"Rudy Rucker & Bruce Sterling - Hormiga Canyon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

lawyers lofting-out a downtown high-rise. In the sharp-edged shadows
lurked a sugar ant as big as a cockroach. The huge ant was tugging at
something. A curly bit of wire, maybe. For a crazy, impossible instant the
ant looked as big as a hamster.

Stefan rocked back on his heels. These ants were blowing his mind;
they were dancing on the surface of his brain. He was losing it. It was very
bad for him to be deprived of a computer. He needed some help right
away.

“Call Jayson,” he told his phone.
 Although Jayson Rubio sometimes worked Stefan’s nerves, the two
of them had a true and lasting bond. During each year they’d spent at
Square Root of Not, they’d ventured to Burning Man together, displaying
their special-FX wizardry to the festival crowds in the desert.

Both of them had all-devouring hobbies: Stefan’s was string theory;
Jayson’s was memorabilia. Since leaving the FX company, Jayson had
started his own little online business, marketing Renaissance-Faire-type
costume gear that he made. Stefan maintained Jayson’s website.

Jayson was old-school, very analog. At Square Root of Not, he’d
been the go-to guy for everything physical: stringing power cables, putting
up drywall, sanding the floors, fixing the plumbing. As a fix-it wizard, Jayson
was a human tornado. He always carried a sheathed multitool on his belt:
knives, pliers, wrench, saw, scissors, cutters, strippers, punchers, pokers,
rippers, pounders, and more. Jayson never lacked for options.

The phone was successfully ringing. Now that Stefan was in a jam, a
jam full of sugar-ants, good old Jayson would pitch in.

“Stefan!” shouted Jayson, answering. “Call me back later.”

“No no no, listen to me,” Stefan babbled. “Ants are eating my
hardware!”

Someone else was angrily yelling at Jayson in the background.
Jayson had a fetish about holding his cell phone at arm’s length, so that the
powerful microwave phone-rays wouldn’t foment a brain tumor. Whenever
you called Jayson Rubio, you weren’t calling an individual, you were calling
an environment.

Jayson’s current environment featured an echoing garage roar of
biker engines and snarling heavy-metal music. “What? Not one more
dime!” Jayson was barking. “Your ad said ‘runs great,’ it didn’t say ‘skips
gears!’ Are you waving that tire-iron at me, you friggin’ grease monkey?
What? Sure, go ahead, call the cops, Lester! I love the L.A. cops!”

Stefan heard more angry demands, and finally the roaring of a
motorcycle. The engine noise rose to a crescendo, then it smoothed down.