"Michael Swanwick - Radiant Doors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

fifty years ago had finally come to fruition. People were no longer needed to
mine, farm, or manufacture. Machines made better administrators, more attentive
servants. Only a very small eliteтАУthe vics called them simply their OwnersтАУwere
required to order and ordain. Which left a lot of people who were just taking up
space.

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 Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998


There had to be something to do with them.

As it turned out, there was.

That's my theory, anyway. Or, rather, one of them. I've got a million:
Hyperautomation. Cumulative hardening of the collective conscience. Circular
determinism. The implicitly aggressive nature of hierarchic structures.
Compassion fatigue. The banality of evil.

Maybe people are just no damn good. That's what Shriver would have said.

The next day I went zombie, pretty much. Going through the motions, connecting
the dots. LaShana in Requisitions noticed it right away. "You ought to take the
day off," she said, when I dropped by to see about getting a replacement
PzC(15)/pencorder. "Get away from here, take a walk in the woods, maybe play a
little golf."

"Golf," I said. It seemed the most alien thing in the universe, hitting a ball with a
stick. I couldn't see the point of it.

"Don't say it like that. You love golf. You've told me so a hundred times."

"I guess I have." I swung my purse up on the desk, slid my hand inside, and
gently stroked the device. It was cool to the touch and vibrated ever so faintly
under my fingers. I withdrew my hand. "Not today, though."

LaShana noticed. "What's that you have in there?"

"Nothing." I whipped the purse away from her. "Nothing at all." Then, a little too
loud, a little too blustery, "So how about that pencorder?"

"It's yours." She got out the device, activated it, and let me pick it up. Now only I
could operate the thing. Wonderful how fast we were picking up the technology.
"How'd you lose your old one, anyway?"

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 Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998


"I stepped on it. By accident." I could see that LaShana wasn't buying it. "Damn