"Nancy Kress - Nano Comes to Clifford Falls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

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Still, I was curious, so in the late afternoon, when it wasn't quite so hot, I packed up the stroller and the
kids and I went downtown.
Clifford Falls isn't much of a town. We're so far out on the plains that all we got is a single square ringed
with dusty pick-ups and the teenagers' scooters. There's about two dozen stores, the little brick town hall
with traffic court and Barry Anderson's police room and such, the elementary school, Baptist and
Methodist churches, Kate's Lunchroom, and the Crow Bar. Down by the tracks is the grain elevator and
warehouses. That's about it. Once a movie was filmed here because the movie people wanted some
place that looked like it might be fifty or sixty years ago.

Soon as I turned the corner I could see where the nanomachinery must be. People milled around the
patch of faded grass in front of the town hall, people who probably should have still been to work on a
Wednesday afternoon. A big awning stretched across the front of the building with a huge metal box
under it, nearly big as my bedroom. To one side the mayor, who retired two years ago from the factory
in Minneonta, stood on a crate right there in the broiling sun without so much as a hat on his bald head,
making a speech.

"--greatest innovation since supercheap energy to raise our way of life to--"

"What's getting made in that box?" I asked Emma Karlson. She had her twins in a fancy new stroller. Just
after Jack left me, her Ted got taken on at the factory.

"A dais," she said.

"A what?"

"A thing for the mayor to stand on instead of that apple crate. It's supposed to be done in a few minutes."

What a dumb thing to make--Mr. Johnson could just as well have gotten a good stepladder from Bickel's
Hardware. But I suppose the dais was by way of demonstration.

And I have to admit it was impressive when it come out of the box. Four men had to move it, a big fancy
platform with a top like a gazebo and steps carved on their sides in fancy shapes. After the men set it
down, there was this moment of electric silence, like a downed power line run through the crowd, and
then everybody started shouting.

"Make me a rocking chair!"

"Tell it to grow a table!"

"I need a new rug for the dining room!"

"Make a good bottle of booze!"

Emma turned to me. Her eyes were big and shining. "Some people are so ignorant. That big nanomachine
don't make anything to eat or drink--the ones inside do that. Three little ones, for food and clothes and
small quick stuff. Mayor Johnson already explained all that, but some people just can't listen."

The crowd was pressing closer to the new dais, and a few men started to climb the fancy steps. Kimee
was getting restless, pulling on my hand, but Will said suddenly, "Mommy, tell the machine to make me a