"Reed, Robert - OurPrayers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

I don't want this to happen. I want it to stop.

Yet what does one opinion have behind it? Nothing, that's what. And besides, am
I at risk? This is like watching those old people drowning last spring: a
gruesome part of me is thrilled, wondering how it will look, millions and
billions of gallons racing downstream in a great apocalyptic wall, mud and
cities carried along with the dead....

That's what happens now.

As we watch--as the world sits spellbound -- those wind-driven waves find a
deadly flaw. Earth slumps, then vanishes. The CNN crew watches a new channel
being created, a new spillway equaling the first spillway, then exceeding it.

In a matter of minutes, the dam is ruined. Useless.

The camera crew retreats, in panic, leaving their equipment to fend for itself.
And before dawn, every city for a thousand miles downstream is being partially
abandoned, and even New Orleans is filling sandbags.

In case.

The reporters abandon our camp before dawn, better mud needing their attentions.
The largest dam failure in history is certain to kill hundreds, possibly
thousands. The Corps spokesman from last night is one of the first casualties. A
self-inflicted gunshot wound, we hear. And as I absorb the news, without
warning, some inner voice says to me:

"He deserves death. It's his fault, after all."

But why?

"You know why."

Maybe it's exhaustion, but my answer feels reasonable. Maybe the months of worry
and work have ruined me, tearing away a thousand years of civilization, but I
can't help thinking that the answer couldn't be more obvious.

"Tiny events cause storms," I tell my shack companions. My fellow refugees.
"What if? What if the human spirit can influence tiny events? What if six
billion people can focus their attentions, their psychic energies -- call them
whatever you want -- and that's how we can manipulate weather fronts and jet
streams? What happens then?"

Nobody speaks.

Sleepless, half-dead faces gaze at me, nothing in them to read.

I give an impromptu lecture on chaos theory and butterfly wings, then conclude
by asking, "When have so many people in so many places been able to think about