"Jerry Oltion - Abridged Edition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oltion Jerry)

Richard's dictionary could make things disappear. Why hadn't he used it? Owen
wondered, then he thought, Maybe he had. Who could say what the world had been
like before Richard started tinkering with it? Unless Owen had been involved
directly, he probably wouldn't have remembered the changes.

Whatever Richard might have done, there was still plenty left for Owen to do.
The possibilities were endless. He quickly looked up "prejudice" and
"bigotry."
Neither one was listed, and presumably neither concept existed now, either. He
shuffled through the papers on his drafting table and found the envelope his
last paycheck had come in, but the pink slip was still there. Too subtle,
maybe?
He tried "unemployment," and that time he got results.

The pink slip had disappeared, but so had his paycheck. And something had
changed down by his feet. Owen looked down and found a chain connecting his
left
ankle to his drafting table. What the --?

A loud crack came from outside, and someone screamed. Owen scooted over to the
window -- he had to stretch out his leg to reach it -- and looked out. A line
of
convicts shuffled past on the sidewalk, chained together at the ankles just
like
he was chained to his desk, and a burly guard paced along beside them,
flicking
a whip to lash the back of anyone who stumbled.

"Holy shit," Owen whispered. "Those aren't convicts; they're slaves." And so
was
he. He'd eliminated unemployment, all right.

Frantically, he looked up "slavery," and sighed in relief when the chain
vanished from his ankle. He looked out the window again and was reassured to
see
just the normal pedestrian traffic. Well, not necessarily "normal"; everyone
seemed to be striding along with much more determination than usual, as if
they
had places to go and no time to waste. Better than dragging chains, though.

Owen looked back to his drafting table. He didn't recognize the half-finished
and now tea-stained topographic map taped there . . . but the longer he looked
at it, the more familiar it became. A freelance job? Yes, that was it. He dug
through the papers until he found the job order, complete with a check for
half
the work in advance.

All right. He'd squeaked through on that one. Maybe it was time to put the
dictionary away before he got into worse trouble. But he still had one problem