"Victor Koman - Death's Dimensions" - читать интересную книгу автора (Koman Victor)

Death’s
Dimensions
a psychotic space opera
by

Victor Koman
Copyright © 1999 by Victor Koman All rights reserved.
Death’s Dimensions is a work of fiction. All names, places, and
institutions (both statist and free) are either completely imaginary or used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living, dead, or cloned—or
to actual events, locales, or myths of mental illness is entirely
coincidental.
For Sam, Neil, Andy, Charles, Chris, John, and Bob,who put up with me
at the AnarchoVillagewhile I wrote this pæan to madness.And also for
Bernie,who probably should notread this a second time.


Chapter One
7 March, 2107
His death wish surpassed that of any mortal. And yet it bestowed upon
him—and only him—the power of flight between the stars.
He was Virgil Grissom Kinney, and he was insane beyond hope.
Caged and bound in a madhouse he festered like a scorned, feared
animal. In an age when madmen were almost unknown, he was a ranting
exception. Sometimes he raged against his restraints with muscle-tearing
fury. Other times he retreated into catatonic silence, conducting a silent,
internal war.
Drugs, nutrition, therapies from Freud to Szasz to Bhodhota all proved
useless.
Virgil Grissom Kinney wanted only one thing from life.
 Death.
At a time when people left one another alone to do as they pleased, no
one would have cared or interfered if Virgil wanted only to kill himself, yet
in an era without police or prisons, Virgil Grissom Kinney lay locked
behind padded walls, screaming without sound, tortured without pain.


“You’ve never seen a bad paraschiz, have you?” the MentTech asked.
The woman walking beside him adjusted the white labcoat thrown
hastily over her shoulders.
“Only in history scrims,” she said.
“Then listen carefully. Treat him exactly as you would a feral genesplice
you might encounter in an alley. You don’t have any way of knowing who
he thinks you are or why he suspects you’re speaking to him, so never start
up a casual conversation. If he thinks you’re the Horned God, you could be
talking about the weather and he’d read hidden meanings into it. Never
stare him in the eye. Never touch him. And most important—”
“Yes?” The woman’s face lost any color it had.
“If and when he speaks, you listen.”
She nodded gravely. The corridor they walked down radiated a