"Rudy Rucker & Bruce Sterling - Hormiga Canyon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

тАЬStefan, dog,тАЭ said Jayson at last, wind whipping past his phone. тАЬYou still
there?тАЭ

Stefan explained about the ants.
 тАЬAnt-man on the way!тАЭ Jayson soothed over the ragged pounding of
his motorbike. тАЬDonтАЩt even think about poison bug bombs! Bad chemical
karma is never the path.тАЭ

Stefan hung up. His mood had brightened. What the hell, he would fix
his system somehow. HeтАЩd buy a new TV. The basic program was still in
the cell-phone memory chips, also his very last tweak: twine dimension
seven, loop dimension eight. For sure that had been the key to the One
True String Theory. The One True String Theory was worth every sacrifice
he had ever made. Cosmic strings were the key to an endless free source
of non-polluting energy. His noble work would be a boon to all mankind.

Stefan wandered outside. It was another ruthlessly sunny June day,
the sky blank and blue. The dry hills around Mr. NoorтАЩs estate were yellow,
with scrubby olive-green oak and laurel trees. Stefan felt glad to be out of
the house and away from his crippled hardware. Why did he labor indoors
when he lived in California? That was crazy. Comprehending nature was,
after all, the end goal of physics. Why not skip the middleman? Why not go
out in nature and comprehend it in the raw?

Maybe the ants were grateful to him for discovering the One True
String Theory. In return, the ants had come to teach him a finer way of life.
The ants were prodding him to recast his research goals. Maybe, in
particular, he could search for a woman to live with? That search was
well-known to be solvable in linear time.

He would phone Emily Yu before tonight. Of course he would. How
hard could that be? His friend Jayson always seemed to have a partner on
his arm, often boozy and tattooed, but undeniably female. All Stefan
needed to do was to reach out at a human level. Here he was, unemployed
yet still feverishly programming, like the cartoon coyote who skids off a cliff,
spinning his legs in mid-air, until finally realizing that, sigh, itтАЩs time for that
long tumble into the canyon.

Overhead the leaves on a eucalyptus tree shimmered in the hot
breeze. Universal computation was everywhere. Behind the fa├зades of
everyday life were deep, knotted tangles of meaning. Yes, yes....

JaysonтАЩs sturdy red Indian motorcycle putted up the hill and into view,
all 1950s curves and streamlining, with a low-skirted rear fender. A beautiful
old machine, with Jayson happy on it.

Jayson shed his dusty carapace of helmet and jacket. He wore
ragged denim cargo shorts, black engineerтАЩs boots, and a black T-shirt
bearing a garish cartoon image of a carnivorous Mayan god. JaysonтАЩs
brawny arms had sleeve-like tribal tattoos under intricate chain mail