"Ken Macleod - Learning the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

Learning the World
A Scientific Romance

by Ken MacLeod
A Note on Translation
For convenience, some numbers used by characters who count in an octal system
have occasionally been rendered in decimal. Terms derived from a dead schol-arly
language are rendered as if from Latin. There is an explanation for this.
Population will mightily increase, and the earth will be a garden. Governments
will be conducted with the qui-etude and regularity of club committees. The
interest which is now felt in politics will be transferred to sci-ence; the latest news
from the laboratory of the chemist, or the observatory of the astronomer, or the
experimenting room of the biologist will be eagerly discussed. [...] Disease will be
extirpated; the causes of decay will be removed; immortality will be in-vented. And
then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the
airless Saharas which separate planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth
will become a Holy Land which will be vis-ited by pilgrims from all the quarters of
the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become
themselves architects of systems, manufactur-ers of worlds.—Winwood Reade, The
Martyrdom of Man, 1872
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks are due to Carol for giving flight to my characters, to Charles Stross
for handwaving their limbs, to Farah Mendlesohn for helpful comments at various
stages of the draft, and to Del Cotter for send-ing me a paper about world ships.
Some of the ideas and images were inspired by The Millennial Project, by Marshall
T. Savage, and Reason in Revolt, by Ted Grant and Alan Woods.
1—The Ship Generation
Learning the World
14364:05:1217:24 The world is four thousand years old. I was eight years old when I
found that out for myself. My name is Atomic Discourse Gale and this is the first
time I have written something that anyone in the world can read. It is strange and
makes me feel a little self-conscious, but I reassure myself that not many people will
read it anyway.
14364:05:1318:30
That was a joke. I see I have a few readers. J—— wants to know how I found out
the age of the world. It was six years ago now but I remember it quite well. I was
very young then and didn't understand everything that happened, but looking back I
can see that it was a significant event in my life. That is why I mentioned it. So this is
what happened.
"How old is the world?"
I asked my caremother. "I don't know," she said. "Why don't you look it up?"
"I've looked it up," I said. "I don't believe it."
"Why not?"
"Seventeen billion years?" I said. "That's impossible."
"Ah," she said. "That's the universe. Well ... every-thing we can see. The stars and
galaxies."
I went off and formed a more careful query. Nothing came back. I returned to my
caremother. "This world," I said. "I can't find anything about that."
"All right," she said. She pointed up to the sky. "See up there ... where the sunline
enters the wall? Inside there, in the forward cone, you'll find what is called the keel."