"Peter Watts - The Second Coming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watts Peter)

The Second Coming of Jasmine Fitzgerald Peter Watts
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The Second Coming of Jasmine Fitzgerald1
Peter Watts



What's wrong with this picture? The only thing that's missing is a motive. They were a quiet
Not much, at first glance. Blood pools in a pattern entirely couple, the neighbours say. He was sick, he'd been sick for months.
consistent with the location of the victim. No conspicuous arterial They never went out much. There was no history of violence. They
spray; the butchery's all abdominal, more spilled than spurted. No loved each other deeply.
slogans either. Nobody's scrawled Helter Skelter or Satan is Lord or Maybe she was sick too. Maybe she was following orders from
even Elvis Lives on any of the walls. It's just another mess in some tumour in her brain. Or maybe it was a botched alien
another kitchen in another one-bedroom apartment, already abduction, grey-skinned creatures from Zeta II Reticuli framing an
overcrowded with the piecemeal accumulation of two lives. One innocent bystander for their own incompetence. Maybe it's a mass
life's all that's left now, a thrashing gory creature screaming her hallucination, maybe it isn't really happening at all.
mantra over and over as the police wrestle her awayтАФ Maybe it's an act of God.
"I have to save him I have to save him I have to save himтАФ"
тАФmore evidence, not that the assembled cops need it, of why * * *
domestic calls absolutely suck.
She hasn't saved him. By now it's obvious that no one can. He They got to her early. This is one of the advantages of killing
lies in a pool of his own insides, blood and lymph spreading along someone during office hours. They've taken samples, scraped
the cracks between the linoleum tiles, crossing, criss-crossing, a residue from clothes and skin on the off chance that anyone might
convenient clotting grid drawing itself across the crime scene. question whose blood she was wearing. They've searched the
Every now and then a red bubble grows and breaks on his lips. apartment, questioned neighbours and relatives, established the
Anyone who happens to notice this, pretends not to. superficial details of identity: Jasmine Fitzgerald, 24-year-old
The weapon? Right here: run-of-the-mill steak knife, slick with Caucasian brunette, doctoral candidate. In Global General
blood and coagulating fingerprints, lying exactly where she dropped Relativity, whatever the fuck that is. They've stripped her down,
it. cleaned her up, bounced her off a judge into Interview Room 1,
Forensic Psychiatric Support Services.

First published in Divine Realms (1998), S. MacGregor (Ed.). Turnstone Books, Regina. Way before The Matrix came out.
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The Second Coming of Jasmine Fitzgerald Peter Watts
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They've put someone in there with her. "Yeah." She nods, seriously. "It's tough enough to do that shit to
"Hello, Ms. Fitzgerald. I'm Dr. Thomas. My first name's Myles, yourself, you know, but to risk someone else, someone you really
if you prefer." care aboutтАФ" She wipes at one eye. "He was dying for over a year,
She stares at him. "Myles it is." She seems calm, but the tracks did you know that? Each day he'd hurt a little more. You could
of recent tears still show on her face. "I guess you're supposed to almost see it spreading through him, like some sort ofтАФ leaf, going
decide whether I'm crazy." brown. Or maybe that was the chemo. Never could decide which
"Whether you're fit to stand trial, yes. I should tell you right off was worse." She shakes her head. "Heh. At least that's over now."