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

“Oh. Of course. Here. You’ll do it, then?”

“I told you: I will investigate the facts surrounding these possible
murders.”

“But the copies?”

“If your mother and sister are indeed artificial persons, and their
copies are in this safe, it is possible that the copies might fall into my hands
during the course of my investigations.”

She did not look entirely satisfied, but nodded once. “All right.”

****

The next morning, after I rose from my couch and washed in the small
bathroom in my office, I began to work in spite of myself. Old habits die
hard.

I hadn’t told her, and she hadn’t asked. That was the strange part.

I was in a building that had not been infused with receptor capabilities.
In pre-conversion language, it had not been wired.

But what was happening now—here, everywhere—was different from
being wired. It was internal.

Communications—regular, old communications like the way they were
back in the old days—were gone. Because of the electromagnetic
interference. Telephones—and, therefore, the good old Internet—didn’t
work. Broadcasting didn’t work. No one knew what was causing this, but it
was like a long solar flare that might never end.

Arlington was being Converted to new biological ways of doing things.
Interstices filled with benign bacteria capable of carrying an infinite amount
of information ran up the sides of converted buildings. There was a port in
every room, where a clear, semi-permeable membrane gave access to
those who were converted, through the wonders of genetic engineering,
and could send and receive information. They call it metapheromonal
communication.
 The owner of the Zephyr Building, in which I have my office, is a
tightwad. When it became clear that he was never going to convert the
building, most tenants moved out.

Julia Quick either did not know or did not mind that both the building
and, by inference, myself, had not stepped into the future.

Or maybe she did, and, finding it to her advantage, didn’t care. It
wouldn’t take much asking to find out about me. I was a bit of a local joke.