"Mack Reynolds - Ability Quotient" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

the apartment.

The balance of the suite lived up to the promise of the living room and
study. It was luxurious and done in a taste that could only be thought of in
terms of tomorrow.

There was a dining room, a large one, but the auto-kitchen also had a
table with a serving unit and he wound up there, sitting down and flicking
the switch for the lunch menu. Then something came to him. He looked at
the watch again. The second hand was speeding around the face at normal
rate.

"The green pills turn it off," he muttered wonderingly.

He gave his order into the screen, realizing all over again that he had an
appetite greater than he could remember for years. He was ravenous.

He had assumed that the steak would be from the whale herds, but it
wasn't. It was beef. Who could afford beef these days? He ate two of them,
a monstrous amount of potatoes, a king-size salad and a huge dish of ice
cream and strawberries.

Lunch over, he pushed the dishes and utensils onto the table's center
and pressed the button that would return them to the kitchens in the
bowels of the basement floors of the building.

He made his way back to the study and stared at the auto-teacher
accusingly for a long moment, his hands jammed into his jacket pockets.
Then he shook his head and went over to the table and got himself one of
the brown pills. Something came to him and he put the pill down and
returned to the auto-teacher and sat down before the screen.

He activated it and said, "What's next?"

A voice said, "Have you taken your stimulant?"

Bert said, "No. I'd like to take a crack at this without it."

"Please take your stimulant."

How in the hell can you argue with a computer's robot voice? He glared
at the screen for a moment but then got to his feet and went back for the
pill.

"The brown one turns you on," he growled. "I feel like Alice In
Wonderland." He began to take the pill but then thought of something. He
returned to the student's chair and sank back into it and activated the
screen again. "Kay. Let's go," he said.

"Have you taken your stimulant?"