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

DO YOU WANT TO HEAR MORE, VICT9R? Y/N яЭоB
The message rambled from that point. Kluge seemed to be aware of it,
apologetic about it, because at the end of each forty-or fifty-word
paragraph the reader was given the Y/N option.
I kept glancing from the screen to the keyboard, remembering Kluge
slumped across it. I thought about him sitting here alone, writing this.
He said he was despondent. He didn't feel like he could go on. He was
taking too many pills (more of them rained down the screen at this point),
and he had no further goal. He had done everything he set out to do. We
didn't understand what he meant by that. He said he no longer existed. We
thought that was a figure of speech.
ARE YOU A COP, VICT9R? IF YOU ARE NOT, A COP WILL BE
HERE SOON. SO TO YOU OR THE COP: I WAS NOT SELLING
NARCOTICS. THE DRUGS IN MY BEDROOM WERE FOR MY
OWN PERSONAL USE. I USED A LOT OF THEM. AND NOW I
WILL NOT NEED THEM ANYMORE.
PRESS ENTER яЭо
Osborne did, and a printer across the room began to chatter, scaring
the hell out of all of us. I could see the carriage zipping back and forth,
printing in both directions, when Hal pointed at the screen and shouted.
"Look! Look at that!"
The compugraphic man was standing again. He faced us. He had
something that had to be a gun in his hand, which he now pointed at his
head.
 "Don't do it!" Hal yelled.
The little man didn't listen. There was a denatured gunshot sound, and
the little man fell on his back. A line of red dripped down the screen. Then
the green background turned to blue, the printer shut off, and there was
nothing left but the little black corpse lying on its back and the word
**DONE** at the bottom of the screen.
I took a deep breath, and glanced at Osborne. It would be an
understatement to say he did not look happy.
"What's this about drugs in the bedroom?" he said.
We watched Osborne pulling out drawers in dressers and bedside
tables. He didn't find anything. He looked under the bed, and in the closet.
Like all the other rooms in the house, this one was full of computers.
Holes had been knocked in walls for the thick sheaves of cables.
I had been standing near a big cardboard drum, one of several in the
room. It was about thirty gallon capacity, the kind you ship things in. The
lid was loose, so I lifted it. I sort of wished I hadn't.
"Osborne," I said. "You'd better look at this."
The drum was lined with a heavy-duty garbage bag. And it was
two-thirds full of Quaaludes.
They pried the lids off the rest of the drums. We found drums of
amphetamines, of Nembutals, of Valium. All sorts of things.
With the discovery of the drugs a lot more police returned to the scene.
With them came the television camera crews.
In all the activity no one seemed concerned about me, so I slipped back
to my own house and locked the door. From time to time I peeked out the
curtains. I saw reporters interviewing the neighbors. Hal was there, and