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

account. She'd sent the vid to seven laces companies, two shoe manufacturers,
and one hundred resale outlets. Each of them should have sent a fee into her
current account. It should have doubled with the laces bit. If she hit her
quota today, she'd have enough for a two-week flop.
Lord knew she needed it. Her own boots were worn thin from all the
walking. Twenty-one successful hunts in seven days, not to mention eight
busts, and one illegal.
She still held the record for the most shifts in one day. Steffie
Storm-Warning, they called her, because in her wake was turmoil and
destruction. Entire companies folded on the basis of her vids. Entire
companies replaced them. And credits flowed back and forth like a river
covered in Mediterranean sludge.
No one knew who she was. She had forty different legal identities, and
more than enough credits stashed in various accounts to live expensively for
the rest of her life. But she liked coolhunting. It was purposely anonymous --
if people knew who she was, they would chase her, try to convince her they
were cool -- and it carried no responsibility. She didn't answer to a boss,
she didn't answer to a company, she didn't even answer to the people she sold
her vids to. She was as independent as independent got, a loner in every sense
of the word.
And she liked it like that.
On the corner a hot dog vender floated his cart over a hot air grate.
The dogs weren't like the ones she'd had as a kid. These were all meat,
registered and certified lean cuts from prime portions of pig. The taste was
similar but not the same.
A taste gone from her life.
Everything changed.
Nothing remained the same.
Life on the street had taught her that.
Coolhunting had reinforced it.
She took an unmarked plastic from her pocket, checked the credit level,
and decided to launder it through the vendor. She stopped, ordered two dogs
slathered in mustard, sweet catsup, and pickle relish, and handed the man the
plastic.
He was skinny, unshaven, with an apron that had grime on it as old as
she was. Vendors had always looked like that. Even in the ancient black ‘n
white vids available for free download on any TV set, the vendors looked like
that.
A hundred years hadn't changed them. Just their carts and their
product.
He took her plastic, ran it through his machine, then frowned. "That's
a lot of change," he said.
"Just run it through the machine." She took one dogs off his
countertop, and took a bite. A little too juicy, a little too ham-flavored,
but enough to still an appetite that had been building for the good part of a
day.
"Don't do that any more," he said. Anyone caught recharging too much
plastic, running too many credits, was brought in.
"Sure you do, for an extra five," she said around the dog.
He grunted, then slammed the plastic into his machine. No one said no