"Kathleen Ann Goonan - The Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

THE BRIDGE
by Kathleen Ann Goonan

Kathleen Ann Goonan’s latest novel, In War Times (Tor, May 2007),
received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, and
Booklist. It begins in WWII, continues through the sixties, and
includes narratives written by her father, Thomas E. Goonan. He
was in the 610th OBAM Battalion, which served in England and the
Rhineland. Kathy has published about thirty short stories, many of
them in Asimov’s. She is also known for her nanotech novels,
Queen City Jazz, Mississippi Blues, Crescent City Rhapsody, and
Light Music. Nanotechnology also shows up in her hard-boiled
mystery of “The Bridge.” Although the story was originally
published as “De l’autre côté du pont” in Détectives de l’Impossible,
J’ai lu Millénaires, May 2002, this is its first appearance in English.
You can find out more about Kathy’s fiction at www.goonan.com.

****

I took the case because I was out of money. It was not the sort of case a
self-respecting private eye wants.

But I was desperate.

In these times, hardly anyone needs a private detective. After all,
these are the days of miracle and wonder, when one’s own true love, even
one’s simulacrum, so to speak, can be spun in a cocoon over on Wilson
Boulevard by Nelson’s Artificial Person (fully licensed by whatever is left of
the U.S. Government), and inculcated with any kind of physical and
emotional frillery one fancies. Or thinks that one fancies.

Nanotechnology is, of course, a buzzword for “we can do anything.” I
don’t understand exactly how an artificial person is grown, but each is a
flesh and bone blank (many types and sizes in the catalogues), ready for
final DNA tweaking and memory infusion. After the rash of memory-related
Nobel prizes, competing memory preservation and replication techniques
flooded the market, leading to the melding of many technologies. It was but
a short jump to a development that has been both vaunted and abhorred:
artificial people.

We are at a very odd place, you see. We are obviously “creating life,”
and who could argue with that? Yet, people certainly have. Vast phalanxes
of lawyers on both sides of the issues have made a lot of money lately, but
the most they seem to be able to do is engage in skirmishes about some
minute aspect of the various processes presently in use.

It is against the law to kill these beings, should they disappoint,
although the penalties for doing so are minimal. It was this sort of instance
that I was called upon to investigate.