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

Elector by Charles Stross Charles
Stross’s
Sirhan walks, shrouded in isolation, through the crowds gathered for
previous
the festival. The only people who see him are the chattering ghosts of
novelette
dead politicians and writers, deported from the inner system by order
in this
of the Vile Offspring. The great terraforming project is nearly
series,
complete, the festival planet dressed for a jubilee that will last almost
"Nightfa
twenty of its years–four pre-singularity lifetimes–before the
ll," made
Demolition. The green and pleasant plain stretches toward a horizon a
the 2004
thousand kilometers away, beneath a lemon-yellow sky. The air
Hugo
smells faintly of ammonia and the big spaces are full of small ideas: for
final
this is the last human planet in the solar system.
ballot, as
did his
"Excuse me, are you real?" someone asks him in American-accented
novel
English.
Singulari
It takes a moment or two for Sirhan to disengage from his ty Sky.
introspection and realize that he’s being spoken to. "What?" he asks, His most
slightly puzzled. Wiry and pale, Sirhan wears the robes of a Berber recent
goat-herd on his body and the numinous halo of a utility fog-bank SF
above his head: in his abstraction, he vaguely resembles a saintly novel,
shepherd in a post-singularity nativity play. "I say, what?" Outrage Iron
simmers at the back of his mind–is nowhere private?–but, as he Sunrise
turns, he sees that one of the ghost pods has split lengthwise across (a sequel
its white mushroom-like crown, spilling a trickle of left-over to
construction fluid and a completely hairless, slightly bemused-looking Singulari
Anglo male who wears an expression of profound surprise. ty Sky),
was
"I can’t find my implants," the Anglo male says, shaking his head. "But publishe
I’m really here, aren’t I? Incarnate?" He glances round at the other d by Ace
pods. "This isn’t a sim." books in
July, and
Sirhan sighs–another exile–and sends forth a daemon to interrogate
his next
the ghost pod’s abstract interface. It doesn’t tell him much–unlike
novel, A
most of the resurrectees, this one seems to be undocumented.
Family
"You’ve been dead. Now you’re alive. I suppose that means you’re