"Тед Чан. Seventy-Two Letters (72 буквы, Рассказ) (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"Probably not much longer," said Lionel. "It’s hard to keep them alive
if they haven’t reached an egg. I read about one in France that was grown
till it was the size of a fist, and they had the best equipment available.
I just wanted was to see if I could do it at all."
Robert stared at the foam, remembering the doctrine of preformation
that Master Trevelyan had drilled into them: all living things had been
created at the same time, long ago, and births today were merely
enlargements of the previously imperceptible. Although they appeared newly
created, these homunculi were countless years old; for all of human
history they had lain nested within generations of their ancestors,
waiting for their turn to be born.
In fact, it wasn’t just them who had waited; he himself must have done
the same thing prior to his birth. If his father were to do this
experiment, the tiny figures Robert saw would be his unborn brothers and
sisters. He knew they were insensible until reaching an egg, but he
wondered what thoughts they’d have if they weren’t. He imagined the
sensation of his body, every bone and organ soft and clear as gelatin,
sticking to those of myriad identical siblings.
What would it be like, looking through transparent eyelids, realizing
the mountain in the distance was actually a person, recognizing it as his
brother? What if he knew he’d become as massive and solid as that
colossus, if only he could reach an egg?
It was no wonder they fought.


* * *


Robert Stratton went on to read nomenclature at Cambridge’s Trinity
College. There he studied kabbalistic texts written centuries before, when
nomenclators were still called ba’alei shem and automata were called
golem, texts that laid the foundation for the science of names: the Sefer
Yezirah, Eleazar of Worms’ Sodei Razayya, Abulafia’s Hayyei ha-Olam ha-Ba.
Then he studied the alchemical treatises that placed the techniques of
alphabetic manipulation in a broader philosophical and mathematical
context:
Llull’s Ars Magna, Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia, Dee’s Monas
Hieroglyphica.
He learned that every name was a combination of several epithets, each
designating a specific trait or capability. Epithets were generated by
compiling all the words that described the desired trait: cognates and
etymons, from languages both living and extinct.
By selectively substituting and permuting letters, one could distill
from those words their common essence, which was the epithet for that
trait. In certain instances, epithets could be used as the bases for
triangulation, allowing one to derive epithets for traits undescribed in
any language. The entire process relied on intuition as much as formulae;
the ability to choose the best letter permutations was an unteachable
skill.
He studied the modern techniques of nominal integration and