"Mike Resnick & David Gerrold - Jellyfish" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

Jellyfish
Mike Resnick & David Gerrold

ONCE UPON A time, when the world was young, there was a man named
Dillon K. Filk. The K. stood for Kurvis.

He was insane. But that was okay. The world was insane, so he fitted
right in.

Dillon K. Filk also had a serious substance abuse problem, but that
was okay too. He was a product of his time, a confluence of historical and
mimetic conditions that created substance abuse as a way of life. The
entire planet was addicted to a variety of comestibles and combustibles.
Caffeine, alco-hol, nicotine, and oil were the primary global addictions;
substances injected directly into veins were secondary.

Filk’s own chemical adventures were based on what was available
and what it would mix well with—marijuana, amyl and butyl nitrates (also
known as poppers), ecstasy, peyote, mushrooms, the occasional toad,
dried banana skins, cocaine (both powdered and crystallized), heroin
(snorted and injected), Quaaludes, Vicodin, horse tranquilizers, PCP, angel
dust, cough syrup, amphetamines, methedrine, ephedrine, mescaline,
methadone, barbiturates, Prozac, valium, lithium, and the occasional barium
enema. And once in a while, airplane glue. But Filk had never taken
acid—LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide)—because he didn’t want to risk
destabilizing his brain chem-istry.

Whether Filk’s mental instability had caused his substance abuse
problems or whether his sub-stance abuse had triggered his delusional
state is both irrelevant and unknowable. The two condi-tions were
synergistic. They were complementary parts of his being, and essential to
his ability to function in this time and in this place.

Filk spent his days sitting alone in a room, talk-ing to himself, having
long discussions that only he could understand. A prurient eavesdropper,
and there had been an occasional few, some even paid by various
governments, would not have been able to follow his verbalized train of
thought because most of the time Filk himself did not stay on the tracks.

In any given moment Filk might suddenly realize that, “Hypersex
exists only in the trans-human condition.” A moment later, he might
postulate, “Therefore, the robots will be functionally autis-tic.” And a
moment after that, he would conclude, “So the issue of sentience is
resolved in favor of hormones.” He didn’t know quite what it all meant
(though he loved the word “Hypersex”, which he was sure was spelled with
a capital H), but it sounded profound.

Whenever Filk came to a conclusion like that, he would nod to himself
in satisfaction and turn to the battered old manual typewriter that sat on a
rickety TV tray table next to his bed, and he would start typing slowly and