Mayflies [antikvár]

Once there had been a man, a quietly intelligent family man, but he died. They did their damnedest to pull him out of it, yet only managed to save his brain. For that they found a use. To state it meanly, it became a computer. To state it grandly, it saved the human race.But first they had to teach it, just as though it were a schoolchild. Like any bright kid, it asked where it came from. It didn't want to know, in the sense of a hunger for knowledge, but it was bothered by a hole in its data banks, and, as it had been programmed to do, it inquired.They replied with the tapes from the lab, and they didn't edit or soften them, because later it would have to deal with even more information that could be even more unpleasant. If it couldn't cope, they needed to know immediately. So they ran the recordings, deliberately risking sensory overload, for good teachers don't describe reality, they show it.Gerard K. Metaclura, M.D., Ph.D.: hurrying across the laboratory, he evokes the twenty-eight year-old marathon medalist he was fifteen years earlier. Seventy-four kilograms sleek out his 182 centimeters, many in the legs that won him all those races. Brown hair covers his face as he bends to check a computerized tissue-typing. When he straightens, his green eyes flash pleasure. He murmurs thoughtful praise to his assistant, who works eighteen-hour days just to earn a single dazzling grin.