"Jeff Vandermeer- Veniss Underground" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vandermeer Jeff)

Almost brought me to an end as well one day, for in the absence of those policing elements of society
(except for pay-for-hire), two malicious thievesтАФnay, call them what they were: Pick DicksтАФwell, these
two pick dicks stole all my old-style ceramics and new-style holosculpture and, after mashing me on the
head with a force that split my brains all over the floor, split too. Even my friend Shadrach Begolem
showed concern when he found me. (A brooding sort, my friend Begolem: no blinks; no twitches; no tics.
All economy of motion, of energy, of time. Eye e, the opposite of me.) But we managed to rouse an
autodoc from its wetwork slumber and got me patched up. (Boy, did that hurt!)

Afterward, I sat alone in my apartment/studio, crying as I watched nuevo Westerns on a holo Shadrach
lent me. All that work gone! The faces of the city, the scenes of the city that had torn their way from my
mind to the holo, forever lostтАФnever even shown at a galleria and not likely to have been, either. Veniss,
huh! The adder defanged. The snake slithering away. When did anyone care about the real artists until
after they were dead? And I was as close to Dead as any Living Artist ever was. I had no supplies. My
money had all run out on meтАФplastic rats deserting a paper ship. I was as much a Goner as the AIs
they'd murdered to restore Order, all those Artistic Dreams so many arthritic flickers in a holoscreen.
(You don't have a cup of water on you, by any chance? Or a pill or two?)




I THINK I always had Artistic Dreams.

When we were little, my twinned sister Nicola and I made up these fabric creatures we called cold
pricklies and, to balance the equation, some warm fuzzies. All through the sizzling summers of ozone rings
and water conservation and baking metal, we'd be indoors with our make-believe world of sharp-hard
edges and diffuse-soft curves, forslaking the thirst of veldt and jungle on the video monitors.

We were both into the Living Art thenтАФthe art you can touch and squeeze and hold to your chest, not
the dead, flat-screen scrawled stuff. Pseudo-Mom and Pseudo-Dad thought us wonky, but that was
okay, because we'd always do our chores, and because later we found out they weren't our real parents.
Besides, we had true morals, true integrity. We knew who was evil and who was good. The warm
fuzzies always won out in the end.
Later, we moved on to genetic clay, child gods creating creatures that moved, breathed, asked for
attention with their mewling, crying tongues. Creatures we could destroy if it suited our temperament. Not
that any of them lived very long.

My sister moved away from the Living Art when she got older, just as she moved away from me. She
programs the free market now.



SO, SINCE Shadrach certainly wouldn't move in to protect me and my art from the cold pricklies of
destructionтАФI mean, I couldn't go it alone; I had this horrible vision of sacrificing my ceramics, throwing
them at future Pick Dicks because the holo stuff wouldn't do any harm of a physical nature (which made
me think, hey, maybe this holo stuff is Dead Art, too, if it doesn't impact on the world when you throw
it)тАФsince that was Dead Idea, I was determined to go down to Quin's Shanghai Circus (wherever that
was) and тАЬgit me a meerkat,тАЭ as those hokey nuevo Westerns say. A meerkat for me, I'd say, tall as you
please. Make it a double. In a dirty glass cage. (Oh, I'd crack myself up if the Pick Dicks hadn't already.
Tricky, tricky pick dicks.)