances was far too humble to allow that.

The Kilburn High Road, as usual, confined her progress to tiny mad sprints with snail's-pace interludes.
And to make matters worse, they'd got rid of that ad for Dial-a-Dong, the bedboy agency. She would
miss the familiar vidclip of that guy, Italianate and doubledropdead gorg, boogieing away with a big stiffie
bulging out through his lime Lycra kilt. Instead, almost every single roadscreen now proclaimed:

DREAMBOXтАФTHE ONLY LIMITATION

IS YOUR OWN IMAGINATION

It was everywhere, now, that slick, mantraic slogan. Mags, NeTV, e-shots puppeting your mobe,
hardmail on your doormat. On buses, advertaxis, on the Cricklewood railway bridge wall when you
slowed at the traffic lights. Rapped out on the radio. You could even win a DreamboxтАФor, if you
preferred, a genuine original 1975 Texas Instruments vintage pocket calculatorтАФby sending in a
snapshot to the Roody Noody Breakfast Competiton, so the tinny tones of her muesli box would remind
her every time she filled her bowl.

That would, no doubt, be the next big move after Mindseyes: they'd be expecting you to box up and put
in extra hours under chronocompression. Already it was being tried by hardcore workos, cutting-edgers
shooting through a whole week of brain toil in one single twelve-hour box binge. But it tended to backfire
on the employers, so Sesha had heard. Dreambox use was so addictive that even the most zealous
careerists were dropping out like twentieth-century hippies, lost in their personal boxworlds. Sesha
wasn't too clued up on Dreamboxes, the finer details of how they worked, although the onslaught of ads
had left her vaguely aware that the box used the immense amount of inf available on the Net, plus the
brain's own, no less considerable resources, to construct and store a facsim of the real world, a total
artificial environment which, when subjected to the Berkeley EffectтАФwhatever the fruck that might
beтАФbecame a playground for the box user's psyche. Apparently, the human mind found this freedom
quite frightening, and fought tooth and nail to keep control, sticking all kinds of barriers in the way of
facile wish-fulfilment. Weird. Sesha wondered if she would turn out to be allergic to Dreamboxes also.
Well if so, then so be it, fruck it. Too much, it was, even with all her FuShok training. A desert island, she