"James Patrick Kelly - The Edge of Nowhere" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

started to get up.

"Okay, okay." He held up his hands in surrender. "Story time. When I was a kid, I used to collect
meanies."

"Meanies?" She settled back down.

"Probably after your time. They were bots, about so big." He held forefinger and thumb a couple of
centimeters apart. "Little fighting toys. There were gorilla meanies and ghoul meanies and nazi meanies
and demon meanies and dino meanies. Fifty-two in all, one for every week of the year. You set them
loose in the meanie arena and they would try to kill one another. If they died, they'd shut down for
twenty-four hours. Now if meanies fought one on one, they would always draw. But when you formed
them into teams, their powers combined in different ways. For instance, a ghoul and nazi team could
defeat any other team of two -- except the dino and yeti. For the better part of a year, I rushed home
from school every day to play with the things. I kept trying combinations until I could pretty much predict
the outcome of every battle. Then I lost interest."

"Speaking of losing interest," said Rain, who was distracted by the spider decorating the corner of
Chance's office in traceries of blue and green.

"I'm getting there." He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and took another sip from the mug. "So a
couple of years go by and I'm twelve now. One night I'm in my room and I hear this squeaking coming
from under my bed. I pull out the old meanie arena, which has been gathering dust all this time and I see
that a mouse has blundered into it and is being attacked by a squad of meanies. And just like that I'm
fascinated with them all over again. For weeks I drop crickets and frogs and garter snakes into the arena
and watch them try to survive."

"That's sick."
"No question. But then boys can't help themselves when it comes to mindless cruelty. Anyway, it didn't
last. The wildlife was too hard on the poor little bots." He drained the last of the broccoli. "But the point
is that I got bored playing with a closed set of meanies. Even though I hadn't actually tried all possible
combinations, after a while I could see that nothing much new was ever going to happen. But then the
mouse changed everything." He leaned forward across the desk. "So let me propose a thought
experiment to you, my lovely Lorraine. This mysterious novel that everyone is so eager to find? What if
the last name of the author began with the letter ...." He paused and then seemed to pluck something out
of the air. "Oh, let's say 'W'.''

Rain started.

"And just for the sake of argument, let's suppose that the first name also begins with 'W' .... Ah, I see
from your expression that this thought has also occurred to you."

"It's not him," said Rain. "He was revived at nineteen; he's just a kid. Why would the cognisphere care
anything about him?"

"Because he's the mouse in our sad, little arena. He isn't simply recycling memories of the world like the
rest of us. The novel your doggies are looking for doesn't exist in the cognisphere, never did. Because it's
being written right here, right now. Maybe imagination is in short supply wherever the doggies come
from. Lord knows there isn't a hell of a lot of it in Nowhere."