"Robert Weinberg - Logical Magician 01 - A Logical Magician" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinberg Robert)

expenses.
Supremely egotistical, Roger never once considered changing his behavior. There
was no question in his mind that the world was wrong, not him. Thus, he was resigned to
earning half of what he should and being routinely passed over when it came time for
promotions. Life seemed to have passed him by.
That all changed in the course of one evening. A group of programmers at work,
the closest to what might be loosely defined as his friends, invited Roger along to a party
where a well-known Channeler was guest of honor. Imbued with the typical disdain felt by
all scientists towards New Age mysticism, Roger treated the entire experience as one big
joke. Until the Channeler, a short, stocky woman with piercing black eyes that stared
directly into your soul, sank into the deep trance necessary for her to call upon her Spirit
Guide.
"Who seeks the hidden knowledge?" The voice that emerged from the woman's
throat was deep and harsh, a man's voice. A vague thrill of fear swept through Roger as
he listened to those guttural tones. In one astonishing instant of epiphany, he transformed
from a harsh skeptic to an ardent believer. "Who seeks the hidden knowledge?" the voice
repeated, and Roger felt it spoke directly to him.
The rest of the evening passed in a blur. Whatever revelations the Spirit Guide
offered, they made no impression upon Roger. His mind was already buzzing off on
tangents far beyond his initial revelation. For once Roger accepted the fact that the occult
existed and could be contacted, it opened an entire Pandora's box of possibilities to be
explored. A man with unlimited ambition and ambiguous morality could achieve great
things if he dared. And Roger dared.
Within a few days, he assembled an occult library consisting of some of the
greatest and most frightening volumes of black magic lore ever written. Many of the books
were readily available in cheap paperback format, thus leading to Roger's second great
revelation. Over the centuries, many thousands of people had access to these same works
and the spells they contained. But little evidence existed to show that any of those other
seekers successfully mastered the powers described.
It was obvious that the spells as written were not enough to summon the forces of
darkness. Ever the computer hacker, Roger guessed the solution in an instant. No
magician willingly shared secrets with his fellows. All of the spells in the forbidden books
were complete. But they each contained minor mistakes and glitches that only the original
user knew to be false. It was as if they had been published in code, without the necessary
key to unlock their power.
Fortunately, Roger owned the greatest code-breaker of all time, a home computer.
He had been using it for cracking access codes and breaking into secret files for years.
The magic tomes were just another hacker challengeтАФone that he accepted eagerly. For a
change, the payoff would be worth the trouble.
Defining terms and listing proper names demanded time. Patiently, Roger fed all of
the necessary data into the machine. He spent a day revising his software, making minor
adjustments wherever necessary. The work wasn't very hard. Seven nights after his
encounter with the Channeler, he was ready to raise his first demon.
The spell he used came from The Key of Solomon , with minor modifications and
corrections courtesy of his computer. His magic circle and pentagram followed the
instructions of Eliphas Levi, one of the most famous magicians who ever lived. The
determination and courage came from Roger.
Slowly and carefully, he recited the summoning spell as reconstructed by his word
processing program. Accents were extremely important, and one misspoken word could
doom the whole project. Another crucial element in the process was naming a specific