"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 11 - Dimension of Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

result. The soft, sweet, crumbly breadlike cake and the almost tasteless liquid were blatantly synthetic
and depressingly dull.
Some five hundred years before, the people of Pura had discovered the basic art of stimulating the
senses by using direct brain-computer links. Blade wondered if in the process of discovering this art and
learning to control it, they had sent any unsuspecting subjects off into other dimensions. But they had
learned to control the linkages bit by bit, and that had been the foundation for Pura's greatestтАФand
lastтАФachievement.
About two hundred years before, they had discovered the methods of recording and simulating
specific sets of sensations. Soon it became possible to put these sensations together into complete
stories, which were incredibly complex and totally realistic as long as one was hooked up. They could
satisfy any possible or impossible fantasy that one could harbor in one's waking mind.
But even then Pura was not doomed. No matter how much of one's sleeping hours one spent
Dreaming, one still had to spend a certain amount of time awake for eating, washing, exercising, and
generally carrying out the necessary business of staying alive. Even those wealthy enough not to need
jobs could not spend all their time Dreaming.
Then somebody invented the life-sustaining gas and all the life-support equipment that went with it. It
became possible to spend years on end in the Dreams; the periods of Waking were reduced to only a
few days to "test" one's body for signs of physical deterioration.
Within a few years everybody was working just enough to be able to spend the rest of the time
Dreaming. A man would work six months, then go to a public Dream House, climb into a vault, and for
the next six months be a wandering minstrel or knight from the city's ancient history or travel among the
stars as one might in the far future. The only people who had to work all the time were the
Dream-builders, who developed and recorded new Dreams, the vault masters who prepared the vaults,
and the life-support technicians, who maintained and improved the machinery that kept the Dreamers
alive and healthy.
Pura had been wealthy, and few if any had ever gone hungry or homeless. But nearly two-thirds of
the city's population could scrape together enough money for only an occasional Dream session, no
matter how hard they worked. They resented this. As the wealthy slipped more and more into their
Dream worlds and cared less and less about running Pura, the poor became discontented, even violent.
The security forces were enlarged, and their salaries were increased to handle this threat. But as soon as
the security troops had enough money to become full-time Dreamers, the city was left to the gangs that
were beginning to be known as Wakers.
Within a single generation Pura had sunk from a flourishing city to a decaying jungle, where men
reduced almost to the level of wild animals stalked and slew each other and any Dreamers bold or
curious enough to venture out into the real world. Health, transportation, and the food supply broke
downтАФfamine and epidemic raged unchecked.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to carry out any major project. Before it became completely
impossible, however, the leaders of the Dreamers faced the crisis and came up with what they expected
to be a solution. Build Dream vaults, one for each willing and interested person, with life-support
equipment, recorded dreams, food, and power to last for centuries. Make the vaults so strong that
nothing short of the weapons of the ancient and half-legendary War Period could damage or open them,
and put them all over the city. Then each person could climb into his private vault and stay there until the
Waker gangs in the city above ate each other up and it was safe to come out. The life-support equipment
and power supply had become so reliable that one needed to Wake for one's tests only every twenty
years or so.
Not all of the people who could afford private vaults and planned decades of Dreams went along
with the scheme, of course. Some packed up as many of their possessions as they could carry and left
the city. On foot or in the few vehicles still running, they headed for the south in search of new land and a
chance to find a new and better city. These were the bravest of the Purans, but there were not many of
them. Even those who did not spend most of their time in Dreams had long since become so completely