"Brin, David - Natulife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

My throwing arm cranked and I thought -- Long ago, I'd have done this to feed my
wife and child.

That was then. As for here and now?

Well . . . this sure beats the hell out of racquetball.

Mass-produced con-apt housing lets twelve billion Earthlings live in minim
decency, at the cost of dwelling all our lives in boxes piled halfway to the
sky. Lotteries award scarce chances to visit mountains, the seashore. Meanwhile,
Virtuality keeps us sane within our hi-rise caves.

On my way to shower after working out, I saw that Gaia's private VR room was in
use. Impulsively, I tiptoed into the closet next door, feeling for the crack
between stacked room units, and pressed my eye close to the narrow chink of
light. Gaia squatted on her treadmill floor, shaped to mimic a patch of uneven
ground. Her body suit fit her pregnant form like a second skin, while helmet and
goggles made her resemble some kind of bug, or star alien. But I knew her
scenario, like mine, lay in the distant past. She made digging motions with a
phantom tool, invisible to me, held in her cupped hands. Then she reached down
to pluck another ghost item, her gloves simulating touch to match whatever root
or tuber it was that she saw through the goggles. Gala pantomimed brushing dirt
away from her find, then dropping it into a bag at her side.

Sometimes, eavesdropping like this, I'd feel a chill wondering how odd I must
look during workouts, leaping about, brandishing invisible spears and shouting
at my "hunters." No wonder most people keep VR so private.

Gaia tilted her head as if listening to somebody, then laughed aloud. "I know!
Didn't the two of them look funny? Coming home all proud with that skinny little
squirrel on a stick? Such great hunters! That didn't stop them from gobbling
half our carrots!"

Naturally, I couldn't see or hear Gaia's companions --presumably other women
gatherers in the same simulated tribe she had been visiting since years before
we met. She stopped again, listening, then turned around. "It's your baby,
Flower. That's okay, I'll take care of him." She laughed. "I need the practice."

I watched her gently pick up an invisible child. Her body suit tugged and
contracted, mimicking a wriggly weight in her arms. Awkwardly, Gala cooed at an
infant who dwelled only in a world of software, and her mind. I crept away to
take a shower, at once ashamed of spying and glad that I had.

Toweling my wet hair, I entered the bedroom to find the wall screen tuned to
Mother Earth Channel Fifty-Three -- a green-robed priestess reciting a sermon.

" . . . returning to more natural ways does not mean having to sacrifice nil
modern . . . ."