"Michael Swanwick - Trojan Horse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

her from deep within the ground. "Now we'll shut off the external senses." The world went away, but the
illusory people remained, each within a separate hexagonal field of vision. It was like seeing through the
eyes of a fly.



There was a sudden, overwhelming sense of Tory's pres-ence, and a sourceless voice said to her, "This
will take a minute. Amuse yourself by calling up a few friends." Then he was gone.



Elin floated, free of body, free of sensation, almost godlike in her detachment. She idly riffled through the
images, stopped at a chubby little man drawing a black line across his fore-head. Hello, Hans, she
thought.



He looked up and winked. "How's it hanging, kid?"
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Not so bad. What're you up to?



"My job. I'm the black-box monitor this shift." He added an orange starburst to the band, surveyed the
job critically in a pocket mirror. "I sit here with my finger on the button"- one hand disappeared below his
terminal-"and if I get the word, I push. That sets off explosives in the condenser units and blows the
dome. Pfffft. Out goes the air."



She considered it: a sudden volcano of oxygen spouting up and across the lunar plains. Human bodies
thrown up from the surface, scattering, bursting under explosive decompression.



That's grotesque, Hans.



"Oh, it's safe. The button doesn't connect unless I'm wetwired into my job."



Even so.