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

It was like an intense, sudden acceleration. Surprising, powerful
music suffused my being in sharp shards so sweet they brought tears to
my eyes. Sometimes it slowed to a flow of voices murmuring and I could
even catch a word or two. Then it went into my brain and showed me all my
memories and I was surprised at both their richness and their paucity, for I
had lived only fifty years and this intelligence against which I was now
measured was all of humanity’s collective, written memories.

After I could see my surroundings again, she returned, removed the
gloves, and set a box of tissues next to me on a low table. I took one and
wiped my face and blew my nose. The eyes of the pale, stern librarian were
no longer pedestrian, but instead were infused with wisdom and the
essence of agape.

“You see?” she asked, in a voice so rich and melodious that I had to
wipe my eyes again. My senses were immensely augmented, so much so
that it was almost too much to bear.

At least it was only temporary.

“Now why did you come?”

“I need to learn about the process of making artificial people. And I
need to access a police database.”

She seemed disappointed. The requests were so mundane. But she
leaned forward and tapped the table in front of me several times, glanced
at the clock again. “Usually we just leave people to explore, but I can get
you into that information immediately. You understand that without
permanent receptors the information you access may not lodge with you for
long afterwards, and certainly will lack its initial sharpness. The whole
package changes the chemistries of memory.”

“Do you get a commission?”

She smiled. The surface before me changed from hard to gel-like.
She directed me to place my hands, now covered with small green ovals,
onto this interface. “Perhaps you know, but—”

“I’ve studiously avoided knowing much about this at all.”

“All right. Inside this interface are bacteria. Their DNA is capable of
carrying ... a lot of information. This information will be transferred to you in
a form of chemical communication based on pheromones, artificially
augmented so that they are now called metapheromones. These
metapheromones will go directly to your brain and you will know what you
want to know.”

“But I won’t remember?”