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

Ferdi Raskolnikov would barge in on them. "Things have been loopy here lately," he said. "You should
see some of the mistakes we've had to send back." He poured broccoli cocktail for himself. It oozed
from the pitcher and landed in his coffee mug with a thick plop. "I've spent all afternoon trying to
convince myself that the dogs are some kind of a workaround, maybe to jog some lost data loose from
the MemEx." He replaced the pitcher in the igloo and settled onto the chair behind his desk. "But now
you show up and I'm wondering: Why is Rain asking me for this book?"

She frowned. "I ask you for all my books."

He considered for a moment, tapping the finger against his forehead and then pointed at her. "Let me tell
you a story." Rain started to object that she had neither goods nor services to offer him in return and she
had just drained her MemEx account to dry spit, but he silenced her with a wave. "No, this one is free."
He took a sip of liquid broccoli. "An audience credit unencumbered, offered to the woman of my
dreams."

She stuck out her tongue.

"Why does this place exist?" he asked.

"The Barrow?"

"Nowhere."

"Ah, eschatology." She laughed bitterly. "Well, Father Samsa claims this is the afterlife, although I'll be
damned if I know whether it's heaven or hell."
"I know you don't believe that," said Chance. "So then this is some game that the cognisphere is playing?
We're virtual chesspersons?"

Rain shrugged.

"What happens when we step off the edge?"

"Nobody knows." Just then a cacophony of clocks yawped, pinged, buzzed in six o'clock. "This isn't
much of a story Chance."

"Patience, love. So you think the cognisphere recreated us for a reason?"

"Maybe. Okay, sure." A huge spider with eight paintbrush legs shook itself and stretched on a teak
cabinet. "We're in a zoo. A museum."

"Or maybe some kind of primitive backup. The cognisphere keeps us around because there's a chance
that it might fail, go crazy -- I don't know. If that happened, we could start over."

"Except we'd all die without the cognisphere." The spider stepped onto the wall and picked its way
toward the nearest corner. "And nobody's made any babies that I know of. We're not exactly Adam and
Eve material, Chance."

"But that's damn scary, no? Makes the case that none of us is real."

Rain liked him better when he was trying to coax her into bed. "Enough." She pushed her chair back and