"John Varley - Steel Beach" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

trip from the Catatonic Academy, or the modern press at work.
Call me old-fashioned. I'm the only reporter I know who still uses his
handwriter except to take notes. Cricket was young enough I doubted she'd
ever had one installed. As for the rest of them, over the last twenty years I'd
watched as one after the other surrendered to the seductions of Direct
Interface, until only I was left, plodding along with antique technology that
happened to suit me just fine.
Okay, so I lied about the open mouths. Not all D.I. users look like
retarded zombies when they interface. But they look asleep, and I've never
been comfortable sleeping in public places.
I snapped the fingers of my left hand. I had to do it twice more before
the handwriter came on. That worried me; it was getting harder to find
people who still knew how to work on handwriters.
Three rows of four colored dots appeared on the heel of my left hand.
By pressing the dots in different combinations with my fingertips I was
able to write the story in shorthand, and watch the loops and lines scrawl
themselves on a strip of readout skin on my wrist, just where a suicide would
slash himself.
There couldn't be that many of us left who knew Gregg. I wondered if I
ought to apply for a grant under the Preservation of Vanishing Skills act.
Shorthand was certainly useless enough to qualify. It was at least as
obsolete as yodeling, and I'd once covered a meeting of the Yodeling
Society. While I was at it, maybe I could drum up some interest in the
Preservation of the Penis.
#
(File #Hildy*next avail.*)(code Unitingle)
(headline to come)
#
How far do you trust your spouse? Or better yet, how much does your
spouse trust you!
That's the question you'll be asking yourself if you subscribe to United
Bioengineers' new sex system known as ULTRA-Tingle.
ULTRA-Tingle is the new, improved, up-dated version of UniBio's
mega-flop of a few years back, known simple as Tingle. Remember Tingle?
Well, don't feel bad. Nobody else does, either. Somewhere, in some remote
cavern in this great dusty globe we feel sure there must be someone who
converted and stayed that way. Maybe even two of them. Maybe tonight
they're Tingling each other. Or maybe one of them has a tingle-ache.
If you are a bona fide Tingler, call this padloid immediately, because
you've won a prize! Ten percent off on the cost of your conversion to
ULTRA-Tingle. Second prize: a discount on two conversions!
What does ULTRA-Tingle offer the dedicated sexual adventurer? In a
word: Security!
Maybe you thought sex was between your legs. It's not. It's in your
head, like everything. And that is the miracle of ULTRA-Tingle. Merely by
saying the word you can have the great thrill of caponizing your mate. You,
too, can be a grinning gelding. Imagine the joys of cerebral castration! Be
the first in your sector to re-discover the art of psychic infibulation! Who
but UniBio could raise impotence into the realm of integrated circuits,
elevate frigidity from aberration to abnegation?