"Walter Jon Williams - Daddy's World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

Jamie nodded. "I was really sick."
"I was so little then, I don't really remember it very well," Becca said. "But the point is--
" She sighed again. "The point is that you weren't getting well. So they decided to--" She shook
her head. "Dad took advantage of his position at the University, and the fact that he's been a big
doner. They were doing AI research, and the neurology department was into brain modeling, and they
needed a test subject, and-- Well, the idea is, they've got some of your tissue, and when they get
cloning up and running, they'll put you back in--" She saw Jamie's stare, then shook her head.
"I'll make it simple, okay?"
She took her feet off the bed and leaned closer to Jamie. A shiver ran up his back at her
expression. "They made a copy of you. An electronic copy. They scanned your brain and built a


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holographic model of it inside a computer, and they put it in a virtual environment, and--" She
sat back, took a drag on her cigaret. "And here you are," she said.
Jamie looked at her. "I don't understand."
Colored lights gleamed in Becca's eyes. "You're in a computer, okay? and you're a program.
You know what that is, right? From computer class? And the program is sort of in the shape of your
mind. Don Quixote and Princess Gigunda are programs, too. And Mrs. Winkle down at the schoolhouse
is usually a program, but if she needs to teach something complex, then she's an education major
from the University."
Jamie felt as if he'd just been hollowed out, a void inside his ribs. "I'm not real?" he
said. "I'm not a person?"
"Wrong," Becca said. "You're real, alright. You're the apple of our parents’ eye." Her tone
was bitter. "Programs are real things," she said, "and yours was a real hack, you know, absolute
cutting-edge state-of-the-art technoshit. And the computer that you're in is real, too-- I'm
interfaced with it right now, down in the family room-- we have to wear suits with sensors and a
helmet with scanners and stuff. I hope to fuck they don't hear me talking to you down here."
"But what--" Jamie swallowed hard. How could he swallow if he was just a string of code?
"What happened to me? The original me?"
Becca looked cold. "Well," she said, "you had cancer. You died."
"Oh." A hollow wind blew through the void inside him.
"They're going to bring you back. As soon as the clone thing works out-- but this is a
government computer you're in, and there are all these government restrictions on cloning, and--"
She shook her head. "Look, Digit," she said. "You really need to know this stuff, okay?"
"I understand." Jamie wanted to cry. But only real people cried, he thought, and he wasn't
real. He wasn't real.
"The program that runs this virtual environment is huge, okay, and you're a big program, and
the University computer is used for a lot of research, and a lot of the research has a higher
priority than you do. So you don't run in real-time-- that's why I'm growing faster than you are.
I'm spending more hours being me than you are. And the parents--" She rolled her eyes. "They
aren't making this any better, with their emphasis on normal family life."
She sucked on her cigaret, then stubbed it out in something invisible. "See, they want us to
be this normal family. So we have breakfast together every day, and dinner every night, and spend
the evening at the Zoo or in Pandaland or someplace. But the dinner that we eat with you is
virtual, it doesn't taste like anything-- the grant ran out before they got that part of the
interface right-- so we eat this fast-food crap before we interface with you, and then have dinner
all over again with you ... Is this making any sense? Because Dad has a job and Mom has a job and