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

The disease of the '90s, he had said. It seemed like half of Melinda's grade one
class were packing inhalers along with their lunch. Now there would be one more.

He was sick himself, probably with the same bug that had downed Hal. His eyes
were sore, his sinuses ached, and he had shooting pains in his back. But he
could not afford to take any time off right now.

He needed this job. As much as he hated it, he needed to hang on to it, at least
until the economy picked up and he had someplace else to go to. If the economy
ever picked up . . .

Right now, they were living in a house that was worth less than their mortgage.
His wife, Alice, had not had a pay increase in two years, and her company was
about to make more staff cutbacks. The transmission on the station wagon was
shot, he was nudging the limits on all his credit cards, and he had no idea how
they would cover Melinda's school fees next year. They might have to put her in
the public system. But that didn't really bear thinking about, not with pushers
in the playground and metal detectors at every door.

Soon he would get up and cross the room and sort through the mess on Hal's desk
for the Fairfax storyboards. But what he needed to do first was to rest his
eyes, just for a moment.

He put his arms on the drafting table, then allowed his head to drift down on
top of them. He closed his eyes.

Just for a moment.

TWO

"Cogan," the voice said.

He was lying on some kind of couch, between narrow metallic walls. A pattern
hovered above him, intricate and multicolored. It took him a moment to realize
that it was a face. Then he picked out the eyes, the mouth, the nose. The entire
face was decorated with twirling lines and geometric shapes. He blinked, but the
lines and shapes remained.

"Wha...?" he said. His mouth felt clumsy, as if unaccustomed to speech. "What .
. .?"

"Cogan," the voice said again, with a trace of impatience. "Dreamtime is over."

It was a woman's voice, a woman's face. As she leaned closer, he could read the
fine bone structure beneath the tattoos. Or was it some kind of paint? He saw
that her head was bald, and covered in the same patterns.

"What . . .?" he said. "Where . . .?"

The woman's voice softened. "You must have been in deep," she said. "Real deep.