"Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vinge Vernor)

changing attitudes about privacy and liberty, of technological progress. Modern security actually worked
most of the time. There hadn't been a city lost in more than five years. Every year, the civilized world
grew and the reach of lawlessness and poverty shrank. Many people thought that the world was
becoming a safer place.

Keiko and G├╝nberk тАФ and certainly Alfred тАФ knew that such optimism was dead wrong.

Alfred looked across the harbor at the towers beyond. Those hadn't been here the last time he visited
Barcelona. The civilized world was wealthy beyond the dreams of his youth. Back in the 1980s and
1990s, the rulers of modern states realized that success did not come from having the largest armies or
the most favorable tariffs or the most natural resources тАФ or even the most advanced industries. In the
modern world, success came from having the largest possible educated population and providing those
hundreds of millions of creative people with credible freedom.

But this Utopia was a Red Queen's Race with extinction.

In the twentieth century, only a couple of nations had the power to destroy the world. The human race
survived, mostly by good luck. At the turn of the century, a time was in view when dozens of countries
could destroy civilization. But by then, the Great Powers had a certain amount of good sense. No
nation-state could be nuts enough to blow up the world тАФ and the few barbaric exceptions were Dealt
With, if necessary with methods that left land aglow in the dark. By the teens, mass death technology was
accessible to regional and racial hate groups. Through a succession of happy miracles тАФ some
engineered by Alfred himself тАФ the legitimate grievances of disaffected peoples were truly addressed.

Nowadays, Grand Terror technology was so cheap that cults and small criminal gangs could acquire it.
That was where Keiko Mitsuri was the greatest expert. Even though her work was hidden by cover
stories and planted lies, Keiko had saved millions of lives.

The Red Queen's Race continued. In all innocence, the marvelous creativity of humankind continued to
generate unintended consequences. There were a dozen research trends that could ultimately put
world-killer weapons into the hands of anyone having a bad hair day.

Alfred walked back to the nearest cannon, paying the touch fee with a wave of his hand. He leaned
against the warm metal, sighting out over the blue mediterranean haze, and imagining a simpler time.

Poor G├╝nberk. He had the truth exactly backwards. Effective YGBM would not be the end of
everything. In the right hands, YGBM technology was the one thing that could solve the modern paradox,
harnessing the creativity of humankind without destroying the world in the process. In fact, it was
humankind's only hope for surviving the twenty-first century. And in San Diego, I am so close to
success. He had insinuated his project into the bio labs three years earlier. The great breakthrough had
come less than a year ago. His test at the soccer match had proven the delivery system. In another year
or so, he'd have developed higher semantic controls. With that, he could reliably control those
immediately around him. Much more important, he could spread the new infection across whole
populations and engineer a few universally viewed transmissions. Then he would be in control. For the
first time in history, the world would be under adult supervision.

That had been the plan. Now incredibly bad luck had jeopardized it. But I should look at the bright
side; G├╝nberk came to me to fix the problem! Alfred had spent a lot of effort digging up "Mr. Rabbit."
The fellow was clearly inexperienced, and every bit the egotistical fool that G├╝nberk believed. Rabbit's
successes were just barely impressive enough to make him acceptable. They could manage Rabbit. I can