"Asimov Isaac - Gold, The Final Science Fiction Collection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

Professor Firebrenner made the necessary adjustments and nailed the ship to the fabric of the Universe while 27.5 million years passed. And then, in less than a flash, time began to move forward again in the usual way, and everything in the Universe moved forward with it.
Through the viewing port of their ship, Professor Firebrenner and Mr. Atkins could see the small orb of the red dwarf star.
The professor smiled. „You and I, Atkins,“ he said, „are the first ever to see, close at hand, any star other than our own Sun.“
They remained two-and-a-half hours during which they photographed the star and its spectrum and as many neighboring stars as they could, made special coronagraphic observations, tested the chemical composition of the interstellar gas, and then Professor Firebrenner said, rather reluctantly, „I think we had better go home now.“

Again, the controls were adjusted and the ship was nailed to the fabric of the Universe. They went 27.5 million years into the past, and in less than a flash, they were back where they started.
Space was black. There was nothing.
Atkins said, „What happened? Where are the Earth and Sun?“
The professor frowned. He said, „ Going back in time must be different. The entire Universe must have moved.“
„Where could it move?“
„I don’t know. Other objects shift position within the Universe, but the Universe as a whole must move in an upper-dimensional direction. We are here in the absolute vacuum, in primeval Chaos.“
„But we’re here. It’s not primeval Chaos anymore.“
„Exactly. That means we’ve introduced an instability at this place where we exist, and that means--“
Even as he said that, a Big Bang obliterated them. A new Universe came into being and began to expand.



ALEXANDER THE GOD

ALEXANDER HOSKINS GREW SERIOUSLY interested in computers at the age of fourteen and quickly realized that he was interested in nothing much else.
His teachers encouraged him and excused him from classes in order that he might concentrate on this hobby of his. His father, who worked for IBM, encouraged him, too, got him some necessary equipment and explained some knotty points to him.
Alexander built his own computer in a room above the garage, programmed and reprogrammed it and, at the age of sixteen, could no longer find a book that told him anything he didn’t know about computers. Nor could he find a book that dealt with some of the things he had found out entirely on his own.
He thought about it deeply and decided not to tell his father of some of the things his computer could do. Already, the boy had become aware that the greatest conqueror of ancient times had been Alexander the Great, and Alexander felt his own name was no accident.
Alexander was particularly interested in computer memory and worked out systems for cramming data into volume--much data into little volume. With each improvement, he squeezed more and more data into less and less volume.
Solemnly, he then named his computer Bucephalus, after the faithful horse of Alexander the Great, the horse who had carried him through all his triumphant battles.
There were computers that could accept spoken commands and give spoken responses, but none could do it as well as Bucephalus. There were also computers that could scan and store the written word, but none could do it as well as Bucephalus. Alexander tested this by having Bucephalus scan the Encyclopedia Britannica and store it all in its memory.
By the time he was eighteen, Alexander had established an information-handling business for students and small businessmen and had become self-supporting. He moved into his own apartment in the city and was from that point on independent of his parents.
In his own apartment he could remove the earphone attachment. With privacy, he could speak to Bucephalus openly, though he carefully adjusted the computer’s voice to low intensity. He did not want neighbors to wonder who was in the apartment with him.
He said, „Bucephalus, Alexander the Great had conquered the ancient world by the time he was thirty. I want to do the same thing. That gives me twelve more years.“
Bucephalus knew all about Alexander the Great, since the Encyclopedia had given him all the details.
He said, „ Alexander the Great was the son of the King of Macedon and by the time he was your age, he had led his father’s cavalry to victory at the great battle at Chaeronea.“
Alexander said, „No, no. I’m not talking about battles and phalanxes and things like that. I want to conquer the world by coming to own it.“
„How could you own it, Alexander?“
„You and I, Bucephalus,“ said Alexander, „are going to study the stock market.“
The New York Times had long since put all its microfilmed records into computerized form and for Alexander it was not at all a difficult task to tap into that information.
For days, weeks, months, Bucephalus transferred over a century of data on the stock market into its own memory banks--all the stocks listed, all the shares sold for each on each day, the ups and downs, even the applicable news on the financial pages. Alexander was forced to extend the computer’s memory circuits and to work out a daring new system for information retrieval. Reluctantly, he sold a simplified version of one of the circuits he had developed to IBM and in this way became quite well-to-do. He bought a neighboring apartment in which he might eat and sleep. The first apartment was now given over entirely to Bucephalus.
When he was twenty, Alexander felt he was ready to start his campaign.
„Bucephalus,“ he said, „I am ready, and so are you. You know everything there is to know about the stock market. You have in your memory every transaction and every event, and you keep it all up to date to the very second because you are hooked into the computer at the New York Stock Exchange, and you will soon be hooked into the exchanges in London, Tokyo, and elsewhere.“
„Yes, Alexander,“ said Bucephalus, „but what is it you wish me to do with all the information?“
„I am certain,“ said Alexander, his eyes gleaming in steely, determined fashion, „that the values and fluctuations of the Market are not random. I feel that nothing is. You must go through all the data, studying all the values and all the changes in the values and all the rates of changes of the values, until you can analyze them into cycles and combinations of cycles.“
„Are you referring to a Fourier analysis?“ asked Bucephalus. „Explain that to me.“
Bucephalus presented him with a printout from the Encyclopedia together with supplements from other information in his memory banks.
Alexander glanced at it briefly, and said, „Yes, that’s the sort of thing.“
„To what end, Alexander?“
„Once you have the cycles, Bucephalus, you will be able to predict the course of the stock market in the following day, week, month, according to the swing of the cycles, and you will be able to direct me in my investments. I will quickly grow rich. You will also direct me how to obscure my own involvement so that the world will not know how rich I am, or who it is who has such an influential finger on world events.“
„To what end, Alexander?“
„So that when I am rich enough, when I control the Earth’s financial institutions, its commerce, its business, its resources, I will have done in reality what Alexander the Great did only in part. I will be Alexander the Really Great. „ His eyes glittered with delight at the thought.
By the time Alexander was twenty-two, he was satisfied that Bucephalus had worked out the complicated set of cycles that would serve to predict the behavior of the stock market.
Bucephalus was less certain. He said, „In addition to the natural cycles that control such things, there are also unpredictable events in the world of politics and international affairs. There are unpredictable turns of weather, disease, and scientific advance.“
Alexander said, „Not at all, Bucephalus. All such things also go in cycles. You will study the general news columns of the New York Times and absorb it all in order to allow for these supposedly unpredictable events. You will then find they are predictable. Other great newspapers, here and abroad, will be yours to study. They are all microfilmed and computerized and we can go back for a century or more. Besides, you do not have to be totally accurate. If you are right eighty-five percent of the time, that will do, for now.“