"Robert Reed - 555" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

yes! "Take my glass, Joan." With my steadiest hand, I took it. "How do I
look? Splendid, as usual?" You always look splendid, and spectacular.
Madam. Ma'am. Claudia Pontificate!
At this moment, my mistress is embroiled in a major social event.
Where she is, it is night. The incongruity doesn't bother me. Time is
extremely important in this world, but the habits of the Sun are not. I
stare across the day-lit City, watching those tiny specks and dashes of
color and motion, and not for the first time, I think it is wrong what they
say. Yes, we are a set of fuzzy instructions and algorithms, shaped light
and inspired daydreams. But from what I understand, the other world is
much the same: Everything is built from dots just a little bit smaller than
these flecks of color. In their own right, the mythical atoms are still quite
simple. Simple, and built of even simpler objects. In that other world, light
also has shape, and souls dream, and in countless more ways, both worlds
are very much the same--two realms relentlessly simple when seen up
close, and at a distance, vast and complex beyond all comprehension.
Joan is a daydreamy girl, I think to myself.
I begin to smile, turning away from the window. A man is sitting across
from my desk, waiting for me. I didn't hear him enter my office. Was I
that distracted? In an instant, I sprint through the catalog of City faces,
finding no man with his face. But perhaps he is a woman who has
undergone some kind of sexual rearrangement. It happens from time to
time, according to the demands of some little subplot. But no, his face is
very much a man's face, and his voice is new to
me--testosterone-roughened and oddly sloppy.
 "Hello, Joan," he rumbles.
I have no lines. So of course, I say nothing.
And he laughs knowingly, gesturing at my empty chair. "Go on, sit," he
suggests. "You're fine. I just want to speak with you for a little moment."
I settle on my chair.
"Ask," he says. "Who am I?"
"I don't know," I admit.
"Mitchell Hanson," he says. "I'm the Head Writer for the City."
I don't know what to say.
He keeps laughing, something striking him as being extraordinarily
funny. "Have you ever met a writer before?"
"No," I confess.
"What do you know about us?"
I am a small soul, and polite. "Not very much," I allow.
He nods. "Claudia speaks about us. Doesn't she?"
On occasion, yes. Sometimes when neither of us is needed and she finds
herself standing in my office, waiting to be whisked away to her next
important scene, she talks to me, telling me her thoughts.
"What does she say about us?"
Claudia often meets with the writers. They come as projections,
discussing current plots as well as events that may or may not come to
pass.
"I don't think you are," I mutter.
"What? I'm not a writer?" Mitchell laughs and leans forward in his seat.
"Why do you say that, Joan?"