"Rudy Rucker & John Shirley - Pockets" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

"It would sound more heroic, wouldn't it?" said Dad, rubbing his face. "That I keep doi
because I'm on a quest. Better than saying I do it for the high. The escape." He rubbed his
for a minute and got out of bed, a little shaky, but with a determined look on his face.
get-it-together time, huh, Wendel? Get me a vita-patch from the bathroom, willya? I'll
Manda and go see her today. We need this gig. You ready to catch the light rail to San Jose

In person, Manda Solomon was shorter, plainer, and less well-dressed than
processed image she sent out on iTV. She was a friendly ditz, with the disillusioned
of a Valley-vet who's seen a number of her employers go down the tubes. When Dad ca
claimed that Wendel was a master programmer and his chief assistant, Manda didn't bat an
just took out an extra sheaf of nondisclosure and safety-waiver agreements for Wendel to si
"I've never had such a synchronistic staffing process before," she said with a breath
smile. "Easy, but weird. Two of our team were waiting in my office when I came into w
one morning. Said I'd left it unlocked. Karma, I guess."
They followed her into a windowless conference room with whiteboards and projec
screens. One of the screens showed Dad's old photo of him and Mom scattered over the n
of a pocket's space-lattice. Wendel's dad glanced at it and looked away.
Manda introduced them to the other three at the table: a cute, smiling woman na
Xiao-Xiao just now busy talking Chinese on her cell phone. She had Bettie Page b
and the faddish full-eye mirror-contacts; her eyes were like pale lavender Christmas
ornaments. Next was a bright-eyed sharp-nosed Sikh guy from India, named Punee
wore a turban. He had reassuringly normal eyes and spoke in a high voice. The third w
puffy white kid only a few years older than Wendel. His name was Barley, and he wo
stoner-rock T-shirt. He didn't smile; with his silver mirror-contacts his face was q
unreadable. He wore an uwy computer interface on the back of his neck. Barley asked We
something about programming, but Wendel couldn't even understand the question.
"Ummm . . . well, you know. I justтАФ"
"So what's the pitch, Manda?" Dad interrupted, to get Wendel off the spot.
"Pocket-Max," said Manda. "Safe and stable. Five hundred people in there at a t
strapped into . . . I dunno, some kind of mobile pocket-seats. Make downtown San Jo
destination theme park. Harmless, ethical pleasure. We've got some senators who can pu
through a loophole for us."
"Safe?" said Dad. "Harmless?"
"Manda says you've logged more time in the pockets than anyone she knows,"
Xiao-Xiao. "You have some kind of... intuition about them? You must know some trick
making it safe."
"Well . . . if we had the hardware that created it . . ." Dad's voice trailed off, which m
he was thinking hard, and Manda let him do it for a moment.
And then she dropped her bomb. "We do have the hardware. Show him Flatland, Barley
Barley did something with his uwy, and something like a soap film appeared above
generic white plastic of the conference table. "This is a two-dimensional-world mock
mumbled Barley. "We call it Flat-land. The nanomatrix mat for making the real pocke
offsite. Flat-land's a piece of visualization software that we got as part of our license. I
lift."
"Offsite would be the DeGroot Center?" said Dad, his voice rising. "You've got
access?"
"Yaaar," said Barley, his fat face expressionless. He was leaning over Flatland, using
uwy link to tweak it with his blank shining eyes.
"Why was DeGroot making pockets in the first place?" asked Wen-del. No one had
explained the pockets to him. It was like Dad was ashamed to talk about them much.