"Grant Naylor - Better Than Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Naylor Grant)

be making tracks. Big kissy-kissy to Marie and the dauphin. Thanks for the servant girls. See you at the wedding.'
Louis XVI thanked Rimmer for the Ray-Ban sunglasses and the Sony Walkman and bade him farewell.
Rimmer gingerly made his way across the lawns towards the Time copter, followed by Kennedy, Van Gogh,
Einstein and Caesar. Elvis crammed a steak in his mouth, stuffed a second in his pocket, grabbed four bread rolls and
followed them.
The man in the air traffic control tower radioed clearance to materialize, and the Time copter bloomed into
existence, and chuddered to rest on the tarmacadamed runway.
The disembarkation door hinged to the ground, and the world's richest man clicked down the steps towards
the waiting limo.
Two steps down, the screaming started. Hordes of teenage girls standing on the observation balcony swept
forward in tides of pubescent adoration.
 'Arniiiiiiiiieeee!' they roared. 'We love yooouuuuuu!'
Rimmer waved half-heartedly and shot them the thinnest of his thin smiles, before he was surrounded by a
phalanx of sober-suited security guards who ushered him to the leather comfort of the limo's interior.
The eight motorcyclists twisted their throttle grips, and led the cavalcade forward, as it swished imperiously
past Passport Control and the Customs building, and headed towards the exit.
Rimmer flicked idly through the stack of magazines on the limo's mahogany table: Time, Life and Newsweek.
He noted with only mild interest that his portrait graced the cover of all three. According to Life, he'd just been voted
'World's sexiest man', 'World's best-dressed man' and 'Pipe-smoker of the year'. Rimmer smiled. He didn't even own a
pipe, much less smoke one. Success breeds success, he thought.
The cavalcade fought its way through the screaming fans milling around the airport exit.
'Arniiiiiiiiiiiieeeeee! Don't marry her!'
Flattened adoring faces squashed up against the grey smoked glass, all of them dizzy with desire for Arnold J.
Rimmer.
Rimmer was perfectly well aware that he was in the wrong plane of the wrong dimension of reality and, quite
honestly, he didn't give two hoots.
The limousine gently disentangled itself from the sobbing frenzy of teenage girls and silently accelerated
down the free-way, followed by a shower of moist, female underwear.


TWO
Three million years out in Deep Space, a dilapidated mining ship drifts pointlessly round in a huge, aimless
circle.
On board, its four crew members sit in a horseshoe, trapped in the ultimate computer game: a game that plugs
directly into the brain, and enables them to experience a world created by their own fantasies.
The game is called Better Than Life, and very few ever escape its thrall: very few can give up their own, personally
sculpted paradise.


THREE
Sparkling lights looped from tree to tree along the main street, above an assortment of parked cars hummocked
in white. A small brass band umpahed discordant but cheery carols in the town square, as last-minute shoppers
slushed through the snow, exchanging seasonal greetings and stopping oc-casionally to join in a favourite carol.
In the fictional town of Bedford Falls, it was Christmas Eve. But then again, in the fictional town of Bedford
Falls, it was always Christmas Eve.
Lister crossed the main street, his two sons perched on either shoulder, and headed for the toy shop.
As they passed the jailhouse, Bert the cop was removing a wanted poster from the front window.
The poster was yellow and gnarled, and offered a five-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest of Jesse James
and his gang. 'About time I took this thing down,' Bert said sheep-ishly. There hadn't been a single crime in Bedford
Falls for over thirty years; not