"Peter Watts - Blindsight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watts Peter)

 Blindsight
Peter Watts




Prologue 6
Theseus 11
Rorschach 115
Charybdis 300
Acknowledgments 307
Notes and References 309
Creative Commons Licensing Information 331
"This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of
imagining what is, in fact, real."
тАФPhilip Gourevitch


"You will die like a dog for no good reason."
тАФErnest Hemingway
Peter Watts 6 Blindsight




Prologue

"Try to touch the past. Try to deal with the past. It's not real. It's just a
dream."
тАФTed Bundy

It didn't start out here. Not with the scramblers or Rorschach,
not with Big Ben or Theseus or the vampires. Most people would
say it started with the Fireflies, but they'd be wrong. It ended with
all those things.
For me, it began with Robert Paglino.
At the age of eight, he was my best and only friend. We were
fellow outcasts, bound by complementary misfortune. Mine was
developmental. His was genetic: an uncontrolled genotype that
left him predisposed to nearsightedness, acne, and (as it later
turned out) a susceptibility to narcotics. His parents had never
had him optimized. Those few TwenCen relics who still believed
in God also held that one shouldn't try to improve upon His
handiwork. So although both of us could have been repaired, only
one of us had been.
I arrived at the playground to find Pag the center of attention for
some half-dozen kids, those lucky few in front punching him in the
head, the others making do with taunts of mongrel and polly while
waiting their turn. I watched him raise his arms, almost hesitantly,
to ward off the worst of the blows. I could see into his head better