"Neal Stephenson - Spew" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stephenson Neal)

counselor clued me in, and it nearly blew the top of my skull off. For a couple
of weeks I was like that lucky conquistador from the poem - stout
what's-his-name silent upon a peak in Darien - as I dealt this wild surmise: 20
years of rough country ahead of me leading down to an ocean of Slack that
stretched all the way to the sunlit rim of the world, or to the end of my
natural life expectancy, whichever came first.
So now I am scared shitless about the next Polysurf test. And then, hope.
My division commander zooms toward me in the Demosphere, an alienated human head
wearing a bowler hat as badge of rank. "Follow me, Stark," he says, launching
the command like a bronchial loogie, and before I can even "yes sir" I'm trying
to keep up with him, dodging through DemoTainment Space.
And 10 minutes later we are cruising in a standard orbit around your Profile.
And from the middle distance it looks pretty normal. I can see at a glance you
are a 24-year-old single white female New Derisive with post-Disillusionist
leanings, income careening in a death spiral around the poverty line, you spend
more on mascara than is really appropriate compared to your other cosmetics
outlays, which are Low Modest - I'd wager you're hooked on some exotic brand -
no appendix, O positive, HIV-negative, don't call your mother often enough,
spend an hour a day talking to your girlfriends, you prefer voice phone to
video, like Irish music as well as the usual intelligent yet primal, sludgy yet
danceable rock that someone like you would of course listen to. Your use of the
Spew follows a bulimic course - you'll watch for two days at a time and then not
switch on for a week.
But I know it can't be that simple, the commander wouldn't have brought me here
because he was worried about your mascara imbalance, there's got to be something
else.
I decide to take a flyer. "Geez, boss, something's not right here," I say, "this
profile looks normal - too normal."
He buys it. He buys it like a set of snow tires. His disembodied head spins
around and he looks at me intently, an oval of two-dimensional video in
DemoTainment Space. "You saw that!?" he says.
Now I'm in deep. "Just a hunch, boss."
"Get to the bottom of it, and you'll be picking out color schemes by the end of
the week," he says, then streaks off like a bottle rocket.
So that's it then; if I nab myself a promotion before the next Polysurf, they'll
be a lot more forgiving if, say, the little couch potato in my brain stem
chooses to watch Hee Haw for half an hour, or whatever.
Thenceforward I am in full Stalker Mode, I stake out your Profile, camp out in
the middle of your income-tax returns, dance like an arachnid through your
Social Telephony Web, dog you through the Virtual Mall trying to predict what
clothes you're going to buy. It takes me about 10 minutes to figure out you've
been buying mascara for one of your girlfriends who got fired from her job last
year, so that solves that little riddle. Then I get nervous because whatever
weirdness it was about you that drew the Commander's attention doesn't seem to
be there anymore. Almost like you know someone's watching.
OK, let's just get this out of the way: it's creepy. Being a creep is a role
someone has to take for society to remain free and hence prosperous (or is it
the other way around?).
I am pursuing a larger goal that isn't creepy at all. I am thinking of Adderson.
Every one of us, sitting in our cubicles, is always thinking of Adderson, who