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

half a day. He made no attempt to produce them; they just happened, as they had
every day of his adolescence.

This wasn't like the inoculation with the Ponce de Leon Vaccine, which had
halted his aging sixteen years ago, but kept him looking and feeling no better
off than a healthy one-hundred-four-year-old. The mass media hoopla of the last
six months came back to him like some sort of electronic echo, but the dreamlike
impossibility of the reports was gone. He'd followed the lead already taken by
three-quarters of the world's population. He was young again.

Then why did it still feel as if his soul hung poised over the abyss of death?
He turned away from the mirror, no longer able to look.

His body seemed oblivious to any anxiety his mind could muster. He could have
used his penis as a towel rack.

He shook his head slowly. "What," he asked his erection, "am I supposed to do
with you?"

MILD INDIAN summer radiance stretched down the canyons of downtown buildings as
Neil and Matthew joined the flow of pedestrians. Young face after young face
ambled by, nearly all on attractive, physically fit bodies. A few children
played, a few middle-aged types promenaded, trying to look distinguished;
otherwise, everyone seemed to be in their late teens to early thirties.

A month after his visit to the clinic, Neil had almost grown used to the absence
of sagging flesh and rheumy eyes around him, despite all the decades spent in
retirement communities, hospitals, and other abodes of the elderly. It reminded
him of college -- another equally unreal part of his adult life.

"Do I really have to do this?" Neil asked.

"Humor me," Matthew said meaningfully. "You have to get out and about sooner or
later."

"I've been busy. Architecture's changed a bit since I last generated a set of
blueprints." Back then, such things were still duplicated on paper and were
still sometimes blue.

"Gramps. . ."

Neil sighed. He'd never shared a home with Matthew before these past few weeks.
He'd been surprised to learn that his grandson could be just as stubborn as he.

This time, Neil had conceded defeat, if only because the kid was right. Neil had
been a hermit, and despite his excuses, all too little of his time had been
spent at his interface studying to resume his career. For the most part he
simply sat in his room.

Matthew at least had the good grace not to lecture. Dr. Rosen had already done