"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Coolhunting" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

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She woke to her mother's face centimeters from hers. Her mother had aged
naturally, with lines and age spots and skin blotchy from uneven sun exposure.
Her hair had gone completely gray, and she wore glasses instead of having her
eyes enhanced.
Enhancements had lost their charm, after KD.
The nose ring remained, though, and the tiny diamond stud Steffies'
father had given her in lieu of an engagement ring.
"Stephanie?" Her mother asked, voice rising. "Sweetheart?"
Steffie blinked as if she were waking out of a sound sleep when in fact
she had awakened the instant her mother sat down. Once of the benefits of
flopping, an instant wakefulness.
"Mother." She kept her voice cool, as if she had awakened to her
mother's touch ever day for the last fifteen years.
"He found you then."
The answer was obvious, so Steffie did not grace the remark with a
reply.
"Why didn't you contact us? We'd have booked your ticket."
"No need," Steffie said. She yawned and stretched. The couch was the
best bed she'd had in weeks. "Can I use the shower?"
 "Sure," her mother said. "Towels are -- "
"Where they always are, I know," Steffie said. And so were the extra
clothes, and the special linens, and KD.
KD.
"How is she?" Steffie asked.
"Dying," her mother said. The response was curt, as if it held both
anger and embarrassment.
Or maybe Steffie was just reading that in.
"I didn't think that was possible," Steffie said, although she had
suspected it was. She had suspected from the beginning.
"It was -- you know -- a long time ago. The technology was new."
Early adapters. She had never thought of her parents that way, but
that's what they were.
Early adapters.
She wondered who set the trend.
She wondered who had coolhunted it.
She shivered.
"So what's happening?"
"Nothing you'd notice," her mother said. "It's all internal organ
decay. On the cellular level, which makes sense, of course. Outside nothing
has changed. She's still quite pretty. It's all so very Victorian -- "
"The skin is an organ," Steffie said.
"But it's the most real of all of her parts," her mother said. "It
didn't need much..."
She let her voice trail off.
"Tampering," Steffie said, and stood up. She was, for the first time,
conscious of how filthy she was. How long had it been since she bathed? How
long since she changed clothes? It didn't matter in New York. People were
people were people there. But here, a single stain on the couch was an
international incident.