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

"I missed you, Digit." Becca sighed. "Believe it or not."
"I'm sorry."
Becca restlessly kicked a piece of junk, a hubcap from an old, miniature car. It clanged as
it found new lodgement in the rubble. "Can you appear as a person?" she asked. "It would make it
easier to talk to you."
"I've finished with all that," Jamie said. "I'd have to resurrect too much dead programming.
I've cut the world down to next to nothing, I've got rid of my body, my heartbeat, the sense of
touch."
"All the human parts," Becca said sadly.
The dull red light oozed over the metal tree like a drop of blood. "Everything except sleep
and dreams. It turns out that sleep and dreams have too much to do with the way people process
memory. I can't get rid of them, not without cutting out too much of my mind." The tree gave a
strange, disembodied laugh. "I dreamed about you, the other day. And about Cicero. We were talking
Latin."
"I've forgotten all the Latin I ever knew." Becca tossed her hair, forced a laugh. "So what
do you do nowadays?"
"Mostly I'm a conduit for data. The University has been using me as a research spider, which
I don't mind doing, because it passes the time. Except that I take up a lot more memory than any
real search spider, and don't do that much better a job. And the information I find doesn't have
much to do with me-- it's all about the real world. The world I can't touch." The metal tree bled
color.
"Mostly," he said, "I've just been waiting for Dad to die. And now it's happened."
There was a moment of silence before Becca spoke. "You know that dad had himself scanned
before he went."
"Oh yeah. I knew."
"He set up some kind of weird foundation that I'm not part of, with his patents and programs
and so on, and his money and some other people's."
"He'd better not turn up here."
Becca shook her head. "He won't. Not without your permission, anyway. Because I'm in charge
here. You-- your program-- it's not a part of the foundation. Dad couldn't get it all, because the
University has an interest, and so does the family." There was a moment of silence. "And I'm the
family now."
"So you ... inherited me," Jamie said. Cold scorn dripped from his words.
"That's right," Becca said. She squatted down amid the rubble, rested her forearms on her
knees.
"What do you want me to do, Digit? What can I do to make it better for you?"
"No one ever asked me that," Jamie said.
There was another long silence.
"Shut it off," Jamie said. "Close the file. Erase it."
Becca swallowed hard. Tears shimmered in her eyes. "Are you sure?" she asked.
"Yes. I'm sure."
"And if they ever perfect the clone thing? If we could make you..." She took a breath. "A
person?"
"No. It's too late. It's ... not something I can want anymore."
Becca stood. Ran a hand through her hair. "I wish you could meet my daughter," she said. "Her
name is Christy. She's a real beauty."
"You can bring her," Jamie said.
Becca shook her head. "This place would scare her. She's only three. I'd only bring her if we
could have..."
"The old environment," Jamie finished. "Pandaland. Mister Jeepers. Whirlikin Country."