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

"Well. Looks like you're sitting pretty, then."
Jamie shrugged. Flames belched. "I'm getting bored with it. I might just wipe it all out and
build another place to live in. I can't tell you the number of battles I've won, the number of
kingdoms I've trampled. In this reality and others. It's all the same after a while." He looked at
her. "You've grown."
"So have you."
"Once the paterfamilias finally decided to allow it." He smiled. "We still have dinner
together sometimes, in the old house. Just a normal family, as Dad says. Except that sometimes I


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turn up in the form of a werewolf, or a giant, or something."
"So they tell me."
"The advantage of being software is that I can look like anything I want. But that's the
disadvantage, too, because I can't really become something else, I'm still just ... me. I may wear
another program as a disguise, but I'm still the same program inside, and I'm not a good enough
programmer to mess with that, yet." Jamie hopped off his throne, walked a nervous little circle
around his sister. "So what brings you to the old neighborhood?" he asked. "The old folks said you
were off visiting Aunt Maddy in the country."
"Exiled, they mean. I got knocked up, and after the abortion they sent me to Maddy. She was
supposed to keep me under control, except she didn't." She picked an invisible piece of lint from
her sweater. "So now I'm back." She looked at him. "I'm skipping a lot of the story, but I figure
you wouldn't be interested."
"Does it have to do with sex?" Jamie asked. "I'm sort of interested in sex, even though I
can't do it, and they're not likely to let me."
"Let you?"
"It would require a lot of new software and stuff. I was prepubescent when my brain
structures were scanned, and the program isn't set up for making me a working adult, with adult
desires et cetera. Nobody was thinking about putting me through adolescence at the time. And the
administrators at the University told me that it was very unlikely that anyone was going to give
them a grant so that a computer program could have sex." Jamie shrugged. "I don't miss it, I
guess. But I'm sort of curious."
Surprise crossed Becca's face. "But there are all kinds of simulations, and..."
"They don't work for me, because my mind isn't structured so as to be able to achieve
pleasure that way. I can manipulate the programs, but it's about as exciting as working a virtual
butter churn." Jamie shrugged again. "But that's okay. I mean, I don't miss it. I can always give
myself a jolt to the pleasure center if I want."
"Not the same thing," Becca said. "I've done both."
"I wouldn't know."
"I'll tell you about sex if you want," Becca said, "but that's not why I'm here."
"Yes?"
Becca hesitated. Licked her lips. "I guess I should just say it, huh?" she said. "Mom's
dying. Pancreatic cancer."
Jamie felt sadness well up in his mind. Only electrons, he thought, moving from one place to
another. It was nothing real. He was programmed to feel an analog of sorrow, and that was all.
"She looks normal to me," he said, "when I see her." But that didn't mean anything: his
mother chose what she wanted him to see, just as he chose a mask-- a werewolf, a giant-- for her.
And in neither case did the disguise at all matter. For behind the werewolf was a program