"Joe Haldeman - Buying Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

Dallas nodded soberly. "You know what I like about this newspaper? The people who put it out know
what's really important in the real world. Gossip. Sex. Small human dramas like ‘I Killed My Baby and
Ate It.' Like them, I don't have much stomach for politics." He shook his head. "If you people are an
underground organization running the world, I wish you'd get into another line of work. You're doing a
really bad job."
"If we were running the world, it would be a much safer place."
"I've probably been hearing that since before you were born. It's not true. Stileman immortality doesn't
confer wisdom. We have more than our share of rich sociopaths." Dallas looked at his watch and took a
deep breath. "In five minutes I'm going next door for a shave and a haircut. I'm going alone. Until then,
I'll listen."
"Fair enough." The barmaid drifted by and he ordered a glass of Bundaberg. He stared at Dallas for a
moment, thoughtful. "Do you worry about getting old? The brain death?"
"Not much. They say I've got another seven or eight hundred years, at least. By then they'll probably
come up with something—hell, I gave a half million to that fund." The Nervous Tissue Preservation
Prize was the result of a rare instance of solidarity among the maverick immortals. Each one had given
10 percent of his assets to it; the research team that could come up with a cure for entropic brain
dysfunction would split a billion pounds. Immortality for a thousand people. Real immortality, barring
accidents or violence.


file:///H|/eMule/Incoming/Haldeman,%20Joe%20-%20Buying%20Time(1989)[v1].htm (6 of 219)15-8-2005 0:24:35
 BUYING TIME - Joe Haldeman


"Yes, that's what they used to say, ten centuries, more or less." He paused, staring at Dallas. "They're
wrong."
"What?"
"You don't have six or seven—" He stopped talking while the woman served him his rum. He left it
untouched and continued. "You may not have even a hundred years left. Maybe not fifty."
Dallas studied his newly young hands. "Okay. You've got my attention."

Transcript
The Lloyd Barnes Show
20 June 2064
LB: We should have some fireworks tonight, gentle viewers. To my right we have
Dallas Barr, who is—well—Dallas Barr. To my left … [we follow LB's gaze to
empty chair with grey box on seat] … is a thing, or man, or program that claims to be
all that remains of Professor Woodward Harrison.
BOX: I am Woodward Harrison.
BARR: Not himself nowadays.
BOX: Look me up in a couple of thousand years.
LB: Professor Harrison spent most of his life perfecting a process that he called
Turing Imaging. What's in that box is the Turing Image of Harrison, who died of
pneumonia—old age—last month.
BOX: I wore out my body, as we all do. The rest of me is still alive.
LB: Care to explain?
BOX: Certainly. The Turing Image is named after Alan Turing, a mathematician who
lived in the last century, one of the people who helped develop the first computers. He
devised the first meaningful test for artificial intelligence: suppose you had a human
being in one room and a computer in another. You can talk to either one only through