"Kim Stanley Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

тАЬIsnтАЩt there a driveway to this house?тАЭ
тАЬYeah, I can leave it there I guess. Buried in this gravel here.тАЭ
тАЬThere you go.тАЭ
тАЬAnd other than that, IтАЩm clean?тАЭ
тАЬThatтАЩs what Umberto said. Speaking only of the van, of course.тАЭ
тАЬYeah. IтАЩve got the wand for my stuff. But is that enough? The van wonтАЩt look
weird to toll gates for not having the box, or anything like that?тАЭ
тАЬNo. Not every vehicle has these things yet. So far, the total information society is
not yet fully online. When it is, you wonтАЩt be able to do stuff like this. YouтАЩll never
be able to get off the grid, and if you did it would look so strange it would be worse
than being on the grid. Everything will have to be rethought.тАЭ
Frank grimaced. тАЬWell, by then I wonтАЩt be involved in this kind of stuff. Listen, I
think IтАЩm going to take off now and get a few hours of driving in. ItтАЩll take me all of
tomorrow to get there as it is.тАЭ
тАЬThatтАЩs true. Good luck my friend. RememberтАФno cell-phone calls, no ATMs, no
credit cards. Do you have enough cash with you?тАЭ
тАЬI hope so,тАЭ feeling the thickness of his wallet.
тАЬYou shouldnтАЩt stay away too long anyway.тАЭ
тАЬNo. I guess IтАЩm okay, then. Thanks for the help.тАЭ
тАЬGood luck. DonтАЩt call.тАЭ



Grumpily Frank got in his van and drove north on 95. Transponders embedded in
every vehicleтАЩs windshieldsтАжexcept would that really happen? Was this total
information project not perhaps crazy enough to fail, ultimately? OrтАФcould it be
stopped? Could they go to Phil Chase and lay out the whole story, and get him to
root out CarolineтАЩs ex and his whole operation, whatever it was? Root it out from
the top down? Were the spy agencies so imbricated into the fabric of the
government (and the military) that they were beyond presidential control, or even
presidential knowledge? Or inquiry?
If it werenтАЩt for his going-off-grid status, he would have called up Edgardo to ask his
opinion on this. As it was he could only continue to think, and worry, and drive.
Somewhere in New Jersey it occurred to him that as he was on the road north, he
must therefore have decided to go. He had decided something! And without even
trying. Maybe decisions now had to occur without one really noticing them
happening, or wondering how. It was so hard to say. In this particular case, he really
had had no choice; he had to warn her. So it had been more of a life override than a
decision. Maybe one went through life doing the things one had to do, hooped by
necessity, with decisions reserved for options and therefore not really a major factor
in oneтАЩs life. A bad thought or a good one? He couldnтАЩt tell.
A bad thought, he decided in the end. A bad thought in a long night of bad thoughts,
as it turned out. Long past midnight he kept following the taillights ahead of him, and
the traffic slowly thinned and became mostly trucks of various kinds. Over the
Susquehanna, over the Hudson, otherwise tunneling on endlessly through the forest.
Finally he felt in danger of falling asleep at the wheel, got off and found a side road
and a little parking lot, empty and dark and anonymous, where he felt comfortable
parking under a tree and locking the doors and crawling into the back of the van to
catch a few hoursтАЩ sleep.
DawnтАЩs light woke him and he drove on, north through New England, fueled by the