"Charles Stross - Message in a Time Capsule" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

bear in mind that some occupations are now entirely traditional clankie preserves тАФ forget trying to get a
job cleaning floors unless youтАЩre called Mrs Mopp and people keep asking you about nominative
determinism whenever they first meet you. Oh, and forget qualifying as an auto mechanic, astronaut, or
accountant. (In general, the AтАЩs are right out unless your circulatory system contains more oil than
blood.)

тАФ Alternatively, as long as you remember to take out catastrophic collapse-of-civilization insurance on
your blind five hundred year hedge-fund, you should be sitting pretty when your investments mature and
they thaw you out and grow you a new body. (Otherwise you might not have a leg to stand on.)

тАФ Things you may be taken aback by in the twenty-eight century? (Yes, Miss Feng, I think IтАЩll have
another top-up ... ah, where was I?) Relations of an intimate nature are somewhat confusing to visitors at
first, because polite society generally recognizes three gender axes, not the four youтАЩre used to. We have
butch/femme, squishie/clankie, and U/non-U. IтАЩm not sure quite why we dropped the old
heterodox/orthodox gender split but I gather it had something to do with the craze for nasal penile
enhancements a couple of centuries ago тАФ or maybe it was to do with the common cold being
reclassified as a sexually transmitted disease? IтАЩm not sure; like matters to do with sex in all ages, itтАЩs
deliberately kept unnecessarily confusing by the self-appointed arbiters of polite society. Anyway, moving
swiftly onwards, as long as you remember that it is a mortal insult to sneeze in public in the presence of a
butch clankie non-U, youтАЩll be fine.



тАФ Things you will find familiar: we speak English. In fact, our most U aristocracy aspires to the cultural
heights achieved by the late pre-Downsizing anglosphere in its richest and most progressive centres of art
and philosophy in the mid-twenty first century, Manitoba and Wagga-Wagga. The more U squishie
aristocrats have, in fact, preserved the traditional Anglo-American upper crust mores in brine, although
the clankie core are mostly descended from Eastern European black-hat hackers, so youтАЩll find yourself
perfectly at home here as long as you use P. G. Wodehouse and Stanislaw Lem as your guidebooks.

тАФ As for why you might want to visit our charming century ...

тАФ Dash it all, Miss Feng, what now?

тАФ Oh, only thirty seconds left? TheyтАЩre not very long, are they?

тАФ Oh, I donтАЩt know why I bother. If the Batley Tourist Board hadnтАЩt leaned on Aunt Agatha the
Aggressive to threaten to box my ears if I didnтАЩt do something for the Drowned Yorkshire Reclamation
Fund ...

тАФ All right then! I will, I will!

тАФ Come to live in the jolly sunny twenty-eighth century. We may be a bit over-insolated, and the Space
Patrol may have a bit of a bloody nuisance on their hands with the alien space leeches from Arcturus, but
at least weтАЩve got a Space Patrol, unlike some centuries I could mention, and the leeches donтАЩt invade
too often. Immigration is easy тАФ just shoot yourself in the old ticker while sitting on the edge of a bath
full of liquid nitrogen, being sure to fall in carefully тАФ and we natives are friendly, as long as you bring a
bottle of Tawney Port and a cigar from drowned Havana. You can easily get a job below stairs if you
want to rough it, but itтАЩs a great life if youтАЩre re-born rich, and between you and me all you need to do is
remember your collapse-of-civilization insurance and invest ten dollars in