"John Varley - Press Enter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

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by John Varley

"This is a recording. Please do not hang up until-"
I slammed the phone down so hard it fell onto the floor. Then I stood
there, dripping wet and shaking with anger. Eventually, the phone started
to make that buzzing noise they make when a receiver is off the hook. It's
twenty times as loud as any sound a phone can normally make, and I
always wondered why. As though it was such a terrible disaster:
"Emergency! Your telephone is off the hook!!!"
Phone answering machines are one of the small annoyances of life.
Confess, do you really like talking to a machine? But what had just
happened to me was more than a petty irritation. I had just been called by
an automatic dialing machine.
They're fairly new. I'd been getting about two or three such calls a
month. Most of them come from insurance companies. They give you a
two-minute spiel and then a number to call if you are interested. (I called
back, once, to give them a piece of my mind, and was put on hold,
complete with Muzak.) They use lists. I don't know where they get them.
I went back to the bathroom, wiped water droplets from the plastic
cover of the library book, and carefully lowered myself back into the
water. It was too cool. I ran more hot water and was just getting my blood
pressure back to normal when the phone rang again.
So I sat there through fifteen rings, trying to ignore it.
Did you ever try to read with the phone ringing?
On the sixteenth ring I got up. I dried off, put on a robe, walked slowly
and deliberately into the living room. I stared at the phone for a while.
On the fiftieth ring I picked it up.
"This is a recording. Please do not hang up until the message has been
completed. This call originates from the house of your next-door
neighbor, Charles Kluge. It will repeat every ten minutes. Mister Kluge
knows he has not been the best of neighbors, and apologizes in advance
for the inconvenience. He requests that you go immediately to his house.
The key is under the mat. Go inside and do what needs to be done. There
will be a reward for your services. Thank you."
Click. Dial tone.
I'm not a hasty man. Ten minutes later, when the phone rang again. I
was still sitting there thinking it over. I picked up the receiver and listened
carefully.
It was the same message. As before, it was not Kluge's voice. It was
something synthesized, with all the human warmth of a Speak'n'Spell.
I heard it out again, and cradled the receiver when it was done.
I thought about calling the police. Charles Kluge had lived next door to
me for ten years. In that time I may have had a dozen conversations with
him, none lasting longer than a minute. I owed him nothing.
I thought about ignoring it. I was still thinking about that when the
phone rang again. I glanced at my watch. Ten minutes. I lifted the receiver
and put it right back down.
I could disconnect the phone. It wouldn't change my life radically.
But in the end I got dressed and went out the front door, turned left,