"Ian Watson - Ahead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

my last day. My healthy organs will be harvested for transplants. My heart
and kidneys and retinas will disperse. My blood will be bottled for
transfusions. I imagine the anaesthetic as sweet, even though it will be
delivered by injection. I imagine the farewell kiss of the blade, even
though the anaesthetic will rob me of sensation. Farewell, Old Regime.
Welcome, the Revolution.



2: The Head War

Smell, first of all, as the primitive reptilian brain-root re-awakens: an
overpowering odour of hair-gel, though without any actual sensation of
breathing. No lungs to breathe with?

Taste: slick and sour-sweet.

Sound: high-speed warbling.

Tactile: soft pressure all around my head. Otherwise: nothing at all, sheer
absence.

Vision! Slightly wobbly, as if through liquid. There's a pyramid! It's
composed of decomposing heads. Squinting sidelong, I spy another
pyramid -- of whitened skulls.

And another, beyond it.

I must be hallucinating.

Or else information is being presented to me symbolically.

My viewpoint is rising up, disclosing yet more pyramids upon a flat white
plain, perhaps a salt-flat. Ovoids are airborne. Eggs hover and dart to and
fro. One of these floats close to me. The rounded bottom is opaque. The

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Ahead! - a story by Ian Watson

transparent ellipsoid of the upper two-thirds contains a hairless head,
surely female. I believe that a clear gel wraps and cushions the head. I
must look likewise. Twin antennae protrude from the top of the egg. She's
a mobile disembodied head. I mouth at her, making my lips form mute
words. (Hullo. What's happening? Where are we?)

She mouths at me but I can't read her lips. No thoughts transmit from
those antennae to what I presume must be my own corresponding
overhead antennae. Her egg-vehicle begins to swing away. I urge mine to
follow but it continues onward lazily under its own impetus.