"Robert Reed - Eight Episodes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

Dr. Smith gave her a shamelessly public hug.
Then the other graduate studentтАФa Brazilian fellow named
CarlosтАФpointed out that, whatever the device was, Mary had
found it in rock that was at least a quarter of a billion years
old. "And that doesn't count the time this little machine spent
in space, which could be millions more years."
After the show's cancellation, at least one former executive
admitted to having been fooled. "We were promised a big,
loud invasion," he told an interviewer from Rolling Stone. "I
talked to the series' producer. He said an invasion would
begin right after episode four. Yeah, we knew the build-up
was going to be slow. But then aliens from the dinosaur days
were going to spring to life and start burning cities."
"Except," said the interviewer.
"What?"
"That's not quite true. The Permian happened before there
were any dinosaurs."


7
 Eight Episodes
by Robert Reed


With a shrug, the ex-executive brushed aside that mild
criticism. "Anyway, the important thing is that bad-ass aliens
were supposed to come out of the rock. They were going to
grow huge and start kicking us around. At least that's what
the production companyтАФEXL LimitedтАФassured us. A
spectacle. And since we didn't have to pay much for those
episodes, we ended up purchasing the first eight shows after
seeing only a few minutes of material...."
Invasion was cancelled after the fifth episode.
The final broadcast episode was an artless synopsis of the
next twenty months of scientific work. Dr. Smith and his
students were just a tiny portion of a global effort. Experts on
six continents were making a series of tiny, critical
breakthroughs. Most of the story involved faceless
researchers exchanging dry e-mails about the tiny starship's
text and images. Translations were made; every shred of
evidence began to support the obvious but incredible
conclusions. The culminating event was a five-minute news
conference. Dripping sweat, shaking from nerves, the
astronomer explained to reporters that he had found a
functioning starship on Earth. After a glancing thanks to
unnamed colleagues, he explained how, in the remote past,
perhaps long before there was multicellular life on Earth, an
alien species had manufactured trillions of tiny ships like this
one. The ships were cast off into space, drifting slowly to
planetary systems scattered throughout the galaxy. The