"Frankowski, Leo - Copernick's Rebellion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

Scratchon thought about the comparison between a tree house and his $450,000 Tudor brick home in Forest Hills. Yeah, he thought, and with the economy being what it is, Shadow Lawn Estates, Inc., can use all the publicity it can get.
"Ms. Cambridge, if I go through with this stunt, would you give it proper television coverage?"
"Why, of course, Mr. Scratchon. An experiment like this would make a wonderful program."
"Plant your tree, Guibedo."
"You'll give it an honest try? Promise to live in it for a year, or at least six months?" Guibedo said.
"You've got a deal, Guibedo. We'll show people what living in a tree is really like."


Chapter Two
SEPTEMBER 20,1999


GETTING RICH is easy. It just takes a lot of work.
The average person spends fifty-six hours a week sleeping, forty hours a week making money, and the re¬maining ninety-two hours in the week spending money. If you work one hundred hours a week, you have two and a half times the income but only thirty-two hours a week to spend it in.
It helps to get in on the ground floor of a new in¬dustry, as I did with medical instrumentation. It usually helps to be a bachelor. And being crippled results in having fewer distractions. But the important thing is to get yourself into the habit of working yourself to your very limits.
—Heinrich Copernick
From an address to the Chicago Junior Chamber of Commerce April 3,1931


Heinrich Copernick sat in front of his biomonitoring console. A thin plastic tube, red with his blood, ran from his left thigh to the machine. A similar tube ran from the console back to his leg. But the blood it carried was dis¬colored with the chemicals that had been added to it.
"The calcium level is a bit low again," Copernick muttered to himself as he typed in revised instructions to the mixer.
The white numbers on his panel were generated by a Cray Model 12 computer in the next room from a com¬plete analog of the biochemical reactions taking place within his body. Even with the algorithms developed by his Uncle Martin, the program had taken more than two years to write.
Below each white prediction number was a status readout of his actual biochemistry. These were all green except for calcium, which was still in the yellow.
The phone rang. Copernick had disconnected the video section before he started his self-modification pro¬gram.
"Hello."
"Mr. Copernick? This is Lou von Bork."
"Hello, Lou. How goes it in Washington?"
"So-so. You know that bill to put tree houses under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration? Well, I fixed it so it will die in committee."
"Great! Old Anne Cary will spit nickels when she hears about it."
"Yeah. I just hope that I don't get in range. She'll be at it again next year. And then she'll have the banking people behind her, besides the construction unions."
"Then we'll just have to lick them again."
"What do you mean 'we,' Mr. Copernick? I'm out here with nothing but a smile and a shoeshine."
"And you are doing a fine job. You and your six tech¬nicians and nine million dollars worth of equipment. Now what's the bad news?"
"HEW. They just passed a ruling that discriminates against people living in your uncle's tree houses. Not through Congress. A departmental ruling. Not a thing that I could do about it."
"Just what did they do?" Copernick asked.
"Cut in half the welfare benefits of anybody living in one. Think we should fight it? In court, I mean."
"Sounds pretty expensive. Let's let this one pass. A guy with a tree house can still live well on five hundred dollars a month."
"You're probably right, sir. Anyway, odds are the welfare types will do the suing for us."
"And doing it with the government's lawyers. Any¬thing else?"
"Oh, the army is talking about using them for bar¬racks. The National Real Estate Board wants to make them illegal. And the State Department is thinking about donating a few million seeds to the Africans. But I don't think that anything will come of any of it."
"A government purchase? Sounds nice. We'll get a good price out of them," Copernick said.
"Like I said, don't hold your breath. Say, when are you going to get the video on your phone fixed?"
"You know the phone company. Hey, how's your old friend Beinheimer?"
"Wonderful! When you guys replace a fellow's glands, you don't screw around!"
"No, but our clients do."
"I'll say. Moe's been making up for twenty lost years! I know his heart won't go, but I worry about his back¬bone and pelvis!"
"Enjoy. Keep me posted, Lou."
"I'll do that, Mr. Copernick. Take care."
His calcium status was back in the green. Copernick started to type in the day's modification. The straighten¬ing and rebuilding of his legs had been fairly straight¬forward, little more than an adjunct to the rejuvenation process. But he was getting into major genetic modifica¬tions, alien ground where he had met with more defeats than victories.
"Every day in every way, I'm getting better and bet¬ter." He chuckled, getting his nerve up.