"Charles Stross - Dechlorinating The Moderator" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Dechlorinating the Moderator
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A perspective on Particulate 7: HiNRG & B-OND
Venue: Maastricht Hilton Travelodge International Hotel, 30 March - 2 April
2018
Yr hmbl crrspndnt rprts:
This was the seventh and biggest Particulate. It's fair to say that these cons have come of
age; with about seven hundred guests and maybe three- hundred walk-ins on the door
there's no longer any question that the concom can make ends meet. Indeed they're
already hard at work scoping out a venue for Particulate #8.

I checked in on Friday morning to find that about a hundred die-hard geeks had hit the
con the night before, and the registration desk's bookings system was toast. The hotel
has hosted the last two Particulates, and they knew what to expect; as I arrived two
bemused porters were helping a spotty youth hump weird-shaped bits of gear crusted in
radiation trefoils into the baggage lifts. Everyone had to pass a check at a discreet
security booth by the door, to prevent any recurrence of the regrettable incident that
nearly wrecked last year's con.

The first thing I noticed in reception was a big whiteboard beside the main lifts. Various
messages were scribbled on it, but right in the middle, written in big blue letters, was a
notice:
DONT TRY CRITICALITY EXPERIMENTS IN YOUR BEDROOM --
UNLESS YOU WANT TO TEST THE SPRINKLERS.
I started by checking out the cafe, which was blue with dope fumes by the time I arrived
and which got steadily worse until the end of the con (when the Bremsstrahlung
Regressives tried to use it as a cloud chamber). The usual suspects were there, sipping
capuccino and smoking like there was no tomorrow. And lo, who should I run into at the
bar but my old acquaintance, Doktor Strangelove?

I first met the Dok back at Criticality II (though I'd run across him before on the net).
That was back when his home town (Buttfahrk, Ontario) was trying to prosecute him for
attempting to assemble a fissile device within city limits -- of which charge, incidentally,
he was found not guilty -- and it struck me as unusually harsh that a local prosecutor was
calling for a twenty-four year sentence on a guy who was still, basically, a kid. Since then
the Dok has done some growing up, and I can safely say that if he wasn't a menace to
society then, he certainly is now. Or he'd like to think he was.
Dok:
Hiya Betsy, howzit going?
Me:
Oh, I dunno. Just got here, dumped my bags, thought I'd take a sniff of the breeze.
Dok:
Huh-huh-huh.
Me:
Anything cool going?
Dok: [ pushes glasses up bridge of nose, fidgets with head-up projector on left spectacle
frame]:
I guess it depends what splices your code. The Fabulous Rubensteins say they're gonna
do something weird tomorrow lunchtime during the birds-of-a- feather on fusion