"Richard Powers - The Gold Bug Variations" - читать интересную книгу автора (Powers Richard)

The rest of that day was dense with its
own transactions, but erased from the
retrievable record. I half expected him to
return a week later, drop in for another chat
about retrieval. He didn't. The whole
encounter had been an elaborate setup.
With no other way to explain it, I
unprofessionally let the incident drop until
this evening. Friend, why aren't you here
now? The date's off again. I too have grown
worse than aphasic with quotes. What was it
you said to me once? What was it I said
back? What had been so urgent for a while,
so in need of saying?

But What Do You Do for a Living?

From that clueless beginning dug up from
corkboard clippings, to Today in History,
6/23/85: Stuart Ressler—who once put his
hands cleanly through the molecular pane,
subsequent second-shift recluse,
late-in-the-day returnee to the world—dead.
I met the man by fluke, the universal
architect. I will not meet him ever again. The
meeting place he opened for us imploded
with him.
Knowing the course of the disease, I
thought I was prepared for Todd's mercifully
curt devastation. I saw it in the envelope
before opening. But when I sat and read, the
veins of my neck thickened with chemical
fight or flight, as if death dated from the
minute I heard of it. Two billion years, and
my body is still stupidly literal. My
neck-gorge refused to shrink, however hard
I rubbed. No RSVP required; just return to
work, an afternoon dispensing citations. But
I couldn't move from the chair. Something
specific was required, some word I had to
identify before I lost the few lucid moments
grief ever allotted.
I reached for the envelope, my first
indication in a year where Franklin was. The
name in the cancellation circle pushed me
over the edge. My throat hemorrhaged;
violent self-control broke into hatcheted
crying. Franklin, Dr. Ressler's only student,
had posted the note from that Illinois
university and farming town where the old