"Charles Stross - Accelerando" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

He speed reads a new pop-philosophy tome while he brushes his teeth, then blogs his web throughput to a
public annotation server; he's still too enervated to finish his pre-breakfast routine by posting a morning rant on his
storyboard site. His brain is still fuzzy, like a scalpel blade clogged with too much blood: He needs stimulus,
excitement, the burn of the new. Whatever, it can wait on breakfast. He opens his bedroom door and nearly steps on
a small, damp cardboard box that lies on the carpet.
The box — he's seen a couple of its kin before. But there are no stamps on this one, no address: just his
name, in big, childish handwriting. He kneels and gently picks it up. It's about the right weight. Something shifts
inside it when he tips it back and forth. It smells. He carries it into his room carefully, angrily: Then he opens it to
confirm his worst suspicion. It's been surgically decerebrated, brains scooped out like a boiled egg.
"Fuck!"
This is the first time the madman has gotten as far as his bedroom door. It raises worrying possibilities.
Manfred pauses for a moment, triggering agents to go hunt down arrest statistics, police relations,
information on corpus juris, Dutch animal-cruelty laws. He isn't sure whether to dial two-one-one on the archaic
voice phone or let it ride. Aineko, picking up his angst, hides under the dresser mewling pathetically. Normally he'd
pause a minute to reassure the creature, but not now: Its' mere presence is suddenly acutely embarrassing, a
confession of deep inadequacy. It's too realistic, as if somehow the dead kitten's neural maps -- stolen, no doubt, for
some dubious uploading experiment -- have ended up padding out its plastic skull. He swears again, looks around,
then takes the easy option: Down the stairs two steps at a time, stumbling on the second floor landing, down to the
breakfast room in the basement, where he will perform the stable rituals of morning.
Breakfast is unchanging, an island of deep geological time standing still amidst the continental upheaval of
new technologies. While reading a paper on public key steganography and parasite network identity spoofing he
mechanically assimilates a bowl of cornflakes and skimmed milk, then brings a platter of whole grain bread and
slices of some weird seed-infested Dutch cheese back to his place. There is a cup of strong black coffee in front of




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his setting, and he picks it up and slurps half of it down before he realizes he's not alone at the table. Someone is
sitting opposite him. He glances up incuriously and freezes inside.
"Morning, Manfred. How does it feel to owe the government twelve million, three hundred and sixty-two
thousand, nine hundred and sixteen dollars and fifty-one cents?" She smiles a Mona Lisa smile, at once affectionate
and challenging.
Manfred puts everything in his sensorium on indefinite hold and stares at her. She's immaculately turned out
in a formal gray business suit: brown hair tightly drawn back, blue eyes quizzical. And as beautiful as ever: tall, ash
blonde, with features that speak of an unexplored modeling career. The chaperone badge clipped to her lapel — a
due diligence guarantee of businesslike conduct — is switched off. He's feeling ripped because of the dead kitten
and residual jet lag, and more than a little messy, so he snarls back at her; "That's a bogus estimate! Did they send
you here because they think I'll listen to you?" He bites and swallows a slice of cheese-laden crispbread: "Or did
you decide to deliver the message in person just so you could ruin my breakfast?"
"Manny." She frowns, pained. "If you're going to be confrontational, I might as well go now." She pauses,
and after a moment he nods apologetically. "I didn't come all this way just because of an overdue tax estimate."
"So." He puts his coffee cup down warily and thinks for a moment, trying to conceal his unease and turmoil.
"Then what brings you here? Help yourself to coffee. Don't tell me you came all this way just to tell me you can't
live without me."
She fixes him with a riding-crop stare: "Don't flatter yourself. There are many leaves in the forest, there are