"Rajnar Vajra - Passing the Arboli Test" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vajra Rajnar)

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Passing the Arboli Test
by Rajnar Vajra
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Copyright (c)1997 by Rajnar Vajra
First published in Absolute Magnitude, April 1997

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Science Fiction


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"Lady, you must think I'm the poster sim for stupidity," I said with
more feeling than originality.
"Not at all, Dr. Carter, not one bit. We simply believe that this is
your best option, your only reasonable alternative. Wouldn't passing the
Arboli Test be nicer than, say, living behind bars for the next twenty-five to
forty years?"
"_Passing_ the test, sure. What are the odds of that happening? So far
-- let's see ... five? Yeah, _five_ goddamn geniuses have tried for the
Reward. Where are they today? As I recall, three are in some new breed of
coma; one gibbers and drools. Oh yeah. Number five lucked out: she died."
"According to our information, you're a genius yourself, Doctor."
"If you worship tests. Me, I don't trust tests, IQ or the Arboli
version. Even if I did, I don't bat in the same league as those five brilliant
imbeciles who've already flushed their superior brains down the toilet."
Beth Robinson's image on my monitor flickered, an annoying and
persistent problem in using secured cybergrid channels. A _bloodlink_ was
supposed to guarantee privacy, but what it really guaranteed was aggravation.
I snatched a pencil and slid it under the light-cuff on my left wrist.
Couldn't reach quite far enough to reach the itch, but I did manage to break
off the sharpened lead at the tip. Wonderful. The tiny chunk of graphite was
improbably uncomfortable and I couldn't remove it without breaking the
connection.
"You're forgetting something, Doctor." For a few disconcerting seconds,
I was seeing two Beth Robinson's, two thin women in their late thirties with
ebony skin, large brown eyes, carmine lipstick, and auburn business wigs. The
pencil lead was screwing with the signal. Some checksum cop kicked in, the
images coalesced, and only one Executive Director of HIMSA remained, her face
as patient as a meditating cow.