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

wasn't one of my regulars.

She gave me a sympathetic smile.

"I suppose it was only a matter of time before they got into the computers," she said.
I blinked. "What?"

"Try putting your sweater on inside-out."

My face had to be registering the confusion I was feeling, but she simply continued to smile.

"I know it sounds silly," she said. "But humour me. Give it a try."

Anyone in retail knows, you get all kinds. And the secondhand market gets more than its fair share, trust
me on that. If there's a loopy person anywhere within a hundred blocks of my store, you can bet they'll
eventually find their way inside. The woman standing on the other side of my counter looked harmless
enough, if somewhat exotic, but you just never know any more, do you?

"What have you got to lose?" she asked.

I was about to lose an afternoon's work as things stood, so what was a little pride on top of that?

I stood up and took my sweater off, turned it inside out, and put it back on again.

"Now give it a try," the woman said.

I called up the "Connect to" window and this time it came up. When I put the cursor on the "Disconnect"
button and clicked, I was logged off. I quickly shut down my browser and saved the file I'd been
working on all afternoon.

"You're a life-saver," I told the woman. "How did you know that would work?" I paused, thought about
what I'd just said, what had just happened. "Why would that work?"

"I've had some experience with pixies and their like," she said.

"Pixies," I repeated. "You think there are pixies in my computer?"

"Hopefully, not. If you're lucky, they're still on the Internet and didn't follow you home."

I gave her a curious look. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"At times," she said, smiling again. "And this is one of them."

I thought about one of my friends, an electronic pen pal in Arizona, who had this theory that the first atom
bomb detonation for ever changed the way that magic would appear in the world. According to him, the
spirits live in the wires now instead of the trees. They travel through phone and modem lines, take up
residence in computers and appliances where they live on electricity and lord knows what else.

It looked like Richard wasn't alone in his theories, not that I pooh-poohed them myself. I'm part of a
collective that originated this electronic database called the Wordwood. After it took on a life of its own,