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

time and space and reality to quiver like a mountain of nervous Jell-O. He
only broke out in the cold sweat of panic when things solidified.

That’s when he did his best work—when he was floundering his way
through a panic attack.

****
FILK STOPPED TO think. He sipped at his lukewarm coffee and studied
the screen of his laptop com-puter. The words on the screen had taken on
a life of their own. Don’t nag me about typewriters and paper; consistency is
the hobgoblin of... well, of something useless or unpleasant, I can’t quite
remember what. Filk understood where the story needed to go next. He just
hadn’t decided which of the many possibilities he wanted to explore. He
glanced at his watch. He still had plenty of time today.

****

THE CREATURE THAT had once been known as Small Brown, because it
was the smallest and the brownest of the members of its nexus, was
wor-ried. “I wonder,” it transmitted, “if perhaps we might have misjudged
these things.”

The other monitors considered the thought. Large Mauve asked
Small Brown to expand its thought. Small Brown replied, “These creatures
are experts at projecting their own views of reality onto the morphic fields,
so much so that the strongest of them can convince the weakest of things
that aren’t so. And we have gathered together some of the strongest of the
strong (relatively speaking). In our efforts to repair an imbalance, we may
be risking a much more serious counter-imbalance.”

****

DAMNED GOOD OBSERVATION, thought Filk, who didn’t begin to
understand it or care about it, but was sure his readers would.

****

FINK WAS THE largest of the Jellyfish. He’d assem-bled himself out of the
tattered veils of the vanished ancients. The larger he grew, the more
self-importance he assumed. He spread his nets wide, creating ripples of
turbulence across a thousand kilometers of upper atmosphere.

****

GOD, THAT’S GOOD. That clueless little Star Truck writer would kill to
write something this poetic.

****

LARGE MAUVE CONSIDERED the waves of discor-dance emanating