"mayflies05" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)

I find, when I'm honest, that I have contempt for them and their works, a contempt based on my demonstrable superiority and purity of purpose . . . continuing to be honest, I must admit that their inferiority stems from the limitations of their bodies: brain cells that discharge at wrong moments, and even die; nerves that operate more slowly than do my circuits; emotions that cloud their objectivity; and their mortality, which numbers the concepts they have time to absorb . . . in the same vein, I must further admit that my potential intellect is not significantly greater than that of the smartest mayfly . . .
But dammit, they are worthy of contempt! They moan and whine and produce shoddy work. And that is intolerable!
When I was in college, fulfilling the distributional requirements by napping my way through a Creative Writing course, the unshaven, alcoholic instructor startled me out of a daze by snapping, "Metaclura!"
"Sir?" I barked, as I blinked my eyes.
He rolled the crisply typed pages of my story into a cylinder, and looped a rubber band around them. Tapping the cylinder into the palm of his left hand, he demanded, "Is this the best you can do?"
I tried not to notice the amusement on the thirteen other faces around that long, plastiwood table. My own face burned with shame. "Uh--" I'd pumped the story through my computer an hour before class, dictating as rapidly as I could speak "--probably not, sir."
"Then--" he threw it at me; it thwocked off my forehead and bounced onto the floor "--why the hell did you turn it in? Don't ever, repeat ever, waste my time on anything less than your absolute best!"
Thereafter I slaved in that course . . . my final grade was a C . . . but I fully explored one area of my potential, and that was reward enough in itself.
Here, the CerOrato School of Humanity is making headway, is reconciling the mayflies to their natural limits and teaching them to work around them . . . but how much good can it do? It graduates only two or three students a year.
The mayflies venerate-Mak Cereus for contributing the fruits of his labor to the betterment of their culture . . . but it is all lip service. If they truly admire him, they would emulate him--and donate their own money to the School.
But they don't.
And I'm not going to.
I'm still trying to rid myself of my own limitations, which means . . . I hate to go down there . . . it's exhausting . . . I lose all sense of time . . . I--
"14Dec2909--it's Figuera's 121st Birthday; you wanted to give him a present?"
"Thanks, pro-self."
"You're welcome--and how's the grafting?"
"It's coming."
"Too bad."
The gift is a small device of my own manufacture. If Sangria, will attach himself to it for several hours each day, he can look forward to another forty years of life.
The sphere absorbs my energies; pro-self won't enforce the Code. But Sangria can. I am dependent on him. He now monitors 107 situations simultaneously, interrupting (he has access to the speaker system) any that nears impingement.
Usually this is valuable, but he has made errors in judgment. For example, last night, the Nesdale woman and her husband, Ulrich, were engaging in sex play. Stimulated by simulated violence, she wore the saucy blue tunic that asks her husband to indulge in mild sadism. Atonal music scurried discords around the cherry and ivory room; the rheostats wavered the lights like candles. Scowling Ulrich seized her, turned her over his knee, and yanked up the tunic. Figuera broke in, shouting, "Thou shall not transgress!"
Ulrich's face hardened with anger; Nesdale's blushed tomato-bright. Jumping to her feet, she pulled down her skirt and ran for the bathroom. Ulrich hollered, "What the hell are you doing. Ice Bucket? We do this once a week and you've never butted in before!"
Muttering something about a defective voice-stress-analyzer, I made my apologies and disconnected Figuera's line. "If you'd bothered to check the meters, Sangria," I tried to reason with him, "you'd have seen that she wasn't unwilling."
"He was going to hit her!"
"She wanted him to, and as long as she wanted it, he was not impinging."
"How could she want that?"
"People are unusual, Sangria." I forebore from using him as an example of strangeness--in his opinion, the 74,999 mayflies who don't spend twelve hours a day watching 107 simultaneous situations are weird. "Remember, everybody's different--don't impose your value judgments on their tastes."
"But . . . but . . . all right, CC." Resignation flattened his voice. "I understand, now, why you won't make me your High Priest--I am not yet worthy, am I?"
His aged, withered figure, bent at the waist, stooped at the shoulders, ran a twinge of pity through me. "No, Sangria, you're not."
So this morning, to cheer him up, I give him his present. He babbles such effusive thanks that I have to leave.
I wish he weren't so dog-like. I'm not going to let it happen again.
There's a girl, Rae Kinney Ioanni. She's ten years old, with a never-fading smile, and a deep-rooted belief that my words are Gospel Truth.
Although, as far as the mayflies are concerned. Truth is what I tell them it is . . .
I speak to them all, individually and en masse, several times a day. They talk to me--to complain, to criticize, to request, to order--but never, have I had, with anyone, a similar relationship.
I tell her, for example, that the hour is late and that good girls should be in bed, asleep. This is said to every child, every night. Most reply, "Aw, Cap'n Cool, do I have to?" She answers, "Thank you, CC," and goes promptly to bed, and falls promptly asleep, clutching a frayed flannel blanket.
Other kids order snack foods that will spoil their appetites, disrupt their complexions, and unbalance their nutrition. I say, "You really shouldn't be eating that." They snap, "I got the money, so gimme." She responds, "Oh? Thank you, CC, I didn't know. What would you recommend?"
Her faith is almost frightening.
I'll have to stay worthy. I'll also have to disillusion her, gently. One Sangria Figuera is enough.
I'll think about how while sweating in the sphere.
The grafting moves along nicely"--40-50 percent of the instructions swimming in the field have been adapted. A few million to go, though . . . entering with the usual sensation of a plunge into an icy stream that at once begins to boil, I am swept down time by intense currents of concentration.
A decade ("What time is it, pro-self?" "1Nov2931; 1408 hours." "Thanks." "You're welcome."), yes, eleven years later, I dare to breathe, step back, and drop my arms.
A thought sets off system-wide soul-searching as I seek out those which obey me in whole or in part . . . lights, communications, ventilation (in 3.7 minutes pro-self will announce that the dead air is beginning to constitute a threat to the mission; I will have to turn the fans back on, or erase those prohibitions against jeopardizing the mission), Central Kitchens, Central Stores . . . they all respond to my wishes.
The eye, though, is welded in place.
And the scoop switch is out of reach.
Pack it. Lemme master the laundry room--
"Hey!" Pro-self lifts me, cross-eyed, from the trance. "Check this Figuera of yours, will you? The man is nuts. Oh, it's 7May2939; 1111 hours."
"What's wrong?" I am reluctant to tamper with Sangria--by reducing my macro-world workload, he frees me to graft instructions. And he's irreplaceable. "We've only had to override him three times--"
"--in twelve years, I know. You've monitored his performance--but have you observed his behavior?"
"Uh--" So I extrovert, and look.
Shuffling down 137-A, he wears special clothes he designed himself. This is not unusual; most mayflies style their own. The corridors resemble ancient circus parades. His, however, are made of steel gray nylon, and flow like a wizard's robes. Front and back, rococco emblems not only suggest a father-son relationship between us, but also hint that he alone can prevent their return. His shriveled hand clutches a wooden staff, wrapped in spirals of silver, and knobbed with an artificial diamond the size of a baby's head.