"Wil McCarthy - Heisenberg Elementary" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCarty Sarah)

Heisenberg Elementary by Wil Mccarthy
Engineer/Novelist/Journalist Wil McCarthy is the science columnist for the SciFi channel,
where his popular "Lab Notes" column has been running since 1999. A lifetime member of the
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus,
AnLab, and Theodore Sturgeon awards, and shares partial credit for a Webbie and a Game
Developers' Choice Award. His short fiction has graced the pages of magazines like Analog,
Asimov's, Wired, and SF Age, and his novels include Bloom, The Collapsium, and, most
recently, To Crush the Moon. He has also written for TV. Wil can be found online at
www.wilmccarthy.com. In his newest tale, he looks at how uncertain we might be of gaining an
education at...
****
"Nine Nine Two!" shouts JimmyTim Exxon in the middle of literacy block. "Five Eight! Four Nine Nine
One Seven!" Everyone looks up at the clock but otherwise ignores him. That's his social security number,
and everyone knows it by heart already. After hearing it every fifteen minutes all week long, we're not
even giggling anymore.

"Let's talk about ticware," Miss Solarbad had said on Monday morning, "and the various ways to avoid
infection." Yeah, yeah, don't lick the flag pole don't inload from strangers don't execute neurops no
matter what survival traits they seem to offer. Like everyone doesn't know JimmyDim caught the bug at
school, from a badly formatted toilet seat. And the week has only gone downhill from there.

Literacy block is a hundred hours long. Fortunately, it takes place in a virtual universe, with minimal
leakage. Boy, I feel sorry for that me! Our time, our real time, is spent taking standardized tests, like
always.

"Real education costs real money," Miss Solarbad says cryptically. "But by measuring the outcome we
can change it at the elementary level. When every chair contains a thousand children, the statistics are
universal."

They're just getting ready to blow lunch in through the vents--I catch a whiff of hot-dog vapor--when the
Chronarchists show up again.

"Again?" says their sergeant recluse. "What do you mean again?"

"You've been here five times today and it's barely lunch," answers Miss Solarbad.

"Oh," he says unhappily. "Great. Would you hit me with a chair to break the loop? Please?"

Guardedly: "That depends on why you're here."

"Can't say, ma'am. Prime directive."

But I'm tired of this loop, so I hit the sergeant recluse myself.

"Thanks, kid," he says, his hair shifting color from blond to brown. His voice is lower, too. Then it's down
to business: he and his three priwates form a circle around Pammy TransAm, line up their funguns and
turn her Happy. Ouch. That smile's got to hurt.

"Sorry, ma'am," says the sergeant recluse to a frowning Miss Solarbad. "We find it's the best way to
neutralize inconvenient people."