"Нейл Стефенсон. The Big U (Большое "U", англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Here was actually some green: a strip of grass between the walk and the
Parkway. On this side the Plex was faced with darker brown brick and had many
picture windows and signs for the businesses of the built-in mall on the first
floor. The Main Entrance itself was merely eight revolving doors in a row, and
having swished through them we were drowned in conditioned air, Muzak, the
smell of Karmel Korn and the idiotic babble of penny-choked indoor fountains.
We passed through this as quickly as possible and rode the long escalators
("This must be what a ski lift is like," said Casimir) to the third floor,
where a rampart of security booths stretched across our path like a thruway
toll station. Several of the glass cages were occupied by ancient guards in
blue uniforms, who waved us wearily through the turnstiles as we waved our ID
cards at them. Casimir stopped on the other side, frowning.

"They shouldn't have let me in," he said.

"Why?" I asked. "Isn't that your ID?"

"Of course it is," said Casimir Radon, "but the photo is so bad they had no
way of telling." He was serious. We surveyed the rounded blue back of the
guard. Most of them had been recruited out of Korea or the Big One. The glass
cages of the Plex had ruined their bodies. Now they had become totally passive
in their outlook; but, by the same token, they had become impossible to faze
or surprise.

We stepped through more glass doors and were in the Main Lobby.

The Plex's environmental control system was designed so that anyone could
spend four years there wearing only a jockstrap and a pair of welding goggles
and yet never feel chilly or find the place too dimly lit. Many spent their
careers there without noticing this. Casimir Radon took less than a day to
notice the pitiless fluorescent light. Acres of light glanced off the Lobby's
polished floor like sun off the Antarctic ice, and a wave of pain now rolled
toward Casimir from near the broad vinyl information desk and washed over him,
draining through a small hole in the center of his skull and pooling coldly
behind his eyes. Great patches of yellow blindness appeared in the center of
his vision and he coasted to a stop, hands on eyes, mouth open. I knew enough
to know it was migraine, so I held his skinny arm and led him, blind, to his
room in D Tower. He lay cautiously down on the naked plastic mattress, put a
sock over his eyes and thanked me. I drew the blinds, sat there helplessly for
a while, then left him to finish his adjustment to the Big U.

After that he wore a uniform of sorts: old T-shirt, cutoffs or gym shorts,
hightop tennis shoes ("to keep the rats off my ankles") and round purple
mountain-climbing goggles with leather bellows on the sides to block out
peripheral light. He was planning such a costume as I left his room. More
painfully, he was beginning to question whether he could live in such a place
for even one semester, let alone four. He did not know that the question would
be decided for him, and so he felt the same edgy uncertainty that nagged at
me.