"Cory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doctorow Cory)

I’ve seen about enough,’ and that’ll be my last day.”
I had seen where he was going with this, and I had stopped paying
attention while I readied my response. I probably should have paid more
attention. “But why? Why not just deadhead for a few centuries, see if
there’s anything that takes your fancy, and if not, back to sleep for a few
more? Why do anything so final?”
He embarrassed me by making a show of thinking it over again, making
me feel like I was just a half-pissed glib poltroon. “I suppose it’s because
nothing else is. I’ve always known that someday, I was going to stop
moving, stop seeking, stop kicking, and have done with it. There’ll come a
day when I don’t have anything left to do, except stop.”
— • —
On campus, they called him Keep-A-Movin’ Dan, because of his
cowboy vibe and because of his lifestyle, and he somehow grew to take
over every conversation I had for the next six months. I pinged his Whuffie
a few times, and noticed that it was climbing steadily upward as he
accumulated more esteem from the people he met.
I’d pretty much pissed away most of my Whuffie—all the savings from
the symphonies and the first three theses—drinking myself stupid at the
Gazoo, hogging library terminals, pestering profs, until I’d expended all the
respect anyone had ever afforded me. All except Dan, who, for some

Cory Doctorow Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom 6
reason, stood me to regular beers and meals and movies.
I got to feeling like I was someone special—not everyone had a chum as
exotic as Keep-A-Movin’ Dan, the legendary missionary who visited the
only places left that were closed to the Bitchun Society. I can’t say for sure
why he hung around with me. He mentioned once or twice that he’d liked
my symphonies, and he’d read my Ergonomics thesis on applying themepark
crowd-control techniques in urban settings, and liked what I had to say
there. But I think it came down to us having a good time needling each
other.
I’d talk to him about the vast carpet of the future unrolling before us, of
the certainty that we would encounter alien intelligences some day, of the
unimaginable frontiers open to each of us. He’d tell me that deadheading
was a strong indicator that one’s personal reservoir of introspection and
creativity was dry; and that without struggle, there is no real victory.
This was a good fight, one we could have a thousand times without
resolving. I’d get him to concede that Whuffie recaptured the true essence
of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn’t
starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you
security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really
represented—your personal capital with your friends and neighbors—you
more accurately gauged your success.
And then he’d lead me down a subtle, carefully baited trail that led to
my allowing that while, yes, we might someday encounter alien species
with wild and fabulous ways, that right now, there was a slightly depressing
homogeneity to the world.
On a fine spring day, I defended my thesis to two embodied humans and
one prof whose body was out for an overhaul, whose consciousness was