"Rudy Rucker - Realware" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

pressure. If you like, Yoke, I'll make it in a special sauce with sherry, cream, and chanterelles. Some saffron basmati rice
and asparagus on the side. A few black cherries in the sauce for the sweetness and the color. And a Belgian endive
salad with fresh-roasted red bell peppers and a mustard vinaigrette."

"Ooh," said Yoke. "That sounds delish. I've read those fancy food words, but I've never eaten them."

"Should we all have the same thing?" said Saint. "Babs? Onar?" Babs nodded, but the handsome, long-haired Onar
insisted that he be served squid. "Stir-fry it in canola oil," he instructed. "All tentacles. And don't let them get
rubbery."

"Gnarly, sir," said Phil.

Naranjo jotted down the order and went off to serve another customer. Phil lingered, gazing at Yoke, admiring her.

"Did you bury your father's ashes?" asked Yoke. "And the knotted ring? How did it go?"

"Having my dad die hurts more than I ever imagined it would," said Phil. "Today it's been a week. Yeah, I buried the
ashes and the ring. I dumped the ashes out of the box; there weren't many of them. Now I wish I'd kept the ring. I need
to think about it some more. Maybe I should have paid more attention when Da tried to teach me about the fourth
dimension."

"I was so sorry to hear about your father, Phil," put in Babs Mooney.

"Yaaar," chimed in her brother Saint. "Poor Kurt. It would xoxx to get chopped up by a hyperspace blender." Babs and
Saint had DIM lice in their hair, colorful little bugs that moved around on their scalps like tiny cars in traffic, arranging
their hair in filigrees that could variously resemble shingles, paisley, crop circles, or herringbone tweed. Programming
the lice was one of Saint's art projects.

"I have a theory about the wowo," proposed Onar, holding up a bony finger. "The wowos were a representation of the
Klein bottle, were they not? Two Mobius strips sewn together?"

"I guess," said Phil. "But it was just a goof. An illusion."

"Perhaps the models set up a morphic resonance. Reality is, after all, a consensual hallucination. If enough people see
something as a Klein bottle, then—voila —it's a Klein bottle. It's not impossible to be killed by a dream."

"Don't make it a New Age fantasy, Onar," reproved Saint. "This thing was real."

"Reality is a hobgoblin for small minds," said Onar mildly. Yoke giggled. She seemed to find Onar entertaining.

Phil got the head chef to let him prepare most of the food for Yoke's table. He cooked with fervor, and the meal was a
big success. Around midnight he and the four guests stepped out of LoLo together. It was still pouring rain. Yoke did
something with her uvvy as they stepped outside, and a moldie suddenly came bouncing up the street, sending out
great splashes of water with each jump. It was Cobb Anderson.

"Thanks for waiting, Cobb," said Yoke. "What did you do?"

"Oh, I was going around town with Randy Karl," said Cobb. "And then we split up and I was hanging out with some
homeless people in an alley off Columbus Street. Talking with them. One of them was a very intelligent fellow. It's not
so much that the homeless are crazy and addicted, it's that they don't have money for rent. Just that one simple lack.