"Rudy Rucker - The Man Who Ate Himself" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

I had her. I had her. But then I had to go and tell her. She'll never forgive me."

"You told her how you sabatoged the guidance system?"

"I didn't sabatoge it. I didn't have to. Time is a circle, Fletch. If she had really understood my papers, she
would have known that. Time is a circle ten billion years around. And Mar-ston's body is going to make
the round trip."

I thought a minute. "So? That just means that there's two Marstons out there. There's the Marston we
just launched, and there's the Marston who's traveled ten billion years around. One Marston is seventy
and the other is ten billion and seventy."

'That won't wash, Fletch. What if we'd decided not to launch him? How would the
ten-billion-and-seventy-year-old know whether or not to exist? A particle's world-line can't be like a
thread winding around and around time. It has to close off, to come back on itself."

"I still don't get the point, Harry."

"The points is that circular time means the universe repeats. Every ten billion years everything comes
back to the same place. It's like a pool table. If you plug all the pockets and hit a hard enough
break-shot, the balls will eventually reform into the triangular pattern you started with. Every atom in
Marston's capsule has to come back to where it started from."

Suddenly it clicked. "You mean the crater back there...."

"Has to be, Fletch. Has to be! Marston's ship is going to go around time and crash there ... say, in 1100
A.D. There's probably even a Zuni Indian legend about it. And then Marston's capsule is going to lie
buried until he digs it up five years ago. Sealed in the capsule is going to be some rotten compost which
he is going to plow into his vegetable garden."

The joy of science had driven off Harry's sorrow at losing Evangeline. He gave a wild giggle. "And
Marston thought he was a vegetarian! He thought he could avoid rotting on Earth!"

The same snake we'd seen yesterday was lying in the same place in the driveway. It had its tail tucked
into its mouth. I down-shifted and skirted it. The android guard was already holding the gate open for us.
The TV-camera over the gate scanned back and forth. For an instant the camera pointed at the android's
face, and it became a TV screen with a picture of a TV screen with a picture of a TV screen with a
picture of....

I pulled onto the paved road and started driving toward the airport. I had a hell of a hangover.