"Weiner-PurplePill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weiner Andrew)

"The mind wants what it wants, Mr. Conway. And that is nothing to be ashamed of.
Tell me, are you a frequent reader of science fiction?"

"A reader? I'm not much of a reader of anything. But I used to watch a lot of
it. TV, drive-in movies, like that."

"You enjoyed it?"

"Oh, sure. The future. Seeing the future, bright and shiny and clean, I couldn't
get enough of that. Just the idea that there would be a future, that we would
get out of this century alive, it didn't even matter what kind of future. But I
liked the space stuff the best. It was so . . ."

"So?"

"Optimistic," he said. "The idea that we wouldn't blow ourselves to pieces,
wouldn't choke on our own pollution. That we would not only survive, but endure.
Go out there and conquer these fantastic new worlds, using our minds and our
machines and our courage. It was the optimism that I liked most of all."

"And you still watch these shows?"

"Not for years. I outgrew them, was what happened. I started dating, I went to
art school, I traveled. I got a job, got married, bought a house, had a kid. I
didn't have time for that stuff, anymore. It didn't have anything to do with my
life. It seemed silly."

"Silly?"

"The whole idea. That we could go into space. That we should even want to. If
you think about it, it's obscene. Children starving and we're spending money on
space shuttles."

"And yet at some level," Dr. Graves said, "you have not let go of your dreams."

"Maybe not." He shook his head. "I was hoping you were going to tell me that
this was all chemical. Some bad chemicals swirling around in my head."

"Oh, but there are," Dr. Graves said. "Not bad chemicals exactly, but rather
chemical imbalances. When you come under stress, that triggers the release of
certain neurotransmitters, which in turn facilitate the psychotic break,
allowing this bizarre ideation to emerge from your unconscious mind."

"But which comes first? The crazy ideas? Or the bad chemicals?"

"We can debate etiology if you like, Mr. Conway. But it doesn't really help us
much. The real question is how to manage the situation. A decade or two ago, we
would have spent many hours together discussing your ideation. But today, quite
frankly, I don't have the time or the interest, and you don't have sufficient
medical coverage. Fortunately there is an alternative." "An alternative?"