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| 3001 The final Odissey |
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Страница 10 из 91 underfoot. Cutting across that band at an angle was another, much fainter one, so that the frame of the window threw a double shadow. Poole had to go almost down on his knees so that he could peer up at the sky. He had thought himself beyond surprise, but the spectacle of two suns left him momentarily speechless. `What`s that?` he gasped, when he had recovered his breath. `Oh -- haven`t you been told? That`s Lucifer.` `Earth has another sun?` `Well, it doesn`t give us much heat, but it`s put the Moon out of business... Before the Second Mission went there to look for you, that was the planet Jupiter.` I knew I would have much to learn in this new world, Poole told himself. But just how much, I never dreamed. 5 Education Poole was both astonished and delighted when the television set was wheeled into the room and positioned at the end of his bed. Delighted because he was suffering from mild information starvation -- and astonished because it was a model which had been obsolete even in his own time. `We`ve had to promise the Museum we`ll give it back,` Matron informed him. `And I expect you know how to use this,` As he fondled the remote-control, Poole felt a wave of acute nostalgia sweep over him. As few other artefacts could, it brought back memories of his childhood, and the days when most television sets were too stupid to understand spoken commands. `Thank you, Matron. What`s the best news channel?` She seemed puzzled by his question, then brightened. `Oh -- I see what you mean. But Professor Anderson thinks you`re not quite ready yet. So Archives has put together a collection that will make you feel at home.` Poole wondered briefly what the storage medium was in this day and age. He could still remember compact disks, and his eccentric old Uncle George had been the proud possessor of a collection of vintage videotapes. But surely that technological contest must have finished centuries ago -- in the usual Darwinian way, with the survival of the fittest. He had to admit that the selection was well done, by someone (Indra?) familiar with the early twenty-first century. There was nothing disturbing -- no wars or violence, and very little contemporary business or politics, all of which would now be utterly irrelevant. There were some light comedies, sporting events (how did they know that he had been a keen tennis fan?), classical and pop music, and wildlife documentaries. And whoever had put this collection together had a sense of humour, or they would not have included episodes from each Star Trek series. As a very small boy, Poole had met both Patrick Stewart and Leonard Nimoy: he wondered what they would have thought if they could have known the destiny of the child who had shyly asked for their autographs. A depressing thought occurred to him, soon after he had started exploring -- much of the time in fast-forward -- these relics of the past. He had read somewhere that by the turn of the century -- his century! -- there were approximately fifty thousand television stations broadcasting simultaneously. If that figure had been maintained and it might well have increased -- by now millions of millions of hours of TV programming must have gone on the air. So even the most hardened cynic would admit that there were probably at least a billion hours of worthwhile viewing... and millions that would pass the highest standards of excellence. How to find these few -- well, few million -- needles in so gigantic a haystack? The thought was so overwhelming -- indeed, so demoralizing -- that after a week of increasingly aimless channel-surfing Poole asked for the set to be removed. Perhaps fortunately, he had less and less time to himself during his waking hours, which were steadily growing longer as his strength came back. |
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