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

regarded as being the same as committing suicide. Only the young, the
curious, and the hopeless went inside. And the greedy. I had read an
account of a man who had gone over in order to cart out antiques, only to
have them disintegrate once they were out on the bridge, out of the fog of
the city.

Some claimed that everything inside was a kind of holographic
reproduction. Others thought that the nanotech surge that had overtaken the
city that strange and terrible night had not simply replicated, perfectly, all
that was there before, but had infused it with a mass mind that outsiders
simply could not understand.

I did not follow Julia.

But I watched the shifting, dreamy lights of Georgetown through the
fog for a long time before turning back.

****

The public transit to Charlottesville was pleasant, and free. I went
through the usual rigmarole at the registrar’s office with my license and so
on, but eventually they gave the information I wanted.

I had little trouble locating Dr. White’s scheduled lecture. The hall was
full of people who looked extremely young, far too young to be medical
students.

It was Dr. White, of course, in all probability, who had done the work
on Julia and her family. The truth had popped out in Julia’s first surprised
response to my question. Dr. White was a famous man. I’d read more than
one article about him in the Washington Post, still published on our side of
the river. He had pioneered—was still pioneering—the brave new world of
eternal life. I had read that the developmental costs were astoundingly
expensive.

He was a big man, and he did have a beard.

I was not sure that he was nice.

The course was Nanobiology 6000. The auditorium contained about a
hundred students. What Julia had told me was true; she was a medical
student, but her schedule did not call for her attendance at this particular
lecture.

Maybe she had heard it before.

The lecture was about the latest artificial livers and how they worked. I
didn’t understand much of it. I waited until the flurry of students around the
doctor died down and then stepped up to him and introduced myself.