"Ellen Datlow - SciFiction Originals vol.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Datlow Ellen)

 "Why the time limit?" he asked her.
"Shifting security codes. The program works on data from a tap on whatever system it is you want to breach. It
makes a model of the system and plays statistics off against chaos. The result gives the program enough latitude to
guess how to give the system only stuff it wants to see. So to speak. If you don't understand that, don't ask me to
explain it. At least, not until tomorrow night, when I'll have more time. Anyway, there's only about three and a half
hours' worth of room on the disc for that kind of data in the necessary amounts. So it's work smooth, work fast, and
keep an eye on the time."
"And then spend the rest our lives on the run," Danny said with mock joyfulness as they stopped at a red light.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, getting in and out of there is no problem, I guess, but after we leave, all they have to do is run a matching
program on our faces from their surveillance footage, track us down, and crush us like bugs."
"O ye of little imagination," Vic said, laughing. It was starting to rain and she put on the windshield wipers. The
resulting smears completely obscured their view of the street. "Now, see what happens when you put the wipers on
too soon?"
"So I've been told," Danny said. "By you, about a million times."
"It has to do with conditions being wrong. Or right, depending on your point of view. This is the sort of thing you
can create on, say, a digital level. Like, if you can somehow persuade a cam the conditions are wrong for the current
settings. Like, say, telling it the ambient light is ten times brighter than it is. The resulting under-exposure leaves you
with a screen you can't see anything on." Vic grinned at him. "Until you clear it." She pressed the washer button and
nothing happened. "Dammit."
"I guess you can't forget the time limit," Danny said. "Like, you only get so many years before the available washer
fluid evaporates and you have to refill."
She gave him a look. "And sometimes you end up calling on a higher power for help." She stuck her head out her
window and looked up at the sky. "Hey, a little help here? I'd appreciate it." She had just pulled her head back in,
ready to explain that higher powers had better things to do, when the clouds opened and rain gushed down in what
Danny's momma would have called a genu-wine frog-strangler.
The two of them sat stunned as the rain drummed on the hood, sheeted down the windshield, and turned the
gutters into small, turbulent rivers. Danny reached over and flipped the wipers back on; Vic made no objection,
although normally even minor trespasses into driver-space, as she called it, were dealt with harshly. "Now, that," he
said, "is one mother of a coincidence."
Vic turned to look at him, her gaze flicking to his arm. "Certain scientists believe there's no such thing as a
coincidence."
He gave a small laugh. "Yeah, well, they're in labs all the time, what would they know?"
Now she looked pointedly at his arm.
"Oh, come on," he said. "You don't think that was some kind of quantum..." He searched for a word.
"Phenomenon."
She didn't answer and he felt peeved, as if he were being forced to make a promise he already knew he couldn't
keep.
"Vic, if I did that, I didn't know it, and I don't know how to do it again. The light's green."
She put the van in gear.
j

Getting into the Ciel building went so easily that Danny felt a little bit spooked. Vic drove past the service entrance
with its pair of security guards sitting in the observation deck-twins, for all Danny could see of them-and pulled the
van directly into the delivery lot, stopping at an automated gate-barrier. The ten-second wait felt more like ten minutes
to Danny, who tried not to fidget. Vic was amused. "Security in this area is all automated," she told him. "It's like the
tollbooths that read your paid-up tax sticker. Except this system is reading the disc you got from Jeremy."
"I don't know," he said, looking back at the observation deck on the other side of the enormous parking lot. He
couldn't tell if the guards were paying any attention to the van or not. "Seems like pretty flimsy security."
"When you know how to get around it, yes, it is," Vic said, chuckling. The gate opened and she drove through,