"Learning The World" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

Learning the World
A Scientific Romance


by Ken MacLeod
A Note on Translation

For convenience, some numbers used by characters who count in an octal system have occasionally been rendered in decimal. Terms derived from a dead scholнarly language are rendered as if from Latin. There is an explanation for this.

Population will mightily increase, and the earth will be a garden. Governments will be conducted with the quiнetude and regularity of club committees. The interest which is now felt in politics will be transferred to sciнence; the latest news from the laboratory of the chemist, or the observatory of the astronomer, or the experimenting room of the biologist will be eagerly discussed. [...] Disease will be extirpated; the causes of decay will be removed; immortality will be inнvented. And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visнited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturнers of worlds.ЧWinwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man, 1872

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks are due to Carol for giving flight to my characters, to Charles Stross for handwaving their limbs, to Farah Mendlesohn for helpful comments at various stages of the draft, and to Del Cotter for sendнing me a paper about world ships.
Some of the ideas and images were inspired by The Millennial Project, by Marshall T. Savage, and Reason in Revolt, by Ted Grant and Alan Woods.


1ЧThe Ship Generation

Learning the World

14364:05:1217:24 The world is four thousand years old. I was eight years old when I found that out for myself. My name is Atomic Discourse Gale and this is the first time I have written something that anyone in the world can read. It is strange and makes me feel a little self-conscious, but I reassure myself that not many people will read it anyway.

14364:05:1318:30

That was a joke. I see I have a few readers. JЧЧ wants to know how I found out the age of the world. It was six years ago now but I remember it quite well. I was very young then and didn't understand everything that happened, but looking back I can see that it was a significant event in my life. That is why I mentioned it. So this is what happened.

"How old is the world?"

I asked my caremother. "I don't know," she said. "Why don't you look it up?"

"I've looked it up," I said. "I don't believe it."

"Why not?"

"Seventeen billion years?" I said. "That's impossible."

"Ah," she said. "That's the universe. Well ... everyнthing we can see. The stars and galaxies."

I went off and formed a more careful query. Nothing came back. I returned to my caremother. "This world," I said. "I can't find anything about that."

"All right," she said. She pointed up to the sky. "See up there ... where the sunline enters the wall? Inside there, in the forward cone, you'll find what is called the keel."

"Like the bottom of a boat?"

"In a way, yes. It's really the base of the engine, and it's the first part of the ship to be put in place. You will find the date of the final assembly there. And from that you can work out the age of the world."

"You don't know what it is?"