"Big U, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stephenson Neal)

"Good," said the derelict, "so did J. D. It's the last view he ever
saw. Couldn't handle the job. That's why I call it that."
The giggling Bert Nix ambled back into the hail, satisfied,
pausing only to steal the contents of the office wastebasket.
Through most of this Casimir sat still and stared at the faded
German ti 1 poster on the wall. Now he was really in the talons of
Mrs. Santucci, who had probably shifted into adrenaline overdrive
and was likely to fling her desk through the wall. Instead, she was
perfectly calm and professional. Casimir disliked her for it.
"I'm a junior physics major and I transferred in from a
community college in Illinois. I know the first two years of physics
inside and out, but there's a problem. The rules here say physics
courses must include 'socioeconomic contexts backgrounding,'
which I guess means it has to explain how it fits in with today's
something or other.
"In order to context the learning experience with the real
world," said Mrs. Santucci gravely, "we must include socioeconomic
backgrounding integral with the foregrounded material."
"Right. Anyway, my problem is that I don't think I need it. I'm
not here to give you my memoirs or anything, but my parents were
immigrants, I came from a slum, got started in electronics, sort of
made my own way, saw a lot of things, and so I don't think I really
need this. It'd be a shame if I had to start all over, learning, uh,
foregrounded material I already know."
Mrs. Santucci rolled her eyes so that the metal-flake blue
eyeshadow on her lids flashed intermittently like fishing lures drawn
through a murky sea. "Well, it has been done. It must be arranged
with the curriculum chair of your department."
"Who is that for physics?"
"Distinguished Professor Sharon," she said. Bulging her
eyeballs at Casimir, she made a respectful silence at the Professor's
name, daring him to break it.
When Casimir returned to consciousness he was drifting down a
hallway, still mumbling to himself in astonishment. He had an
appointment to meet the Professor Sharon. He would have been
ecstatic just to have sat in on one of the man's lectures!


Casimir Radon was an odd one, as American Megaversity
students went. This was a good thing for him, as the Housing people
simply couldn't match him up with a reasonable roommate; he was
assigned a rare single. It was in D Tower, close to the sciences bloc
where he would spend most of his time, on a floor of single rooms
filled by the old, the weird and the asinine who simply could not live
in pairs.
ln order to find his room he would have to trace a mind-twisting
path through the lower floors until he found the elevators of D
Tower. So before he got himself lost, he went to the nearest flat
surface, which was the top of a large covered wastebasket. From it
he cleared away a few Dorito bags and a half-drained carton of