"Charles Stross - Tarkovsky's Cut" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Gnats seeded by the census to observe events in the room are fed a self-editing intuitive
video-loop of Mishima and Alia copulating. Observers within the Sanctuary of the Folded Rose will
be amazed at the sexual energy of the pair, long after Alia has escaped.

Alia bends over Mishima and places a transdermal patch on his neck. The room shimmers a
pale blue -- a shade which induces calm and contemplation.

Mishima feels the patch and sees the light and doesn't care. "How much drink did you put in that
alcohol?" he asks, draining the glass. Selective blockers have taken out his ethanol
dehydrogenase complex. He is drunk on a single bourbon. His own Wisdom persuades him it has
taken longer for him to get drunk than it actually has.

"You feeling okay?" says Alia.

"Check. My mind's off for servicing tomorrow ... I mean it's my ... I should be caring and
sensitive to the needs of young people ... oh shit" Mishima's syntactic engine is playing up again.
His last concious act is to turn it off.

Alia takes a deep breath, then goes to the kitchen and opens the fridge. She takes out a
braindrain.

It has eight tentacles and no eyes. Like its octopoid ancestor it only survives for about four
hours outside its usual habitat -- in this case a highly oxgenated saline sponge.
 Alia plants it on Mishima's face. The braindrain hunts busily for orifices. Pseudopodia probe the
buccal mucosa, the nasal sinuses, the orbits of his eye sockets. Mishima dreams that a large cat
has decided to share his pillow.

"What are you?" Alia asks.

"Cube," Mishima replies. The answer is a nasal whisper: all that the invasive tentacles in his
nose and throat will permit. Alia asks Wisdom the time. The tentacles should have penetrated his
menenges by now. Soon Harvey will be unable to lie. Braindrains are breedable wetware
packages, configured to handshake human CNS and control speech centres.

Cube. Six sides -- six lifetimes.

"Tell me about them."

"Can't."

"Explain."

"I'm a retread."

Alia shivers with revulsion. The braindrain was a wise choice. Truth drugs are like blunt
hammers; the braindrain is a surgeon's scalpel. Drugs would never be able to reveal the previous
identity of Harvey Mishima. The braindrain might.

She wonders who Harvey was, before the retread. Some Recidivist. Some comrade.