"Bruce Sterling - Shinkansen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Bruce Sterling
bruces@well.sf.ca.us

Literary Freeware: Not For Commercial Use

From SCIENCE FICTION EYE #6
CATSCAN 6 "Shinkansen"

Let me tell you what the 21st Century feels like.
Imagine yourself at an international conference of industrial designers in
Nagoya, Japan. You're not an industrial designer yourself, and you're not
quite sure what you're doing there, but presumably some wealthy civic-
minded group of Nagoyans thought you might have entertainment value, so
they flew you in. You're in a cavernous laser-lit auditorium with 3,000
assorted Japanese, Finns, Germans, Americans, Yugoslavs, Italians, et al., all
wearing identical ID badges, except for a trenchant minority, who have
scribbled "Allons Nagoya" on their badges so that everybody will know
they're French.
There's a curved foam plug stuck in your ear with a thin gray cord
leading to a black plastic gadget the size of a deck of cards. This is an "ICR-
6000 Conference Receiver." It's a five-channel short-range radio, with a
blurry typed serial number stuck to it with a strip of Scotch Tape. You got
the receiver from a table manned by polite young hostesses, who were
passing out vast heaps of these items, like party favors. Of the five channels
offered, Number 1 is Japanese and Number 2 is, purportedly, English. You get
the strong impression that the French would have preferred Number 3 to be
French, but the Conference offers only two "official languages" and channels
3, 4 and 5 have static.
Muted festivities begin, in the best of taste. First a brief Kabuki skit is
offered, by two expatriate Canadians, dressed in traditional robes. Ardent
students of the Kabuki form, the two Canadians execute ritual moves of
exacting precision, accompanied by bizarre and highly stylized verbal
bellowing. They are, however, speaking not Japanese but English. After some
confusion you realize that this piece, "The Inherited Cramp," is meant to be a
comic performance. Weak culture-shocked chuckles arise here and there
from the

more adventurous members of the audience. Toward the end you
feel that you might get used to this kind of thing if you saw enough of it.
The performance ends to the warm applause of general relief. Assorted
bigwigs take the stage: a master of ceremonies, the keynote speaker, the
Mayor of Nagoya, the Speaker of the City Council, the Governor of the
Prefecture. And then, accompanied by a silverhaired retainer of impressive
stolid dignity, comes the Crown Prince of Japan.
Opening ceremonies of this kind are among the many obligations of this
patient and graceful young aristocrat. The Crown Prince wears a truly
immaculate suit which, at an impolite guess, probably costs as much as a
small car. As a political entity, this symbolic personage is surrounded by
twin bureaucracies of publicity and security. The security is not immediately
evident. Only later will you discover that the entire building has been