Engineering Infinity by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Novela, Ciencia ficción
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 2011-01-25T05:00:00+00:00

Mantis

by Robert Reed

Robert Reed was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1956. He has a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the Nebraska Wesleyan University, and has worked as a lab technician. He became a full-time writer in 1987, the same year he won the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, and has published eleven novels, including The Leeshore, The Hormone Jungle, and far future science fiction novels Marrow and The Well of Stars. An extraordinarily prolific writer, Reed has published over 180 short stories, mostly in F&SF and Asimov’s, which have been nominated for the Hugo, James Tiptree Jr. Memorial, Locus, Nebula, Seiun, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial, and World Fantasy awards, and have been collected in The Dragons of Springplace and The Cuckoo’s Boys. His novella “A Billion Eves” won the Hugo Award in 2007. Nebraska’s only SF writer, Reed lives in Lincoln with his wife and daughter, and is an ardent long-distance runner.

“Infinity windows were installed two months ago, but technical troubles, nebulous and vexing, delayed their coming on-line. The tall squidskin sheets were left transparent, revealing white walls and assorted cables leading back to the building’s servers and power plant. Mr Pembrook is our club manager, and whenever he bounced past he made the point of apologizing for any inconvenience. But I didn’t particularly miss the mirrors that used to hang here; staring at my pained, sweat-sheened face was never an attraction. And I didn’t pine for the giant televisions tuned to sports I didn’t follow and the 24/7 crime networks. White and bland suited my task, and after the first week it felt as if this was the way it had always been.

My club sits ten storeys above the apartment where I live with my son. Fifty machines of various designs fill a long, narrow, well-ventilated room. My favourite machine is near the back corner, and it’s usually unoccupied in the early afternoon. As a rule, I avoid the newer models. I’m avid but lazy, and their “miles” feel long to me. I know what to expect when I work the pedals and swing the long arms, the onboard computer interfacing with a heart and lungs it knows as well as any. I prefer hill workouts while watching history programs from my own library, and one hard hour is usually enough to cleanse a brain evolved to chase antelope across a grassy plain.

Mostly the same faces haunt the club every day, and we know each other on sight and sometimes by name. A few regulars are passing acquaintances. Not Berry. I know her name only because somebody once called her that in front of me. Berry might be her first name, or last, or a nickname. Or I didn’t hear things right, and she’s somebody else entirely.

Whatever the name, the woman seems to be in her late sixties. She has a long face framed with hair dyed a luxurious, unnatural black. She never asks anything of her machine except a lot of easy minutes. She watches old hospital shows, turn-of-the-century stuff.

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