"Halo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maddox Tom)

center of the room was the egg, split hemispheres of chromed

steel, cracked and waiting. One half-egg was filled with beige

tubes and snakes of optic cable, the other half with hard dark

plastic lying slack against the shell.

 

Gonzales rubbed his hands across his eyes, then pulled his

hair back into a long hank and slipped a circle of elastic over

it. He reached to his waist and grabbed the bottom hem of his

navy blue t-shirt and pulled the shirt over his head. Dropping it

to the floor, he kicked off his shoes, stepped out of baggy tan

pants and loose white cotton underpants and stood naked, his pale

skin gleaming with a light coat of sweat. His skin felt hot, eyes

grainy, stomach sore.

 

He stepped up and into a chrome half-egg, then shivered and

lay back as body-warmth liquid bled into the slack plastic, which

began to balloon underneath him. He took hold of finger-thick

cables and pushed their junction ends home into the sockets set in

the back of his neck. As the egg continued to fill, he fit a mask

over his face, felt its edges seal, and inhaled. Catheters moved

toward his crotch, iv needles toward the crooks of both arms. The

egg shut closed on him and liquid spilled into its interior.

 

He floated in silence, waiting, breathing slowly and deeply

as elation punched through the chaotic mix of emotions generated