"Spider Robinson - The Free Lunch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

By the time the bowl was empty, he had become aware of his surroundings. His first reaction to Annie's home
was surprise - at how unsurprising it was. Heck, it was downright boring. It reminded him of a hotel room. (A
cheap hotel room, the only kind he had ever seen except in TV or films.) No entertainment center - in fact, no
visible TV or stereo of any kind. No posters, paintings, or pictures. No windows. Hardly any furniture at all,
really, and all of that looked old and dinky. The computer was so old it had no speakers; looking closer he
saw its disk drive would accept only Stone Age floppy disks, and its monitor could not be changed in either
size or aspect ratio. The bed he lay on was antique, unpowered, simply a flat rectangle: he sat upright only
with the aid of a precarious pyramid of pillows. The single visible recreational amenity was a pair of
bookshelves packed full with books, mostly beat-up paperbacks. Something else nagged at his subconscious,
and then surfaced: there was no remote control of any kind within reach of the bed . . .

Then all at once it made sense. He asked himself two questions: Why did I have an HEC and posters and a
good PC and a real bed in my room (when I still had all that stuff)! and Why do most people? - and the
answer to both came back the same. So we won't mind so much that we don't live in Dreamworld.

Annie didn't need any of that stuff.

Besides, she'd have to be prepared to abandon everything she owned, if Security ever got wind of her and
she had to jungle up someplace else ... so why own anything much?

"You can go back to sleep again if you like," she said, setting down the empty bowl. "It's the middle of the
night." She wore a dark purple silk robe and slippers. He realized suddenly that he was naked under the
covers, but could not manage to work up any embarrassment over it. He had been a patient before.

He made himself take a deep breath. "H-how many of us are there?" he asked.

She blinked. "Two. How many does it look like?"

"I mean Under."

"The answer is still the same. We're the whole club, boy. You and I are the only ones PWOL."

"Huh? I mean, beg pardon?"

"Present Without Official Leave. Am I coming through? No one else is Under."

"Oh."

"Dozens have tried. Well, hundreds have tried, maybe thousands for all I know, but dozens have gotten as far
as you have. As of today, nobody but me has been Under for as long as a week. The current record is four
and a half days."

"Oh." He felt sharp dismay.

"I didn't help any of them," she said. "None of them even knew I was here."

He started to answer, but the longer he hesitated, the longer he hesitated. Annie must know his obvious next
question; since she wasn't going ahead and answering it, she must not want to. "What did he do wrong?" he
asked finally.