"Charles de Lint - Pixel Pixies" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

Pixel Pixies
Charles de Lint

ONLY WHEN MISTRESS HOLLY HAD RETIRED TO HER apartment above the store would Dick
Bobbins peep out from behind the furnace where he'd spent the day dreaming and drowsing and reading
the books he borrowed from the shelves upstairs. He would carefully check the basement for unexpected
visitors and listen for a telltale floorboard to creak from above. Only when he was very very sure that the
mistress, and especially her little dog, had both, indeed, gone upstairs, would he creep all the way out of
his hidden hobhole.

Every night, he followed the same routine.

Standing on the cement floor, he brushed the sleeves of his drab little jacket and combed his curly brown
hair with his fingers. Rubbing his palms briskly together, he plucked last night's borrowed book from his
hidey-hole and made his way up the steep basement steps to the store. Standing only 2 feet high, this
might have been an arduous process all on its own, but he was quick and agile, as a hob should be, and
in no time at all he'd be standing in among the books, considering where to begin the night's work.

There was dusting and sweeping to do, books to be put away. Lovely books. It didn't matter to Dick if
they were serious leather-bound tomes or paperbacks with garish covers. He loved them all, for they
were filled with words, and words were magic to this hob. Wise and clever humans had used some
marvellous spell to imbue each book with every kind of story and character you could imagine, and many
you couldn't. If you knew the key to unlock the words, you could experience them all.

Sometimes Dick would remember a time when he hadn't been able to read. All he could do then was
riffle the pages and try to smell the stories out of them. But now, oh now, he was a magician, too, for he
could unearth the hidden enchantment in the books any time he wanted to. They were his nourishment
and his joy, weren't they just.

So first he worked, earning his keep. Then he would choose a new book from those that had come into
the store while he was in his hobhole, drowsing away the day. Sitting on top of one of the bookcases,
he'd read until it got light outside and it was time to return to his hiding-place behind the furnace, the book
under his arm in case he woke early and wanted to finish the story while he waited for the mistress to go
to bed once more.

***

I hate computers.

Not when they do what they're supposed to. Not even when I'm the one who's made some stupid
mistake, like deleting a file I didn't intend to, or exiting one without saving it. I've still got a few of those
old warhorse programs on my machine that don't pop up a reminder asking if I want to save the file I was
working on.

No, it's when they seem to have a mind of their own. The keyboard freezing for no apparent reason.
Getting an error message that you're out of disk space when you know you've got at least a couple of
gigs free. Passwords becoming temporarily, and certainly arbitrarily, obsolete. Those and a hundred
other, usually minor, but always annoying, irritations.

Sometimes it's enough to make you want to pick up the nearest component of the machine and fling it