"Alastair Reynolds - Signal to Noise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

“They don’t take up anything like as much bandwidth as vision. The
way Joe puts it, postural information only needs a few basic parameters:
the angles of my limb joints, that kind of thing. Hearing’s pretty
straightforward. And touch is the easiest of all, as it happens.”

“Really?”

“So Joe says. Hold my hand.”

Andrea hesitated an instant then took Mick’s hand.

“Now squeeze it,” Mick said.

She tightened her hold. “Are you getting that?”

“Perfectly. It’s much easier than sending sound. If you were to say
something to me, the acoustic signal would have to be sampled, digitized,
compressed, and pushed across the link: hundreds of bytes per second.
But all touch needs is a single parameter. The system will still be able to
keep sending touch even when everything else gets too difficult.”

“Then it’s the last thing to go.”

“It’s the most fundamental sense we have. That’s the way it ought to
be.”

After a few moments, Andrea said, “How long?”

“Four days,” Mick said slowly. “Maybe five, if we’re lucky. Joe says
we’ll have a better handle on the decay curve by tomorrow.”

“I’m worried, Mick. I don’t know how I’m going to deal with losing you.”

He closed his other hand on hers and squeezed in return. “You’ll get
me back.”

“I know. It’s just… it won’t be you. It’ll be the other you.”

“They’re both me.”
 “That’s not how it feels right now. It feels like I’m having an affair while
my husband’s away.”

“It shouldn’t. I am your husband. We’re both your husband.”

They said nothing after that, sitting in silence as the boat bobbed its
way back to shore. It was not that they had said anything upsetting, just that
words were no longer adequate. Andrea kept holding his hand. Mick wanted
this morning to continue forever: the boat, the breeze, the perfect sky over
the bay. Even then he chided himself for dwelling on the passage of time,