"David Marusek - The Wedding Album" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marusek David)

When the eminence finally faded from sight, Anne was released from her fascination. All at once,
her earlier feelings of unease rebounded with twice their force, and she felt wretched.

"Simopolis," said Benjamin, her Benjamin. "I like the sound of that!" The sims around them began to
flicker and disappear.

"How long have we been in storage?" she said.

"LetтАЩs see," said Benjamin, "if tomorrow starts 2198, that would make it. . ."

"ThatтАЩs not what I mean. I want to know why they shelved us for so long."

"Well, I suppose . . ."

"And where are the other Annes? Why am I the only Anne here? And who are all those
pissy-looking women?" But she was speaking to no one, for Benjamin, too, vanished, and Anne
was left alone in the auditorium with the clownishly dressed old Benjamin and a half dozen of his
earliest sims. Not true sims, Anne soon realized, but old-style hologram loops, preschool Bennys
mugging for the camera and waving endlessly. These vanished. The old man was studying her, his
mouth slightly agape, the kerchief trembling in his hand.

"I remember you," he said. "Oh, how I remember you!"

Anne began to reply but found herself all at once back in the townhouse living room with
Benjamin. Everything there was as it had been, yet the room appeared different, more solid, the
colors richer. There was a knock, and Benjamin went to the door. Tentatively, he touched the
knob, found it solid, and turned it. But when he opened the door, there was nothing there, only
the default grid. Again a knock, this time from behind the wall. "Come in," he shouted, and a
dozen Benjamins came through the wall, two dozen, three. They were all older than Benjamin,
and they crowded around him and Anne. "Welcome, welcome," Benjamin said, his arms open
wide.

"We tried to call," said an elderly Benjamin, "but this old binary simulacrum of yours is a
stand-alone."

"YouтАЩre lucky Simopolis knows how to run it at all," said another.

"Here," said yet another, who fashioned a dinner-plate-size disk out of thin air and fastened it to
the wall next to the door. It was a blue medallion of a small bald face in bas-relief. "It should do
until we get you properly modernized." The blue face yawned and opened tiny, beady eyes. "It
flunked the Lolly test," continued the Benjamin, "so youтАЩre free to copy it or delete it or do
whatever you want."

The medallion searched the crowd until it saw Anne. Then it said, "There are 336 calls on hold for
you. Four hundred twelve calls. Four hundred sixty-three."

"So many?" said Anne.

"Cast a proxy to handle them, " said her Benjamin.