"Robert Reed - Show Me Yours" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

"Imagine you're an old man looking back. What do you see? Fifty years later, and if you had to describe
the consequences of your actions ... if you had to explain your life to others ... how would you do it?"

"Know what?" he says. "You're just a little bit weird."

She doesn't respond.

"Not that weird is a bad thing." He drinks part of his beer. "I don't know. I guess I'd say, 'In my life,
everybody had some fun.'"

"'Fun?'" She takes a last long drink and sets the bottle out of the way. "Is that what you call it?"

He shrugs. Laughs.

"Fifty years," she repeats. "It's going to be a different world. Full of changes, rich with possibilities. I think
you'd agree to that, right?"

"I suppose."

"And you'll have led this long life where you said, 'Yeah, sure,' to every whim and desire that came into
your head. Which is how a sociopath exists. But I bet that doesn't bother you, does it? Hearing yourself
referred to as a sociopath. And you've probably never noticed the worst consequences of your actions.
The misery, the waste. The plain ugliness that you leave in your wake."

The young man closes his mouth and stares. After a moment, he asks, "Aren't you getting sleepy?"

"Should I be?"

He glances at her half-finished beer.

"Half a century," she says. "If you think about it, you can appreciate that there's going to be a wealth of
new pills available. More powerful than any barbiturate, and infinitely more imaginative in their effects."

He squirms in his chair.

"Believe me, there are some amazing pharmaceutical products in that world. Pills that will make a person
believe anything. Feel anything. Do anything, practically." She sits back, smiling with keen pleasure. "If a
person were sufficiently clever, she could feed an old man a series of potent medications, and he would
suddenly believe that he was young again, sitting inside an apartment that he hasn't visited for years. A
young stallion enjoying an evening with two trusting, unfortunate women."

A tight, fearful voice asks, "Who are you?"

"The roommate," she replies. "I had been drinking that night, and when you came out of her room, we
played our little game of 'Show Me.' Then you slipped a Mickey in my beer, and I fell asleep in this chair,
and I woke up the next day, in my bed, with a miserable headache."

The man kicks with his legs, flails with his arms. But he doesn't possess the simple coordination to lift up
off the chair.