"Smeds-MarathonRunner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smeds Dave)

Wincing, Neil rushed to the bathroom to wash and bandage the paper-cut. With his
injured hand over the sink and the other on the faucet handle, he paused. The
ribbon of blood along his wrist and forearm reversed its flow, defying gravity
to return to the vessels from which it had sprung. That done, the slice closed,
weaving together with an itchiness that made Neil feel as if ants were suturing
him up with minuscule needles and thread.

Not ants. They were called nanodocs. Within three minutes they had completed
their job. Neil ran his finger along unblemished, unscarred flesh. He shuddered.
Next thing he knew, the Feynman Institute would come up with a means to revive
the dead.

Perhaps they had. Lifting his glance to the mirror, he stared at a man from a
previous century. The athletic lines of his reflection matched those in the
track team photo from his senior year of college. The thick, brown hair was the
same glorious mop his June Cleaver mother hounded him to cut, all the while
editorializing about the corrupting influence of Those Beatles Fellows.

The last time he'd looked like this, he'd been twenty-three years old.

Even his perspiration evoked an earlier time, when exertion brought out a crisp,
pheromonal incense, not the reek of ancient glands. Neil tensed his neck. The
muscles bulged, taut and corded -- no more sagging jowls. He tugged off his
shirt, and tapped his firm, lightly rippled abdomen.

This was how he'd been before he'd developed that annoying tire around his
waist. Before he'd become a father. Before all those years at a desk job. Neil
Corbin -- lean, mean track star.

Except he was even better this time around. As requested, the nose he'd had
surgically straightened at age thirty-nine was still straight; the appendectomy
scar, from age seventeen, was gone as if it had never existed. The promise of
nanotechnology had blossomed. A year ago, nano-assemblers, despite all their
useful applications, could only augment other types of medical care. Now they
coursed, self-guided, through every cell of Neil's body, reining in free
radicals, disassembling invasive microbes, healing damage as it occurred.

And, of course, restoring youth. Permanently.

Neil turned this way and that in the mirror, unable to resist the visual feast,
the sensual kiss of fabric against hard muscle and supple skin. Was this him?

An unfamiliar sensation started low in his torso, grew stronger, and finally
demanded attention. He opened his fly and there it was, a physiological event as
effortless as breathing or blinking. His groin hummed like a violin string drawn
tight over the bridge, its music amplified by the sweet ache from his bladder.

"Incredible," Neil murmured.

He hadn't had erections for thirty years, yet this was already the fourth in